Page 26 of Knox (The Devil’s Luck MC #6)

KNOX

I wanted Walter Bates’s head on a platter as much as I wanted to stick my tongue down his daughter’s throat. But I didn’t see her as Bates’s daughter anymore. I saw her as just Caroline, my spitfire, mine .

And I was going to do fucking everything to make her see that, too.

We fucked again, and damn was it good. It was a release in more ways than one.

The bed springs creaked like crazy, and the people on the other side of the wall banged their fists against it, shouting to stop fucking like animals.

Obviously, we didn’t.

Not until I made Caroline come so hard we had to shower and collapse onto the other bed in each other’s arms.

My hands skimmed her body, cupping her ass, palming her tits. All her marks, from Vane and running from everything she knew, were still present but fading—the physical evidence, at least. Her fingertips trailed down my chest and abdomen, then back up to tenderly touch my face.

I winced and said, “I feel like tenderized meat.”

Caroline rolled her eyes, but she was fighting a smile. “You look it, too. You’re an ugly motherfucker.”

“You’ll still let me finger you, right?”

“Yeah.”

She spread her legs, but then her brows furrowed, and I stopped. “What?”

She touched my inner right arm where my Devil’s Luck patch was inked—a skull and three shamrocks behind it. “Your patch.”

“Yep,” I said, remembering the day I got it. “Jackson was there with me. Local guy, pretty cool. It felt like a rite of passage, you know?”

“Hm,” was all she responded with. I didn’t like the tone, but before I could ask, her touch moved to the one barbed wire around my left bicep. “This one is…”

I chuckled. “Shitty.”

“You said it, not me.”

“Sixteen-year-old me thought it was so edgy and rebellious. Cheap back-alley job. Didn’t mean a damn thing back then except one thing—that I owned my body. First thing I ever really chose for myself. I got it three days before Harlon died.”

“This one?” she asked, feeling the Roman numerals on my ribs. “Even more edgy.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said with mock boasting. “The date my mom died. Hurt like a motherfucker.”

I thought she would keep asking—I had a fuck ton of ink all over me—but she just kept touching, slow and soft, tracing all of them like she was memorizing them.

This was the calmest I had ever seen her.

And then she rolled over, baring her back to me. She moved her long blonde hair aside to show her own ink on the back of her neck, right over her spine.

The patch of the Wolverines—a snarling wolverine with blood on its teeth.

I all but growled. The sight of it made something black and feral coil in my gut. I wanted to claw it off her skin with my own bare hands. I wanted to make her new again.

Free.

“I fucking hate it.” Caroline’s voice was so quiet I barely heard it. “I want it gone. I don’t care if I have to burn it off myself.”

I carefully rolled her over to face me, then took her hands in mine and kissed her knuckles. “You’re not your ink, Caroline.”

Her lower lip wobbled. “I feel like I am.”

I caught her chin between my fingers, pulling her close for a lingering kiss. “You don’t have to anymore. You’re not his. You’re not their property. You’re not anybody’s but your own. Fuck anyone who thinks otherwise.”

“Knox…”

“Call me Nate.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. No one else is allowed to but you.”

Caroline hesitated, searching my eyes, then gave the smallest smile. “Okay.”

I pressed my lips to her forehead. “I’m gonna make sure Bates never breathes the same air as you ever again, Care.

I’ll put him in the fucking ground myself, with my bare hands if I have to.

I won’t lose this.” I held her tighter. She pressed her cheek to my chest. “I won’t lose you. I’ll be fucking damned if I do.”

We were quiet for a long time.

Then she whispered, “You’re right. He needs to die.”

She had alluded to her father’s death before, but hearing her say it straight up was still jarring. “Really?”

“Yes,” she said fearlessly. “If I don’t see him die with my own eyes, I’ll always be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I’m tired of being defined by him and his stupid crew. I want to be what you want me to be. Yours. Free. I want Reno to be free. I want the Devils to be free.”

“Caroline…”

She sat up to look at me. The moment had so much gravity that I wasn’t distracted by her perfect tits.

“They’ll never trust me. Will Jackson kick you out of the club if he finds out I’m still here?”

I scrubbed my face, not wanting to think about it. Caroline was the priority over Jackson’s personal vendetta. “Maybe.”

Caroline lay back down just to curl up in on herself. “What about Gabriel?”

I hated seeing her make herself small when she was too badass for that.

“They’ve definitely gone back for him. They’re planning a funeral.

I have no idea where I left my phone, so I don’t have contact with them.

” I paused, then smirked. “Otherwise I’d be scrolling for the first laser treatment I can find. ”

She smiled halfheartedly. I scooped her ass with my arm, pulling her closer. She buried her face in my chest again. “It’s my burden to figure out, Knox—Nate.”

I squeezed her hip. “Oh, I meant for myself. Time to get this stupid barbed wire gone.”

That made her snort a laugh and shove at my chest, which made me chuckle. “That can wait, you cocky bastard. Right now, we need to plot my father’s demise.”

“Oh, I’ve been waiting to hear those words for months, baby girl. Let’s do it.”

Grant’s bike and credit card were our saving grace.

After we finally got enough sleep and woke up around ten in the morning, we went to a thrift store for entirely new wardrobes—Caroline damn near wept over clean underwear—and then enjoyed a breakfast place.

We didn’t talk much, but that was okay. She wasn’t much of a conversationalist. I was just happy to see her not looking miserable as she inhaled her French toast and chugged chocolate milk.

Not that I wasn’t stuffing myself, either. We hadn’t eaten since my shitty attempt at ramen. I was keeping pace with her, plowing through my pancakes and coffee.

By the time we were done, we were in food comas.

“Wheel me out, spitfire,” I said with an exaggerated groan.

Caroline rolled her eyes. “In your dreams.”

“No room. My head’s too full of you lying in bed under me as I?—”

The waitress teleported next to us. “Anything else for you?”

Caroline covered her face, but I saw her ears turn red.

From then on, it was Mission Impossible.

We spent hours upon hours planning how to make a move on Bates. We had ideas upon ideas, but there were always holes. We also had arguments.

Well, she argued with me .

“What?” I asked in exasperation. “It could work. We just need to get the Devils to?—”

“No,” she interrupted, annoyed, then bit into an apple with a vengeance. “He has a failsafe against that kind of shit.”

“Okay, what about…”

Nope, that was too naive.

“We could try…”

Nope, that would take a dozen more men to enact.

I flopped back on the bed. “If we fuck, maybe we can refresh our minds.”

Caroline swatted my knee. “Sex doesn’t work like that, Nathaniel.”

“We can try.”

“Good attempt.”

“I want to see your new panties,” I grumbled.

“Not until we figure out how to kill my father,” she said like it was reading a weather report. “Then you can see them on the floor.”

I sat up like a shot and rejoined her sitting at the edge of the bed, surrounded by notebook paper. Neither of us had our phones, so everything we did was the old-fashioned way with pens and independent thinking.

I kissed her bare shoulder, exposed by her tank top that revealed a good amount of her tits. “One hundred percent of my brain power for you, baby girl.”

Caroline was so laser-focused that she barely reacted.

I was still surprised I could get away with calling her that.

Knowing who she was, how she acted, what her personality was like, Caroline Bates was the last person I would give such a nickname to—until I fucked her so good she was the only one I trusted to call me by my given name.

“I have a plan I’ve been chewing on,” she said. “And more than half of your brain power is focused on what position you want to fuck me in.”

“Of course not, spitfire,” I purred. “I’m?—”

She shoved her half-eaten apple in my mouth. Standing up to pace, she said, “We need to play into Walter’s single weakness. His one blind spot.”

I hacked on the apple, miffed but amused, and chucked it in the trash.

“He doesn’t have one. We’re up against a mountain.

The Devils are down a man.” Saying that was like a knife twisting in my gut.

“So it’s seven, including you and me, and you can count Carrie, against however many Wolverines your dad’s got stashed away.

We got two pregnant women to protect. We’re not exactly a formidable force. How many men you think he’s got?”

Caroline stopped pacing to fix her already perfect hair. She was still keeping it up in a ponytail. “Almost thirty.”

“Damn.” I scrubbed at my jaw. My scruff was growing out thicker.

I hadn’t shaved in two weeks now. “The trailer was the club’s safe place to hunker down.

Bates tailed the Devils there and…” My voice choked a little, remembering Gabriel’s prone body.

I forced it down. “Bates knows where it is, and now that he knows we’re even more vulnerable without Gabriel, he’s going to use that to his advantage. ”

“If he hasn’t already,” she said darkly.

“No,” I said sharply. “Jackson would have found a way to contact me.”

Caroline was silent for a moment, then whispered, “Me.”

“Huh?”

“His weak spot.” She turned to me, and her eyes were blazing. “It’s me.”

I stared at her like she’d grown a second head—then laughed. She crossed her arms defensively when I tried to suppress my laughing fit. “Baby girl,” I tried to reason, “you’re delusional if you think I’m going to let you be bait for a psycho mob boss.”

“You’re delusional if you think you own me or get to decide what I can and can’t do,” she fired back.

My smile faded. I stood and tucked her into my arms without resistance. “You’re right. I don’t.” I rested my cheek on her head. After a second of stiffness, Caroline relaxed into me. “But you’ve gone through too many levels of hell to be a sacrifice.”

“But—”

“He left you in a room with a monster. He doesn’t give a damn about you, Caroline. I hate to tell you that, but I know it’s true. You must, too. You can’t give a damn about him, either.”

Caroline let out a shuddering exhale. “I know that. But he’ll still want me back.”

“How can you be so confident?”

She pulled away gently. “Because I know him. He wants me back so that he can punish me. Not you. He wants it for himself. He thinks he owns me.” She lifted her chin, and damn her confidence was sexy.

“He always has. But not anymore. That’s why it’ll work.

He’ll want to break me. He’ll leave the Devils alone if I’m the thing he has to focus on first.”

I didn’t like it. There were too many risks. Too many variables we couldn’t control. Caroline believed that we could create a situation where we did control all the variables.

But it would require help.

“If I entertain this idea,” I began slowly, “we need to get the Devils on board, and that’s a hell of a lot easier said than done.”

Caroline nodded. “I know. That’s why you have to convince them it’s your idea, not mine. We can make it seem like you do hate me and want to return me to Walter.”

That made me angry. “I don’t hate you. And I’m not going to lie to Jackson.

That’ll only make things worse. What I hate is that I have to tell you that Black Jack isn’t going to want to follow a plan where you’re a variable at all.

He doesn’t trust you. He isn’t going to put any of his men at risk?—”

“They’re all at risk anyway,” Caroline hissed.

I sat down hard on the edge of the bed. Why couldn’t we get on the same page?

“You said it yourself, Nate,” she said, crossing her arms again. “Walter knows the Devils are vulnerable right now. He could make a move any day. We need to make a move first , and if that involves being bait, fine. I’m willing to be that.”

I raked my hand through my hair but kept eye contact. She was too damn convincing. “And once he’s dead, you’ll be fine and come back to me.”

It wasn’t an argumentative point.

Caroline gave one sharp nod. “I’m a survivor. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“You’re so badass, baby girl.”

“Damn right.”

“Sit,” I ordered.

Without hesitation, Caroline sat on my lap, straddling my legs to face me and resting her arms on my shoulders. I kissed her.

She knew Walter best. She knew how he thought, how he planned, how he acted. She was the Devils’ unintentional inside man. And I trusted her. So much that I’d risk my own life if she told me to. Needed me to.

This wasn’t about right or wrong. It wasn’t even about trust anymore. It was about justice.

When I looked in her eyes, I didn’t see a traitor—I saw fire. Willpower. Brutality wrapped in something goddamn beautiful. I saw a woman who could gut me or stand beside me in the same breath.

And I wanted her on my side. Not because of who she used to be.

Because of who she was now.

The question was, would I risk the lives of my brothers?

I drew back, resting my forehead against hers.

“Tell me this plan of yours.”