Page 22 of One Bad Knight

I didn’t create. I destroyed.

And I desperately wanted to know what she locked away in that secret closet. What she created when she worked in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. Kat was careful to keep her back to a corner, hiding her easel. When she was done, she’d lock them away. I hungered to see the innermost secrets of her soul in acrylic color. I’d seen many of her pieces. The portraits done in complex colors, and it made me want to fall into her mind and swim there for ages.

Kat's eyes fluttered open as if she could feel the heat of my gaze. I took a step back farther into the shadows.

With a deep, full-body stretch, she yawned. “I know you’re there.”

That silk chemise rode even higher and my cock twitched.

Then she sat up in her bed. I emerged from the darkened corner of her room, allowing the moonlight filtering through the French doors to illuminate me. Her knees came up and the sheets fell away.

Where she was barely covered, I was back in my shirt, jeans, and leather jacket. I’d felt ridiculous wearing that suit at the party.

Then Kat’s silken shorts rode up, revealing the expanse of her delicious thigh as well as the wound from when she’d been attacked. To my surprise, it was nothing more than a faded mark. She must have removed the stitches herself.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I was aware that wasn’t right. It should have taken at least a week or more to heal to this point. I’d noticed at the party her arms appeared unmarred as well. The scratches all but disappeared.

The question of how circled my mind, but it was quickly drowned out by other desires. The dark pools of her eyes, and glossy part of her lips invited me to do all the bad things I desired in my black heart.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

I pushed away my dark fantasies. “Like I said, you are in danger.”

She arched an eyebrow as she scanned me from head to toe. “I’ll say. There is a strange man in my bedroom.” Her tone was biting. “I should call the cops and have you removed.”

A half-smile touched my lips. “I don’t think you want anyone to get hurt, Kat.”

The cavalier tone in the air was sucked from the room, as Kat’s expression flattened. “What are you doing here, Gatsby? Are you here to ruin my life again? Because that’s what happened last time you showed up. You’re like a bad omen, an albatross lurking about, promising to sink my ship.”

I couldn’t answer her question. The sudden heavy weight in my gut prevented me.

Then Kat was on her feet, padding over to stand in front of me in that absurdly sexy peach sleep set. “And then when you are done, you can leave me again?” Fury vibrated in her tone.

Fuck, why did she smell so goddamn delicious? Like sugared violets. Sleep and anger only intensified the scent. After circling around her for so long, being this close was beyond intoxicating. I wanted to lick up her collar bone to nibble on that perfect earlobe.

Then her accusation penetrated my haze of arousal.

“You’re mad I left you?” I asked.

She poked me in the chest with a sharp finger, for the second time tonight. Her eyes suddenly glittered with unshed tears of fury. “You acted like you were my friend. You claim you didn’t kill my father, so then why did you leave? Do you know what they did to me after you left? No one believed me. Not about the boy who visited me every night but never showed up on a single ounce of security footage. And no one believed me about the…” The words seemed to die in her throat. With a deep inhale, she pressed on in a lower, gravelly voice, “No one believed I saw a demon.”

There was nothing I could say.

Kat averted her gaze from my eyes to stare at my chest. “The state put me in an institution for a while. They said the stress of my dad’s murder made me go crazy. Looking back, I see how they couldn’t put me in foster care, so they stashed me away where they didn’t have to deal with me. Then, the louder I was about what happened, the harder they ground me down. They gave me pills. So many pills, I couldn’t do anything but stare at the walls and drool. They said they were making mecomfortable, but they only trapped me with the memory of that night and that creature. When my uncle showed up to take custody, I’d already been in there two weeks. Eventually my uncle rescued me. He got me released and became my guardian, but it took another week. It felt like an entire lifetime passed in there.”

I couldn’t help but step in closer to her, but I didn’t let myself touch her. I didn’t deserve to touch her. She couldn’t understand all the reasons why I couldn’t stay. There were so many, they gathered in my throat, choking me with a hundred violent hands. But above all the other reasons was the fact that if I had stayed, I would have obliterated what was left of her life. I wasn’t the hero she wanted me to be.

“It was… it was real, wasn’t it?” she finally asked, looking up into my eyes. Desperation and need shone out from them, but I could tell she still feared my answer.

“Yes,” I murmured. “A demon killed your father. And now I fear it draws near once again, preparing to come for you.”

Kat wrapped her arms around her stomach, her back slightly curving as if she could make herself smaller.

“Why?” she asked.

“The demon returns in… cycles.” It was the best I could explain it.

“My birthday,” she said, her lips barely moving. “It’s coming back on my birthday.”