Page 18 of Slick & Spooky
“I want you,” I say. “Whatever you’re offering.”
His eyes darken. “Then don’t give me the version you give everyone else.”
“You’re so worried I can’t handle you,” I say, and my throat goes dry the second the words land. “But what if it’s the other way around? People treat me like I’m breakable because of my name. No one wants to be the one who shatters a Finley.”
Knox tilts his head and narrows his eyes, studying me with a heavy gaze. I hold his eyes for a moment, then shake my head.
“I only play it safe because I have to. It’s easier to seem harmless than powerful. What’s your excuse?”
He pulls in a breath that sounds equal parts pain and restraint.
“I think you liked pretending I was innocent. It gave you an excuse to hold back.”
“Maybe it did.”
I scoff, tipping my head. “That’s not what you want, is it? You don’t want control. You want permission to lose it. Free reign to ruin and be ruined and stop pretending like you’re above wanting anything.”
He doesn’t say anything, but that muscle in his jaw twitches and I know it’s taking everything in him not to bite.
“You keep trying to twist this into something manageable,” I murmur. “But I’m not safe, and neither are you. Stop trying to choreograph every moment and just be who you are when no one’s watching.”
His chest is rising fast, unsteady. He’s one exhale from unraveling. I can see the way his jeans pull tight, the outline of him hard and straining.
“Do you know why I was at that party on the Fourth?”
I lift an eyebrow, waiting. He swallows thickly.
“My uncle was throwing it. I wasn’t gonna go, but I knew you’d be there. I—” His voice drops. “I needed to see if the stories were true. If you were really like that. If anyone could be that fucking magnetic.”
A beat.
“You were worse.”
My cock’s straining in my pants so hard I could bust. He really sees me in a way no one else ever has, and it makes me fucking feral. I laugh. I can’t help it. It bubbles out of me wild and breathless, manic with the high of being known.
“You’re right to be scared,” I say. “If you keep letting me in, there won’t be anything left of either of us.”
His jaw flexes.
“But maybe I want the version of us that ends in ruin. Maybe you do too. I’m not soft. I’m not fragile. So don’t play nice with me. Don’t water it down. I’m done pretending I need to be protected from who I really am.”
His nostrils flare. That careful calm he hides behind is long gone.
“Stop pulling your punches.”
He looks half-feral. Hands flexing his sides, every instinct in him fully screaming to take. To ruin. To make me his.
The air between us crackles, thick with want and warning. His eyes drag over me until I’m squirming under the weight of it. I can see it in the way he watches me that he’s made his choice, but he’s dragging it out, letting the hunger sit on his tongue a second longer.
And then, voice firm, he says?—
“Face the headboard.”
6
My entire body feels like it’s rooted in concrete.
I can’t fucking move.