Page 30 of Knox

The corner of Caroline’s lips twitched. “Of course. Just after my tenth birthday. Guns in your house?”

“House?” I snorted. “We lived in a trailer home most of my childhood. Had Ol’ Tess here, and we’d go camping now and again. If you could call it that. More just fishing trips, and Dad would have to haul me along because he couldn’t leave a minor alone. But yeah, plenty of guns.”

Caroline propped her chin in her palm. “Mom?”

“Drug addict. Overdosed when I was fifteen. You?”

“When I was three. Unknown cause.”

My jaw tightened. “Daddy won’t even tell you how your own mom died?”

As if the fact didn’t bother her in the slightest, Caroline said, “Nope. How old are you?”

“Thirty.”

“Same.”

“It’s like we’re twins.”

Caroline rolled her eyes, but I saw her mouth twitch again. She would never admit to laughing at my attempts at a joke.

The fire was starting to sputter out without my tending to it. We were slowly being enveloped in actual nighttime. We needed to sleep.

I got to my feet and stretched my arms over my head. I didn’t miss her gaze rake over me. “There’s only one bed.”

Caroline stiffened, then stood, too. She stumbled but caught herself on the table. “Lead the way.”

“I’m not sleeping with you, spitfire.”

She glared. “I hate you.”

“You’ve already told me that.” I stepped closer to her. She held her ground this time, no flinching. And the closer I got, the faster her eyes flicked back and forth between mine as if waiting for permission for something.

“And even if you did,” I continued slowly, testing the limits of her personal bubble by leaning down so my mouth was this close to her ear, “I wouldn’t give a damn.”

CHAPTER 12

CAROLINE

Asshole.

Arrogant, rude, smug fucking bastard.

I hated him. I truly, deeply hated Nathaniel Knox.

But fuck I wanted to know what his lips felt like. Were they softer than that sharp, wicked grin he gave when he enjoyed pissing me off too much? What would his kiss taste like? Blood and tequila, most likely. More than likely.

I didn’t want to want him, but here I was, bone-tired, soul-weary, coming apart at the seams—and horny as hell.

I knew it was really just the need for escapism, but fuck rational thinking. I wanted to feel something that wasn’t pain or fear. A good-looking Devil was just the solution to ease the heat pooling in my core, which was burning hotter than the dying fire pit.

We were just standing there in the forest clearing with his dead father’s trailer. I let him into my personal space, and he was less than two feet away. If either of us just leaned forward a little bit…

I said what I meant, that no sob story was going to make me feel sympathetic, but then Knox told me about how shitty his childhood was. It paralleled how shitty my childhood was.

I wanted to forget that, too. The want to feel sympathetic. I knew it wasn’t pity I felt, and I hated myself for letting him get under my bruised, sliced-up skin.

He let himself get bruised and sliced up. To save me, the least redeemable woman in Reno, Nevada.

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