Prologue
Greer - age 9
I got sick on my shorts. Hunkering down, the harsh smell twisted my stomach again, my hands on my shaking legs. The bite on my ankle oozed blood, and I brought my leg in, cradling it as I listened for sounds. Some rustling behind me and I was on the ground, hugging my knees and hoping the dog couldn’t find me. Old Man Peabody let it out again.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Please.
Movement behind me and I was almost sick again, trembling as I eased a look behind the tree that hid me. The dog had chased me for nearly ten minutes, exhaustion quivering my limbs as much as the fear. When I saw nothing, I was up, running again as fast as I could. I found another tree and I hugged it.
It was all quiet.
Too quiet, I closed my eyes, listening. The animal cry made me jump, the yelp right after shooting a harsh sense of fear inside me. The struggled cry had sounded like a dog, the yelp the same.
More rustling and movement in the leaves beneath my feet sounded. I left the tree, escaping its security to find two local boys. They were hunkered over something, and both were familiar to me. The one with the blond hair and light-colored eyes liked to play with the master of the house my mom cleaned and cooked for. His name was Royal, and he held down something, his hands white and knuckled over fur.
They no longer knuckled as I got closer, no longer needed. The thing below him wasn’t moving. He sat back on his haunches, staring up at the other boy there. He was the master of the house with his grandfather, only a couple years older than me and the boss of my mom, who was an adult. I hadn’t known kids could be in charge until I met him, moved into his house with my mom.
A twig snapped under my sneaker, and that boy gazed up at me, eyes a coal black even from here, though I knew them to be brown. I stared at him a lot when he couldn’t see, dark and harsh and angry, always angry. A sweep of dark hair breezed across his forehead, shielding eyes that bored into me. Some of that anger descended my way, dark eyebrows above like storm clouds.
Knight Reed wet his lips, a rock raised above his head. Frozen, he stared at me, the thing dripping red onto the mass of fur on the ground below him. Backing away, Royal put space between himself and the scene, but Knight hadn’t moved. He stayed, watching me, and closer now, I saw what he hovered over. Before I had met Old Man Peabody’s dog, I used to like looking at the animal behind the fence. It was so innocent, caged, and I had always wanted to free him.
That was until he’d started chasing me.
Black and cream spotted, that dog lay dead now, its head smashed in and its brain oozing out of its scull like soup. I’d never seen real insides before that, not even on TV, and Knight Reed hovered over it all, raging and breathy with a rock I knew now… was covered in blood. It leaked from it like a river, and Knight only dropped it when I slammed to my knees. My head falling forward, I got sick again.
At least this time I missed my shorts.
Chapter One
Greer - age 19
The water in the sink shifted to red, deep and crimson like a vision pulled from my memories. My thoughts traveled back to the past when I’d been nine, a bleeding dog before my eyes and a boy with a dark and sinful stare looking at me. Wicked, he peered on with nothing but a pointed gleam at me.
Just like he did now.
I was aware of that same gleam hovering over me at the present, lingering as I scrubbed and scrubbed at the skin stained red. The friction of the wash burned, my skin threatening to come off as I washed it so hard. All the while that glare found me, a large presence following as the boy with the brown eyes made his way into the bathroom with me. He was no longer that boy, but a man of size and firm stature. He was a man of presence and heat that did nothing but make my heart race.
If only it could be for the right reasons.
A slow reach and Knight Reed tugged at my sleeve, exposing skin covered in the same red I was attempting to rub away. It’d made it everywhere, even up my sleeve.
“You’ll miss your arms,” he said, and I found his eyes again. They immediately swallowed me up in their ebony depths, a dark sea as rigid and harsh as when we’d been kids. He’d had so much anger as a child, and that same anger stared right back at me through the mirror. Those eyes shifted, and mine did too, to me this time in the mirror. It seemed I’d missed some of that red I was attempting to wash away...
The blood coated my face like freckles.
Earlier that night
Chapter Two
Knight
Behind a drink, I saw her, remembered her.
And she still managed to get mixed up with pricks.
Greer Michaelson couldn’t help getting herself in trouble, even after all this time and all these years. My frat brother Bryce’s arm was around her, the king of the entitled douchebags that roamed the halls of our frat house. I didn’t have to like every motherfucker here, and I especially didn’t like him, a special place in hell reserved for him and his lot.
I sipped at my beer, the brother guiding Greer around. Holding her like arm candy, he didn’t even acknowledge her, bumping fists with other brothers and friends. Had he actually seen her, he’d see her and sure as fuck wouldn’t be looking away.
I fucking wasn’t.
White blond hair curled a little at the ends, a pert nose and pink lips like a sweep above and below. Her chin round and her face oval, she flitted those wide eyes of hers innocently around the room. She hadn’t seen me yet and may not even recognize me, a far cry from that eleven-year-old with knobby knees and hair that couldn’t be tamed for shit. I also hadn’t lifted a weight until junior high, and needless to say, that scrawny-ass kid had filled out in the years since. I had trouble fitting through the frames of most doors these days, height or width.
Smirking at how much Greer had changed too, I drew off my beer. Curves and supple tits she hid behind a long sleeve crop top and acid-washed jeans sitting well above her navel. The things were basically grandma cut and went well with the whole nineties MTV video thing she was trying to pull. She definitely didn’t fit in this place, definitely looked like a freshman, and that was probably a big reason the second biggest guy in the room outside of myself preyed on her. He thought he could take advantage of that little white dove, pure and innocent as she pranced around the room with him. I hadn’t seen her in over ten years, but the memories had hardly left. I mean, she fucking lived in my house, she and her mom since her mom used to clean my grandfather’s manor. He basically raised me, and I saw that little dove often.
I shifted as Bryce guided Greer around, barely even speaking to her. The growl low in my throat, I recalled some of the last moments she’d been in my life. Things hadn’t been pretty toward the end there, and even being eleven I’d known that. Grandfather had tried to hide a lot of things from me growing up, shelter me, but even he couldn’t scrub away the real reason Greer and her mom had ultimately left. It’d been very much because of me and my grandfather’s need to keep drama out of my life. I’d been very fragile back then…
Veering my attention away from Greer and the spectacle, I transferred it to another blonde who vied for my attention. Melrose pushed her slender arms around me, a model outside of her college work, but even still she couldn’t reach my height. I folded an arm around her, an attempt to blend in and keep my attention off Greer fucking Michaelson. I couldn’t help but be intrigued. After all, I hadn’t seen her in so long and had been curious. Needless to say, a working model beneath my arm with her perfect tits pressed up against me proved to be enough to bring my head out of the past a little.