Page 101 of Captive Souls

“Petal.”

There it was again. More of an edge to it that time. I felt a sensation on my body. Light at first then firmer.

My body throbbed as I heard a metallic click followed by instant relief from aching wrists as they were freed from the handcuffs.

Then there was a warm, hard chest. The smell of spice, earth andhim.

Knox.

Panic forced me up to the surface from wherever I’d been drowning.

My eyelids were impossibly heavy, so it took every ounce of strength I had to open them.

It was Knox. I was in his arms, the watery-yellow light from the lamp in the bedroom of the motel room illuminating him. He was a shadow against that light, harsh edges etched in fury as his eyes traveled over my face.

I searched his cheekbones, his smooth jaw… No bruises. No blood. Only slightly bloodshot eyes, his inky hair more mussed than usual. He was wearing a suit, open at the throat, showing off the taut protruding veins in his neck.

“You’re alive,” I croaked.

His eyes flared at hearing my voice. “And so are you. You’re going to stay that way,” he ordered. “And every man who did this…” he stroked his finger down my tender face with an impossibly delicate touch. “They’re going to die in the most painful way possible.”

My body chilled at his words, hearing the killer lurking beneath them.

“Turn your fucking back,” he snapped at someone. I was confused as to who he could possibly be speaking to; I was still in a daze from the experience, from preparing to die, wanting to die, thinking Knox was gone yet seeing him there now.

I let him gradually move me to where he reached into a bag on the rumpled bed that assaulted me with memory, shocking me into an immovable state. That was the bed I was almost raped in. That was the bed where Stone had threatened me, where he had informed me triumphantly that Knox was dead.

My limbs turned to stone then began to tremor as if an earthquake were shaking my very foundation.

“Petal.”

His voice was no longer gentle. It was a cold and sharp blade cutting through my haze, the heavy memory of—minutes? Hours?—ago that caused my heart to thunder like a racehorse through the delicate cavern of my chest.

I blinked him into harsh focus. His face was etched in harsh lines, his eyes electric, nostrils flaring, a crease in the center of his brow. A picture of cold fury.

He didn’t say anything, just let me hold onto his form, his face, his scent like a port in a storm. All I could pull in were shallow breaths.

“Hands on my shoulders,” he ordered, his voice a strange mix of tender and brutal that I’d never heard from him.

Confused for a second, I realized what he meant when he knelt at my feet, a bunched-up pair of sweats in his hands—my sweats, I noticed dazedly. I did as he asked, balanced unsteadily on one foot then the other as he threaded my feet into holes like I was a child before pulling the pants up my bare legs.

He did it slowly, his eyes homed in on my inner thighs, where there were small but unmissable fingerprints from Groves trying to hold my legs open.

His hands had stuttered, just for a second, but I’d felt the world tilt as the energy of his body completely changed.

He was robotic as he settled the sweats onto my hips.

Knox thought I’d been raped. He’d found me chained to a sink, beaten and in my underwear, with fingerprints on my thighs. It made sense.

“Knox,” I began, wanting to reassure him that that didn’t happen, since he looked like he was a man unhinged. Beyond anything I’d ever seen.

“Go to the next room,” he ordered the person I totally forgot was in the room, the one who hadn’t uttered a single word during our exchange nor made a single sound. “They’ll be coming back, so I want you to alert me if it’s before I can tend to Piper.”

Though it seemed impossible for me to be able to tear my gaze away from Knox, I had to see who he had trusted enough to bring with him.

I frowned as I took in Joey’s face, pale and serious.

That tore me completely out of my haze.

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