Work Text:
[joel]
“I need ideas, Knight.” I sat back, eyeing my captive as I sipped my glass of red wine and waited for a response. Michael Knight, for his part, was pretending to be very disinterested in the gourmet meal placed before him, but if the way his jaw and throat worked was any indication, he was salivating already and wouldn’t hold out for much longer. After all, the man had been starving himself for the last twenty-four hours, an act of what I’m sure he thought conveyed defiance, although he only succeeded in making himself look like a moron.
Rubbing his wrist where the handcuff had bit into him, he swallowed again, shot me a strange look, and said, “For what?”
I set my wineglass down. “For just what the fuck I’m supposed to do with you.”
He glared at me.
I smiled without malice and went on, picking up my knife and fork and cutting into the slab of mahi-mahi on my plate. “Knight, you’ve got to give me something. It wouldn’t do me much good to kill you now. You’re much more valuable as leverage if you’re alive, and I really don’t care for KITT when he’s pissed off.”
Knight sneered. “How about your usual song and dance, dickhead?” He picked up a mockery of my mannerisms. “’I have your man, and I’ll give him back. All you’ve got to do is give me KARR, and oh, why don’t you throw KITT into the mix, just for the hell of it? Jess, too, if you really want to see him alive.’”
“Oh, please,” I said with a half-smile. “I don’t have the facilities set up to handle either machine or that bitch right now, and don’t you think that’s getting boring? It was just happenstance that I crossed paths with you, you know. I didn’t have any real plan for your abduction, but who am I to refuse when opportunity knocks?” I shot him a grin, amused by the look of utter confusion on his face as I bit into my meal. I let my words hang for a moment, then smirked again. “Oh, well. I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
“Could just let me walk outta here. I’ll even give you a head start before I sic KITT on you.” Knight fussed with his comlink. I’d let him keep it on. My Malibu beach house was a dead zone for comms that I didn’t authorize, so the device was useless, as was that microprocessor implanted in his arm, marked by a neat little cauterization scar.
I sucked air through my teeth. “Ooh, nice try. Can’t do it, mon ami.” I gestured toward his untouched plate, watching his eyelashes flick downward as he gave up trying to ignore it. “Tell you what. Let’s just enjoy dinner, sleep on it, and see what comes up overnight. The hunger strike routine isn’t doing you any favors, and you’ll hurt Nick’s feelings if you let that sit. He worked hard on that.”
“How can I be sure you’re not drugging me?” Knight’s blue eyes were flinty with suspicion.
“Because,” I said, signaling to Nick, my closest friend, personal chef, and bodyguard, “we’re drinking from the same bottle of wine. If you’re going down, so am I.”
He was quiet for a while, regarding Nick with a withering glare as he poured a second glass of wine for Knight and topped mine off. Then, just as I suspected, my captive’s stomach won out, and he slowly picked up his utensils, dreaming of all the ways he could kill me with them.
* * *
In the two years since KITT had taken half of my right leg, I’d gotten quite good at navigating with only one foot to the earth. Granted, that meant my crutches had become a permanent fixture of my person, but I made do.
From the couch, Knight watched me, curiously. He was smart. He knew that if he set foot beyond the threshold, he’d be so stitched through with lead in milliseconds that he wouldn’t even know what hit him. So, he stayed close to me. Observing me. Checking every corner of the house for something he could use against me. He wouldn’t find anything, of course, except maybe the computer terminal in my office, but it was locked down tight. Without KITT, he didn’t have the slightest hope of breaking into it. He was smart, but not like KITT.
“It’s amazing how the body adapts, isn’t it?” I said as I headed out of the master – and only – bedroom in my single-story home, hair still damp from my shower. “My upper body strength has never been so good, and I am almost better in combat on one leg than I ever was with both.”
“Fucking fascinating,” he said. He reclined with one arm draped along the back of the couch, ankle crossed over thigh. “Too bad KITT didn’t bust you up so bad they had to take both legs.”
“I would be quite a different man if that were the case, that’s for sure,” I replied, and before he could get another jab in, I found my kindest smile and said, “I’ve left a towel and a change of clothes for you on the bathroom counter. Bring your current outfit to Nick when you’re done. I’ll make sure he has it cleaned along with that leather jacket of yours, too. Imagine all the dust and, ah, motor oil it’s seen.”
That caught Knight completely off-guard, though he pretended he wasn’t. He resituated himself with a shimmy, nestling back down into the couch. “Thanks, but, ah, no thanks. Presentation for your snuff film might mean everything to you, but I don’t give a fuck.”
“Snuff film? Pitié, like I’d dirty these floors.” I frowned down at the polished hardwood beneath my foot before meeting Knight’s eyes again. “I wish you’d relax. If I intended to hurt you, I’d’ve done so already.”
He leveled me with a cold stare, his shirt falling open across his chest as he breathed. “You really like that line, don’t you?”
“Because it holds truth, Knight. You, of all men, should know that.”
He shot to his feet then. I hadn’t expected that response. Alerted by the sound of boots striking hardwood, Nick appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, but I dismissed him with a flattened hand as Knight crossed the rug toward me. He was a full head taller than me, emphasized by my inability to stand up straight, which is quite difficult when one depends on walking aids for mobility – and perhaps I played it up, leaning into my crutches, just to elicit a reaction as he invaded my personal space.
“Sorry,” he said in a low voice as he towered over me, “but I’m having a hard time believing you.”
He could have easily laid me out, and we both knew it. I was unarmed. I was not stupid enough to have a weapon accessible to me, because that would make it accessible to him. We were both evenly matched in hand-to-hand combat even now. He was bigger than me, more muscular, and of course, both of his feet still touched the ground. But I had ten fewer years on my chassis, I was quicker, and I had the homefield advantage. He was on RedWall territory, after all. My territory.
I lifted my face and smiled at him. “Well, you’re no dumbass,” I said. He was close enough that I could touch him without having to unpin my crutch from beneath my arm, so I did. He flinched, but I only lifted a hand to rearrange the collar of his leather jacket, which had gotten messed up in his haste to stand. He clenched his jaw, but didn’t move, and I went on. “But I’m willing to forget about our past transgressions.” Since I had him by the shirt now, I flipped it open, exposing the left side of his chest. More specifically, the starburst-shaped scar plastered over one of his ribs. He had its twin, somewhere. My revolver had put them there, two years ago, the night KITT took my leg.
I put his shirt back and crutched backward. “At least for tonight.”
He brushed past me without another word.
* * *
One of the first things I’d done when I’d acquired this house was tear out the shag carpet in the bedroom. I liked to surround myself with greenery, and, yes, even I have been known to slosh water out of a watering can while tending plants. I hated mold and I hated sand where it wasn’t supposed to be, so the carpet had to go. Thankfully, I’d hit the “flooring jackpot,” as my contractor put it, and found beautiful hardwood beneath. And because it was hardwood, it was just that: hard. As such, I wasn’t sure why Nick forced Knight onto the ground after I’d sent for him, and I told him as much.
“That,” I quipped, pinching a yellowing leaf from a strand of devil’s ivy that dripped from its pot suspended from the ceiling, “is no way to treat my guest.”
Knight’s spine contacted the wall. He grunted. Nick stood over him, looking a bit confused as I glanced at him over my shoulder. I sighed. He’d handcuffed him, even, wrenching the man’s arms at an awkward angle behind his back, although it did stretch the fabric of his blue three-quarter button shirt tight across his chest, which was, dare I admit, quite fascinating.
“Joel,” Nick started to say, but I just shook my head, carefully stooping to feel the soil of a healthy euphorbia on the windowsill.
“That’s all for tonight, Nick.”
He tried again. “Joel, are you sure you don’t want me to put him somewhere else—”
“Bonne nuit.”
“Bonne nuit,” he echoed, and let himself out. The door clicked shut behind him, and I moved onto the next houseplant. I kept mundane flora here and found myself missing my exotic plants in the greenhouse, which was some miles away, overseen by a group of eager botanists at a university. Of course, most of those plants were poison. Wouldn’t be smart to keep them where I slept.
Reaching over a round pot of cacti, I opened the window enough to let the sound of the ocean in. Knight was quiet, undoubtedly reaching for KITT, but my strategically placed signal jammers were designed to prevent communication with that machine specifically.
“Can’t be easy,” I said to the window, watching Knight’s reflection as he looked at me.
“What?” he said, shortly.
“Without the car.”
He sneered.
“Someday, I’d like to find out what it is, exactly, that binds you to KITT,” I said, straightening up as I checked the final of my two dozen plants. “Why you tend to seek a car’s company over contact with fellow humans.”
“Who says I do that?”
“I’ve seen you, Knight. I know it.”
“You don’t know me as fuckin’ well as you think you do.”
“That may be true, but I know what size shirt you wear. That wasn’t cheap, you know.”
He frowned at himself, at the shirt I’d hand-picked for him, and the soft gray sweatpants I’d had brought in as well. “Am I supposed to say, ‘thank you?’”
I lifted a shoulder and got my crutch back under me. I was dressed for bed as well, but hadn’t yet buttoned my shirt, which hung loose about my torso, one seam caught in my waistband. He eyed me, a few errant curls plastered across his forehead with moisture. I flicked off the recessed lights closest to the window and turned back the comforter on my bed, though it was still too early to sleep.
“What the hell is this all about, man?” he asked in a weary voice once he realized I intended to bed down for the night.
I put my crutches into their keeper at the foot of the bed, then dropped myself onto the mattress.
In the absence of any response, Knight shifted uncomfortably, dragging his shoulder against the drywall as he tried to find a suitable position with his hands bound behind his back. “You hate me,” he said, “and I’ve got the goddamned scars to prove it. So why the hell are you being nice to me?”
I said, coolly, “There’s more to me than RedWall, mon ami.”
“Is that so?” he shot back. “That why you’ve spent two years trying to round me up? Now you got me, and – what, you suddenly decide that instead of beating me within an inch of my life, you’re gonna treat me like RedWall royalty? How the hell does that work, huh?” He let the back of his head hit the wall with a thud. “Listen, if you’re trying to yank my chain, it’s working, and I’m getting sick of it. How about we cut to the chase, you tell me what it is you really want, and we can stop jacking around?”
“There’s a lot that I want, Knight,” I replied, face melting into a languid grin as I pushed my thick hair off my forehead. “And only so much you can give me. I’m sorry about Nick. I thought I made it clear that you’re a guest. He tends to take his job seriously. I wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.”
My non-answer sent Knight into silence, at least for a moment, while he mulled my words over. In the quiet, cut only by the sound of the surf, I leaned over to my bedside table without bothering to turn the lamp on and opened its single drawer. The key was right on top, and I took it out and showed it to him. Its polished surface glinted in the dim polluted light filtering through the curtains.
“What’s that?” he asked when curiosity got the better of him.
“If you’d prefer to keep the handcuffs on all night, I understand,” I said, rolling the key through my fingers while he watched, “but wouldn’t you be more comfortable without them, and in a proper bed for the night?” I gestured toward where he sat, sagged against my wall. “I mean, unless you want to sleep on the floor again. Suit yourself.”
He didn’t think I saw his teeth hook his lower lip, nor the way his eyes flashed with the prospect of being comfortable. I gave him empty air in which to respond, but he didn’t rise to the challenge, so I tugged my shirttail out of my waistband (drawing his attention to my lower half) and palmed the small silver key, leaning forward. “I’m sorry,” I said, keenly aware of his pointedly blank expression as he continued to watch me. “I’m being rude.” And then I shoved off the bed, my bare foot striking the floor (Knight moved as though to catch me if I fell, though he would never admit it, I’m sure) and in a few short strides, I’d set myself down on the floor next to him with my remaining leg tucked neatly under the stump of my lost limb.
There was enough room for him to sidle away if he wanted to. He didn’t.
“All I want,” I said to him, as one might speak to a spooked horse, “is to make sure you’re comfortable. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“There’s that line again.”
“Because I mean it. I’m a little hurt that I have to keep reminding you of that. Look at me.”
He didn’t, not at first, staring straight ahead now as I planted a palm against the smooth hardwood and rested the other on my thigh. However, the angle of his head betrayed him, an ear tilted in my direction as he hung on my every word. Whether he knew it or not yet, I had him right where I wanted him.
“Tonight,” I said, tilting my head as a clump of dark hair spilled across my forehead, “you and I aren’t enemies.”
I had his attention now. We locked eyes, and I made sure the threat was gone from mine. “Yeah?” he said like his throat had suddenly gone dry, which was probably exactly what was happening. “And what about tomorrow?”
“Eh.” I shrugged. “We’ll worry about that then. You’re a handsome man, Knight. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that. I’ve always wondered what things might look like if they were different.”
The corner of his lips turned up. He inhaled through his nose and let it out slowly. “That so?”
“Mm. In another life.” I put my weight into my palm and left the key resting on my thigh where he could see it. He couldn’t touch it, of course. He was still bound. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t get away if he wanted to. Again, I left him an escape, careful to keep my body well out of his way so he would not think that I was attempting to box him in, even as I reached toward him, fingers slipping beneath the neck of his shirt. I tugged the fabric to the side, exposing his chest again, that one gunshot scar. I didn’t call it to his attention. Not verbally, anyway. I did not want to talk about that. Instead, I touched it. Gently. The scar itself was thick and uneven where his body had knit back together. His ribs hitched, but he did not pull away. It was the first time I’d gotten a good glimpse of my handiwork, and it was sobering.
I took my hand back, my touch gliding over his thick chest hair. It always amused me that he left his shirts unbuttoned often to his midriff, but I supposed it wasn’t much different from when I flashed a grin at my latest target. He had his charms; I had mine. I met the slope of his neck next, flattening my palm as my fingertips found the hair at the back of his neck. His natural curls pulled toward his collar and away at the same time. It was clear he took great care in his grooming, right down to his freshly shaved jaw. Who could blame him? I did, too.
I shifted, and the key plinked onto the floorboards, and I was reminded that I had promised to release him from his bindings. I startled slightly and glanced down at the key. Knight did, too, his shoulder rolling beneath my touch as he readjusted.
Deliberately, I brushed my hand across his bare skin as I backed away from him, picking up the key once more. “I am a man of my word,” I said, aiming the teeth of the key toward where his hands were bound. He regarded me for a second out of the corner of his eye, then shifted so his spine was angled toward me. I took him gently by the wrist, letting my touch linger as I fitted the key into the lock and turned, freeing his left hand with a metallic click.
He flexed his hand, then his wrist. I moved to unlock the other side, but now, he pulled away.
I should have expected him to round on me the second he was free, but I’d been a fool and let my guard down. Knight shoved off the wall by throwing his shoulder into it, and then he was almost quite literally on top of me. In the darkness, little space existed between him and I as he met me where I rested. Mentally, I flipped through a dozen ways to defend myself so they would be right there if I needed them. But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.
One arm ended up on either side of me. The cuff still attached to his right dragged across the floor. In the heartbeat before we clashed, I again reached up to sort out a drying curl that had trapped itself beneath his collar but found myself cupping the back of his neck instead as he tilted his head and forced our lips together.
Despite myself, I grinned against him. This time, the drywall was at my back. I pressed down through the heel of my palm as my other hand took a fistful of his hair. He was not rough, but firm, and I made sure that my jaw was slack and soft to his, following his lead as he deepened the kiss before he pulled back slightly to catch his breath (and perhaps to question his life choices). Then he set himself on me once more. My pulse increased, my mouth relaxed, and I felt that hot twinge in my lower body, but I was distracted by the feel of blood hammering what was left of my right leg as it pooled against my scar. I wondered if Knight’s scars gave him the same trouble, or if I was just being dramatic.
“Now, Knight,” I said as he broke contact again. I couldn’t help it – I shuddered as the heat of his mouth found the curve of my jaw, then my neck, my shoulder. “Careful, or I might start to think you actually like me.”
His teeth caught the thin skin of my neck. I inhaled sharply, skin breaking out in goosebumps as he spoke in a low voice. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Mm. I won’t.” I tilted my head back, exposing my throat to him. Let him think I was vulnerable; that he had the upper hand. He took the bait. Kissed the hollow at the base of my neck, then worked his way back up, using his bodyweight to crowd me against the wall as he went. I might’ve minded, except for the fact that he nipped my lower lip before covering me again, which earned an unexpected moan on my part. He was, to say the least, skilled. I was not his first.
Plus proche, I thought. Closer. I wove my hand deep into his curls and took a fistful of his nape, pinning us together as he slanted his lips across mine. Teeth again, then the slash of tongue. I returned it, though my arm had begun to tremble with fatigue from leaning so far into it. There was anger in his affection if I dared call it that. He was rightfully pissed off. Forget our history – I wondered what battle I’d awakened in his mind and what it was doing to him. Although, judging by the feel of his dick pressing into my thigh, he wasn’t too worried about fighting it.
He broke us apart again, panting. Sweat had begun to slick up my bare chest. His, too. I draped my arm about his neck, peering up at him from beneath my eyelashes as I shook my hair out of my line of sight. He breathed hard, and I was particularly fascinated by the way his chest rose and fell beneath his shirt. He’d dropped himself onto his left hip, freeing his hands (complete with the cuff still encircling his right wrist), and I felt gooseflesh anew branching from the heat of his palm against my waist. His hand was heavy. I leaned into my aching wrist and smirked at him, letting go of his neck to push his hair off his forehead. I’m sure my face was flushed, but nobody was around to care.
“Come on, Knight,” I breathed. His name rode out on a sharper syllable than I’d intended as his hand settled on my inner thigh. I regathered my thoughts and went on. “No way you’re gonna fuck me on the floor, are you? I’m a man of class.”
His eyes flashed. His thumb dug into the thigh of my half-leg. “Is that a fact?”
I leaned in close. Our lips brushed, but I didn’t kiss him. In fact, I jerked away from him when he tried. “Take me to bed,” I murmured, with a smug look, “and I’m all yours.”
As I intended, that did something to him. He reeled for a second, and I saw his thoughts plain as day as his eyes shifted from me to the bed: Am I really about to fucking do this? The answer, of course, was yes, and he squeezed my inner thigh in the split second before he took me by the wrist – I felt the loose handcuff bounce against my forearm – and hauled me to my foot, using the momentum to sweep me close, his arm snaking about my waist. He was very, very hard. Which meant I was winning.
I grunted, lightly, as he hefted my weight off the floor with ease, almost as though he’d been surprised at how easy it was. I was used to that. I doubt many people even think about how much their lower leg weighs on its own, but I knew that I’d lost approximately ten pounds because of KITT’s aggression. Briefly, I was weightless, and acutely aware of his body heat and the absence thereof as he shoved me off him. I fell back against the mattress, grinning to myself as the bedsprings depressed beneath us, the headboard lightly knocking the drywall as he joined me. My legs – or what was left of them – spilled apart. He fit nicely between my left knee and my residual right leg. Just like his face fit perfectly at the curve of my neck again, and I gasped as he found the pulse in my throat and raked his teeth across it.
I almost couldn’t pull out of myself enough to tell him to stop when his hand dipped below my waistband. “Nah, ah,” I scolded, again as though I were tutting at an unruly stallion. “You first.”
I felt his lips twist in a snarl against my neck before he broke us apart again. He yanked the drawstring and exposed himself, then moved as though to place himself back on top of me. I braced a palm against his chest to halt him. “Not so fast. If I’m going to allow you to see my scars, I need to see yours.”
“Can’t get off without a good look at what you did to me, huh?” he snapped.
“Oh, no. Not at all. We’ve both lost a lot in this fight,” I said, trailing an index finger over where I knew the one bullet scar was. “Help me understand what I’ve taken from you.”
His body curved away from me, but then he had his shirt by the hem and yanked it over his head before casting it to the side. His hands made fists, and he drove them into the mattress on either side of me again, dropping his hips and allowing me to notch my knee and stump against his ribs.
I simply observed him. Yes, there was the upper bullet scar, mirrored further down by a second. I could still see it in my mind’s eye: twin flashes of my revolver’s muzzle, and then the chilling shriek of KITT’s turbine engine in the split second before the car bore down on me, headed by that wicked red scanner slashing back and forth through the darkness.
But I was not to think about that right now.
Instead, I turned my focus back to Knight’s body, following the grain of the hairs along his torso before my gaze settled on his lower abdomen. His abdomen was crisscrossed with small hyperpigmented surgical scars, no doubt the result of the procedure he underwent to remove life-threatening shrapnel, both from my .38 special and his own shattered ribs. No, he hadn’t gotten off lightly either. I would not forget that.
I touched the places where I had hurt him. Imagined that I could still feel the heat of injury and his pulse against my fingertips. He tensed but didn’t pull away. I considered apologizing, but my words would’ve been empty. I wasn’t sorry for it. I’d done what I had to do in a life-or-death moment. No, I was sorrier for the fact that he and I would never fight for the same side than I was that I’d harmed him.
I found the thick curls between his legs. He tensed again, his abs drawing tight as I made a few, gentle circles, then let my touch wander back up, cupping both hands against his jaw, thumbs pulling through his sideburns. Again, slowly, searching me for disapproval, he found the elastic of my waistband again and coaxed the fabric downward, leaving me bare except for my unbuttoned shirt. He angled himself away from me, but then he stopped just sort of disrobing me all the way. I saw why. My pant leg had caught on my residual limb.
I would have been offended, but I wasn’t surprised. After all, Knight was the reason KITT had shattered my shin and rendered it a mess of bone fragments jutting through pulverized muscle. But there was a part of him that understood how few people I allowed to see the injury, that my vulnerability was rare. He liked it. I lay back as he undressed my half-leg, smirking at his blank expression. Good. Let him be shocked. It was horrible to look at, the scarred stub of what was supposed to be whole, and he wasn’t even the one who had to fucking live with it.
Neither of us said anything for a long moment. We didn’t have to. I let a hand slip from his neck, my arm dropping to the mattress as he examined my amputation. The nerves had grown back, but still didn’t feel quite right, and never would. His touch, light as a feather, was numbness to me.
“I can still feel it,” I said. “To this day. It’s easy to forget that I’m not whole.”
He said something that shocked me. One syllable. My name. “Joel.”
Maybe he meant to follow it with something else, but his words were lost as I gently thumbed his lips. “I’d like to forget,” I told him. “That’s something you can help with.”
Oh yes. It was. He grabbed me by the knee, and I let him push my legs apart. My abdomen had begun to warm as blood rushed to my cock, which I’m sure he noticed, because his next move pinned us together again and forced me further into the mattress, followed by a sudden buck of my hips that I hadn’t been expecting as my body responded to his stimulus. It made my voice catch in my throat, but he silenced me by covering my mouth with his yet again and drawing the fight right out of me. I was a live wire. He knew this because he was, too.
I was never much for foreplay. Apparently, neither was he. I took a hold of myself as he did the same, gripping his shaft with a snarl. I felt that familiar tightness in my pelvic floor and focused on letting the tension go (but not before halting him again before things heated up. Believe me when I tell you that lubricant, no matter how uncomfortable it is at first, is very, very important. I made a show of slicking myself up, then ensured he followed suit.)
He’d buried his face in my neck again. Our bodies meshed surprisingly well. “Easy, Knight,” I said, voice strained his hips rocked and I felt pressure build between my legs. “Careful with me.”
“Careful with you?” he strained, almost laughing.
“Careful,” I repeated in his ear. “Not gentle.”
The pressure mounted. I took my lower lip between my teeth. Sucked in a breath and let it out, releasing all the tension I had in me on the exhale as I opened myself to him. It was slightly painful – the first steps usually were – and instead of letting the tension pool between my sit bones, I channeled it into my legs, slotting them about his waist as he tested me. When I did not resist, Knight let himself venture further into me, and I realized I’d allowed the cords of my neck to bind up in stress, so I banished that and let my head fall back once more. His head, meanwhile, was heavy against my shoulder, his grimace written plainly in the bared teeth I felt pressing into my collarbone.
Knight was skilled. He found slight strain as my abdominal muscles involuntarily contracted and backed himself out. I would have preferred to remain completely silent, but that wasn’t his modus operandi. As he did with the car, he needed affirmation. “C’mon, Knight,” I said, voice thin as he rocked back into me, causing my words to hitch as I clawed at him, drawing him even closer (if that was possible). “Like you hate me.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he said. He didn’t mean it. I dragged in an open-mouthed breath. He turned rough, but not overly so. The places where our bare skin contacted began to slick up with sweat. I was glad I’d opened the window.
“Ah,” I gasped, matching him in the best way that I could. I was pinned beneath his weight, completely immobilized beneath him. “That’s what I thought.” I showed a canine as we got off-rhythm, but he quickly recovered and found the sweet spot again – oh, just like that. My vision whited out for a moment. Yes, he knew what the fuck he was doing. I’d chosen well.
I started to count strokes to keep myself grounded, but I failed in short order – how the hell was I supposed to pay attention when all I could feel was his solid body atop mine, filling me in a way I’d never experienced before? I slotted a hand between us, feeling my own climax building, taking myself in my hand and matching him, aware that I had probably just moaned (which was not something I did very often) and in turn earned a rougher thrust the next time. My pulse was through the roof, and I imagined I could feel his hammering his chest in the spaces between my own heartbeats. He breathed hard, heavy. So did I. Keeping pace was difficult, but as we reached almost perfect timing. No – I spaced out again as he struck home in the best way possible – we were perfect. And I fucking hated him for it.
So when he began to slow, his hips more deliberate in their strokes but losing the desperate sort of thrust that had first bound us together, I took back control.
It was easy, really. Even now, he underestimated me. I dropped my left leg and arched my back, breathing out with force and a groan as he plunged a little deeper than he meant to, I’m sure. He became lightweight in his distraction. I notched my chin over his shoulder, and then in a swift movement timed just as he entered a downward stroke, I shoved my bare shoulder into his. He ended up on his side first, and I used the momentum and my grip still on the back of his head to pin him beneath myself, rolling him over onto his back as his arms splayed against the mattress.
“Not yet,” I snapped at him. His eyes were screwed shut, his lips twisted to the side. I had command now, and he knew it. He seemed surprised as I planted the stub of my right leg on one side and took to my knee on the other. Gently, I reached around to guide him back to where I wanted him, letting gravity do the work for me this time as I dropped my pelvis into his.
No words needed now. He was mine, although I was slowly losing control of myself, but I made it a point to never finish first and I certainly wasn’t going to break that habit now. Hell, I held back as Knight and I found a new cadence. He was still close, evident in his bared teeth and flexed abs. I let friction take over my own pleasure and planted both hands on his chest, pulling rows through his hairs as I sank my weight into him.
“Like you fucking hate me,” I reminded him as I felt his back curve beneath me. His hands carved channels in the comforter, and then he had me by the hips, anchoring us together. Ah – apparently that was the key because he slowed again and almost halved on himself as he climaxed, except I wouldn’t let him. I was stronger than he gave me credit for, and I kept him pinned as he rushed into me until I, too felt myself slipping and figured it wasn’t worth holding on anymore, not until I had a hand braced across his collarbone and a thumb pressed into the little hollow of his throat.
My eyes were open, but I couldn’t see. Lost for a heartbeat or two, entangled in Knight’s grasp, pressing him into the mattress as I found the place where his heartbeat was strongest between his collarbones. “Fuck,” I said under my breath when I finally pulled air into my lungs, followed by a “goddamn it” from Knight.
And then it was over.
Again, he breathed hard. I had his pulse against my thumb and against my hips. He had mine pinned beneath his thumb in the groove between my hip bone and my groin. I grinned, wryly, skimming my palms downward as I once again forced myself to relax and finally pulled away from Knight. It took some effort and some finagling, but I untangled myself from him and threw my half-leg across his abdomen and briefly considered picking up my crutches with intent to clean myself up, but I realized I did not have the energy.
Without a word, I sank back down next to Knight. We touched again, and in the darkness of my room with the sound of the surf pounding the sands beyond the window, he and I simply caught our breath.
* * *
Sometime later, I finally did get up. Knight did, too. He even handed me my crutches, but I graciously let him go first to make himself presentable again. He did not get dressed, nor did I, and I rejoined him in bed sometime after midnight.
Now was the tricky part. I never usually got this far. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d shared a bed with someone aside from Rei. It was foreign to me, quite honestly, and as I settled myself back down and threw back the covers, Knight observed. He was already tucked in – angled slightly toward the door, I noted, just in case I snapped and decided that I really did want him dead – with an elbow pillowed beneath his head. He left me space, and I sank into it.
“Bonne nuit. Goodnight,” I said to him over my shoulder as I cast the sheets back on my end so I could wrestle myself into them. He lifted his arm and took the comforter with it to make it easier on me. I hesitated, then lay myself down, for once turning my back on my enemy in the dark hours of the morning.
The mattress depressed behind me. I heard the sheets shift and lifted my head, curiously, suddenly very aware of Knight’s body heat as he closed the gap between us. I went rigid and wondered if I’d gotten too complacent and if he was about to strangle me. He did touch me, and again, I froze up as his hand snaked about my waist, pulling me into him with a command: “C’mere.”
I startled. “What—”
“Shut up,” he said, settling down again, “and stop moving.”
I forced myself to lie still. He tossed the sheets over us both, fluffing the pillow to his liking as he rested his head back down. I could feel his breath on the back of my neck, but strangely, I didn’t hate it. I also didn’t hate the way his hand rose and fell in time with my diaphragm. The handcuff that we’d both somehow overlooked was still fastened around his wrist. I stared down at myself, too afraid to move or even speak, curiously unable to think.
“Take it easy, huh?” he murmured. “If I was gonna hurt ya, you’d know.”
Clever. Throwing my own line back at me. I did as he asked, though, my body on autopilot as I let the strain ebb out of my muscles, melting into the mattress. I needed to sleep before I thought too much about this, because if I thought too much about this, it might’ve struck me that I felt the safest I’d felt in quite some time in the arms of the man who would just as soon snap my neck.
* * *
We didn’t hate each other in the morning, either.
I woke up before him. That wasn’t a surprise. Michael Knight was not a man who voluntarily became functional before 10 a.m. Sometime during the night, I’d flipped myself over to face him, which put his hand against the small of my back – with the handcuff still encircling his wrist; I wasn’t surprised that I’d forgotten about it – and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was his face mashed into the pillow, his thick curls in disarray about his head. He was still sound asleep, and I’d let him stay that way for a while yet.
Gently, I shifted. He didn’t move. That was fine. I sat up, rearranging myself so his hand now draped across my lap. I fumbled around for my reading glasses on the nightstand, propped them on my nose, and picked up a pen and the latest edition of Form & Façade that I’d been flipping through lately. Not my usual choice of reading material, but I’d come to the painful realization that my kitchen needed an update. I flipped through the glossy magazine pages, frowning at the pastel colorways that seemed to be 1985’s vogue.
Surprisingly, Knight stirred not long after me. I watched him in my periphery as he lifted his head, confused, taking in his environment, sucking in a sharp breath when he realized he was still lying next to his mortal enemy. He snatched his hand away from me and pushed himself up, apparently lost for words.
“I don’t think if I painted my walls blush pink that it would age very well,” I said nonchalantly. Knight’s brow drew low with a quasi-horrified expression as the previous night came back to him, so I went on to keep him from thinking too hard about it. “But would off-white be too predictable? It might go best with the floors, and then I wouldn’t have to redo the countertops. Although I do quite like this black marble.”
A thousand questions vied for attention in Knight’s sluggish sleep inertia-riddled mind. He settled on, “How the hell do you afford all this?”
“My parents left me a large sum,” I said, plucking the pen from behind my ear and jotting a note next to an aesthetic I liked. “It was withheld from me until I turned eighteen.”
“How much did they leave you?”
“Do you ever stop working, Knight?”
“What you got against pillow talk, huh?”
I humphed and turned back to my magazine. “Point taken. Ten figures, if you must know,” I answered. “The family business was, ah, lucrative. But I don’t need to go into that. Aside from that …” I flipped the page. “… FLAG has its investors, and I have mine.”
“If you’re that fuckin’ loaded,” Knight said, “why haven’t you fixed your leg?”
Well. That was unexpected. I shot him a glare out of the corner of my eye, then settled myself and shrugged. “I don’t like prosthetics. They’re clunky and restrictive. I’ve tried a few and just never clicked with me. I prefer my crutches, or a cane.”
“Hurts, I bet.”
Again, I caught him with the corner of my eye. “Pardon?”
“Prosthetic. Probably hurts,” he said. “I never realized how sensitive that leg was.”
“It is,” I admitted. “The femur was not designed to take that sort of pressure, much less after being rent apart and the rest sawn through.”
He recoiled. Something like concern etched itself into his rugged features. I wasn’t sure why, but it made my heart twist in my chest to consider that perhaps there was a part of him that did care. I saved us both from having to dwell on the prospect, however, calmly folding my magazine shut and placing it on the nightstand, along with the pen and my readers. “Breakfast will be served soon, and when you’re ready, a car is waiting to return you to the Knight estate.”
His eyes widened, briefly, before he assumed a serious expression once more. “That’s it? No catch.”
I shrugged. “No catch. I’m sure KITT will be thrilled to reunite.”
If he noticed the jab, he didn’t show it. “You’re serious.”
“Deadly.” I threw the covers off and acquired my crutches. “I got what I wanted.”
“Huh,” Knight said, and then, to himself: “Guess that makes two of us.”
* * *
I was a man of my word. After breakfast, Knight mounted into the passenger’s side of my silver Mustang without hassle, dressed in his customary leather jacket over his cleaned clothes. I sat on the back deck and watched the taillights recede, thoughtfully sipping my tea as the ocean breeze mussed my hair and plastered my fringe across my forehead. Dare I admit I was actually sad to see him go? Whether Knight knew it or not, our relationship had changed. We would never be the same, he and I. And with that I was not upset.
* * *
Not long after Nick had cleared the plates and brought me my readers and a stack of magazines and furnishing order guides, I heard turbines.
My head shot up. It was not KITT. KITT’s engine was not a sound I would ever forget. There was only one other vehicle on this planet that sounded like that, and that was KARR. The two-tone supercar was just a streak on the horizon, no bigger than a sandflea as he shot down the coastline on a collision course with my home.
“Nick?” I called into the kitchen. “Boil another pot of water and bring me a clean teacup, would you?”
“Sure thing, Joel,” my bodyguard said. “Is that all?”
“Better bring the pastries back out, too,” I said, folding my hands in my lap, staring down that silver-and-black machine and his amber scanner bar, the one that I’d brought back from the brink. “I think we have another guest.”
-END-