CH.120

Serena’s fists pounded weakly against Knox’s chest in a silent demand to release her, for she was almost out of breath.

She gasped and drew in a mouthful of air when he finally let her go.

“You b—” She paused, seeming to rethink her choice of word at the look of ‘I dare you to finish that statement’ he gave her.

Knox seemed satisfied by her grudging cooperation. "Good girl," he murmured.

The simple praise and the undisguised heat simmering in his depths had her burn with need.

“I haven’t brushed my mouth. My breath stinks.” She pouted.

“Why don’t we do something about that?” He asked, leaning forward with a devious look in his eyes.

“Ha, no need.” Serena shrank back.

Knox chuckled. He kissed her gently on the forehead before turning over on his back. "Now, as I was saying..." he began again, his expression sobering into one of grim solemnity.

"The matter of Mia is complicated. More so than you could possibly imagine. I've been responsible for her since she was a little girl."

He paused, seemingly gathering his thoughts. "Her family were like my own kin a long, long time ago. People who had served my lineage faithfully for countless generations, making sacrifices I can never hope to repay. And I'm responsible for their extinction - for wiping out nearly her entire bloodline."

Serena's brows knit together in utter confusion in the face of this unexpected, horrifying revelation. "What do you mean you're responsible?" she asked. "How could you have possibly killed Mia's family? I don’t understand."

Knox's countenance turned completely unreadable as his jaw tensed and muscles rippled beneath his tanned skin. "I killed them," he said matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the weather rather than admitting to what amounted to mass murder. "By accident. Their blood is on my hands."

Serena's eyes went wide in disbelief. She had expected many things from this conversation, but not this...not her husband so calmly admitting to such unimaginable guilt and tragedy, to bearing a burden so immense.

What manner of man was she truly married to?

Knox continued, "Her mother was kind and treated me like her son. Her family descended from a long, unbroken line of people who served my family. Their devotion was absolute, unwavering even in the face of death."

Serena stole a breath.

"Her 7th-generation grandmother was the one who made my childhood bearable, who showed me kindness and compassion when no one else would. She was a light in the suffocating darkness that threatened to consume me." His sculptured features contorted briefly as if he were being assailed by a fresh wave of bad memory. "She was the first in her lineage to die because of me."

Serena's heart clenched painfully in her chest as a wave of sympathy that momentarily overshadowed the lingering resentment she harbored towards Mia washed over her.

She had no idea the depth of Knox's connection to the other woman, the sacrifices and tragedies that seemed to inexplicably bind them together through ties thicker than blood.

"And when I finally came into my abilities in full, when I was strong enough to protect them as their ancestors had protected me for so long... I failed spectacularly. Her mother, father, brother and aunt all perished because of me. Because I tried to save her mother who got shot and couldn't control the raw, destructive force of my abilities."

Knox fell silent again.

Serena could only gape at him, utterly speechless and stunned into horrified silence.

Her mind whirled dizzily, struggling to process this deluge of gut-wrenching revelations that seemed to shift the very foundations of her understanding of this man.

"How did...how did your relationship with Mia evolve into that of...of lovers?" She finally forced the dreadful question past her numb lips, almost afraid to give voice to the words.

Knox's expression remained stoic. "I promised her dying family I would make her mine when she came of age," he stated curtly.

A cold knot of dread twisted in the pit of her stomach at where this conversation seemed to be leading. Her intuition screamed at her that she might not want to know the full, unvarnished truth.

But she couldn't stop herself from pressing further.

"Did you ever...act on that promise?" Serena couldn't halt the reckless words that tumbled from her lips in a pained whisper.

Knox’s body went utterly still. The only movement was the slight flaring of his nostrils as his penetrating gaze averted from hers.

Serena held her breath. Her heart pounded wildly against her ribcage as the tense silence stretched on forever in dreaded anticipation of his response.

"I did," Knox finally admitted in a rough, hoarse voice that shattered the unbearable quiet.

Serena bit hard on her lower lip as if to hold back the broken sounds that threatened to escape.

Tears welled hotly in her eyes and blurred her vision. The agony of it all sliced through her, shredding her heart and soul into tattered ribbons.

Serena's stomach roiled violently at the unwelcoming images her treacherous mind insisted on conjuring.

"You said you never slept with her...was that a lie?" Her voice cracked with the force of her unshed tears.

Knox immediately realized she had misunderstood. He moved to gather her into the protective circle of his embrace to offer what little comfort he could against the devastation he had wrought. But Serena recoiled from his touch.

Her emotions were a tangled, chaotic mess that she could scarcely control in that moment.

She swatted his hands away when he reached out again, her eyes blazing with hurt and accusation through the shimmering veil of her tears.

For a long, drawn-out instant, Knox looked as if he was going to try to explain further, to offer justification or context for his past actions with Mia.

His mouth opened, but then his expression shifted abruptly, and a pensive frown crept up his brow as if he were listening to some inner voice, some intuitive guidance that only he could hear.

"Going into further depths will destroy everything. She's already about to pass out or burst with jealousy.” A warning voice sounded in his mind.

Knox’s forehead creased. However, he couldn’t deny that his inner self was right.

"I never fucked her," he finally stated flatly. "I had planned to make her completely mine that night you came into my room, but you arrived before I could act on my intentions."

The knot of dread gripping Serena's insides loosened, and she exhaled the breath she hadn't even realized she had been holding.

Some of the tension bled from her shoulders, even as her mind whirled over his choice of crude words.

He hadn't slept with Mia in the biblical sense, but he had clearly intended to at some point, to claim her and make her his lover in truth. The thought made her feel vaguely ill.

But then something else occurred to her, another deeply unsettling detail that refused to be ignored any longer. "What about the nude pictures from last night? And the messages that followed?" She demanded, not bothering to hide the agitation in her voice.

"Those texts clearly meant you two have been intimate before. She was practically saying you would return to her, to her body. How do you explain that?"

Irritation knitted Knox's brow. "Do you think so little of me to not realize this was an orchestrated setup?" He said through gritted teeth.

"That wasn't my phone from which you were receiving those messages!" An inner fire that bordered on danger flashed in his eyes.

Serena opened her mouth to respond, to demand further explanation and proof to corroborate his claims of innocence. However, Knox moved with such startling swiftness that she never got the chance to speak.

In the blink of an eye, he had pinned her beneath the hard planes of his frame. One of his large hands fisted in her hair to angle her head as he covered her parted lips with his own in a searing, branding kiss.

Serena was initially taken aback by his abruptness and the scorching heat of his mouth, claiming her own with such hunger intensity. But then she melted against him and yielded to the desire sparkling low in her belly, banishing her anger and doubts to the furthest reaches of her consciousness.