Steal Vows

Chapter Two: The Tiger, Not the Cage

The morning sun peeked through the windows as she got up and walked towards the bathroom. Knox, on the other hand, hadn't slept. He thought to himself: This woman is a conundrum. Who does what she's doing at her age? It's unheard of. Yet even after her trip had taken such a violent turn, she hadn't given up on her plans. She was afraid, but she was still thinking about her future. He'd watched her sleeping through the security feed more times than he would ever admit... and to his surprise, when she walked out of that shower, hair still dripping water, fresh-faced, no makeup, and no pretense, she was more beautiful than any of the girls around here could ever be. He felt his c**k twitch. That hadn't happened in years, not just from looking at someone.

Knox stood in the hallway, coffee in hand, when she emerged from the bathroom. He didn't move. Didn't acknowledge the wet hair clinging to her shoulders.

His shoulders clenched. Once. That's all.

He turned away deliberately, setting the coffee on the small table inside without looking back. The movement was controlled-everything about him was controlled, now more than ever. A cage he'd maintained for decades suddenly feeling too small.

“Bike's ready,” he said, his voice rougher than before. “We leave in twenty.”

He didn't wait for a response. He walked toward the door, boots heavy against the floor, needing distance and air and something to break.

She looked up at him through her eyelashes and simply nodded and asked for her bag off her bike so she could brush her hair and change. He looked at her and saw why she needed to change. Yesterday's clothes weren't even hers, and he asked,

“Did he make you wear that dress we brought you in?”

She nodded. Knox started to ask, “Did he?...” He couldn't finish the sentence.

Knox's fists clenched at his sides. The warehouse. The rival MC. What they might have done to her before he arrived. His mind didn't finish the sentence because finishing it meant acknowledging what might have happened, and that thought sent a spike of rage through him he hadn't felt in years.

He turned back to face her, eyes dark and lethal.

“No,” he said flatly. That was them. Before.

His voice dropped even lower, controlled fury underneath.

“You're with me now. You wear what I say. Nothing else.”

He moved to the door, gripped the frame hard enough his knuckles went white.

“Bag's in the garage. Get dressed. In your own clothes. Twenty minutes.”

He left to go get the bag, and she sighed and thought: They're all the same. He said no, I wear whatever he wants. I guess he thinks he owns me now, like a transfer of ownership. She shook her head and wanted to cry but didn't want to show weakness, so she kept it all inside. Her thoughts and her emotions were the only thing she owned right now, at least until she could get away.

Knox returned with her bag a few minutes later, dropping it on the bed without ceremony. He leaned against the doorframe again, watching her move through the room. There was something different in his gaze now-sharper, more focused. He'd caught the shift in her expression when he'd told her what she could wear, seen the way she swallowed hard and looked away.

He didn't comment on it.

Outside, the morning air was thick and humid. His truck sat idling near the garage, engine rumbling. One of his prospects was washing her bike-a Harley, clean lines, well-maintained. Knox nodded approvingly at the machine, then glanced back at her.

“Get in.”

She looked at her bike longingly as she did as she was told. Her ability to adapt to any situation was one of her strongest attributes... she looked out the windshield. Silence filled the cabin. She didn't speak unless she was spoken to or needed a question answered. No small talk. Not an ounce of her personality was being shared with him, and it was torture.

Knox drove without speaking, one hand on the wheel, the other resting on his thigh. The silence didn't bother him usually. He'd built his empire on it. But this silence was different. She was locked down, offering nothing. No personality, no resistance, and no spark. Just compliance.

He hated it.

He chewed on the side of his lip as he navigated the rural roads toward Moss Lake. The property came into view-trees, water, privacy. Perfect. But his attention kept drifting to her. The way she stared out the window. The rigid set of her shoulders. She'd already decided he was like all the others, already built walls he didn't even know he was attacking.

Knox pulled onto the gravel drive and killed the engine. He turned to face her directly.

“Talk to me,” he said quietly. “Real words. Not answers.”

She looked bewildered as his statement was so contradictory to that of the personality he'd shown her.

“Sir, I don't know what you want me to say...”s**t she didn't even know this guy's name but he wanted casual conversation, he must be schizophrenic or smoking crack or just plain f*****g nuts, she thought to herself... She moved to open the door.

Knox's hand shot out, gripping her wrist before she could open the door. Not hard enough to hurt, just hard enough to hold her there.

He released her slowly, deliberately, keeping eye contact. His voice was lower now, more honest.

“I don't do casual. I don't do soft. But I also don't do women who check out on me. You want to survive here? You stop thinking about escape and start thinking about what's actually in front of you.”

He nodded toward the property stretching before them-trees, water, untouched land.

“This is yours if you want it. But you don't get it by shutting down. You get it by being real with me.”

She looked at him and furrowed her brow. Anger swelled up inside of her.

“What makes you think I want anything from you or want to stay here now?” she said with a bit more bite than she meant to show him, just a little of the tigress underneath.

“I...I...mean I don't know if this...fuck...I...am sorry.”

She stepped out of the truck and took a deep breath and walked away from him toward the water's edge. As she looked around she started to feel more relaxed.

Knox watched her walk away, grinding his teeth. He thought: That bite—that tiger underneath—that's what he needed to see. Real. Not broken compliance, but resistance. Fire. His c**k twitched again, and this time he didn't look away.

He got out of the truck slowly, boots crunching on the gravel. The water stretched before her, calm and dark. She looked different out here-less trapped, more herself. He kept his distance, standing maybe ten feet away, hands in his jacket pockets.

“You weren't apologizing for the words,” he said quietly. “You were apologizing for showing me who you actually are.”

He lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke into the humid air.

“Don't do that again. The apologies. I want the tiger. Not the cage.”

She huffed and said,

“Of course you do,” and she walked further away from him, looking at the property, at the weeping willows and the flowers.

She walked further down a trail, finding a few rolling hills and a flat piece of land with a pump house and an electrical station. No sewage, but it had the essentials she could work with. But did she really want to be here? Maybe she should go to Virginia, she thought to herself. There were four properties there to see as well.

Knox followed at a distance, not closing the gap. He watched her move through the property like she was testing it, measuring it against something in her mind. The pump house, the electrical line, the flat land-she was calculating. He saw it in the way her eyes moved, the slight nod when she registered what was possible here.

Virginia. He remembered it from her map. She had other possibilities, not just North Carolina. He suspected she was considering them now. He read it in the shift of her weight, the way her gaze drifted toward the horizon like she was already halfway gone.

He stepped forward, his presence suddenly impossible to ignore.

“You're running,” he said flatly. “Again. Different direction this time, but the same instinct.”

He stopped a few feet away, letting her feel the weight of his attention.

“What's in Virginia that's not here?”

She turned around slowly to look him dead in the eyes and said,

“Freedom of choice.” She said it flatly... “I don't do well under someone's thumb. I bite and I'm not housebroken and it gets me in trouble eventually,” she answered honestly, something real about herself.

Knox stood motionless, smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers. Freedom of choice. Not housebroken. The tiger showed her teeth, and for the first time since he pulled her from that warehouse, he saw exactly who she was beneath the shock and survival instinct.

He smirked and said, “Good.” Then, a few moments later, before she could say anything else, he continued, “I don't want housebroken; I want someone who knows her own mind.”

He took a long drag, exhaled slowly.

“But freedom and running aren't the same thing. You keep running, you never build anything. Never own anything. You just exist in other people's spaces.”

He turned to face her fully, the property sprawling behind them both.

“Stay a week. See how it feels when you're not deciding based on fear.”

She turned away from him, then threw up her hands and asked,

“And where am I supposed to stay, locked up in that room with guards in a clubhouse? I'll never live in... or here in my tent like I was meant to? And what do you mean you don't want... what do you want from me?”

Knox flicked the cigarette into the water, watched it hiss and die. The question hung between them-what do you want from me-and he didn't answer immediately. Can't, really. Because the answer is complicated, and he'd spent forty-four years avoiding complicated. Besides, he didn't even know what he wanted.

“You stay at the clubhouse on your terms”, he said finally. “Your own room. No guards. You come and go as you please during the day. At night, you're where I can find you.”

He stepped closer, closing some of the distance.

“What I want is to figure out why a woman like you ended up in my warehouse. Why? You're not broken. Why you keep looking at me like you're deciding if I'm worth the trouble?”

His eyes were darker when he looked at her. His possessiveness crept into his voice.

“And I want to know if you're staying or running.”