A pause. “Jolene, this is between me and Harper.”

“No, it isn’t, because she doesn’t want to see you.”

Harper, unless you want your grandmother and me fighting, come to the door.

Cursing to herself, Harper stalked out of the room and down the hallway.

“It would seem she does keep her word after all,” Jolene said to him.

Harper came to a stop behind Jolene, and his gaze boldly locked with hers. Her chest hurt just looking at him. He was so achingly good-looking. Living, breathing seduction. And a total asshole. Her demon glared at him, upper lip curled.

He held out his hand. “Come on.”

She shook her head. “Go home.” Looking at him was pissing her off all over again.

Harper —

Just. Leave.

Knox inwardly cursed. His mate was a lot of things, but not cold or distant. At that moment, she seemed both those things. The short physical distance between them might as well have been an ocean. She was lost to him right then. And he didn’t know how to bring her back.

He did know that it would be a lot fucking easier if her family backed off and let them deal with it. Jolene, however, still stood there like a sentry. Martina and Ciaran were at Harper’s back, scowling at him. What’s more, other demons were gathering in the yard, watching with shrewd eyes.

That was the thing about imps. You took on one; you took on them all.

Not that Knox was worried. He could kill them all with minimal effort. He wouldn’t, of course, since they were Harper’s family. But a display of power would serve as a decent enough warning to make them back off. And he would have made such a display if two little girls hadn’t dashed into the house and coiled themselves around Harper’s legs… which was no doubt why they’d done that. Imps of all ages were as cunning as they came.

His demon growled at the scene. It wanted its mate. Wanted to smash down the wall she’d erected between them. Wanted to grab her and haul her home. But Knox knew better than to even attempt to touch her right then. Besides, he’d messed up enough already. So he sighed and said to her, “I’ll be back in the morning. Be ready.”

Harper stayed where she was as Knox prowled to the Bentley, where Levi was waiting. The reaper gave her a “take pity on him” look, but she ignored it.

“I really didn’t expect him to leave,” said Martina as the car disappeared down the street.

“He’s respecting her wishes,” said Jolene. “There’s hope for him yet.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Silky, fiery heat licked at Harper’s skin. It shocked a gasp out of her and tugged at her consciousness, pulling her out of her sleep.

“Shush, baby.”

Her demon snarled at the sound of his voice, making the memory of the argument blast to the front of Harper’s mind. Her eyes snapped open, and she glared at the fucking asshole holding her possessively against him on their – no, his – bed. “Are you kidding me?” He had to be. Or he’d lost all sense of self-preservation, whichever.

“You didn’t think I’d really spend the night away from you, did you?” Knox had waited until she was asleep before taking her from Jolene’s spare bedroom.

“If I’d wanted to come here, I’d have left with you!” Growling, she struggled against him. She was getting out of there. She was going back to Jolene’s house. She was —

Knox rolled her onto her back and used his psychic hands to pin her wrists above her head. “I fucked up.” She stilled, so he continued. “I know that. But you didn’t call me, baby. You didn’t trust me to protect us both.”

“You should have just stuck with ‘I fucked up.’” The rest canceled out his admission and made Harper want to punch him in the face, which would be mega hard while she couldn’t move her hands. And, seriously, who would ever be dumb enough to subdue someone they had majorly pissed off?

“I fucked up,” he repeated.

“Yeah, you did,” she clipped. And he needn’t think that was enough to make her forgive him.

“You weren’t moving, Harper. You didn’t look like you were breathing. For a few seconds, I thought you were dead. My demon went ape-shit. If I hadn’t felt your pulse beating against my fingers, everyone in that office would have been dead within seconds.” He would have lost every ounce of control.

The pain in his tone took a tiny bit of the wind from Harper’s sails. Her demon, however, had no sympathy for him whatsoever.

“Even when I realized you were alive, I was still so frantic that I would have killed Crow right then if my priority hadn’t been getting you someplace safe, far away from him.” Knox combed his fingers through her hair. “At that point, it didn’t matter to me that killing him would be the wrong thing to do; that I would have been undermining myself to my own lair if I’d done for you what I wouldn’t do for another. All I could think was that you could have died.”

“I get that you were scared. I do. But if you think that gives you a free pass to be a shithead and question my integrity, you’re out of your mind.”

The stubborn jut of her chin almost made him laugh. She was just plain cute when she was mad. “When you first asked me to tell you immediately if Crow made any moves, I assured you that I would. But I didn’t. I waited until later that day to tell you. I saw that as protecting you – I didn’t want to fuck up your day by delivering shitty news smack bam in the middle of it. Even though you understood my intentions were good, you were pissed that I didn’t tell you straight away, weren’t you?”