Chapter 72: May I?

NORA’S POV

"Knox?" I sat up almost immediately, pulling the heavy comforter tightly to my chest. "What are you doing here?"

Priya was still holding the wooden door, glancing between the two of us with an expression that shifted from utter shock to something far more calculating in under two seconds.

She pulled the door open the rest of the way.

Knox stood in the dim hallway, his massive six-foot-three frame filling the doorframe. He wore a dark charcoal hoodie with the sleeves pushed up his forearms and gray athletic sweatpants.

He looked slightly worn out from the chaos of the afternoon, with shadows beneath his sharp jaw, but his dark gaze bypassed my roommate entirely and locked straight onto me.

"Right," Priya said, practically lunging for her canvas tote bag and shoving her feet into her slides. "I suddenly have an overwhelming urge to study the architectural integrity of the twenty-four-hour law library. I will be gone for a very long time. Do not destroy my security deposit."

"Priya, is that..."

"I also plan on reviewing tort law briefs... all night... extremely far from this room."

"But it’s midnight and..."

"The law library is open twenty-four hours during midterm season, Nora... everyone knows that." Priya paused at the door, glancing back at me with a wicked, unsubtle wink. "Don’t wait up."

She squeezed past Knox in the doorway, patting him once on his broad shoulder like she was blessing a particularly reckless life decision, and disappeared down the hallway before either of us could stop her.

The heavy wooden door clicked shut.

Knox stood there for a silent beat with his hands shoved into the front pocket of his hoodie, looking like he hadn’t quite decided whether to step further into the room or stay anchored to the threshold.

"You didn’t have to come all the way across campus," I said, pulling my knees up beneath the blanket. "You could have just texted."

"I know."

"So why are you here?"

Knox exhaled slowly, dragging a large, calloused hand through his dark, messy curls. "Because I left the arena tonight, drove back to the SinBin house, and couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that I left you standing on the player bench without actually talking to you."

"You don’t owe me an explanation for what happened on the ice, Knox."

"Maybe not." He finally stepped further into the room, letting the door rest against his back. "But I owe you more than leaving you to deal with the fallout alone after a day like today. That wasn’t fair to you."

I studied him in the shadowed quiet of the room, my heart doing strange, fluttering gymnastics against my ribs.

Whatever had driven him to defy Harold and Garrison at the media showcase was still humming beneath his skin; I could see the rigid edge of it in the careful way he held his broad shoulders, like a man keeping an iron door closed by leaning his entire weight against it.

"Is there something you need to tell me?" I asked softly.

"Not all of it. Not yet." Knox’s sharp jaw tightened slightly. "But I didn’t want you lying awake here thinking what happened on the ice had anything to do with PR or donor politics. Because it didn’t. Standing beside you today was..." He stopped, recalibrating the sentence halfway through his throat. "Standing beside you was the best part of my week."

The admission landed like a warm weight low in my chest.

"The center-ice kiss?" I asked, mostly to fill the heavy silence, because the alternative was admitting what I wasn’t sure I was ready for.

"The coffee by the fountain this morning," Knox countered, his raspy voice dropping into a low, warm rumble that made my pulse jump. "You handed me black coffee with two sugars and told me that ice belonged to my team. Nobody else on this entire campus has ever looked at me and seen past my father’s money."

I didn’t have a clever comeback.

For once, my usual armor of economic formulas, sharp wit, and steady logic simply wasn’t there when I reached for it.

Knox crossed the linoleum floor with slow, measured steps.

I didn’t tell him to stop.

He sat down on the edge of my mattress, close enough that the wooden frame creaked and the bed dipped under his heavy athletic weight. He was close enough that the intoxicating scent of cedar, clean soap, and the autumn wind drifted straight off his skin into my lungs.

"Nora," he murmured in a soft voice soft, stripped of all cockiness.

"Yeah?"

"Every time I closed my eyes tonight, all I could think about was lifting you over that glass and the way you felt in my arms."

My breath hitched in my throat. "The bench kiss was part of the deal, Knox. We talked about this. You said we needed to show the donors a united front."

"I know what I said," he whispered.

His eyes were steady and burning on mine, carrying none of their usual teasing distance. "I keep telling myself this is a contract. I keep reminding myself of our rules. No real feelings. No physical contact unless someone’s watching."

He paused, his gaze dropping to my lips before rising back to my eyes. "Nobody’s watching right now, Bookworm."

My heart was beating violently, loud and frantic against my ribs. "No," I whispered. "Nobody’s watching."

"Then tell me to leave," Knox murmured, leaning in until his chest was mere inches from mine. "Because I don’t think I can sit on this bed much longer and not touch you. I need you to be the one who says stop, Bennett... because I don’t trust myself to."

I should have told him to leave.

Every analytical instinct, every boundary we had written, every warning about his father’s wrath... all of it was right there in my head, ready to be deployed.

I didn’t say a single word.

Before I could form a rational response, Knox’s warm, rough hand came up, his palm cupping my jawline. His thumb brushed lightly over my cheekbone, sending a jolt of pure fire straight down my spine.

"Knox," I breathed, my weak protest sounding more like a desperate plea.

"Tell me to walk out that door, Nora," he whispered, his lips hovering barely an inch from mine. "Say the word."

I couldn’t say it. I didn’t want him to leave.

Instead, I lifted my hand, my trembling fingers touching the sharp angle of his jaw, feeling the slight stubble beneath his skin.

Knox went completely, rigidly still under my touch.

"Don’t leave," I whispered.

Something broke loose in his eyes... the rigid control, the defensive armor he carried everywhere, and then his mouth crashed down on mine, and there was nothing careful about it at all.

This kiss had no cameras to convince, no donors to defy, and no contract to uphold.

It was deep, consuming, and intoxicatingly real.

His large hand slid around the back of my neck, his fingers tangling into my chestnut curls, while my hands fisted into the cotton of his hoodie like I needed an anchor in a storm.

Knox pulled back just enough to look down at me, his chest heaving, checking my face, and whatever he saw made the last shred of his restraint vanish entirely.

"Say it again," Knox growled softly against my lips.

"Don’t leave," I breathed.

He didn’t.

His mouth came down on mine with demanding hunger, completely obliterating every single rational thought in my head.

I fell back against the pillows, pulling him down with me.

Knox shifted his heavy, muscular frame over mine, pressing me deep into the mattress as his arms wrapped securely around my waist, hauling me flush against his solid chest.

His mouth was hot and relentless, tasting like mint and pure fire.

My hands tangled in his dark curls, holding him closer as his lips left my mouth, trailing burning, open-mouthed kisses down my jawline to the sensitive hollow beneath my ear. A sharp gasp tore from my throat as his teeth lightly scraped my skin.

"You drive me insane, Bookworm," Knox groaned against my collarbone, his ragged breath sending a violent tremor straight down my spine.

His large, calloused hands slid beneath the hem of my oversized sleep t-shirt, his burning palms gliding up the bare skin of my waist. The contrast of his rough, hockey-worn hands on my sensitive skin sent a shockwave of electricity straight to my core.

An involuntary moan escaped my parted lips before I could stop it.

Knox mapped the curve of my waist with possessive intensity, his thumbs brushing slowly upward to tease the lower edge of my bra.

He stilled above me, dropping his forehead against mine, his breathing just as ragged and frantic as my own.

"May I?" Knox rasped.