Malice in Wonderland (4 page)

"You must understand why I thought what I did?"

"Yes," I admitted. "I can absolutely see why you would have thought what you did, but you told me there was a time when you dropped your defenses and believed in me. You realized you were wrong then, and yet, you never told me who my father was."

"
Dulcie
, I'll be frank with you," he said, eyeing me pointedly. "I never trusted you one hundred percent."

"Despite your body telling you I
was
the one," I snapped, referring to the fact that Knight's body had chosen me as his mate, signified when his eyes glowed.

"It is in my nature not to trust," he responded. "It's what I do day in and day out. I'm a trained soldier,
Dulcie
. I didn't get as far as I did in the ANC by trusting people. This is who I am." He took a breath. "But do I regret everything that happened between us?
Absolutely.
Do I wish I could go back and make things right again? Yes, and I mean that wholeheartedly."

I swallowed and stared out my window, trying to avoid the pain in his eyes. I just didn't know how I felt about him now. So much had happened between us, I wasn't sure if the damage was
repairabl
e.

THREE

"So where do we go from here?" Knight
asked,
his expression sullen as he chanced to look my way before returning his eyes on the road. Where we were headed was still unknown to me as I wasn't at all familiar with this area.
But wherever we were had to be pretty remote, judging by the weeds popping up through the asphalt and the fact that I hadn't seen another car since leaving Compound Three.

I shook my head and shrugged, answering honestly. "I don't know."

He nodded as if my reply didn't surprise him,
then
seemed to zone out, staring at the road for a few seconds before returning his attention to me. "My feelings for you haven't changed," he said simply.

"My feelings for you
have
changed," I said just as simply, trying not to notice the chiseled lines of his face, much less how the ends of his thick, black hair curled up over his collar.

My own feelings towards Knight were infuriating, to say the least. I mean, I was more than mad at him—livid, disappointed, and hurt—all rolled into one big grudge that was currently lodged in my stomach. And, yet, for as angry as I felt, I couldn't help seeing Knight's point. I could understand how he hated my father so much that he would want to exact revenge on his daughter. I could also understand how Knight assumed I was in on my father's plan all along. There was a lot of evidence in support of this conclusion (especially everything that happened over the last two weeks). I could also understand Knight’s anger since I wasn’t exactly truthful about the reasons why I decided to work for my father in the first place. But, given all those exceptions, I also couldn't deny that I was furious that he'd never told me who my father was and, more so, that he wasn't willing to listen to me when I'd told him how and why I was innocent of all his accusations. And those were the sticking points. They were the points that kept jabbing me with their dull blades. Those were the points I couldn't automatically dismiss and which tainted my feelings towards Knight. Basically, his refusal to even listen to me, after I risked my life for him, was the crux of the whole matter.

"So you don't see where I'm coming from at all?" Knight asked, rather astutely.

I nodded quickly, almost wondering if he could somehow read my thoughts as they occurred to me. As a Loki, Knight had numerous abilities and it seemed the longer I got to know him, the more he surprised me with them. "Yes, I do, Knight," I started, exhaling a heavy sigh of despondency. "Of course I see your point of view; but it doesn't change my feeling that the whole course of our ... friendship was all initially based on a complete lie."

"A lie?" he repeated, his voice simmering with anger. He speared me with his beautiful blue eyes before returning his icy glare back to the road.

"If I'd known the true circumstances regarding your reasons for coming to Splendor, I never would have allowed things to progress as far as they did." One of those reasons was him getting kicked out of the Netherworld because he refused to work for my father. In coming to Splendor, he'd intended to track me down and engineer a surprise attack on my father, using me as his vehicle. Yep, Knight had been completely convinced that I was in cahoots with good
ol
' Dad.

He clenched his jaw and I could see his fingers tightening around the steering wheel. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that had I known all along you were using me as a vehicle in some sort of vendetta against my father, I would never have trusted you. Furthermore, I never would have been your ... friend." I was quiet for a few seconds as I re-contemplated it. "Knight, you were gunning for me from the moment you met me. That's not exactly the ideal foundation for real friendship."

"Stop referring to what we had as a friendship," he ground out, glaring at me. "You are more than aware that we were much more than friends."

At his words, I felt myself flush. Yes, I was more than aware what existed between Knight and
me
was too hot to touch. That wa
s why I purposely labeled it a "friendship," if only as an attempt to cool my own feelings, which were, even now, heating up. One thing I could say for Knight: the man was sexy with a capital S. Even after everything that happened between us, I couldn't help my irresistible attraction to him. It really stuck in my craw.

"Well, whatever it was, it's done now," I snapped back at him and immediately regretted the words because they sounded so final, so exacting, and they just didn't feel right.

"Well, then, apparently you've just shown all your cards." He shook his head and laughed icily but I could see the pain in his eyes. "But I will have the last word as to your point about me wanting to use you against your father. I already told you that I stopped believing you were involved with your father very quickly after I met you." He returned his attention to the road, his shoulders stiff.

"And yet, you never gave me the benefit of the doubt when it came to my involvement with the
Draoidheil
import," I threw back at him. "When I told you I was innocent, you wouldn't listen to me! For someone who trusted me, you had a really funny way of showing it."

He faced me with raging eyes. "
Dulcie
, I trusted you up until two weeks ago. Since then, the
Dulcie
I thought I knew so well was nowhere to be found. I concluded that I must have been duped into believing you were innocent. Obviously, once Christina confirmed your involvement with your
father, that
was enough for me. "

"But you still could have listened to my side of the story."

He shook his head as if I were dense and couldn’t understand what he was saying. Then he faced me again, carefully dividing his attention between the road and me. "What did you expect me to think after Christina confirmed that you were absolutely working for your father? I would've been an idiot if I still believed you were innocent."

I couldn't fault him for that on
e—especially because Christina ha
dn't
known
me from Eve. At the time, she
hadn’t known
the true reasons for my association with my father. As far as she was concerned, I was just one of my father's people. Well, that is, before she talked to
Caressa
. At any rate, I knew I couldn’t win this
argument,
so instead, I turned to the other issues that still bothered me. "That's all fine and good, but before I ever met my father, when you thought I was innocent of all of this, did you ever tell me who my father was? No. And that was when you quote, unquote, loved me!" I couldn't help the shrill sound of my voice.

"I didn't tell you about Melchior because I didn't want to hurt you," he said earnestly. "I weighed the options and decided it was better for you not to know who and what Melchior was than to know the truth."

"That's a decision you should have left up to me." I shook my head, anger now freely pouring out of me. "Sometimes you have this God complex thing going on and it pisses the shit out of me!"

"Please," he said with a frown. "I'm an alpha male; I have to be in this line of work."

"Alpha male or God complex, they're both just as infuriating," I spat back. "Does it ever occur to you that you don't have the right to make other people’s decisions?"

"
Dulcie
, I didn't tell you about your father because I was protecting you," he said in a hollow voice. "I didn't want to upset you. Think about it—if you had known who and what your father was, how would it have affected your life? You would have wondered why your mother came to Splendor in the first place and if it was to escape your father (whic
h it was). I'm sure you would’
ve always wondered if all of your successes in life had anything to do with you being Melchior's daughter. Not to mention that it would have shattered any idealistic thoughts you might have entertained as to who your father might be. There was no way
I
was going to take responsibility for any of that."

Sometimes Knight was spot on. Sometimes it was difficult to argue with him. "I could have handled it," I grumbled, staring out my window as I frowned. Not wanting to admit defeat, I faced him again. "The point is that it should have been my decision to make, not yours."

"Just like it should have been my decision to make whether or not you ruined your life by teaming up with your father because of me?" he demanded. "How the hell do you think that makes me feel? Knowing that all the shit you ultimately put yourself through was because of me?" He shook his head and sighed. "We could have figured it out together,
Dulcie
. You never should have taken all of this on by yourself."

I didn't respond, suddenly too tired to think. "What's done is done," I said softly, rubbing my temples as I closed my eyes, fighting the exhaustion that was trying to claim me. I just had too much to think about—The Resistance, what my future held, when I could see my friends again. I really didn't want to add the shriveled remains of my relationship with Knight to the mix. The mix was already dangerously close to precipitating the onset of a complete mental breakdown.

"Yes, what's done is done," Knight continued, his voice much softer now. "But that isn't to say we can't pick up the pieces,
Dulcie
." He reached over, squeezing my knee reassuringly. "At the end of the day, all we really have is each other, right?"

"I don't know." I glanced down at his large hand that seemed to engulf my knee and felt numb. I lifted his hand and returned it to him, pulling myself closer to the passenger door, suddenly needing more space.

"
Dulce
," he started.

"You said some really shitty things to me, Knight." Those shitty things included some incredibly rude comments about my friend, Bram. Due to an unfortunate string of events, Knight managed to convince himself that Bram and I were ... intimately involved. And he wasn’t discreet about his feelings on the subject. If I remember correctly, he even asked me if I called out
his
name while Bram and I were having sex! That was followed by a few
other
, just as colorful, statements and/or accusations.

Knight nodded guiltily and sighed again. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let my temper get the best of me." Then he stopped himself short as though something suddenly occurred to him. "Then the Rolex wasn't a gift from Bram?"

I shook my head, keeping my lips tightly sealed as I tried to restrain my temper. "It was a portal compass given to me by Melchior."

"Shit," he said. Then, without any warning, he
bashed
his fist into the steering wheel, which beeped angrily at the assault. "I was jealous,
Dulcie
," he said once he seemed to calm down. "I was convinced you were playing me before you moved on to Bram. It even crossed my mind that you were with Bram all along." As he said the words, his eyes started to light up with a familiar glow, a glow which said I was his. I felt something inside me blossoming receptively, a yearning deep down in my belly. I swallowed down the sudden desire to feel his lips all over me and felt like slapping myself.

"I was never with Bram," I managed.

Knight nodded, but his expression was unreadable, almost like he hadn't heard me, or like he was reliving his memories. "When I went to No Regrets and saw you leaving his office, he leaned down to kiss you."

"That's just Bram. He always pulls those stunts just to piss me off."

He nodded again, but that same empty expression said the memory still enraged him. "When I watched him kiss you, I just couldn't take it anymore," he said, slowing down. He exited the highway onto "Pineville Street," which appeared to be just as deserted as the highway. With a strange glance at me, he suddenly stopped the SUV in the middle of the road, turning his entire enormous body toward me. "I've regretted all the shitty things I said to you since I said them. I was overcome by jealousy and I couldn't control myself. I wanted to lash out and hurt you because the thought of you and Bram devastated me." He swallowed. "The truth is that thinking about you with any other man makes me sick to my stomach."

And that was when something occurred to me, a thought that left me cold. "Knight, did you ...
did
you ... do anything with anyone because of what happened between us?" I was thinking in particular of Angela, the bartender at No Regrets, Bram's club. Angela had it pr
etty bad for Knight; and they’
d even dated before things got hot and heavy between Knight and me.