Chapter 95 KNOX

Chapter 95 KNOX
I was done watching.
The guy’s hand slid a little lower on her waist, and something in my chest went from simmering to fully boiling over in about half a second. I’d been managing it. Barely. This was the last straw.

“Alright,” I muttered, mostly to myself, and started walking toward them.

“Ohhh,” Hunter called after me. I heard the grin in his voice before I even looked back.

“What?”

“I thought you weren’t jealous.”

“I’m not.”

I kept walking. Hunter followed a few steps behind, because apparently watching me lose my mind was tonight’s entertainment.

“I’m just saying, bro—for a man who isn’t jealous, you’re walking over there with the urgency of a husband who just spotted his wife dancing with the milkman.”

“Fuck off, Hunter.”

I was already moving, weaving through the crowd toward the dance floor, jaw tight, eyes locked on the guy whose hand was still resting far too comfortably at Juniper’s waist.

Up close, she looked worse than I’d braced for—not worse in the sense of bad, worse in the sense that the little red dress she was wearing had apparently been specifically engineered to make every single guy within a fifty-foot radius stop what they were doing and stare.

I could feel their eyes on her the second I got close, a dozen different directions, and it took real, physical effort not to start swinging at all of them collectively.

“We’re leaving,” I said, reaching her, voice flat, aimed at her but eyes locked hard on the guy she was dancing with.

Juniper blinked up at me. “No, I’m dancin’. I’m havin’ so much fun. I’m not goin’ anywhere, Knoxy.”

The guy grinned. That grin irritated me immediately.

“Yeah, we’re dancing…” he said, entirely undeterred by my presence, and executed some kind of shoulder-rolling, hip-jutting maneuver that looked less like dancing and more like the result of a mild electrical shock.

Juniper’s eyes lit up. “Ooh, do that again.”

He did it again, apparently thrilled to have an audience, adding an extra hip thrust for good measure.

Juniper attempted to copy it. What emerged bore no resemblance whatsoever to what he’d just done—she jerked one shoulder up, wobbled sideways into an entirely unrelated hip movement, and nearly lost a shoe in the process.

“There,” she announced, breathless, deeply pleased with herself. “Did I get it?”

“Not even a little,” I said.

“You weren’t even watchin’ properly.”

“I watched the whole thing. It looked like you were being attacked by a bee.”

“That’s the style, Knoxy. It’s called freestyle. You wouldn’t understand. You only know how to do the sexy slow kind.”

“Speckles, I’m telling you one more time. We’re leaving.”

“I can’t.” She shook her head with grave determination, as though I’d just asked her to abandon a national emergency. “I have a duty.”

I stared at her. “A duty?”

“To my fans.” She glanced around the club, suddenly suspicious, then lowered her voice like she was sharing classified intelligence.

“They could be watching. It’s a lot of pressure, Knoxy. You’ve never been famous.”

I almost laughed. “Your fans aren’t here.”

“How do you know?” She jabbed a finger toward me—or, more accurately, at a completely innocent patch of air about three feet to my right.

“They could be anywhere. That’s how fame works. You don’t see them. They see you.”

She attempted another hip roll, apparently determined to prove her point. It started in one direction, veered sharply into another, and ended with her stumbling sideways. I caught her by the waist before gravity could finish whatever she’d started.

She looked down at my hand, then back up at me.

“I meant to do that.”

“Of course you did.”

“It was part of the choreography.”

“Gravity was part of the choreography too?”

She ignored me completely and turned toward the guy beside her.

“Oh yeah, meet my new dancing partner.” She gestured toward him with exaggerated importance. “This is Chad.”

The guy blinked. “It’s not Chad.”

Juniper frowned at him, studying his face like she was trying to locate the discrepancy.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

She nodded slowly. “Okay. You’re definitely Chad-adjacent.”

The guy laughed and reached for her waist again.

My jaw tightened.

Juniper, apparently oblivious to the fact that I was about three seconds away from personally escorting Chad-adjacent out of the building, smiled up at him like he’d just been promoted to principal dancer.

I stepped between them, my expression hardening as I looked directly at the guy.

“Touch her one more time,” I said quietly, “and you’ll be dancing with my fist instead.”

I held his gaze for a beat, letting the warning sink in. He finally seemed to realise he’d wandered into territory he probably shouldn’t have, his drunken grin fading beneath my stare.

“Find someone else to dance with.”

He opened his mouth to argue—probably some slurred, confident nonsense about free will and public dance floors—but before he could get a word out, a girl in a sequined top materialized out of the crowd like she’d been waiting in the wings for exactly this cue, grabbed his arm, and pulled him bodily into her orbit.

He went, easily, immediately, like he’d forgotten Juniper existed the second a new option presented itself.

“Hey!” Juniper called after him, genuinely offended. “Wait—get back here! I thought you were my dance partner! We had a whole thing going!” She turned to me, hands on her hips, delivering the betrayal like breaking news.

“He just left. Mid-routine. That’s very unprofessional.”

“Tragic,” I said, already reaching for her arm. “Devastating loss for the industry.”

“I know.” She nodded solemnly, apparently missing the sarcasm entirely.

He didn’t turn around. She stared after him for a full second, looking betrayed on a scale that felt disproportionate to losing a stranger she’d known for four minutes, then apparently decided the show must go on and kept dancing anyway—alone now, still fully committed to whatever choreography existed only in her head.

Jesus Christ.

I curled my hand around her arm and started steering her toward the entrance.

She protested immediately, digging her heels in with the determination of someone convinced she still had full control of her limbs.

“Where are we goin’? I’m not done. I have duties, Knoxy.”

“Party’s over. We’re leaving.”

“But I’m havin’ fun.” She said it like the word alone should override every argument I could possibly make.

“That’s the problem. You’re having too much fun.”

“That’s not a real crime.” She tried to twist out of my grip, wobbling dangerously on her heels in the process, one hand flailing out to grab a nearby bar stool for balance that she absolutely did not need until she’d caused the need herself.

“I want to dance some more.” She wriggled, entirely uncoordinated, the whole effort resembling less an escape attempt and more a fish trying to remember how swimming worked. “Lemme go. Lemme go, Knoxy. I have rights.”

“You asked for it,” I warned her, and before she could process what that meant, I bent down, wrapped an arm around her middle, and hauled her up over my shoulder.

She shrieked—delighted, not alarmed, which was somehow worse—and immediately started laughing, both hands smacking ineffectually against my back like she was considering resistance and had already abandoned the idea.

“Knox! Knox, put me down, this is undignified!”

“You tried to dance with a stranger while unable to count to four. I think we’re past dignity.”

“That’s slander.”

“That’s documented fact.”

She grabbed a fistful of my shirt for balance. “Knoxy! This is kidnapping.”

“It’s called leaving.”

A bouncer near the exit watched our approach with the particular resignation of a man who’d seen this exact scenario play out a hundred times before and had stopped being surprised by any of it years ago.

“Have a good night,” he said flatly as we passed, not even looking up from his clipboard.

“I was havin’ a good night!” Juniper informed him, upside down, with real enthusiasm.

“Ask anyone! I have three fans! Actual fans! In the toilets!”

The bouncer nodded slowly, unbothered, like this tracked perfectly with every other piece of chaos that had walked out that door before her.

A couple near the coat check turned to stare as we passed, and the girl—mid-conversation with her friend—actually stopped talking entirely to watch Juniper dangling over my shoulder, hair falling loose around her face, one hand still gesturing emphatically at nothing.

“Y’know,” Juniper continued, entirely undeterred by the audience, “for someone who’s kidnappin’ me, you have a very nice back. Sturdy. Reliable. Ten out of ten kidnappin’ technique.”

“I’m not kidnapping you.”

“That’s exactly what a kidnapper would say.”

Somewhere behind us, I heard Hunter’s voice carry across the club, delighted beyond words. “This is the best content I’ve gotten all year! Katy, tell me you’re filming this!”

“Oh, I’m filming it,” Katy called back.

“Knox?”

“What?”

“Did you know your hand is on my ass?”

“I am aware,” I said dryly.

As if there were anything else in the world I could think about.

Fuck. Her ass felt good. Soft and warm under the thin dress, filling my palm like it belonged there. I should’ve moved my hand. I didn’t.

“Is that on purpose or an accident?” she asked, tipping her face up toward me as best she could from this angle, eyes bright and unfocused.

“I’m just holding you.”

She considered this with the deep seriousness of someone conducting a scientific review. Then she nodded, as if the logic had checked out perfectly.

“Well, since you’re grabbing my ass, it’s only fair I get to grab yours.”

Before I could respond, she reached around with both hands, grabbed a solid handful of me, and squeezed. Hard.

I made a noise that was half surprise, half something I was not examining right now.

She beamed, completely satisfied with the exchange, still upside down and somehow winning the argument.

“There. Now we’re even.”

Fuck me.

This girl was going to be the end of me.