TRADING MY CHEATING HUSBAND FOR THE LYCAN KING novel Chapter 185

CHAPTER 127: ANNOYINGLY

EMBER’S POV

Music drifts through the safehouse.

Something old, jazz maybe, a woman’s voice curling through static, crooning about love and loss and wanting things she can’t have.

I follow the sound down the narrow hallway, my bare feet cold against marbles, Knox’s shirt hanging to my thighs and my body deliciously sore in ways that make me flush just thinking about.

Last night.

Goddess, last night.

I can still feel him everywhere. The bruises on my hips where his fingers dug in while he fucked me against the wall, making Gale watch every second.

The ache between my thighs from how intense he made me come, relentless and savage and so filthy. The rawness in my throat from screaming his name.

It should feel wrong. Fucking the man I’m falling for while my asshole ex watched from three feet away, broken and bleeding and crying.

It doesn’t feel wrong at all.

It feels like justice served hot and dripping.

The kitchen is small and gray and nothing like the large spaces I’ve grown used to at the Summit, but Knox stands at the stove like he owns it anyway, shirtless and golden, sweatpants slung low enough to be criminal, muscles shifting under his skin as he moves between pans with surgical focus.

Steam rises around him and something smells incredible and I realize with a start that he’s humming along to the music without seeming to notice he’s doing it.

Nathaniel and Queenie are gone according to the note on the counter, left before dawn to check the perimeter and gather intel from the outside world.

Which means we’re alone. Really, truly alone.

I pad across the cold floor and wrap my arms around Knox from behind, pressing my cheek against his

bare back.

His skin is warm and solid and real, and his heartbeat thuds steady against my ear. My inner thighs protest the movement, tender and well–used, and I smile into his spine.

He doesn’t startle, just hums low in his throat and keeps cooking.

“You’re distracting me.”

CHAPTER 12 ANNOYINGLY

Claim

“Am I?” My fingers trace the ridges of his abs, following the lines like a map I’m memorizing. “I can stop if you want.”

“Don’t you dare.”

He turns off the burner and spins in my arms, catching my face in both hands and kissing me properly, deep and thorough, the kind of kiss that makes my knees forget how to function.

I melt into him automatically, and he must feel my wince when his hands grip my hips because he gentles immediately.

“Sore?” he murmurs against my mouth.

“Destroyed. Ruined. Completely wrecked.” I nip at his lower lip. “Your fault.”

“I’ll take full responsibility.” He’s grinning now, that arrogant tilt to his mouth that should annoy me but mostly makes me want to climb him like a tree.

Then he’s lifting me, hands gripping the backs of my thighs, setting me on the counter in one fluid motion and stepping between my legs like he belongs there.

“Better. Now I can reach you properly.”

“You’re so arrogant.”

“Practical,” he corrects, nipping at my jaw. “You’re too short. I was getting a crick in my neck.”

“I’m average height, you’re just freakishly tall.”

“Freakishly?” He pulls back with an expression of mock offense that makes me want to laugh. “I prefer impressively‘ Or ‘magnificently. ‘Intimidatingly, if we’re being formal about it.”

“How about ‘annoyingly‘?”

He laughs, the sound warm and startled like he’s surprised it came out of him, and the sight of Knox Volkov laughing in a dingy safehouse kitchen with egg on his spatula does something dangerous to my chest that I’m not ready to examine.

“Stay right there,” he commands, kissing my forehead before turning back to the stove. “Don’t move. I’m about to impress you with my culinary prowess.”

“Your what now?”

He ignores me, plating whatever he’s been making with the precision of a man who takes his breakfast very seriously.

When he sets the plate in front of me I actually stare at it like it might be a hallucination.

Fluffy scrambled eggs with fresh herbs, perfectly crispy bacon, toast cut into neat triangles, everything arranged with an attention to detail that seems wildly out of place given our surroundings.

“I don’t mean to brag,” he says, leaning against the counter across from me with his arms crossed over his

CHAPTER 12 ANNOVINGLY

bare chest and a smug tilt to his mouth that absolutely means he’s about to brag, “but I have a few tricks up my sleeve. Guaranteed to make beautiful women fold.”

“Fold?”

“Melt. Swoon. Declare their undying devotion to my eggs.” He waves a hand like this is obvious. “Take your pick.”

I take a bite, mostly to shut him up, and the eggs are annoyingly perfect.

Fluffy and seasoned with something herby and better than anything I could make in a fully stocked kitchen, let alone a safehouse with questionable supplies.

“Well?” He’s watching me with an intensity that’s completely disproportionate to breakfast.

I chew slowly, letting him sweat.

“It’s adequate.”

“Adequate.” His eyes narrow dangerously. “Those are award–winning eggs, Ember. I perfected that recipe when I was seventeen. My mother used to say they were the only reason she kept me around.”

The glimpse of vulnerability catches me off guard, something softer flickering across his face before he smooths it away.

His mother.

He barely ever mentions his parents, and when he does it’s always in these small fragments, these tiny windows into a version of Knox that existed before something hardened him into the Lycan King.

I set down my fork and reach for him, pulling him closer by his pant ropes until he’s standing between my

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