Page 70 of Knot Here for You

While he’s ordering me around, Asher moves to my coffee pot and starts prepping it, so it’ll be ready to go in the morning. He glances over his shoulder. “You still like it the same way?”

“Yeah,” I nod. “I do.”

He smiles at me and gets back to work, while Ford stalks through the living room checking the windows are all locked. Jackson tidies the living room, folding throw blankets and bringing the empties into the kitchen. Davis heads to the kitchen to wash up the few dishes from dinner, putting the leftovers away. Topher laces his fingers with mine and tugs me gently toward the bathroom. “Come on, baby. Let them do their alpha thing.”

I let him pull me down the hall and into the bathroom, where he physically picks up my toothbrush and places it in my hand. “Come on, get ready for bed.”

I just kind of blink at him again. “Toph, what’s happening right now?”

He chuckles and leans in to press a kiss to my brow. “We’re taking care of you, Vee. Like we should have been doing all along.” His forehead replaces his lips. “We want so badly to stay to make sure you’re okay, but we also understand that it’s too early for that. And we don’t want to push our luck. So we’re going to take care of you however we can, while not crowding all six of us into your bed.”

I huff out a laugh at that. He breathes in like he’s inhaling the sound. His nose brushes mine. “I don’t think all of us could fit on my queen sized mattress.”

He chuckles and pulls back, smoothing a strand of hair behind my ear. “You’d be surprised what we can do when we’re properly motivated.”

I laugh, even as my cheeks heat at the image of all of us shoved together on the little bed. Logically, I know it won’t work. A queen is just too small. The bed at the cabin had been specially made to fit all of us at once, and that was when most of us were still teenagers, growing into our bodies. Davis had been lanky and not necessarily skinny, but smaller than he is now. All of them were.

“You know I take up like half the bed all on my own, Toph.”

He smirks and kisses my nose. “Oh, I remember. You like to starfish. You’ll take up whatever space we give you.”

I hum and turn to put toothpaste on the brush in my hand. “Yeah, not that you guys ever gave me any space.” No matter who was in bed with me, we always slept pressed together, a tangle of limbs. You’d think since I stretch out whenever I sleep alone, I’d hate it. But it always made me feel secure.

God, I want to feel that again.

“Course we didn’t, Vee. The best fucking feeling in the world is having you in my arms.” He smirks. “Even if your enormous head on my arm made my fingers go numb.”

“Hey!”

He kisses my nose again, while I scowl at him and shove my toothbrush in my mouth, scrubbing with a vengeance. “I’m gonna go check the windows in your room. Make sure they’re secure.”

I roll my eyes and turn toward the mirror to finish getting ready for bed. I notice that my reflection looks healthier, that my eyes have a little more sparkle and the dark circles under them are a little less pronounced, my skin looks less sallow.

Is this all it took? One night of conversation with my pack? A few acts of protective care? That’s what I needed for my body to not rebel against me?

There’s something so… disheartening about that, about how easily I can heal so long as I’m with them.

What if this is all just some… joke? What if they decide they don’t really want me? What if…

I shut down the thoughts as I bend over to spit. That doesn’t help anything, Vee, I say to myself. Take what you can now. Let their presence heal you as much as it can, even if it doesn’t last.

By the time I step out of the bathroom, cleansed and moisturized, they’re all in my room. Well, all of them but Davis, who is in the second room I’ve commandeered for book binding. “What’s all this?”

I lean a shoulder against the door frame, hyperaware of the rest of them stepping into the hall behind me. “I make custom editions of books.”

“By hand?” Davis asks, scooping up a beautifully bound edition of an indie author’s first book she commissioned me to bind for her.

“Yep. It started out as something just for me, to keep me busy when I wasn’t working, but Sadie started posting pictures of them online and then I had people reaching out to me, asking if I could make editions for them.”

He flips through the book and his brows arch. “Is this the kind of thing you read?”

My cheeks heat, but I meet his eyes and shrug. “Sometimes.”

“Vee,” he grins, all sultry and delighted at the same time. “This is fucking filthy.”

A warm hand slides around my waist from behind, dragging over my stomach before pulling me back into a hard body. Maple bacon surrounds me. “How filthy we talking, Davis?” Ford asks against my cheek, dragging his scruff covered jaw over my skin. Maybe I should be upset that he’s scent marking me, but I can’t bring myself to be.

Davis stares down at the page, his finger sliding over the text. “Well, this scene here has a beta fisting an omega to imitate a knot.”

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