Page 68 of Hard Knot

“It better have saved.”

Felix adjusts his glasses from the slight sound of it making the tiny creak noise it does when he fixes the left side. He does that when he’s nervous or turned on enough to attempt to distract himself.

“Relax. I’m sure I can retrieve it from one of the three cameras in here.”

Victoria’s gasp of horror is almost comical.

Truthfully, I forgot she was here for a moment.

Not like I care.

“There arecamerasin here?”

“Duh,” Felix replies, sounding unimpressed. “You think we’d be security-less?”

She sputters, trying to regain some composure, and I can feel the shift in the room as she aims to turn this against Abercrombie.

“This is humiliating,” Victoria sneers, her voice sharp. “For her. For all of you.”

Abercrombie doesn’t flinch.

If anything, her confidence only seems to grow from the shift in the atmosphere. I sense her rising up, the feel of the wind her movement triggers gives me a graceful analogy. I can only think she has some sort of defiant or mischievous look in her eye.

“Humiliating?” she repeats, her voice dripping with mock innocence. “I’d do it again if it means grinding Holmes’ gears.”

Fuck.

Don’t go saying that, Abercrombie or I’ll get fucking addicted to this shit.

Her words are like a spark to a fire, and I feel a fresh wave of heat wash over me.

Damn, this Omega might be the end of me—but I’ll be damned if I let anyone else have her. I have to think of how to keep her around.

I huff, dragging my fingers through my hair, still damp with sweat and the aftershocks of Elizabeth Abercrombie’s punishment. Just imagining her kneeling there, her smug confidence radiating off her in waves, and all I want to do is shove her out of the office—out of my life—and yet...

There’s no way I can get her out of my mind after that experience. Not so swiftly.

“I hate your guts,” I say flatly, my voice cutting through the charged air.

I hear a hint of a crack of her neck, which makes me wonder if her sharp gaze snaps to mine, but before she can respond, I smirk, feeling the heaviness of her lingering gaze on me.

At least if my intuition and instincts are right.

“So, what better way to encourage your suffering than to tell you this: if you don’t stick around us for a while, we’ll release the tape.”

Victoria lets out a triumphant laugh, the grating sound stabbing through the tension like a dull knife.

“Thank goodness,” she says, her voice dripping with relief and mocking triumph. “Holmes, it’s about time you came back to your senses. Clearly, you?—”

“Fine.”

The single word is like a whip crack, silencing everyone in the room.

Elizabeth rolls her shoulders and I hear the sound of something I’d think is brushing against skin. I can only assume she’s brushing her knees after kneeling down for such a lengthy time on the carpet. It may be a plush cashmere type, but it would probably still bother her knees with how I was working her.

“What’s a day or two around the douche trinity?”

“Hey!” Carter interjects with mock indignation, pointing a finger at her. “I’m the douche you love.”

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