Page 27 of Knot All that Glitters: Part 1

I knew I just had to mention Brian, and it’d wake you up.

Creed:

Like Tic said, shut the fuck up, Jude.

Hale:

Focus, please.

When can we see you again, mouse?

Me:

I’ll work on it and get back to you.

My father has me booked solid for the next few days.

I don’t tell them I can usually only get out when my father goes to one of his special donor dinners. The ones that take him out of the house until the early morning hours. They don’t need to know that in order to have some semblance of freedom, I have to sneak out like a teenager and not simply walk out the front door like the grown woman I am.

“Who are you texting?” I resist the instinct to startle, to jump, to give away that I’m doing anything wrong. If I do, Brian will smell blood on the water, and he’ll be ruthless in finding out who I’ve been communicating with.

I lower my phone slowly, even as I feel it vibrate in my hands. Arching a brow, a turn to him slowly. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m texting Ren.”

Brian gives me a ruthless smile. “It is my business, Haven. Everything about you is. Your father trusts me to look after you.”

I grit my teeth around the words I want to say. If I do, he’ll demand to see my phone and then the jig will be up. “Right. Sorry. I forgot.”

“You seem to forget that a lot, Haven. Do you need a more permanent reminder that you need to listen to me?”

All the blood drains from my face and I give a quick shake of my head. “No. No. I don’t. I’ll be good.”

Brian’s eyes drink in my reaction, my fear, fucking loving every second of the power he wields over me. Not only can he physically overpower me if he wanted to, but he doesn’t need to. He can just bark at me to get me to comply with anything. And I do mean anything.

He could order me to strip off all my clothes and go stand on the back porch in the chilly autumn night for hours and I’d do it. He could tell me to drop to my knees and suck his cock, and I would. Inside, I’d be screaming the whole time, but my body would obey him.

He knows it. I know it.

Only one of us relishes it, though.

“Remember that I own you as much as he does, Haven.”

I give a quick nod, dropping my eyes to the carpet in submission. It’ll get this over faster. “Yes.”

“Good.” He claps his hands together and this time I jump. More because I know he delights in it, and I’d rather have himfocused on me than my phone and who I’ve been texting. “Now, get me a drink, omega.”

I flinch at him using that term with me. Even though it’s what I am. There’s something so wrong about an alpha you loath using it on you. And Brian flings it like an insult, like it’s demeaning to be an omega. Like my designation makes me weak, less than somehow. It’s nothing like when Jude said it on the dancefloor with… reverence.

I do as I’m told, mixing up his preferred martini. As I hand it over to him, it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask why he’s here. In our house. It’s not uncommon, but normally if Brian is here, so is my father.

But then the front door opens and in walks the man of the hour. I step back from Brian, fold my hands in front of me, and lower my head. This is how he prefers me here. A shadow, silent, unobtrusive, nothing.

He pauses just inside the living room and I feel his gaze scrape over me, looking for anything to find fault with. He won’t unless Brian decides to spill about my moment of bravery. Though he’d frame it as a moment of being a brat. An omega that needs to be handled.

“Good, you’re both here,” my father says as if we’d be anywhere else but where he wants us. “A drink, Haven.”

I know he’s not offering me one. He never does, and that’s just fine, seeing as when he allows me to drink it’s always something I dislike, almost as though he delights in making me ingest something I can’t stand just because he can.

I move over to the bar and pour him the exact right amount of bourbon. It’s taken years to master this pour. And I do mean years. He used to find fault with it, no matter what I did. Even if I was sure I’d poured the alcohol in the exact same way, it was always wrong.

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