Page 29 of Knot Mine

Okay. So…we weren’t going to talk about the blowjob. Fine. If that’s how he wanted to play it, then I wasn’t going to bring it up either. No wrong ideas here, so let him put up his walls and hide behind a curtain of attitude. It was going to be a long drive.

“Get over yourself, Zale.” Rolling my eyes, I lock my apartment door and lead him to my parking spot.

As we climb into my Mercedes, and he puts his bag on the back seat, I say “We’re doing one project together and you’re dating my sister. I’m not deluding myself into thinking that we’re besties.”

It’s the truth. We’re no better than strangers, forced to work together on a project and we may have shared one oddly intimate moment. That’s all. He’s friends with the people who like to make my life difficult. And he’s my sister’s boyfriend.

“I know that.” He gets in the passenger seat, and instantly I can smell hints of his musky scent. Zale remains quiet for a moment before he clears his throat and we make awkward eye contact. “We’re not exactly enemies either.”

No. We weren’t.

But maybe we should be? Those blue eyes made me weak.

“Let’s just get you all delivered to Rom. And then we’re free of each other. How about that?” Starting the engine, we pull offand I wince when the MapApp tells me the route will be more like five hours with the Friday night traffic.

Taking a deep breath, I’m glad I doubled my dose of suppressants this afternoon since I’ll be trapped in an enclosed space with Zale for longer than planned. Who cares if it makes me feel a little nauseous and numb? At least I was protecting my peace, keeping my secret hidden.

“Whatever you say.” Leaning back in his seat, he gets comfortable which isn’t an easy feat given how large and broad he is. A hint of something smokey lingers in the air and for a moment, my brain scrambles to think what it reminds me of as my heart beat picks up. But the scent is fleeting, fading before I can place it.

I can’t help my dry chuckle, “Careful, you almost sound a little submissive there.”

What would he look like on his knees for me? People made the assumption that because an omega naturally submits to an alpha during their heat, that they always needed to be in that role. People were idiots. If you asked me, some of the hottest porn I’d watched always involved an omega taking their pleasure from a beautifully compliant alpha. No one dynamic was right or wrong, no matter what society still believed.

“Agreeing with you doesn’t mean I’m submitting. I just want the next four hours to go as painlessly as possible.” With his arms crossed, body tilted so that he's partially facing me, he allows his eyes to flutter closed. Like this, he looks almost soft and approachable rather than being weighed down by his lofty titles as the Blackwood heir and one of Oakley U’s top jocks. ‘Practice’ must have been tiring if he’s comfortable enough to sleep in a car with a stranger.

“And when the designated driver is a prickly hedgehog, well, I don’t want to be stabbed.” He lets out a little huff as he wriggles again before settling down.

A hedgehog?

I know people saw me as abrupt and rude, but a hedgehog?

I pretend to mull it over for a moment or two as we drive out of Oakley leaving the university in the rear-view mirror. “I won’t stab you. Think about the mess you’d make in my beautiful car.”

Zale hums, the noise making my chest tight, eyes still closed. “It is a sweet ride, and not at all what I imagined you driving.”

As we turn onto the highway, I’m frowning—not that he can even see it. Does that mean he’d been thinking about me or was I reading too much into his words? “What did you think I’d drive?”

I’m waiting for some smart-ass answer. Maybe for him to make fun of me or compare my choice of car to my sisters, but instead he makes a small noise, as if he’s trying to consider his response.

“I dunno.” He gives a small half shrug, “But you always have this ‘fuck the status quo’ thing going on, and this is very standard rich person car.”

“I like comfort.” It’s my turn to shrug as I try to focus on the road. I’ve never really been a fan of driving in the dark, but traffic would be even worse if I left it until tomorrow to leave. The car had been an eighteenth birthday gift from my parents, and my father had been the one to choose it with me. I think he thought it would be a good first family car too, with the spacious back seat and large trunk.

Not that I’d be having a family anytime soon, especially not if I kept taking the suppressants. I’d had another call from Zion, asking me to try weaning myself off them, worried about the long-term effects on my fertility but hiding my nature is more important right now than the option of having a baby. ‘What ifs’ and ‘one day’s’ were problems for future me.

“Is that why you’ve been wearing all those turtle necks lately?”

“I…yeah.” I glance over at him, and see that he has one eye cracked open to watch me. I can feel my cheeks heat as I think about my supposedly fading bite mark. I don’t know what changed, but it seemed to be working in reverse, getting darker where it was once getting paler. When we were back from the cabin, I was making an appointment to see Zion again and I’d have to explain the whole mess to him.

Zale’s eyes are still on me, making me squirm. Was my heart racing again? Had I taken too many pills ready for this journey? Had I accidentally overdosed myself?

“Weird that you noticed.”

He’s got both eyes open now, watching me with a small frown. The line between his brow is furrowed in a way that makes me want to reach across and smooth it out with my thumb. “You know, you look at me like I’m stupid, and I’m not. I have eyes in my head, and I notice things around me.”

I knew he wasn’t stupid. The work he’d been sending across for the project wasn’t written by an idiot and it wasn’t an internet cut and paste job either. He’d spent time going over it carefully.

Still, his words make me raise a brow, because from where I’m sitting, this is a pretty shit way to spend a Friday evening – with the brother of the girl you’re banging when you could be out drinking, partying and snorting things you shouldn’t. “Then why are you stuck in a car with me for the next couple of hours, rather than with Romilly and the others on a beach in Crest Haven?”

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