Page 138 of Knot All is Crystal
Atlas was supposed to stick around for cleanup, but he’s not here either.
I don’t have time to think about it much as I rifle through a locked cabinet behind the reception desk and pull out a few doses of fizz.
Gage has led Crystal into the girlfriend experience room and gotten her into the shower. As the water runs, I look at the other two Alphas. “I’m going to bite her,” I say slowly. “And before you interrupt me, it has to be me. She needs you both so much. She loves you, and she trusts you. She needs someone she trusts to get her through this heat. We don’t know what it’ll look like, so we don’t need her avoiding you because she hates you.”
“She doesn’t hate you, Puck,” Manny insists. “Her feelings are complicated, sure, but she wants you around.”
“Be that as it may, I am the safest bet to do this. Let me be the one she hates for this.”
Of course, I don’t want her to hate me.
She’s my Omega.
I love her.
I loved her before I knew she was my Omega.
I love her sense of humor and the way she never broke. The way she challenged me at every turn.
The water turns off, and Gage pushes a docile but empty Crystal into the room. She’s wrapped in a fluffy white towel, her hair still dripping on her bare shoulders. I pass the packet of fizz to Maverick, who drops a pill in a bottle of water he snagged from the cabinet. As Gage holds it to her mouth, Crystal takes tiny swallows until the bottle is drained.
It doesn’t take long for fizz to start working, and with Queenie having so many heat spikes lately, it hits her hard. She doubles over, arms wrapped around her abdomen, and whines loudly. Her pheromones fill the air, and buttery shortcake invades my senses.
“Come here, Omega.” It’s a brutal effort to get the words out.
Because chances are, this will be the last time I get to be with her.
She won’t want to keep me around after this.
Which serves me right, honestly.
Crystal stumbles over to me, and I pull her onto my lap, where she immediately starts gyrating, moaning, and begging incoherently. I brush her hair away from her neck, shifting her slightly to see the bite Kieran left on her.
I wrap my arms around her body, pulling her close, luxuriating in the feel of her on me and at the contrast in our skin tones. I run my nose down the edge of her throat, nuzzling into her and soaking up her scent.
And then I tilt her head forward, angling my mouth directly over the blighted blond Kieran gave her. “I love you, Queenie,” I say as tears run down my face. “Please forgive me.”
I sink my teeth into her flesh.
FIFTY-TWO
I amway out of my depth here.
One minute, I was in the blood-soaked penthouse office of a nightclub that happens to be a front for a major criminal organization, and now I find myself in a hidden brothel below the same nightclub.
How did I end up here?
I am an introvert. A loser, for all intents and purposes. I don’t have friends, my job is entirely online and solitary, and I barely leave my home unless it’s to go to the doctor. I get everything delivered.
I am the last person anyone would expect to get tangled up in a drug and trafficking organization.
So, how is this my life? How did I end up here?
My eyes drift to the wailing Omega in the massive enforcer’s arms, and my questions are answered.
Crystal is how.
This is not the life I saw for myself. Could I have ever imagined that I’d go from looking at the corpse of a monster of a man that my Omega tore to pieces to preparing to guide her through a forced heat? Certainly not.
