Page 101 of Knot Your Business

Forty-Seven

VIOLET

You can do this, Violet.

I chant it to myself as I brush out my hair until the words seep into my bones. Whatever the Council makes me do, I can do it. I survived the awful heat in March. I survived the fallout. I survived my mother not just at the event but the last five years of being officially designated as Omega.

I’m strong enough to walk into that room and face Jasper for the last time.

I push away from the counter before I can actually lose my nerve.

And then stop dead in the threshold of the bathroom.

Dominic is still sitting on the far side of the bed, though the sheet’s been replaced with a set of gray sweats. His eyes are closed, his head tilted back against the headboard, his hands resting on his stomach.

“Come sit, Sirena.” His voice is a warm caress that has my body singing.

The need to be close still claws at me. That’s the only reason I perch on the bed with a few scant feet between us. At least, that’s what I tell myself.

The silence extends to the point of discomfort. I reach for something to say that will force this conversation to start so I can cry without him here. My mind catches on the nickname.

“What’s that mean? What you called me?”

It’s probably nothing good. Though how much worse could it be than your own mom calling you a whore? Her cutting voice in the bathroom twists in my gut, and I have to breathe through my nose to keep from crying again.

Dominic circles my wrist and urges me toward him.

For some bizarre reason I refuse to examine right now, I don’t fight him. Instead, I let him urge me back across the bed until we’re nearly touching. His brown eyes are dark and full of some emotion I can’t manage to name, something I’ve only ever seen when he’s looked at Jasper. Nerves claw up my throat, but I bite them back, forcing a swallow even as my mouth dries out entirely. I try to construct those walls that have kept me mostly insulated from my mother’s jabs and barbs since that first time she laid into me about the nose piercing. I try, and I fail.

Maybe it’s the fact I’m still in my nest, not even a few hours surfaced from a forced heat. Maybe it’s the reality that despite me swearing I wouldn’t let myself be vulnerable with this man, most of me wants to throw myself at him until he realizes I’ll be whatever he needs, turn myself into whatever has him looking shell shocked when he doesn’t think people are watching.

Yeah, like he’d want anything from me aside from my signature on that form so that he doesn’t have to give up Jasper. And I’ve already given him that.

“It means siren,” he says.

It takes me a minute to break out of my thoughts and catch up to what he’s saying.

“That… doesn’t feel like a compliment,” I whisper.

The corner of his lip twitches, like he’s trying not to smirk. “A beautiful woman luring in a man with her beautiful voice? Perhaps we have different definitions for compliments.”

I purse my lips. “Sirens drown the men they lure. It’s why they do it.”

“Che cavolo.” His voice scrapes over me.

My gaze drops to his lips before I can help myself. Even after the heat, honeysuckle blooms from me, though not nearly as strong. He hums, his eyebrow rising in unspoken question, but I shake my head.

“I don’t understand women,” he mutters after a long silence. “I call you beautiful, and you take it as an insult. I use gentle touches, and you grow more skittish instead of less. Do I need to tie you to the bed so that you will actually listen to me?”

Heat flashes down my neck and onto my chest.

He laughs and shakes his head. “I am not even surprised you like the idea of being tied down.”

The door clicks closed, and my heart races. The soft humor drains away from him as he sighs.

“Cavolo, I don’t know how to do this.”

I try to pull away from him. I don’t want to hear this from him. Not ever, and especially not now, when I am still sore from where he’s knotted me multiple times over the last several days.

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