Page 59 of Knot Just A Fan

I know it’s your dream—not taking pictures of our ugly arses forever. And you should have it.

It is, I admitted shyly, digging a bare toe in the cold sand, unable to meet his eyes.But I’ve been grateful for this job, especially getting to shoot my favorite band in the world. Music is an equally important part of my life. Music and nature. They go together, don’t they?

Grayson had nodded, smiling. He placed a hand in the sand between us, spreading his fingers wide. I stared at them a minute, trying to comprehend this action, why he was staring at it. So I took a risk. I leaned over and covered his warm hand with mine, my fingertips barely reaching his top knuckles. His skin was like an uncovered treasure lending me its strength.

Finally I’d looked up into his eyes and they were watching me, those half-closed, smiling, wondrous eyes. No glasses on. I wanted to lean over and kiss him. Or maybe just ask,Why not us?But Enzo’s and Ronan’s voices floated along the beach toward us so we pulled away, but not without him saying,You can do so much better than us, Briella Phillips. And you will.

I’d smiled, but shook my head.No, I don’t think I can.

Now I’m pinning him to the DJ booth floor with my knees and my gaze. “Say it,” I purr softly. “Tell me when.”

“Exeter. The beach. That night.”

My heart floods with that delicious kind of ache when you know something so good but also so wrong—timing, so wrong. So long ago. So much time we could’ve been together but weren’t, because neither of us scented the match, neither of usseemed in the right position to say it out loud, and just assumed we were two ships passing. Wrong timeline, wrong realm. But we’d both seen it at that moment.

And what matters now, I think, is that we both admit it.

“I loved you then,” I say.

“I loved you, too,” Grayson says, eyes somber. “Briella, I want to make your heat the best time you’ve ever had. Again, and again, and again.”

A small moan slips past my lips. It says everything. It’s the feeling of waiting so long, and still wanting the same thing, and finally—blissfully—watching it land in your open palm.

I want to close my fingers around this dream. Around him. Around the heat that’s growing between us.

Around his cock trying to break free.

“Say it again,” I whisper, as I lower my body toward his chest. My fingers clumsily unbutton his shirt.

“I am so sorry. Sorry for making you wait. Sorry for leaving you to never know. Sorry for fucking up the gift that you are.”

His eyes draw me in with their sincerity. But my body can’t hold back any longer.

I peel his shirt off and throw it over his head. And without further warning, I’m scrabbling at his trousers, getting them unbuttoned and unzipped, leaving only boxers.

I lean my naked chest against his, my breasts pressing into him, and I place my mouth at his ear, flicking it with my tongue.

“Forgiven. Now get inside me, Alpha.”

Without any further invitation, his mouth leaps up for mine, his tongue pushing inside, tasting me tasting him. Between kisses and his fingers playing with my nipples, twisting them, pulling them, rubbing his palms in circles around them, he manages, “Only good thing to waiting this long is I’m ready to unload a lifetime of needing Briella.”

“Good,” I say as his hands grasp my ass through my skirt. He pulls the raging fire of my core toward his rock-hard shaft. “Inside me. Sooner, better.” At this point, that’s all I can get out.

He sits up and lifts me off him, then lays me carefully down onto his clothes. My hair fans out around me. He plants his hands on either side of my head as he lowers himself. I take in the dazzling mural of tattoos up and down the length of him, from his collar bone, shoulder, arm, and wrist, down his side to his hip, and all the way down his leg. Just the right side, a variety of designs all pieced together like a jigsaw. I want to ask about each one, a tour of his body and what matters to him enough to sew into his skin. But this will wait.

He slips his fingers under my skirt waistband, takes my top lip between his and sucks on it gently at first, then harder. I moan, as he whispers, “You’re sure?”

I nod but he clearly wants to hearmesaythis.He releases my mouth and pulls back a little, eyes darting between mine.

“Yes, Alpha. I want you inside me. Fuck me before I explode.” All the bodies just below us and along the beach, dancing, gyrating, drinking, cavorting, and here we are, floating above them like sex gods, finally feeling his body against mine. The thought alone could get me off.

But luckily, I have Grayson Cove for that.

He slides two fingers achingly slow up my inner thigh, swirling paintings of slick along my hot skin.

“Do it, please, Jesus, just do it,” I moan.

The music switches to a more downtempo track that slowly builds. Grayson smiles down at me, one hand cupping and squeezing my breast, the other’s index and middle finger slipping between my folds and exploring me at last.

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