Page 82 of Knot Just A Fan

In fact, nausea rolls across my gut at the thought of food. I pull at my top, a high-necked, skin-tight sleeveless shirt. I’m wearing loose trousers and wedge heels, but the shirt feels like it’s strangling me. I need to sit down. No. I need toliedown.

Panic swells in my chest, but I focus on my breath as I hustle back to the loading area. There was no one there as most crew are in the main auditorium or on either side stage. The opening band, a trio of women, are in their own dressing rooms which I think are down by catering. And I’m not going to bother them. Besides, I don’t speak very good French. I can ask for the toilet and order a drink, that’s about it.

Besides, I don’t feel like I should even be standing. I feel like my body’s trying to choke me from the inside. Unlike anything I’ve felt so far. And I’m worried.

I dart around the loading area. It’s not exactly private. The side stage is a few steps away, and the hallway to the dressing rooms and stairs is just at the back. But fuck it, I need to lie down.

Frantically I race around the room, arranging everything into a more sheltered little cove in the back. Tall crates block out the view of the stage. Guitar cases, random cushions, a few coats, and a box of merch that’s been missed. I tear this open and grab handfuls of t-shirts and plump them up into a circle around me with the gear cases and other bits and bobs.

Before I know it, I’ve made a nest.

This isn’t heat. Is it? I reach my fingers down to my crotch. There is a dampness spreading there. So there is slick. And as I think about it, I feel my crease swelling up. Shit. I’m in heat,again. A proper one this time it feels like. The kind I had in my flat when I nearly wrecked my own room trying to bring myself to as many orgasms as my body could handle. A feral animal, thinking only of one thing.

Fuck.

I pull at the neck of my shirt, and with my breathing growing more and more shallow, I have no choice. I pull it over my head, but my underwire bra is still restricting me. I rip this off, sweating and panting.

I look around, arms around my chest, then grab one of the tour shirts. They all seem to be XXL, with the band’s name emblazoned on the front and the tour dates on the back. I start to throw it over my head when I hear footsteps, and then a voice.

“Briella? What the fuck?”

Ronan comes around the side of the crates, staring at my sweat-covered breasts, erect nipples, and dampness obviouslyspreading from the crotch of my jeans outward. I’m curled into a fetal position but it’s all on display. And my face scrunches up.

The pain is back. But the need to fuck is here with a vengeance I can’t ignore.

“Gray. Can you get Gray? Or Enzo? Please,” I whimper.

“You’re in heat. Shit. Are you—I mean. They’re in the middle of—I can ask. But you know Alejandro, he won’t?—”

“Don’t care.Get them,” I growl. “I need this take care of immediately or I’m going to be fucking a cushion and howling back here during the opening act.”

The pain reaches in tighter around my rib cage now, but the slick is what’s stealing my focus. Dizziness sets in, and I squeeze my arms around my chest, abandoning the t-shirt.

Ronan throws a glance over his shoulder at the stage, but while Enzo’s bashing away at the drums, I can hear Grayson’s voice over top, yelling. He doesn’t often yell. But then I hear Alejandro back. And then the song starts up again, Gray’s guitar diving into the opening number once more, this time the monitors cranked as an air-splitting feedback fills the venue.

Technical difficulties. I don’t have time for this.

I look down and realize I’ve raised my hands to my ears and Ronan’s staring at my chest. I glance down out of instinct to see a raging hard-on in his dark wash jeans. He doesn’t acknowledge this. He just stares at me.

And then we both hear it—a female voice. The music stops again and Grayson and Enzo are both now raising their voices in argument.

Ronan runs toward the stage, then runs back, kneeling beside me. “It’s Willow. She’s got a couple of dudes with her. Look. You’re in heat. Let me protect you and we’ll get this over with. But not here.”

He leans in and his tightly-knotted hair on the top of his head brushes my forehead for a second as he leans down to scoopme up. He pauses, grabs a shirt, and covers my chest with it, then jogs down the hallway to the far dressing room, unlocks it, hurries in, and closes the door behind him with a foot.

There’s a huge sofa in the back corner and one of those chaise lounge things. Cami wanted one for the flat and said it would be the perfect “sex chair,” but it was out of our price range. I sputter out a dazed laugh at this memory but then heave forward as my thighs and all the muscles inside my lower half contract hard like they’re screaming for something they don’t have.

Yet.

“Ronan, I?—”

He shakes his head, mouth firm. His eyes are wide and he looks almost scared. “You’re so wet, and I mean sweat, everywhere.” He places me on the sofa and unzips my jeans, pulling them off, but doesn’t say anything else. His nostrils flare as the scent of my slick hits the air, my soaked skin exposed.

Ronan leans back on his heels beside the sofa. A clinical expression floods his somber face, like a doctor assessing a patient. Not an Alpha serving his Omega in heat. But he’s never said I’m his, or he’s mine.

But he’s sensitive and empathic enough to see that this heat is not a normal, everyday heat. I don’t know what it is, but it’s ripping through me like a void that must be filled, or I’ll break apart into a thousand pieces.

“Please, don’t—if it’s not what you want, I can’t have that on my—on my?—”

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