Page 100 of Knot for Sale

I think it terrified Gabriel, too—and for pretty much the same reason. His identity, like mine, had been tied up in a single thing for a very long time. I was the perfect, aloof fashion model who only used sex as a tool, never letting anyone near my heart. He was a bereaved older brother on a crusade for justice for his baby sister, too single-minded to even think about letting other people in.

Now I wasn’t a model anymore, and these four idiots had pierced all my armor to get at the soft parts that lay underneath. Meanwhile, the march of justice for Theresa Rosencranz had moved on, leaving Gabriel behind, and suddenly he’d been forced to crawl out of his hole so he could deal with messy things like emotions and commitment.

I swallowed hard and knocked on the doorframe, peeking inside. “Elijah?”

My erstwhile roommate had somehow lost all his clothes in the brief amount of time I’d been gone. He was now sprawled in the center of the nest with a raging hard-on and beads of sweat glistening on his skin.

“Oh, thank god,” he moaned. “Someone please come in here and fuck me.”

“God, I love heats,” Onyx declared, brushing past me and shedding clothing with astonishing efficiency.

“Three cheers for an omega who knows what he wants,” Curran muttered, following close on his packmate’s heels.

I stood frozen in the doorway, staring wide-eyed as Onyx practically dove into the mountains of cushions littering the center of the nest, tugging Elijah’s legs apart and swallowing his cock to the root.

“Ohfuckjesusyes!” Elijah blurted, hips jerking against Onyx’s restraining hold.

A pulse of slick dribbled down my inner thighs, and I was abruptly and overwhelmingly aware of the blond alpha standing at my shoulder.

Gabriel cleared his throat. “Maybe Curran was onto something earlier,” he said, urging me into the nest with a hand on my lower back.

Prickly heat radiated outward from the contact. I shivered as my nipples helpfully tightened into painful points. Unsticking my feet, I let Gabriel guide me to the far end of the curved sectional sofa, where we wouldn’t be in the way.

I sat down, mostly because my knees had abruptly decided that standing up was for losers. After a slight hesitation, Gabriel sank down next to me—a careful few inches separating us.

“Can you believe, I honestly thought this would feel less intimidating the second time around?” he murmured.

Curran, who apparently lacked Onyx’s facility for walking and undressing at the same time, had taken the easy road of simply opening his fly while remaining otherwise clothed. He knelt by Elijah’s head, and two seconds later Elijah was up on one elbow, craning around to get his mouth on Curran’s cock without dislodging Onyx fromhiscock.

My pussy throbbed urgently, and I tugged the collar of my T-shirt away from my neck to try and get some air against my overheated skin.

“Neither of us is really built for this, are we?” I managed.

Gabriel gave a choked breath of laughter and waved a hand sheepishly toward the pronounced tent in his trousers. “Well...”

My mouth watered. More slick pulsed from my core, soaking my leggings.

“I meant emotionally.” My voice was a low rasp.Fuck.I hadn’t meant for the words to sound sultry.

“Probably.” Gabriel turned to look at me. His pupils had dilated, nearly swallowing the ring of summer blue. His nostrils flared. A furrow formed between his golden eyebrows. “Emma... are you...?”

Curran looked up sharply. A moment later, Elijah pulled off of his cock with an obscene slurping noise. His dazed green gaze focused on me with difficulty.

“Emma.Pet,” Curran said, in his deep, reassuring rumble of a voice. “Elijah’s pulling you into heat with him. You’re safe, love. We’re going to take care of you—”

He probably said some other wonderful and reassuring things after that. I didn’t hear what they were, because the tendon running down the side of Gabriel’s neck was suddenly the most mouth-watering thing on the entire planet. He smelled like a thunderstorm after a long drought, and it was the most natural thing in the world to crawl into his lap and fasten my teeth over it.

A growl vibrated beneath my lips, and before I knew what had happened, I was lying on my back on the comfortable couch, caged by arms and legs and surrounded by the scent of lust.

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