Page 26 of Lucky or Knot
“Because you don’t seem to know a lot about how we work. Once we get the idea that something belongs to us? We never let it go. Not ever. So you offered to pay me, and—what’s wrong?”
All the color had drained out of his face, leaving him a horrible chalky color, like a lime-flavored antacid tablet, but his eyes blazed, with an actual flicker in their depths, I was pretty sure, a glint of pale purple in his black irises.
“Do you think I don’t know that?” he choked out. He went on, his voice rising with anger. “I know he’s never going to let me go! Iknowthat, and that’s why I was trying to—and now you’re telling me I’m also stuck withyou? You fucked me once! One time! Surely you weren’t a virgin, you can’t possibly stalk everyone you’ve ever fucked!”
He broke off in a howl of pure rage, panting, fists clenched on his thighs, leaning in to yell in my face in a way that had my blood pumping and my body straining toward his again. Tigers didn’t mate gently, and everything about him screamedmate who wants to snarl at me and fight me while I own him.
It took me a moment to force that instinct down and control my burgeoning partial shift, and my voice still came out low and raspy, harsher than I intended.
“I was referring to the coin or its value in actual money, not you,” I said, and he jerked back slightly, lip curling, as if I’d upset him or something? What the hell, he was pissed at me for refusing to leave him alone a second ago! Anyway, that wasn’tthe main point here. “And you were trying to what, exactly?”
“Get free of him, obviously. What else?” he snapped without hesitation. I filed it away for later, if I needed the information: he stopped choosing his words so carefully when he got angry. “I might as well—damn it. He gave me the coin. Paid me with it, for a night with him. Or I thought it was for only one night. It’s beautiful and it’s magical, and yes, I was a fool, but I coveted it in a way that—you wouldn’t understand. It’s in my nature. He wanted to knot me, and he told me that the coin would be mine and I would be his, and I accepted. And now as long as I have the coin, my magic won’t work against him and I can’t leave him. I hoped if I paid another alpha to knot me, the symmetry of the two bargains, being paid to be knotted and then paying to be knotted by someone else, would satisfy the coin. But apparently not, because it won’t leave me, and when I paid you with it, it was on my dresser when I got back. There. Are you happy now? Will you go away,” his voice broke slightly, “and leave me alone?”
“No,” I replied without hesitation, even though I hadn’t thought it through. Two seconds of thinking it through allowed me to add, with a high degree of confidence, “And you don’t want me to.”
Through his own fae lust for magical gold, he’d managed to trap himself, and now he couldn’t escape. Not the most sympathy-inspiring story compared to all the people out there who were in trouble through no fault of their own, although maybe I should cut him some slack, given my own saga of fake tits and loan sharks. And while the fairy’s captor might not be a match for me one-on-one, he had all the money and resources and security to make sure it never came to that.
Yeah, I should walk away.
But this beautiful, lying, desperate man in front of me needed…someone, anyone. If he’d had any other options, hesurely wouldn’t have been looking for a way out in Lucky or Knot.
He only had me.
Walk away? Not a chance.
Besides, he still hadn’t paid me. Until he did, I didn’t have much choice but to stick around, right?
“I do want you to go,” he protested unconvincingly.
The way his head tilted back to offer me his lips and his soft throat, the slight spread to his legs, his hand sliding onto my thigh—and I’d have been willing to bet he didn’t even realize he’d touched me, even though sparking heat radiated out from that one, delicate point of contact, sweat prickling behind my knees and along my spine. All of it suggested that he very much didn’t want me to go anywhere.
“I should never have brought you into this mess. Besides,” he added much more sincerely, “it didn’t work.”
Laughing despite myself, I leaned closer too, unable to resist his pull any longer. My body ran much hotter than his, but I could still feel his presence, a tingling awareness. It grew stronger as I edged nearer, the bed dipping and creaking as my weight shifted toward him.
“I have two more questions,” I said. His warm breath brushed softly over my chin, and every moment of it killed more of my brain cells. “Your name. Even a fake one. I mean, another fake one. Something better than Ty fucking Tania.” His sly little laugh shut down my remaining higher cognitive functions, hopefully not permanently, and it took effort to add, “And I need to know why you were crying when I fucked you last time.”
Context was everything, and now that I knew more about him…well, in the moment, I’d been able to dismiss his reaction as one of those weird things that happened sometimes, but I couldn’t anymore. My cock had risen insistently against my fly again, trapped there and painfully hard, but I could wrenchmyself away and keep my hands to myself, if I had to. So I needed to know.
“You have an active imagination.” I rolled my eyes at that ridiculous dodge, and his lips quirked up. “But if I had been crying…” His voice dropped to a sultry, low timbre that sent a shiver along all my nerve endings. “If I had been, it’d have been because I’d been so afraid, and you—didn’t give me any reason to be.”
Oh, thank all the gods.
Slowly enough that he could push me away or dodge if I’d misunderstood him, I bent down the last few inches and tilted my head, at last getting my mouth on his skin. A brush along the line of his jaw, an inhale of his sweetness and the pheromones of his desire, my arm snaking around his waist, every inch of me trembling with anticipation…
“You can call me Raven,” he whispered.
“Tony,” I said against his throat, and pushed him down onto the bed, biting at the side of his neck where his high collar left a sliver exposed.
The feel of his slim body under mine hit me like a freight train, every muscle going rigid, every nerve on fire, my cock straining.
“He checks my clothes for damage to make sure I’m not wasting his money,” Raven gasped. “Careful.”
Cunningham checked his…my vision washed crimson and my claws popped, too close to ripping his clothes to shreds after all.
“Then you need to get them off,” I growled.
Mine. Not Cunningham’s.Mine, to fuck and knot and protect, and shit, I hadn’t meant to say any of that out loud.
