Page 24 of Lucky or Knot
My cock ached with the need to force him open, take him, knot him. But slowly, reluctantly, I pushed up and off of him, bracing myself on my hands to either side of his shoulders, giving him room to breathe.
That was something I needed as much as he did, and I sucked in air, trying to get my heartbeat to slow, grounding myself in mundane sensation: my knees digging into the too-soft mattress, the faint shush of the fan high up in the wall, the cool air on my sweaty skin.
“Explain it to me,” I said, as gently as I could manage with my laboring lungs and around my dropped fangs. Smilodons weren’t known for their reassuring affects for a reason. “Why shouldn’t I?”
His lips pressed together in as flat a line as a mouth that plush could manage. “It doesn’t matter. Simply respect my—”
“Absolutely fucking not.” If I didn’t stay firm, those big, glossy eyes gazing pleadingly up at me would have me caving in seconds. Usually I didn’t lean on my alpha magic to get my way. But this time I didn’t feel bad about it. “No,” I said, and my voice resonated with command. “Answer the questionnow.”
I’d expected him to react. Possibly with instant obedience, although I hadn’t been counting on it, and morelikely with annoyance or a few words reluctantly dragged out of him.
Instead, his whole body jerked as he gasped and flinched away from me, his eyelids fluttering, his hands flying off my shoulders to come up in—yeah.
A defensive position, like someone would take when trying to deflect a blow to the face.
If someone had offered to bet me a million dollars at a hundred to one that my desperate lust and offended fury could vanish like magic within the space of a single heartbeat, I’d have taken that bet.
…And I’d have lost.
I stared down at him, both of us frozen in place.
He had an alpha—no, I couldn’t think of Cunningham as his lover. Nothing that neutral or benign. Abuser probably fit a whole lot better. And I’d dominated him. Threatened him. Used my alpha magic to try to command and control him. Probably the exact same way Cunningham did before he…
My gut churned and bile stabbed at my esophagus, and I rolled to the side, coming to sit on the edge of the bed next to his dangling legs, scrubbing my hands over my face and breathing through the nausea.
Suspecting that Cunningham might be the kind of man to mistreat someone in his power had been one thing.
Seeing the absolute confirmation of it was something else.
“Jesus motherfucking fuck,” I choked out, as my determination to have my revenge and make him pay came crashing down around me and crushed me under the rubble, “fucking Christ.”
Had I ever felt this guilty? No, and that included living with the knowledge that a Vegas loan shark might force my parents to lose their home.
A soft rustle to my left suggested the fairy had moved, and then the bed dipped slightly as he sat up, the motion a flicker in my peripheral vision. I didn’t turn my head. Meeting his eyes would be more than I could stand; I’d have to see my own behavior reflected in their panicked brightness.
His silence had a breathless, wary weight to it.
As if he were afraid that the wrong word would bring on a burst of violence, maybe.
My working assumption, based on my preexisting experience with and opinions of the fae (generally justified, to be fair), had been that this particular fairy had been wreaking mischief and mayhem on me simply for his own amusement, or possibly for some malicious reason no human-adjacent species could comprehend.
Now…
Well, now it simply didn’t matter. There were a few things about him I’d been missing. And those far, far outweighed any damage done to me, even if he had been messing with me for fun.
“I’m not going to call him,” I said at last, and dropped my hands to my knees. Looking at him still felt impossible, but I could at least give him a view of my expression. He might trust me more if he could gauge my sincerity. “You have my word. It doesn’t bind me the way a promise does you, but I’ll keep it. You can get up right now and walk out of here, or do anything you want, and I swear to you, that fucking son of a bitch is never going to hear about any of this from me.”
Although I might go and kill the aforementioned fucking son of a bitch, obviously without breaking my promise and telling him why, as soon as the fairy had walked out the door—but that didn’t seem like something he needed to hear.
His minute twitch was more than enough to tell me how much I’d surprised him. I half expected that he’d simply getup and leave as I’d offered, but except for that involuntary reaction, he didn’t move a muscle. My consciousness of his body next to mine had changed, from pure desire to something more awkward and strained, but it hadn’t diminished. All the cells in my body seemed to have oriented themselves in his direction, iron filings chasing a magnet.
His breath came too fast and too shallow, but he still didn’t move.
“How did I—how did you—you didn’t seem to, to know anything. When I arrived.” He paused to suck in an audible breath, blowing it out slowly. “What do you think you know?”
Translation: How had he given himself away?
At last, I gave into temptation and twisted around, shifting my weight and looking him right in the eyes. Those eyes, gods.
