Page 44 of Knot Going Down
She rolls over again with a frustrated sigh, yanking the sheet higher like she’s trying to cocoon herself.
“If you roll over one more time, I’m sedating you,” I whisper into the dark.
Emily freezes. “Sorry. Did I wake you?”
I turn onto my side to face her. There’s enough light coming from the bathroom to let me see the frustrated expression on her face. Her short hair is a tangled mess against the pillow, cheeks warm and flushed.
“You didn’t wake me,” I murmur. “You just made me regret not bringing melatonin.”
Emily groans, flipping onto her back. “I can’t sleep.”
“Shocking revelation.”
She snorts. “I’m serious.”
“So am I. I’d like to sleep before the sun comes up. Don’t want to miss the conga line.”
That earns a quiet laugh. She pulls the blanket tighter. “It’s nothing. I shouldn’t be this wound up.”
After a beat, I gently prod, “But you are.”
Emily sighs. “Yeah.”
I prop myself up on one elbow. “Let me guess—Declan?”
She doesn’t answer, but I catch the way her face tightens in the dim light.
“I knew it,” I whisper smugly. “What’d he do? Call you a good girl while handing you a fork? Accidentally steal a peek at your ankle?”
If I wasn’t trying to hide my new designation—and if Declan wasn’t already claimed by Em—I’d have climbed that tree the first day I met him.
“I hate how accurate that is,” Em says.
“You’re flushed, twitchy, and vibrating like a fucking chihuahua. Emily, what happened?”
She hesitates for a long moment. “He has the suppressants,” she says in a voice so soft I almost miss it.
That’s clearly not what has her so aggravated, and it doesn’t slip my notice that she’s avoiding telling me. Or maybe she’s working up to it.
“I couldn’t find out where,” she adds. “But he has them.”
I want to tell her they’re in his wallet, but then I’d have to explain how I found out, and I’m really not ready to tell her about kissing Knox. Plus, if I interrupt her, she might not ever tell me what really has her so agitated. So I keep quiet. There’ll be time for sharing more later.
“So… in order to find out, I kinda had to flirt. Which, you know, I’m not good at, but it sort of worked.” Emily groans and buries her face in the pillow. “And Lucas was there, which should have made me feel embarrassed with how much Declan was touching me all possessive like, but instead it made me feel all… hot.”
She turns her face away, and I hope she’s blushing. She’s so cute when she blushes.
“And then when we got back to the room, he pulled me out on the balcony and kissed me before I came upstairs, and he… touched me. And it was getting really good. Butthenhis phone rang, and I came up here feeling like my whole body had short-circuited.”
There’s a beat of silence. I want to know everywhere he touched her.
“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.”
I bite back a grin. “Sounds like someone needs to take matters into her own hands.”
Her head lifts just enough to squint at me. “What does that mean?”
“Ohh emm gee. Emily, have you never…” I let the words trail away and shoot her a suggestive look she probably can’t see in the dark room.
