Page 83 of Hot Knot Summer
“About time you showed up,” a male says behind me.
I spin around, startled by the voice. Chad stands in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest, watching the growing blaze with detached interest. He looks exactly as I remember—expensive clothes, carefully styled hair, and a smile that reminds me of a shark.
“Chad? What are you doing here?” My mind spins in confusion. “Why is there a fire? We need to get out!”
“This was supposed to be our vacation,” he says, ignoring my panic. “Remember? The cabin I booked for usbefore you decided to go slumming with your firefighter toys.”
The fire grows as he speaks, spreading across the ceiling now, crackling and popping as it consumes the wooden beams. The heat intensifies, sweat beading on my skin, but Chad seems unbothered.
“We need to leave,” I insist, reaching for his arm and coughing. “Now!”
He shakes off my grip, his face twisting into something unfamiliar, something that makes my blood run cold. The carefully maintained charm falls away like a cheap mask, revealing what’s always been lurking beneath—cold calculation and rage.
“You went behind my back with three fucking Alphas?” he snarls, advancing on me as the flames rise higher, circling us like hungry predators. “I always knew you were trash.”
“Chad, please,” I back away, but there’s nowhere to go. The fire has surrounded us, closing in with unnatural speed. “I didn’t?—”
“Always knew you were worthless,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “Just another desperate Omega pretending to be special. You’re nothing without me.”
His hands shoot out, grabbing my shoulders with bruising force. His pale blue eyes, always cold even when he smiled, now gleam with malice that chills me despite the inferno around us.
“You belong in the fire,” he hisses, shoving me backward. I stumble, falling into the wall of flames behind me. The fire catches on my clothes, my hair, my skin, and Iscream?—
Ijolt awake with a gasp, my heart pounding against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. The sheets are tangled around my legs. For a disorienting moment, I can still feel the fire licking at my skin, can still see Chad’s icy stare, watching me burn.
“Just a dream,” I whisper into the darkness of my room. “Just a stupid dream.”
But my body doesn’t seem to have gotten the message. I’m burning up, skin flushed and covered in sweat. Between my thighs, I’m embarrassingly wet and throbbing with an insistent need that makes no sense, given the nightmare I just escaped.
I kick off the sheets, trying to cool down. The air on my overheated skin brings temporary relief, but the ache deep inside only intensifies. Something’s wrong. I’ve never felt like this before, as though I’m being consumed from the inside out.
A terrible suspicion forms in my mind. No. It can’t be. My heat isn’t due for weeks, and it’s never hit this suddenly before. There are always warning signs, gradual buildup, not this freight train of sensation.
I press a hand between my legs, shocked at the slickness I find there. My fingers come away glistening in the faint moonlight filtering through my window.
“Shit,” I mutter, panic rising. “Shit, shit, shit.”
This can’t be happening. Not now, not here, notwhen I’m living with three Alphas who already make my pulse race.
I need a cold shower. Now. The deep, sharp pain of heat hasn’t set in yet, so maybe this is just my body responding to the Alphas being so close to me.
Stumbling out of bed, I grab fresh pajamas from my dresser, the shortest shorts and thinnest tank top the guys bought me, but anything heavier feels like it would suffocate me right now. The room tilts alarmingly as I move, my balance off-kilter, my limbs heavy and uncooperative.
I make it to the door through sheer determination, easing it open as quietly as possible. The last thing I need is to wake one of them in this state. The hallway stretches before me, the bathroom door seeming impossibly far away. Gripping the wall for support, I make my way down the corridor on unsteady legs.
Left foot. Right foot. Don’t fall. Don’t make noise. Don’t think about how good the cool wall feels against your overheated palm.
I reach the bathroom without incident. The face that greets me in the mirror is almost unrecognizable—cheeks flushed, pupils wide, and lips parted and swollen as if I’ve been kissed senseless. I look drugged or feverish or both.
Turning the shower to its coldest setting, I strip off my sweat-soaked pajamas and step under the icy spray. The shock tears a gasp from my throat, but the relief is immediate and profound. The fire under my skin recedes, the fog in my brain clearing slightly.
I stand there until I’m shivering, letting the cold water wash away the slick between my thighs, the sweat from my skin, and the lingering tendrils of the nightmare. When I finally shut off the water, I feel almost normal again. Still warm, still on edge, but no longer desperate.
As I towel off, I catch myself thinking about the three Alphas sleeping just down the hall. Each is so different, yet all stir something in me I’ve tried desperately to ignore.
I can’t keep doing this, can’t keep letting my guard down around them. The balcony with Atlas, the tunnel of love with Levi, the way I find excuses to touch River whenever we’re in the same room... it’s like I’ve lost all self-preservation instinct.
“Get it together, Emma,” I mutter to my reflection as I pull on clean pajamas. “They’re being kind, that’s all. Don’t make it weird. Don’t get attached. And for God’s sake, stop imagining them naked.”
