Page 55 of Down Knot Out
I meet his eyes, seeing the vulnerability beneath the strength. This Alpha who faced down his mother’s rejection rather than abandon his friends, is afraid I’ll reject him after coming this far.
I sit up in the bed. “I need to tell you something.”
The cool morning air prickles my skin, and I pull the sheet with me, tucking it under my arms before grabbing my pillow and hugging it to my chest.
Dominic follows suit, bracing his back on the headboard. The movement causes the sheet to slip down, exposing the sculpted planes of his chest and abdomen. Last night, I had mapped every inchof that skin with my hands and mouth, relearning the texture and taste of him.
A trail of dark hair disappears beneath the bunched sheet at his waist, and my breath hitches at the sight, betraying my thoughts.
“If you keep looking at me like that,” Dominic rumbles, “we’re going to have a repeat of last night.”
Heat rushes to my face, burning along my cheekbones and down my neck. The lilac and lily of my pheromones spike, filling the air between us with unmistakable desire.
Dominic groans, a low, pained sound that vibrates in his chest. His hands fist in the blankets, yanking them higher over his lap, and he raises one knee to tent the bedding, but it fails to hide the evidence of his growing interest.
“Sorry,” I mumble, though I’m not sorry at all.
The bond between us pulses in time with my heartbeat, urging me to cast aside the pillow, to straddle his lap and chase the pleasure we found together in the dark.
“Don’t apologize,” he says, his handsome features showing the strain of holding back. “Just say what you need to say before I forget all about my doctor’s orders.”
Despite everything, laughter bubbles up. “Isthat what you were doing last night? Following the doctor’s orders?”
His smirk sends my pulse racing. “I was lying down and letting you do all the work. That’s as close as I’m going to get to following directions now that I’m allowed to touch you again.” His expression sobers. “But right now, you said you needed to tell me something?”
And just like that, reality crashes back.
I clutch the pillow tighter and steel myself. “I do. And I’m not sure how it will change things between us.”
Concern darkens his features. “Nothing can change my love for you.”
I want to believe that with my whole heart. But the truth I’m about to share has already changed everything for me. It’s rewritten my past and threatens to reshape my future in ways I’m still struggling to comprehend.
“I hope that’s true.” I lean over to grab my cell phone from the nightstand.
My fingers tremble as I unlock the screen and navigate to my email, finding the message I’ve stared at for weeks now, trying to figure out what it means for everything I thought I knew about myself.
When I find it, I take a deep breath. My thumbhovers over the screen for a heartbeat before I open the email from the Omega Registration Center that confirms I am, and have always been, a Sinclair.
I hand the phone to Dominic, watching his face as he reads. His brows draw together at first in confusion, then rise in disbelief. The muscles in his jaw tighten, a vein pulsing at his temple. His scent shifts, the citrus notes sharpening with a bitter spike of anger.
“What the fuck is this?” The words come out flat, controlled, but his knuckles whiten around my phone.
“My official registration,” I say, the words thick in my throat. “It arrived after everything that happened with Louie. I think it’s the reason he was so fixated on me, why my mother still wants me married into the Santaro pack. I’m just not sure how it all works together.”
Dominic scans the screen again, as if searching for some flaw, some evidence that what he’s seeing isn’t real.
When he finishes, fury burns in his gray eyes, not directed at me but at the world that has played us both. “So, you’re telling me that you were a Sinclair all along? That all of it, your father disowning you, my mother forcing us apart, youbeing vulnerable to Louie… All of it was fornothing?”
I pull my knees closer to my chest, the pillow clutched tighter. “It appears so.”
“How is this possible?” His voice rises. “Your father made it very clear you weren’t a Sinclair. My mother wouldn’t have let me go so easily if you were. She wanted Sinclair connections more than anything.”
“There’s more.” I reach for the phone, my fingers brushing his as I take it back.
I swipe to my photos and find the picture I took of the letter, crisp cream stationery with embossed gold letterhead that screams old money. The Sinclair & Associates Law Firm, requesting my presence to discuss matters of inheritance and pack status.
I hand the phone back, watching Dominic’s expression darken further as he reads.
