Page 58 of Knot Excused
Piper
“Can you up my dose of suppressants?” I asked Otis one morning as we sat at the breakfast table.
My friend shook his head resolutely at me as he shuffled the cards for our daily tarot reading.
“Can’t do, my darling. The higher the dose, the harder it will be when your heat does break out.”
I sighed. “I was afraid it was something like that. But how else can I resist their disgusting Alpha scents until I figure out what to do?”
“Are they starting to smell good?” Otis asked.
“Yes,” I said unhappily.
I felt itchy and warm, like I was on the brink of getting sick. But I knew it wasn’t that.
It was their damn Alpha scents working on me. I needed to figure out what I wanted to do.
He flicked the window open.
“I could smuggle you out of the country,” Otis said.
But I shook my head.
“Fuck, I can’t decide what to do.”
My fingers played idly with the Coffee Dispenser 3000, a little machine of Otis’ invention designed to remember your coffee order and give you the exact right amount of cream and sugar.
The machine had never figured out I wanted two scoops of sugar, not twenty-two, but I still loved it.
“Look who it is,” Otis said, nodding his head at Erain walking up the garden pathway, now miraculously free of weeds, with freshly-planted herbs growing. “Can’t turn around without falling over one of these damn Alphas. I’m going to the grocery store.”
I sighed.
What was I going to do?
I grabbed a bag of snacks to go meet Erain, then sat down on the couch in the living room while he prowled in behind me.
“When are you going to give up?” I asked. “Accept that we aren’t meant to be together?”
Erain looked almost unearthly beautiful sitting beside me on the couch with his hair pulled back like that, his cheekbones sharp, and those goddamn ice-blue eyes.
But I couldn’t look at him without remembering what he said about me.
“Please, Piper,” he growled, “Forgive me, angel. I will never take you for granted ever again. I love you.”
“I know you love me,” I retorted, opening the bag of Cheetos. “Old news. I still can’t get over it.”
I stretched my legs in front of me, watching as he hungrily eyed my gray sweatpants and white tank top, knowing he can look but he can’t touch.
“Can you tell me what it was?” Erain asked, moving closer. His shoulders were broad, and a muscled flexed in that perfect movie star jaw. “It’s going to make me sick to remember it. But I want to tell you very clearly how fucking stupid I was.”
“That my perfume must smell like Hot Cheetos and Marlboros,” I said, examining my fingers, and sucking Cheetos dust off one of them.
Erain flushed red.
“I’m so sorry,” he said desperately. “I was a fool for being so shallow and closed-minded. It was—literally just snobbery. I knew you didn’t come from the same kind of money that I did, so I assumed that meant I was better than you.”
His hands clenched in the fabric of the couch and I saw the tendons standing out in them.
