Page 63 of Knot Excused
Then they all rushed toward me, arms around me, drawing me toward the house eagerly, all talking at the same time and wanting to show me what they’d made.
Inside, the house was somehow even more beautiful.
The first thing I saw when I came in was that ridiculous painting I’d made for Erain’s art competition, respectfully placed in a huge golden frame.
“Oh my god!” I exclaimed involuntarily.
“The Duke,” Rook said dryly, his lips twisting up at me, “was persuaded to sell it to me, despite saying it was the most beautiful and ground-breaking art he’d ever seen.”
“How about that?” I retorted.
I looked up at the huge cat monstrosity.
“I didn’t win fair and square,” I told Erain. “I bribed the Duke.”
He only grinned at me, his cold face transformed by his gleaming smile.
“I don’t care. Yourswasbetter. It’s actually memorable. I’m working on adding more authentic emotion into my art. And I’d love it if you did that with me.”
He raised a hand and pushed open a door to the right of the entrance.
“An art studio,” he said.
I stepped inside and was stunned. It was a huge, open area with big bay windows, the forest framed inside them. And it was stocked with every art supply imaginable—huge top-of-the-line canvases, the best quality paints.
And every other room was like that, too.
A glorious gleaming in-home gym. An outdoors/indoors pool. Sauna. Hot tub. Bedrooms that were twice the size of my old apartment. A playroom just for the kittens.
A big kitchen.
“I’ll do the cooking,” Rook said over my shoulder. “Since I know you loathe it.”
“We just want to share it with you,” Erain said. “That’s all we want.”
I felt my skin prickle, heat and anger roiling into an uneasy salve over my skin.
“I can’t get past it,” I hissed. “And I frankly think if you had never scented me, didn’t feel biologically drawn to my scent, that you wouldn’t give a shit about me. I can’t get past that.”
Erain stepped closer, and I had to fight my treacherous Omega urges to run to him, wrap my legs around his waist, and nuzzle into his stupid Alpha scent.
“I promise you, Piper,” he said, and I saw him trying to fight back tears, but unable to stop them as they spilled out and down the unbearable gorgeous perfection of his cut-glass cheekbones.
“I promise you, even if I had never scented you, even if you weren’t my fated mate, that I would still love you and think you were the best woman in the world. I said what I did out of stupid arrogance and pride. I reject what I said. I reject that entire stupid mindset I had. Smelling you means your scent makes drool run down my chin and I can’t keep my cock down, butknowingyou means that I love you and think you’re the only one in the world for me. I don’t need a knot to know that.”
“I don’t think I can get past it,” I said again, feeling tears on the corners of my eyes, my emotions a chaotic whirl in my chest.
And I turned and ran as fast as I could back to Otis’ house and slammed the door.
I could hear them outside my window all night crying, sleeping on the hard ground. They didn’t come in to bother me.
But I knew they were waiting.
For something I didn’t know if I could ever give them.
CHAPTER32
Erain
