Page 19 of Fated or Knot (UnseelieVerse: The Omega Masquerade #1)

19

LARK

I had the sense of time passing as I came in and out of the darkness of deep sleep. There was a gentle weight keeping my eyelids from lifting. It was like a soap bubble stretching around me when I reached for wakefulness. That thin barrier wouldn’t allow me to rouse completely, but sometimes I got close.

There were voices exclusively speaking in Serian, mostly indistinct. The door opening and shutting more than I was used to. Tormund’s sudden, loud exclamation of, “I found it!”

Kauz whispering at him to keep his voice down. It felt like his warmth wrapped around me…his hand cradling my back, gently rocking me to return to resting.

And so I slept until that soap bubble popped on its own and I cracked open my eyes. The light from the shaded window was slanted like it was already afternoon. I smelled the princes all at once: a summery evening by a lake flush with wild mint and waterlily blooms, completed by roasted mallows and the sprinkling of stardust I was starting to associate with Always.

I sighed out a little purr and shifted, realizing I was snuggling with my arms around three pillows. The warm blanket under me was actually Kauz’s wing. He lay next to me, one hand splayed over his stomach, the other curled around my hip. The shape of his eyelids changed. Even without pupils, he was looking at me, and I looked back. Stars glimmered and winked in his eyes, dancing under the diffuse purple sheen they’d taken from the shaded sunlight.

This is better than stargazing. The night sky was static and remote compared to the dancing stars and the warmth of his gaze. Even the frame of his white lashes glittered with the occasional starry mote, set free after each blink.

The rest of the room was still, absent of shuffling clothes or the whispers of others keeping quiet below our bunk. Maybe they’d gone to lunch. They’d given me their pillows, and the combination of their fresh scents had me filled with a fuzzy kind of peace. I still set them aside, dropping them off the edge of the cot, to shift closer to Kauz.

We were nearly nose to nose when I was satisfied, my head resting on his shoulder and my arm banded around his torso. “Hi,” I murmured.

“Hello, sleepyhead,” he teased.

My eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Why’d I sleep so late?” That soap bubble feeling was probably magic, meaning he’d cast it upon me with his fancy essence spinning.

He shifted me with his shrug. “You must’ve needed it. This many days stuck on a train, with present company, is stressful.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong about that. It wasn’t that I’d forgotten Cymora’s punishment and the breakdown I’d had afterward, but for a few blissful moments, it hadn’t been important. I needed to relieve myself. That meant figuring out whether my stepfamily was already in the female’s bath. Which also meant leaving his warmth, and I didn’t want to do that yet.

“But if I had used magic on you,” Kauz continued. He brushed hair out of my face, tucking it behind the point of my ear. “It would be worth any ire you have to share this moment alone together.”

Ah, stars. With a tender noise in the back of my throat, I leaned and kissed him. I hoped I wasn’t misreading him and going too far, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.

His lips yielded to mine, and he cupped my face as our mouths melded. I longed to taste Always on him like the blast of pheromones from an alpha’s kiss, but it wasn’t like that. Kauz was still a beta, his own unique person compared to his brothers.

Essence tingled on my lips, making the pressure of his mouth and tongue feel incredible. It had to be a deliberate trick, as he wasn’t spinning magic, though my skin felt extra sensitive in the path he traced up the curve of my waist.

Heat built at my core. Kauz hadn’t touched up my suppressant tattoo since before yesterday’s events, and my slick came fast with the promise of a male’s touch. I released a needy mewl.

What am I doing? This was a mistake. He had to feel my body heat swelling against him. In a moment, he’d stop kissing me and go for his ink kit to restrain the need building in my body.

Kauz lifted one hand, and a thread of starry essence curled around his fingers. He flicked it away, and the door locked a moment later, its bolt sliding into place with a click .

His fingertips drew up the hem of my shirt, letting in cool air. He spoke between kisses. “And it would be worth my whole pack’s ire to give you some relief.”

“Kauz, what—” I cut off with a moan. He’d caught the curve of my neck in his blunt teeth, and I stilled, my inner omega submitting by instinct with one last flutter of my wings. My breath came in short, heated bursts as he pawed my back blindly until he found the buttons securing my sleeping shirt around my wings. The material loosened significantly.

His touch lingered as he tunneled his hands underneath to rub my bare skin. He used that same essence trick, leaving just enough to tingle in the wake of his fingertips. He traced circles up my back, teasing the base of my wings, which trembled the more he touched me. I was slick and needy for him, my core pulsing to the fevered beat of my heart.

“Kauz,” I murmured, reluctant to stop him. “We can’t.”

He released my neck to reply. “‘Untouched’ has many definitions.” He caught my hips and rolled until I was lying flat on my back inside the circle of his wings. I was loosely caged, his weight braced between my top and bottom wings. My pussy fluttered and clenched as I considered how easy it’d be to pull him the rest of the way on top of me.

“Not touched,” I panted.

“By a penis. In a very specific place.” He watched my face as he eased his fingertips under the front of my shirt. He tilted his head, asking for permission.

“So, you’re not going to, um…” I didn’t want to say touch your penis to my specific place . I was twenty-two, for stars’ sake. But I missed my chance to say fuck me instead. It just didn’t seem like Kauz’s style.

“No,” he chuckled. “But you could touch it, if you liked.”

He nudged my thigh with his erection, and I gasped. My body flamed with need, and I reached for him. Did I know what I was doing? No. But he sucked in a hiss of pleasure when I felt the outline of his cock through his sleeping pants. It was heavier than I expected, pulsing through the cloth barrier between us.

He traced the curve of my belly and squeezed my breast just right. “More,” I moaned. The whisper of my feral side suggested ripping his clothes off to feel more of his skin against mine. I settled for reaching under his shirt to feel the flex of his muscles as he drew me closer.

“More,” he agreed. With some shuffling, we worked together to free me of my shirt. My nipples pearled under the appreciative stars gleaming in his gaze. The backdrop against that starry night had darkened with lust, losing its purple sheen.

He palmed one breast, rolling the sensitive orb between his fingers, while he lowered his mouth to the other. The warm brush of his tongue nearly undid me until he pulled my nipple into his mouth and sucked . My toes curled, and my hips bucked from the wave of pleasure.

I stopped clutching him to run appreciative fingers over his body, exploring it through touch. His lean figure concealed hard muscle, especially in his shoulders and abs. Everything connected to his massive bat wings was strong and firm to the press of my fingertips.

I wanted to take my time and see the planes of his chest for myself when there wasn’t a threat of someone interrupting us. He had his other hand down the front of my pants, his fingertips gliding through the slick coating my pussy lips. I trembled and clenched on air.

“Kauz,” I whined.

His soft growl vibrated straight to my core, followed by the press of one fingertip. It sank in easily until my pussy clamped with another wave of pre-heat and slick to soak his hand. He hissed against my breast, his hips jerking and grinding his cock against my thigh. Against all better judgment, I wanted it in me. I spread my thighs further with another whine.

He worked a second finger inside me while I reached under his clothes and grasped his erection. It was velvety to the touch with an unyielding core, wet with its own kind of slick at the tip. I spread the bead of liquid over his shaft and rubbed back and forth, grinning when I felt his breath quicken.

Maybe we couldn’t join bodies yet, but surely this felt nearly as good. His thumb circled the swollen bud at the top of my pussy, his fingers squelching as they pumped through my slick. My moans hit a higher pitch as the pressure mounted, promising the kind of peak I’d never achieved with my own hand.

Someone tried the knob into our room, followed by knocking swiftly. I froze, while Kauz released my breast from the seal of his mouth with a soft “ Foc. ”

He caught my face with his free hand and kissed me hard, then twirled and pressed his thumb down while spreading his fingers, reminding my body just how close it’d been to coming. With our lips locked, he muffled my moans as he drove his fingers into my needy pussy and curled them, brushing a hidden spot that set me off with a detonation of bliss that radiated through me like a sunburst. His mouth caught my scream.

“Kauzden,” Fal sing-songed from the other side of the door. He jiggled the doorknob loudly. “I can smell her from here. You’d better let me in now…” He let the thought drift off meaningfully.

I panted in an utter daze, watching the slightest hint of concern cross and fade from Kauz’s face as he broke our kiss with one last gentle brush of his lips.

“One second,” he called back. With a shift of his shoulders and a great rustle, he folded his wings to his back and started licking clean the fingers gleaming with my slick, looking entirely too pleased even with the raging erection he still sported.

“Next time, we won’t be interrupted, sweetheart,” he vowed in a low voice.

My pussy clenched at the thought. Greedy thing .

I just hoped there was a next time. I’d never felt such pleasure in my life, and he’d given it to me with only three fingers. “I look forward to it,” I murmured.

The next moment, I went grabbing for my shirt at the sound of a key turning in the lock. I dove behind the bulk of Kauz’s folded wings as I shoved it over my torso.

Fal slipped in with a question in Serian. I was fairly sure he’d asked, “You didn’t fuck her, did you?”

“Nay. She’s still untouched,” he answered in Theli.

The dark elf breathed a sigh of relief. “I must point out the utter irony.”

Kauz grumbled something under his breath.

“My little beta brother, so worried about the smell of our pheromones!” Fal exclaimed grandly. “Bought special soap so the rest of us could control ourselves and said he was so concerned about that alpha-omega connection taking over. Damn it, Kauz. After all that, you’re the one to break first and pleasure our omega.”

“Like you wouldn’t do the same,” Kauz remarked.

“I’ve been dying to do the same. You couldn’t wait until we could share her? Honestly,” he tutted.

I peered around Kauz’s side, surprised at how unsurprised I was at Fal’s lack of anger. He stood just inside the door, nostrils flared as he scented the air. With his jeweled masquerade mask in place, his illusioned evergreen eyes were dark with promise as they met mine. “It’s too bad Tormund and Marius are on their way back from lunch, else I wouldn’t call this a missed opportunity,” he growled.

My cheeks heated further. Now that I’d come, I realized my scent must be suffusing every nook of the room. There’d be no hiding what we’d just done from the other two males, not with the sugar-kissed promise of my pre-heat woven into the smell of my slick.

“We could prop the door,” I suggested. I also felt how charged the air had become and knew we had to change the subject.

Fal chuckled. “Nay, sweet thing. I think Kauz gets to explain himself while I take you to the female’s bath.”

“Fine,” Kauz said.

I imagined Marius and Tormund being much less relaxed about the whole thing. “Sorry,” I whispered.

He shifted and put an arm around me, pressing one last kiss against my cheek. “It was worth it.” There was still lingering heat in his gaze as he stroked his fingers through my hair.

My heart leapt. I think I fell deeper for him then and there, and it had nothing to do with my pre-heat or any post-orgasm high.

Then he handed me down to Fal, who already had a towel and my bag of toiletries in hand. The dark elf scooped me up to carry me out of the room. “What are you doing?” I protested. “I can walk!”

“Then Kauz didn’t do a very good job,” Fal said. Something hit the other side of the door with a thump after it closed behind us, and he snickered.

“He…” Oh, taking about this with his brother was weird, even if they were packmates.

Fal raised a brow behind his mask, his grin full of mischief. “He what?” he asked.

I cleared my throat, grasping for another change of subject. “Why are you wearing that?” I pointed at the mask.

“I found it,” he answered. “And, you see, it’s mine. I figured you should see my Seelie disguise in the light of day.”

The illusion on it had changed him into a forest elf, sure, but there was no mistaking his Unseelie mischief or the lilt in his words. Now that I knew better, all I saw was Fal overlaid with tanned skin and green hair and eyes. It was eerie.

“Why? Do you want it?” he teased. I started to smile, hopeful to have at least one of my tokens back for a future nest. “You know what to do to get it back, tricksy li’l omega.”

I might as well stop coveting it. How was I supposed to steal it from him again when he was expecting it this time?

He set me on my feet before the female’s bath with a wink, offering over the towel and toiletry bag. I glanced over my shoulder, wary Cymora or Laurel were having one of their long soaks in one of the tubs while they waited for me to show up.

“They’re not in there,” Fal said. I glanced back at him, catching the confidence of his statement. He’d bared the edges of his fangs, just the beginnings of a snarl. “You won’t have to worry about them anymore. Trust me.”

I did. Trust him, that was. Despite the way we’d met—and the reminder of it he wore—he’d earned my trust with the rest of his brothers for caring for me after my feral moment yesterday.

“Okay.” I tilted my head, flashing my throat purposefully to show him that trust. He released a pleased rumble that I felt to my core.

I walked into the female’s bath and found that he was right. I was feeling weak in the knees.