Page 130 of Knot So Lucky

“Eyes on me,” Luca murmurs, voice lower, free of challenge. It’s an anchor. I lock onto his gaze while riding Cale’s rhythm, building tension like coiled spring until language shatters. I become pure sensation: want, release, the sacred ache of being held exactly where I belong.

Adrian breathes a soft benediction I can’t quite catch. Elias mutters a quiet oath, startled by his own volume.

“Good girl,” Cale whispers into my nape—an utterance that doesn’t diminish me but liberates. I drive back against him with everything left in me and he tightens his hold as my legs tremble. Then he fucks me through the last turn, flat-out, no mercy.

The orgasm crashes over me like a tidal wave of shattering light. I claw at the sheets; Luca cups my face, urging me to let go; Cale thrusts deeper and deeper, his groans laced with my name as though it’s a lifeline.

Something blooms low inside him.

I feel it hit first in the way his breath stutters, the way his hands, those huge and callused hands, tremble against my hips.

He tries to keep it together, to be the anchor and the dam all at once, but when the knot swells and locks, there is no barrier, not for him and not for me. The sensation is a shockwave, a white-hot pulse that anchors us both to the moment, to each other, and to the bed—a living, writhing axis for the world to spin around.

My muscles clamp hard, instinctive and feral, as though I could keep him inside forever, as though anything less would mean shattering back into a million lost pieces.

The first swell comes with a rush of heat, thick and velvet-soft, and I can feel every twitch and tremor as his knot forms and locks him inside.

There’s no pain, not anymore—just that raw, primal fullness, a pressure that’s both a physical claim and a psychic demand:You. Now. Always.

My own body answers in kind, muscles fluttering and spasming around him in frantic aftershocks, as if my heat is reluctant to yield, as if it needs to wring out every last drop of fever and fury before it admits defeat.

Every heartbeat is a spark of pain-pleasure, every throb a silent scream that says:Stay. Don’t you dare fucking let go.

The fever recedes like a tide, dragging grit and wreckage but leaving something strange and clear in its wake.

Distantly, I am aware of the others in the room—Adrian, still holding my ankle with the patience of a priest; Elias, stock-still and staring, as if he might combust if he so much as blinks; Luca, smirking from the foot of the bed, but his eyes tracking every micro-movement, every sound I make, every beat of the new rhythm.

I’m aware of them, but only the way a swimmer is aware of the shore.

Cale’s breath is ragged at my shoulder now, damp and uneven, his body still shaking with the aftershocks of the knot. The sweat from his chest painting a roadmap across my back; the weight of his arm curled around me, possessive and raw.

He presses his face to the curve where my neck meets my shoulder, and I can feel every pulse of blood beneath his skin, every wild staccato of his heart. He mutters something—myname, maybe, or a curse, or a prayer—and the vibration of it sets off a fresh wave of tremors where we’re joined together.

And that’s when the scent changes.

A heady, molten thing, sweet and deep and braided with woodsmoke and want, rolling out from our tangled bodies and filling the whole room. I hear Luca hiss in a breath, sharp as a blade. Adrian’s grip on my ankle tightens, just for a second, before he smooths it back down with a calming touch. Even Elias looks suddenly unmoored.

For a long, endless moment we just exist here, all of us, in a breathless standoff of need and disbelief.

My brain is fried, my body a ruined cathedral, but there’s a strange sort of clarity in the aftermath. I realize, with something like dread and something like relief, that I am not just changed—I am remade. My skin is alive with it. My tongue tastes it, coppery and electric.

Every sense is tuned to one pitch-perfect, impossible note.

We lie like that, Cale and I, for I don’t know how long. I hear nothing but the hitch and thunder of our breaths, and beneath that, the hush of the others. When I finally manage to move, it’s only to tilt my head, still pressed to the sheets, and find the edge of his jaw with my mouth.

I can smell the salt of his sweat, the last bite of ozone from the fever, and under it all that same cedar-smoke sweetness that could only ever belong to him.

He says my name again, this time softer, more question than command.

Instinct takes over.

Maybe it’s leftover from the heat, or maybe it’s the raw, animal need to claim something as mine. I open my mouth and sink my teeth into the tender place just below his ear—hard enough to break skin, hard enough to taste him. He shuddersagainst me, a sound torn from somewhere deep, half agony and half worship.

The puncture is shallow—a warning shot, not a wound—but it’s enough. I can feel the snap of it, the way the bond cinches down like a racing harness, the way the air in the room changes. My mouth floods with the taste of him, bright and wild and pure. It fills my head, replacing every other thought with the thrum of yes, yes, this, now, forever.

Cale is the first to react.

His whole body goes rigid, muscles locked and breath caught in his chest. Then he relaxes all at once, a shuddering sigh leaving him deflated and spent. He buries his nose in my hair, clutching me so tight I can barely breathe, and whispers it again: “Mine.”