Page 181 of Knot So Lucky

His hands are everywhere, mapping the fields of my body through silk and flesh, and when he finally finds the zipper at my back—oh, fuck, that’s game over.

The sound of it unzipping is the only thing louder than my own heartbeat.

He drags it down slow. Inch by inch. Each lazy centimeter of exposed skin is a dare—a question hanging in the air about whether I’ll flinch, whether I’ll pull away, whether I’ll fight or just let him claim what’s his.I do neither.I just melt.

The gown pools at my hips, then my thighs, then all the way to the floor as he peels me out of it—methodical, a surgeon at work on something alive and trembling. The satin catches at my calves for a second before gravity wins and leaves me exposed, shivering in the night air.

Cool against my skin. Cold enough to turn my nipples hard and raise goosebumps all over. But the contrast between that chill and the heat of his palms wrecks me. Everywhere he touches, fire. My breasts. My hips. The small of my back, thumb dipping just above the line of my panties like he’s considering whether to rip them off or leave them as a present for later.

I shudder, gasping, breath coming fast and shallow in a way that’s not performative at all—this is real, this is raw, this is me unmasked.

“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he murmurs, pressing his mouth to the side of my neck. He starts there, tongue tracing the line of my pulse, then teeth—gentle at first, then a little harder. Enough to stake a claim without leaving marks only Cale would dare to rival.

Every time he breathes against me, it’s a new line of code being written to my nervous system.

“Best thing I’ve seen in years,” he says, words muffled by skin but no less brutal for it. “Could spend all night—and morning”

He’s moving down. Mouth at my collarbone, hands roaming up to cup my breasts, thumbing over the peaks until I’m arching for more. My knuckles are white from gripping his biceps, nails digging through his shirt until I’m sure I’ll leave half-lunar imprints behind.

This isn’t the frantic, out-of-control collision of heat.

This is deliberate. Unhurried.

Like he’s trying to rebuild me from the outside in, one bite and one kiss and one whispered command at a time.

“You have no idea how you've been taunting me all fucking night,” he growls, and fuck, there it is—the steel under the velvet, the edge that makes my Omega instincts shiver with pleasure.

He kisses lower, over my sternum, down the ladder of ribs. His hands follow, rough but gentle, like he’s afraid I’ll break but hungry to find out where the limits actually are.

I want him.

Every part of him.

I want to see what happens when the leash slips, when the control cracks open and the animal underneath takes over.

But he’s patient. Or pretending to be, because I can feel the tension singing off his skin with every pass of his tongue.

My legs part for him automatically. I’m wearing nothing but panties and the residue of his attention. My body is a live wire, every nerve ending tuned to the frequency of his mouth inching lower on my abdomen.

“Beautiful,” he whispers, and the word vibrates against my navel. “Spectacular.” Kiss. “Smartest Omega I know.” Kiss, lower. “And very, very fuckable.”

The praise is a drug, a nitrous hit straight to the pleasure center of my skull. I arch up, desperate for more—more contact, more words, more of the thing only he can give me.

He’s in no rush.

He traces the line of my hipbone with his tongue, sucks a bruise at the edge of my underwear, fingers already curving to slide them down but not quite yet.

Goosebumps ripple up my thighs, my breath coming in shallow, broken gasps. I’m so wet it’s embarrassing—soaking the fabric, scent probably thick enough to make any Alpha in a three-floor radius lose their mind.

But he’s not just any Alpha. He’s Elias. One of my Alphas.

And tonight, I’m the center of his goddamn universe.

He worships my body like he’s memorizing it for a final exam no one else is allowed to take. Each bite, each kiss, each whispered “fuck-you’re perfection” is a punctuation mark, a reminder that for once, I don’t have to prove anything. I just have to exist.

And holy hell, how I exist under his mouth.

The dress is a puddle on the floor, my body caught between the arctic air and the red-hot trail of his hands, and for the first time in years, I don’t care about the scars or the differences or the ways I never quite fit in.