Page 47 of Knot Your Basic B*tch
As long as I didn’t pull any truly deranged shit—like rubbing my scent to mark the nail clippers and polish used by Brutus—I still had a chance of walking out of this date without truly embarrassing myself.
Fernando walked back holding a basket of manicure supplies, with another one of those wide smiles that I irrationally hated. He beckoned over a coworker, who was younger, somehow even shorter but with less vibrant hair, pointing to one of the big chairs with a sink at the bottom.
The two men started fussing with the sink and the supplies, filling the basin with water. Then, they werepointing to the chairs, indicating that the two of us should sit.
I walked closer, side-eyeing Brutus to figure out what I was supposed to be doing.
He’d settled into the chair in front of the younger coworker, pulling off his socks and shoes, revealing feet that were big, hairy and somehow perfectly formed. Just like the rest of him.
I sat next in the chair next to him, in front of that little fucker Fernando, copying how Brutus began pressing buttons on the chair to turn on the massage function, and how he’d dipped his toes into the water.
“Have you never gone to a nail salon before?” When he saw me nod, Brutus smirked at me. “Perfect, I got one of your firsts, taking you here.”
Oh God, that man lit my cheeks on fire. I risked a quick glance to Fernando to see if he was paying attention to our conversation. But he seemed to ignore me, fussing with the water in the tub. Fernando put in some blue powder that smelled like lavender and immediately made the water begin to bubble.
The warm water around my feet and the soothing scent of lavender in the air were enough to soothe my frayed nerves. Or maybe it was the fact that Brutus barely took his eyes off me, even when he was being massaged and scrubbed. The nail technician took out some tools and began to prod at Brutus’ toe nails.
Brutus paid him enough mind to let him know that he wanted his nails “squoval shaped,” whatever that meant. I swear I’m not dumb. At this point they weren’t even using real words. Was everyone here in on it? Were they all just fucking with me?
When Fernando asked me what nail shape I wanted, I wasn’t about to tell him that I had never thought about theshape of my nails before in my entire life, so I just said, “same as him,” jerking my chin towards Brutus.
Then Fernando handed me an entire book of different colors that I could pick to paint my nails. There were way too many color options. I settled on a pale pink that looked pretty, without flipping too many pages. This whole process started to feel like a bit much—that is until Fernando started to rub my feet.
The foot massage was making me forget all about the fact that I was pissed at Fernando. He sort of was really good at finding all the tense spots, deep within the arch and at the corner of my heels, and then soothing all my discomfort away—he was doing such a good job at it that I wasn’t even mad at him anymore.
After a bit, I got comfortable enough to have a conversation with Brutus, right in front of the nail tech who was probably–definitely not Brutus’ secret lover. “Why did it take so long before I could see you? Why were you okay with the twins’ plan to hide you away from me?”
“Were the twins acting like I’m the big bad wolf, here to abduct their little red omega to ride her?” Brutus was smiling at me in a way that was admittedly a little predatory. There was a small gleam of hunger in his expression whenever he looked at me, that made a thrill of anticipation slither down my spine.
With Brutus, everything he said felt like it was weighed down with the heavy promise of sex.
“They never mentioned you, like you were some dark secret.”
Brutus pressed his back harder against his seat and closed his eyes for a moment. I couldn’t quite blame him, this was rather nice.
There were rose petals floating around in the basin that I was starting to think of as my feet’s personal little whirlpool. Fernando had pulled out hot rocks… and I don’t know if I just had been living under a rock or something because I had no idea how good a massage like that felt. The heat of the rocks was cutting through all the tension I didn’t even know I had. This felt amazing, even when they had started sugar scrubbing each foot, which was ticklish as hell. Then he took a file, and expertly started to shape my nails.
“The twins knew that I would seek you out on my own time.” Brutus’ eyes were closed, with a look of pure distilled relaxation on his face.
The way that Kain and Sabien left Brutus to do whatever he liked, they sort of treated him like he was the pack lead. But he wasn’t. Officially, it was Kain who was the leader of the pack.
However, it was obvious who the dominant alpha was.
It was also pretty clear that neither of the twins would be able to get Brutus to do something that he didn’t want to do. The only way that someone else was running their pack was if Brutus himself wasn’t interested.
“Why didn’t you want to be pack lead?” I thought I had a decent understanding of how the pack hierarchies worked; I’d aced the quiz on it and everything. The packs chose a leader who would make decisions and have the final authority on all pack business.
At home, it was obvious that Father was the pack lead. Someone just walking into our house without knowing a single thing about any of us would be able to figure it out immediately. Father seemed born for the role.
“I would be an awful choice as pack leader. Kain is in charge because he actually gets shit done. He makes the appointments, pays the bill, checks the mail. All that important stuff.” Brutus was scrutinizing the way his nail tech was filing his nails. I don’t know what exactly he was looking at—they sort of looked just like they did when he first walked in, only a bit shorter now.
“You don’t care about taking charge?”
“No Love, I only care about fucking.” There was no smirk on Brutus’ face now, no hidden innuendo. He was telling the truth. “Kain’s the obvious choice. If he didn’t look exactly like his brother I would deny that the two of them ever shared a uterus. Sabien’s the unfortunate appendage that Kain was born with. Now we’re both stuck with him.”
I noticed that Brutus’ jaw tensed, though he acted like talking about Sabien wasn’t bothering him at all.
“Do you really find Sabien that bad? Or is this all because of that sandwich incident?” I’d talked to Kain about the weird tension between the rest of his pack. All Kain knew about it was that he wasn’t sure how it started; just that it had something to do with a sandwich—presumably, someone who wasn’t supposed to eat it? If I didn’t have so many siblings with a history of stealing my food, I’d say that this was all blown out of proportion. But honestly, sometimes you just had to stand up and protect your ham and cheese. Even from loved ones.