Page 32 of Knotted By my Pack (North Coast Omegaverse #3)

CORA

The sun filters through the canopy in dappled patches that flicker across Elias’s shoulders.

He walks beside me, steps even and sure. He’s quiet, but not distant. That’s something. At least he isn’t pulling away like I half-expected him to. After everything I just told him. After everything I did.

His hand brushes against mine occasionally, not quite holding it, but close enough that I know he’s still here.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I say quietly.

He glances over, not startled. Just patient. Waiting.

“I mean... as far as I know, you’re the only one who’s ever had a mate. A real one. The rest of us are just... improvising.”

His mouth twitches like he wants to say something, but instead he stops walking and digs into his backpack. “What do you want to know?” he asks, pulling out a crumpled bag of treats.

Before I can answer, Rusty comes tearing through the trees like a streak of gold. He skids to a stop in front of us, tongue lolling and eyes bright, and devours the treats from Elias’s palm before disappearing again, back into the underbrush like some enchanted forest creature.

I look down at the crushed leaves beneath my shoes. I don’t want to make this weird, but the question won’t leave me alone.

“It’s just... when Noah knotted me, it took almost two hours before he... well, before it was over. Before he could pull out.”

Elias doesn’t move, just watches me. No judgment, no reaction. I push on.

“But with Julian, it was different. It happened fast. He finished, then released almost right away, and then…” My throat tightens, but I push through it. “He knotted me again. And that time, it only lasted like an hour. Maybe a little less. So what I want to know is... do you know why that is?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just rubs his hand along the line of his jaw like he’s thinking through something he isn’t sure he should say out loud.

I feel heat crawl up the back of my neck. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. You probably don’t want to talk about that.”

“That’s not it,” he says, voice low.

I glance up.

He’s staring at the ground, but I can see the tension in his shoulders, the way his jaw flexes.

He takes a step closer. “The truth is, thinking about them knotting you…” He lifts his gaze. “It makes me horny.”

That is absolutely not what I expected to come out of his mouth. My lips part, words stalling, heartbeat tripping.

“Yeah?” I ask, breath caught somewhere between surprise and something deeper.

“Yeah,” he says, nodding once. Then he grabs my wrist and pulls me into him, kissing me. His mouth is hot, full of hunger and heat, and his hands slide around my waist like he’s anchoring himself to me.

I don’t pull away. I open to him instead, my tongue chasing his, fingers slipping into his hair as his hands spread wide across my back. His body presses into mine, solid and warm and hard, and for a second, the forest disappears.

When he finally pulls back, I catch my breath and look up at him, a little dazed.

“It’s not just the knot,” he says. “It’s the intimacy of it. The instinct. The way your body accepts it. The fact that it means you’re his, even if it’s only for those minutes. It’s raw, and real, and it’s so tied to instinct that it makes my body react whether I want it to or not.”

He strokes my lower back, eyes locked on mine. “You’re built to take it. That’s what gets me. Knowing that it’s your body’s choice too, not just ours.”

His words send something low and electric curling through me. The honesty, the way he sees it—it shifts something.

“It’s how sometimes, you get an orgasm and it lasts a few minutes, and other times, it’s so toe-curling that you need a minute just to catch your breath. It’s the same with the knot. Typically, it takes longer than a few minutes, but that’s not just us. It’s also you. You play a huge part in it.”

Then he dips his head, lips brushing my ear. “Are you thinking about me doing it to you?”

I breathe in sharply, my fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. “I just don’t understand. We’ve had sex... more than once. And you never have.”

He leans back to look at me fully. “That’s on purpose.”

I blink.

“Because once I do, I’m not walking away from you,” he says. “That’s the difference. I’ve waited because I didn’t want to mark you like that unless you wanted it. I didn’t want it to be just biology. I wanted it to be you choosing me.”

My throat tightens. My hands slip up to his chest, resting over the steady rhythm beneath his skin.

His voice lowers again. “Do you want me to?”

I press a kiss to the corner of his jaw, soft and slow. “Yes.”

Elias doesn’t waste time. His grip tightens at my hips, dragging my body flush against his. I can feel the hardness of him through his jeans, hot and full and demanding.

He buries his face in my neck, breathing me in like I’m the only air he wants. Maybe “needs” is a better word.

His fingers slide beneath my sweater, pushing it up until my breasts are bare to the forest air. His tongue flicks across one nipple before he sucks it into his mouth.

I gasp, gripping his shoulders as he bites down just enough to make my knees falter.

I whisper his name. It’s the only thing I can manage with my head tilting back and my chest rising to meet his mouth again.

I don’t even notice when my jeans are tugged halfway down my thighs until his hand is between them. His knuckles brush over where I’m slick and open, and he groans like he’s been waiting years for this instead of days.

“I need to taste you again,” he says against my skin, and then he drops to his knees on the forest floor like a man ready to worship. My foot knocks over a twig.

Rusty barks in the distance, chasing something up the trail, but I can’t focus on anything except the way Elias parts me and presses his tongue to my clit like it’s a secret only he’s allowed to learn.

I grab a fistful of his hair, and he hums, the vibration shooting through me. I can barely stand upright. I lean back against the tree, thighs trembling as he devours me with an unrelenting rhythm that has my eyes fluttering shut and my mouth falling open.

His tongue is greedy and reverent, and I grind against it, losing myself. My orgasm hits so hard my legs threaten to give out, and he catches me before I slide to the ground.

He rises slowly, mouth wet with me, and looks at me like he’s memorizing this moment. He tugs his shirt off, then pushes his jeans down with a single hand, freeing his cock.

It’s thick and ready, flushed at the tip, and I lick my lips as I reach for it. He grunts when I stroke him, his hand overlapping mine.

“You want me to?” he asks, voice rough, wild.

“Yes,” I whisper, eyes locked on his. “I want everything.”

He grips the back of my thigh and lifts me effortlessly, pinning me to the tree as I wrap my legs around his waist. His cock presses against me, not yet inside, just teasing. My nails dig into his shoulders.

“Then you’re going to get it.”

He pushes in, the stretch deep and slow, and it punches the air from my lungs.

He holds still, kissing me hard, letting me adjust to the sheer size of him before pulling back and thrusting again. Each stroke is brutal and perfect.

He sets a rhythm that has the tree shuddering behind me, bark scraping my back and making me gasp. Every part of me is alive. Slick and heat and skin and the weight of his body claiming mine again and again until I’m shaking against him.

“You’re mine,” he growls, voice dark with something ancient. “This… this bond… I’ve fought it. I told myself I was being smart. That it wasn’t time. But Cora, I can’t wait anymore.”

I moan into his mouth, nodding frantically. My body is pulsing, my release building again, faster this time. Elias’s rhythm stutters, and I feel the first pulse of his knot beginning to swell. His pace grows erratic.

“Cora… I need—”

“Yes,” I breathe, holding his face. “Please.”

The moment his knot pushes into me, I cry out, everything tight and slick and perfect. His hips slam into mine as he locks us together, his arms holding me like he’ll never let go.

The warmth spreads, thick and consuming, as he finishes deep inside me, shaking against me as I come apart again with him grinding deep with every pulse.

We stay there for a long while, pressed together against the tree, our breath mingling, his cock inside me as his knot keeps us fused.

The air buzzes with silence and energy and something that’s not quite words. Something older. I stroke the back of his neck while he cradles me, his forehead against mine.

“Why can’t I stop?” I whisper after a while, running my thumb along his jaw. “When it comes to you. To Noah. To Julian. It’s like I try to stand still in a hurricane.”

His eyes find mine. His lips brush against my cheek, then lower to my throat.

“Because you were made for it,” he says quietly. “For us. You weren’t built for half-measures or safety nets. You were built for wild things. For connection that burns. Your body knows what your mind still tries to deny.”

I swallow and rest my head against his shoulder, listening to the sounds of the forest, the birds and wind and the soft whimper Rusty makes somewhere nearby.

“I thought it would feel wrong. I thought I’d be ashamed of what’s happening between all of us,” I murmur. “But I’m not. I’m terrified… and yet more myself than I’ve ever been.”

He shifts slightly, the knot still anchoring us. “You think I’m not terrified, too? You think I’ve done this before? I’ve had a mate, yeah, but never like this. Never one who made me want to lose control just by looking at her.”

I brush his hair from his forehead and kiss him again, slow and deep. His hands smooth down my spine as he kisses me back.

“What happens now?” I ask.

“We wait,” he says. “Until this part passes. Then we clean up. We walk back. We figure it out one step at a time. That’s all we can do.”

I nod, pulling him closer. The knot still holds us, but I don’t want to move anyway. I want to stay like this, where the world is small and warm and honest.

He presses another kiss to my collarbone, then my jaw.

“Next time,” he says, “we’ll bring a blanket.”

I laugh softly, the sound echoing through the trees. His knot pulses again, and I shiver, clenching around him.

“Stop that,” he warns, half-laughing, half-strained. “You’re going to keep me in here forever.”

“Maybe I’d like that.”

His smile presses into my shoulder.

We stay like that, tangled, exposed to the wild, claimed and claiming, until the sun slides lower through the canopy and we finally, slowly, begin to move.