Page 18 of Knotty Nights

She huffed out a little strained laugh. “You wouldn’t have wanted someone younger? Someone your own age?”

“You make age seem like a flaw, but all I see is a woman who’s lived enough to know what she wants.”

“You’re smooth.”

“I am?” I asked with no small measure of surprise. That was news to me.

She rounded the counter, shrinking the space between us in a heartbeat. What was breathing supposed to feel like? It was supposedly an essential body function but I’d lost all sensation except for the feel of her standing close, her heat-drenched warmth brushing across my skin.

I heard my pulse in my ears, loud and unhelpful, and I wondered if she could hear it, too.

“Tell me what you want,” I said. I tried to summon my inner Winter Blackwell, but fuck, the words were barely a whisper.

“I’ve always wondered about power play,” she said quickly, the words almost fused together in one long sentence.

I froze.

“Yes, I read that on your profile.” The words were thin from my lips.

“Is that something you’re comfortable with?”

I hated answering her question with one of my own but…

“What exactly does power play mean to you?”

She scraped her teeth along her bottom lip as she considered my question, the seconds stretching between us like taffy. Little red indents appeared on the pillowy contours, drawing my gaze to them. How would they taste? How would they feel trapped between my lips?

“It means I want you on your knees, Atlas,” she said at last, her voice a whisper. “I want to hear you beg for me.”

Oh.Oh.Breath tumbled from my chest.

“Do you trust me?” she asked when I said nothing.

I wet my lips, staring at her, uncertainty curling through my limbs even as I nodded once.

“Then do as I say.”

SEVEN

Jazmine

Ideserve this.

I repeated the sentiment over and over in my head, but it didn’t help me believe it.

Nobodythisgorgeous matched with an omega like me on purpose. She could’ve had her pick of younger omegas in their prime, but she was here. With me. In my house.

Had she actually chosen me on the app? Had she looked through a bunch of different omegas, all smiling into the camera with their best angles, and thoughtIwas attractive? Or was this just the algorithm dictating that she had to match with me?

My brain worked overtime as I tried to decide if she actually wanted to be here. Was she curious about me, or was she just being polite?

The worst-case scenario was that I was just an assignment to her, or an option she got stuck with. Every insecurity I’d ever buried tried to crawl back up my throat even as I traced every inch of her sculpted features.

And her scent… she couldn’t fake that, could she? I felt it shifting as she followed my command and sank to her knees,thickening, sharpening, heating the air in my quaint little kitchen.

Alphas don’t always realize when they’re broadcasting their scent—it was second nature to them. But every nerve-ending in my body came alive as Atlas’s pheromones pulsed around us like molten warmth leaking through cracks in her armor.

An Alpha’s scent gave away many things they tried to hide. On the surface, Atlas smelled like clean skin and the metal of her motorbike, but under all that was a darker note threading through the air—a rough rasp of cedar and the ozone crackle of restraint. The pheromones around her were so tight they almost hummed.