Page 50 of Torment Me Knot
“Leave it to Levi. We need you here.”
She purses her lips, crosses her arms and faces me. “I didn't take you for being stupid, Kev.”
“Sera—”
She picks up the smoothies. Two glasses, one in each hand. “I can at least make sure they're nourished. If nothing else.”
If nothing else.
She walks past me toward the back door and steps onto the patio.
I made her feel unwanted before.
And I have a sick feeling she believed me.
Chapter Eighteen
Aubrey
The patio chair is wide enough for a pack, piled high with cushions and a thick blanket.
Espie is curled against my chest, her face tucked into my throat. Her heartbeat moves slow against mine.
Gardenia and clover close around me, and beneath that, where her scalp presses to my jaw, clean sweat, warm skin, the faint soap she uses.
Sunlight warms me to my bones. I didn't think anything could reach them again.
Her nose drags along my pulse, breathing me in. “You're awake.”
“Mm.”
“Don't move.”
“Wasn't going to.”
She makes a small pleased sound against my throat and burrows closer. My hand threads through her hair.
“Sun's good,” I manage.
“Mm.” Her voice is slurred with sleep and heat and something softer. “Let’s stay here forever. I like this chair. It feels right.”
Sera sits in a matching armchair close to us, book open in her lap, half her attention on the pages and half on us. She brought us strawberry smoothies an hour ago, set them on the patio stones beside the chair. I drank the whole one. Espie drank hers. The sweetness is still on the back of my tongue and the cold of it has settled in my belly, and the sun on top of all that has dropped me into a sleepy half-place where my limbs feel too heavy to lift.
All of the alphas are sitting in the sun on the patio with us, but keeping their distance. Kev is further back. Lex to the side. Ezra somewhere behind me. They speak in low voices.
“You put basil in it.” Lex's voice, dry, unhurried. “On purpose.”
“Yeah. On purpose.”
“I'm going to need you to reflect on that choice, Dawson.”
“Reflect on your own choices. You put sugar on scrambled eggs once.”
A quiet snort from Sera. Ezra murmurs something in reply. I breathe in the sun and the weight of my omega. My eyes drift shut.
A glass clinks. A man laughs. Low. I know that laugh. The marble is unrelenting beneath my knees. I don't know how I got here. I was in the garden and now I'm on the marble and the collar suffocates me and Axel presses me down with a heavy hand, and the lights are bright and the air smells like champagne and cologne and money. Axel's cologne. The one he wore to these nights. Sandalwood rotten over something chemical. The hum of men's voices is low and unpleasant.
No.
