Page 69 of Torment Me Knot
I cross to him. Set the cold cup aside. Pour him a hot one from the fresh pot.
“Coffee's hot, Kev. Drink it while it's still good.”
“Yeah. In a minute.”
“Drink it now. I'm not taking another cold cup out of your hands this morning.”
He huffs once, low in his chest, and drinks it. Sets it down. His hand stays on the cup.
“I can’t stop thinking about them watching them walk up the stairs after... She told us...” He wipes his hand over his face. “Fuck.”
“I know. I was in the chair next to you watching it happen.”
“They kept looking back at us the whole way up. And I kept thinking, she's three feet from me. I could close the distance. I could pick her up. She wouldn't have to be doing this,” he says.
Ezra's behind me now. His hand brushes Kev's shoulder on the way to the toaster. Doesn't grip. Just lands and goes.
“I want to undo their trauma too,” Ezra says. “But healing isn’t simple. It’s one step forward, two back.”
“I know,” Kev says. “It’ll be that way until it’s two steps forward and only one back.”
I pull the bacon off the heat. Plate it. Crack two more eggs into the pan, because none of us is going to eat less than three.
Their scent drifts through the open window. Gardenia and clover and cedar and chamomile, woven so deep into each other I can't pull the threads apart. But there’s a new layer this morning. A layer I caught a breath of yesterday and talked myself out of. Today I am sure because my cock thickens against my zip and I brace my hand on the counter and breathe through it.Don't.The bacon. Look at the bacon. Look at the chip in the spatula handle. Don't think about thelayer.
I'm thinking about the layer.Their heat is coming.
Ezra is at the window. I follow his gaze to our omegas. Always to our omegas.
Aubrey rises onto his elbow and looks down at Espie like he doesn't quite believe what he's looking at, like she might evaporate if he blinks. He traces her cheek, then kisses her temple. She tilts her chin and he kisses her. Slow and deep.
The kiss of two people who've kissed each other enough times in the last two nights that they've stopped being careful and started beinggoodat this with each other. Her hand climbs the center of his chest. Traces over his sternum, collarbone, throat, hair. His fingers thread through her dark waves and tighten there. The blanket I gave them shifts around them as they move and his head tilts to find a better angle and his eyes close. His hips start to move under the blanket, pumping up and down. A sound comes through the window. Low. A whimper. Hers, or his. I can't tell from here. There’s no hiding what they’re doing.
“Fuck. Look at them.”
Neruda comes to mind. I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
Kev's chair scrapes as he gets up. He crosses the kitchen. His hand lands flat on the counter and he doesn't say anything. He just stands there. Watching them.
“Seeing our omegas like this is a privilege,” he says.
Their kiss breaks. Espie tucks her head under his chin and burrows in. They settle deeper into the chair and their scent rolls in through the open window thick as honey. The way they move tells me they're still connected. I drag my brain back to the kitchen. My hands. My pan. The eggs.
“I think they’re going to go into heat soon,” I say.
Neither Ezra nor Kev says anything to contradict me.
“They’re going to need a nest, and they haven't looked twice in the house nest,” I say.
“Bedroom, then? They sleep there. They've made love there. They'd at least be familiar with it,” Ezra muses.
“They sleep there, but they’re notnesting. Not like…” I trail off.
Not like the patio chair with the fluffy blankets they’ve piled around the edges. An article of Kev clothing peeks between a weave of throws I had over the couch. It hits me so hard I almost laugh.
“They've already chosen. We've been calling itthe place they like to be in the morningslike idiots, and the whole time it's been their nest.” I gesture to the two most precious beings on the planet outside the kitchen. “That's their nest. They've been building it under our noses.”
“You're right, Lex.Patioisn't where alphas put a nest in our heads. That's why we missed it,” Ezra says.
