Knot Without You: An Omegaverse Romance

Chapter 6

Chapter

Six

Michelin star restaurants mean shit to cashed up Omega besties, so it’s no surprise when instead of eating itty-bitty bits of food with a hundred different ingredients we stay in the bar and order platters of fried comfort food to share.

I smile at all the right places, being hilariously offensive when I can, but at the same time my heart isn’t in it. I’m so fucking distracted by him. He’s vacuuming all my attention and I’m powerless to stop wanting his.

He pretty much stood locked in the place we crashed together until Raney dragged his reluctant sexy ass over to where we’re sitting. His immediate discomfort was hard to miss, his scent changed but at the same time no one else commented on it.

When he sat down, so did a few of Raney’s uncles and then it was like he got his mojo back or he just hid behind huge fuck-the-world energy. He’s still very demanding and dominant, but at the same time, when I was with him, he was different.

I’m not sure what I was expecting if I ever saw him again, but being Raney’s dad was not it. Neither was him being the president of the Fallen. Dumb, I know, the Fallen tattoo sign boarded over his barrel sized chest. Looking back now it was a pretty obvious clue, but I’ve got no bones admitting I lost the ability to think and breathe when I saw the rest of him.Good news, that insatiable drag to one another hasn’t diminished despite the truth of how we both know Raney coming to light.

It’s probably a good and a bad thing that Koz, Raney’s fated Alpha, is a bit of a possessive dick because making all the other Alphas sit at a different table and face away from ours meant the girls and I could gossip and eat like pigs. But it also gave me a better view to watch him. And if I’m honest, tease the fuck out of him as much as he’s unconsciously doing to me.

I twist the top of my body to face Raney, Simona, and Heidi, the table obscuring the way I spread my legs slightly. And look, I’m a body confident person anyway, but still, I make sure I’m only flashing him because I feel sick thinking of flirting so obviously with anyone else.

“So,” I interrupt the girls talking about the benefits of investing in shares over long term cash bonds. On any other day I’d be all up for talking rollovers. Unsurprisingly thinking of rollovers has me remembering getting flipped over by a certain Alpha before he took me slow and dirty from behind. Before I get too carried away by my fantasy, I need some idea of how Raney would feel if she knew about me and him. “We should talk about King.”

“Excuse me?” Raney gasps, stopping mid word and slamming her hand on the table hard enough to make Koz twist in his seat and ask what’s wrong.

She waves him away, and I keep snake charming her, waving the last onion ring in her face. Once her glare moves to me and not the food between my fingers, I lean over the table like I’m going to whisper but of course I talk loud enough for the concierge in the lobby to hear, “Your daddy, King, is an AIWTK.”

Thankfully, or maybe not, one of the Fallen is holding the attention of everyone sitting around the other table in an equally loud discussion on the virtues of pole dancing and advice from his doctor to do more cardio, so they miss hearing me, but the girls don’t.

Heidi catches on way quicker than Raney does on the meaning of the acronym. She cracks up laughing while Raney looks like she’s overworking her brain. The drinks we’ve shared are obviously messing with her because she’s usually as sharp as glass. Her lips pucker aggressively when she can’t figure it out. “Spell that shit out for me, Tristan. And drop the fucking onion ring. You know we don’t play with our food.”

“Mmmm, I was thinking the same,” I muse while moving one of my legs, opening the gap wide enough for him to see the colour of my panties. I smirk when I feel his eyes burning a hole in them. Reaching for Raney’s hair, I tug on it so she can’t miss a word I say, “He’s totally an Alpha I want to knot.”

Raney’s emotions drain away leaving her looking pasty as fuck.

“No fucking way,” Simona says softly before she looks at Raney. “I kind of get it though, Raney, he’s actually really good looking.”

“Right?” I confirm, shamelessly pushing to see how much Raney can take before she snaps. We do it to each other all the time. “If it’s an age thing, he can’t be more than a few years older than Koz?”

“He’s my father!” she bellows, throwing a handful of fries at me.

Clearly, I hit a nerve because Raney playing with her food is sacrilege. I dodge them all, plucking a fry off my shirt to dip in her ketchup. “Raney, babes, violence is not the answer. Besides, you said yourself that he’d love me.”

“Jesus, Tristan, don’t talk about King like that. Thinking of him as anything other than my dad is truly horrific!” She splutters, her face getting colour after she went white as a ghost, but now her eyes are all squinty.

“Didn’t you say he was young when he had you?” I ask innocently, probing for more details.

“Not the point,” she growls back better than an Alpha.

I interrupt her. “He’s so tall, I could climb him like a tree before…”

“Tristan, what is wrong with you? Stop talking!” She snarls, getting ready to climb to her feet to go street fighter in her attempt to make me stop talking.

Heidi steals the moment though. Her face is almost fuchsia, and she’s caught in a vicious loop of trying not to laugh while fighting to breathe, and when she pushes herself away from the table, trying to get some air in typical Scorned Girls style, she topples her chair and goes flailing backwards. Her expensive heels are the last thing we see.

Simona explodes, unable to hold in anymore of her bubbling laughter, and I watch impressed as she sprays our table with her fruity cocktail. Our demure and softly spoken fourth has a wicked streak as large as ours.

Raney’s composure snaps next. She’s not as showy as Heidi today, and she’s probably acting more restrained because Koz’s here, but she’s not ladylike either as she dissolves into a fit of laughter. She makes it worse by surging to her feet and clapping as Heidi fights to right herself and her chair.

Me? I sit back on my seat, and I lock eyes with King. After he stops staring up my skirt.

Then he’s up out of his chair, wavering between coming closer to help or making his escape.

Koz on the other hand has no hesitation in what he’s doing, he’s getting his girl. It’s cute the way he shakes his head in amusement as he approaches Raney like he knew something was going to happen, but the tiny tip of his lips makes it pretty clear no matter how goofy she is, she’s his and he’s hers.

King’s eyes track Koz on his way to Raney before he jumps into action along with the rest of his crowd as they come near to see if they can help, pointedly ignoring me which is fine. I’m still smiling from our last interlude.

We get wrangled into sensibility with comments about time and finishing things up. Goodbyes happen next, and they’re hurried. King comes over and gives his daughter a hug and throws his hand up as a goodbye to the rest of us before disappearing out the door with his similarly dressed disciples trailing after him.

Once he goes, I step over to save Heidi.

“Ho, are you good?” I ask, shoulder barging past her shitty bodyguards. They’re not shitty in what they do, just how they do it. The girls and I know how to deal with them.

Heidi’s relief is evident, and she huddles closer to me while also forcing her security team to retreat with an entitled glare before flinging her arm over my shoulder. We collect Simona on our way to the lifts, leaving Koz and Raney sharing a moment.

There’s a small crowd milling in the lobby; you can tell they’re diners from Chow Down, the hotels’ restaurant. The guests’ disapproval of our earlier antics reeks as much as the lemongrass and garlic in their food they ate. They shamelessly watch the three of us as we strut and laugh our way across the lobby. God, I wish I had a camera though, because it’s absolutely priceless watching their faces as the hotel manager comes and greets the girls and me like lifelong friends.

“Ladies, you’re all set up in your usual rooms,” Marcel says, his voice dropping low. He probably felt the attention of the diners, and he’s always been so very protective of us the few times we’ve stayed here. We go to slip into the private lifts, “Tristan, sorry… we’ve had to move you to a different floor. There was a plumbing issue earlier, but…”

“It’s a room!” I go to say more, but we’re deafened by the thundering noise of bike engines revving. You can’t see The Fallen, but by God you can hear them. A low, deepthroated rumble that makes me squeeze my eyes shut, rattles every window in the lobby as it fills with the noise of them idling on their bikes. We have to wait to talk until they roll out, and they do that just as suddenly as they started them.

Marcel looks professionally mortified, but he also knows Koz Siderno, international gun runner, is still in his establishment along with Koz’s men discreetly dotted around the place.

I lean over, pulling him back to me because you know, I’m just as important. “Don’t worry at all about the suite swap. Honestly there’s no problem. And if there’s a difference in cost, make sure you charge me this time.” I grin following after him as he retreats to the desk to swap keys with me.

With the new key in hand, the girls and I talk shit while we wait for the lift, and then they get out with suggestions of catching up for breakfast. I’m left taking a noisy exhale, relieved I’m alone and can drop the facade for a few hours. Why is it though that it’s always in those moments you get a second of peace that some asshole shatters it. A text on my phone from an unknown number is it?

Stay away.

“Right oh, weirdo,” I murmur to myself before flicking my phone to silent and refocusing on trying to relax again.

The suite helps foster the mood too. It’s stunning and invokes a strong sense of peace. Whoever the designer is, they’re a goddamn genius, and I’m so pleased my usual grey on grey suite was flooded. It was lovely but compared to this, there is no going back. The stylist went full Japandi—the white-on-white mix of Japanese and Scandinavian style means all the fittings, the furnishing, even the artwork is white, and oozes serenity.

I drop my bags on the oversized white chaise opening up the glass sliding doors to the outdoor patio. But the instant I see the hot-tub and the view, I circle back inside, switching all the lights off before I undress and grab a towel.

Walking outside, the light breeze is cooling and soft as silk against my skin, and I twist my hair up. I’m literally climbing up, ass in the breeze, when the front door opens. Twisting around and caught mid-scramble, I find King, who holds me hostage in one heated, slightly pissed off glance.

“We need to talk,” he growls, not too softly or quietly either.

He turns me on any time I look at him, but growling at me while power walking towards me with obvious intention in his deep brown eyes as I’m outside, naked, about to climb into a spa? Jesus, I fucking whine.

“Tristan…”

I think he’s meant for me to stop climbing in, but King saying my name for the first time is one of those moments that will be immortalised in my memories forever and a day.

I slide face first into the warm water because of the need to escape his inexplicable raw power. The man, with one word and a couple of hours, rewrites the definition of powerless in the dictionary. I lose all my wit and strength, but at the same time I don’t feel weak; I feel somehow stronger giving him the tools to make me a better, more honourable version of myself.

Omegas need. I know that and it’s not discounting how strong one Omega is over the other—at the end of the day, we were made for Alphas. In return, they were made to need us in equal measure.

Scent-matched bonds are the epitome of Alpha and Omega connection, and even underwater, I feel myself respond.

And it’s a poignant reminder, almost as special as him saying my name for the first time.