Obsession (Knot Club #3)

Chapter 2

Kieran

Three months ago, I lost the Whitfield case to a man I'd never met.

Not lost, exactly. I wasn't lead counsel.

Not even second chair. I was the junior associate buried in the back row, watching the other side's guy take our expert apart like it was nothing.

Four questions, and our guy tripped over himself twice.

Everyone in the room knew it was over before he even sat down.

I couldn't stop watching his hands. I don't tell anyone that part.

While our case was dying, I was just staring at this guy's hands.

The way he held his pen, loose between two fingers.

The way he flipped pages without even looking.

Like he already knew how it would end. Like he decided before he walked in, and the trial was just for show.

His name is Everett Callahan. I know that now.

Back then, I had to look it up after the fact, scrolling through the other firm's website at two in the morning like a total creep.

Not that I am one. Senior associate at Harding Knox.

Twenty-eight, maybe twenty-nine. Made senior faster than anyone I know.

So he's either a genius or has connections, or both.

Doesn't matter. He ruined our case and I've been stuck on it for three months.

Thinking about it. The case. Not him.

I adjust my mask in the bathroom mirror and tell myself that one more time.

The mask is matte black, covers everything, and cost more than my first suit.

No teeth, no designs, nothing flashy. Just a blank surface.

That's the point. At Knot Club, you're nobody.

No name, no firm, no politics. No omega who graduated top of his class still getting sent for coffee by alphas who can't even spell litigation.

I look good. Not bragging, just facts. Black jeans that cost way too much but make my ass look great.

Dark shirt I won't care about losing later.

My heat's just simmering right now. I can feel it—skin too sensitive, a little flush, a little slick.

Manageable. I can still think, still talk, still act normal.

Give it a few hours and that'll be gone, which is why timing matters.

I went off my suppressants six weeks ago, planned it down to the day.

That's who I am. And tonight's plan is simple.

Find Everett Callahan. Let him claim my heat. Take him apart.

I don't even know what "take him apart" means yet. Doesn't matter. The point is, I want to see the guy who owned that courtroom come undone for me. Maybe even beg. Lose that lazy control because an omega—because I—got under his skin so bad he can't think straight.

It's revenge. Obviously. He humiliated my team and I've been pissed about it ever since. This is how I settle the score. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The bass hits as soon as I step out of the bathroom.

Low enough to rattle my teeth. The club looks just like the photos.

Industrial, dark, ceilings so high they disappear.

The walls look like a warehouse that stopped pretending to be respectable.

Blue and purple lights cut through the haze, picking out bodies, masks catching the glow like floating skulls.

But the smell.

Pheromones hit me like a wall. I actually stop walking.

It's every alpha in the room at once—arousal, competition, that sharp musk of guys looking to fuck.

And underneath, omega heat. So much of it.

That desperate, sweet-wet scent that makes every alpha snap their head around.

And under all of that, the smell of sex—slick, come, sweat.

Proof of what's already happening in every corner.

My nipples are hard before I've taken three steps.

There's a fresh pulse of slick between my thighs and I clench my jaw.

I was not planning to get wet the second I walked in.

I make myself keep walking.

Some of the omegas are way further gone than me.

One by the far wall has been in heat for a while—shirt gone, back arched, head tipped back, throat bare.

Slick running down his thighs, dripping onto the floor.

Two alphas are circling, trying to decide who gets him.

He doesn't care. His hips keep rolling, like he's trying to fuck something that's not there.

The sounds coming out of him are wrecked—more whimpers than words.

I watch one alpha finally step in, hand landing on the omega's hip.

The noise the omega makes is so raw and grateful my stomach drops.

Not disgust. Recognition. I know exactly how that feels.

Closer to the center, another omega is getting fucked.

Bent over a low leather couch, pants around his knees, alpha behind him gripping his hips so hard I can see the finger marks from here.

The alpha is driving into him, long and steady.

I can hear it over the bass—the wet, filthy sound of slick and skin.

The omega's hands are fisted in the cushion, mouth open against the leather, making this broken, desperate noise.

No dignity left. The alpha's slowing down, grip getting tighter.

He's about to knot. A beta staff member walks by with a tray of water bottles, doesn't even look over, just sidesteps the wet spot like it's nothing.

Nobody else is watching. This is just background here.

An omega getting railed while a beta steps around the mess. Normal night.

My heat responds to all of it. Of course it does.

The pheromones, the sounds, watching omegas get exactly what I came for—it all feeds the slow burn that's been building since I woke up.

My skin is flushed, I'm wet enough to be glad for dark jeans, and even the air on my arms makes me shiver.

Every breath brings in more alpha scent, and every one makes me wetter.

I shift my weight, feel the slick, and tell my body to get its shit together.

I find a spot along the gallery staircase railing — visible but not desperate — and scan the floor.

It takes me less than two minutes to find him.

Everett Callahan is standing near the center of the floor with two other alphas, and I stop breathing.

That motherfucker. Look at him, standing there like he owns this place too, like every room he walks into is just another courtroom waiting for his closing argument.

He's wearing a dark mask. Angular, aggressive, covers everything above his jaw.

Doesn't matter. I'd know him anywhere. I've spent three months memorizing how this guy holds a room, and he's doing it here just like in court.

Shoulders back, weight easy, head tilted like everyone else is just background noise.

The alphas next to him are bigger, broader, but it doesn't matter.

He's the center of gravity and they know it.

I watched a jury rearrange itself around this man.

Now I'm watching two alphas do the same.

It's never about size with him. It's that calm, unhurried certainty that the room is his.

And the worst part—the part that's kept me up for twelve weeks—is that he's always right.

And he has tattoos. I wasn't expecting that.

I can't make out the designs from here but they look extensive, crawling across his chest and shoulders.

The tendons in his forearms shift when he gestures, and my brain immediately flashes to those hands on my hips, gripping me like that alpha on the couch.

I have to shake my head to kill the image before it gets worse.

This is about revenge. Stay focused.

Then his scent hits me and I grab the railing so hard my knuckles go white.

Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.

In the courtroom, his scent was barely there.

Filtered through recycled air and too many bodies.

I caught it once—a thread of something dark and warm when he walked past our table.

It stuck in my brain for three days, like a word on the tip of my tongue.

I told myself I was imagining it. Making it up.

Projecting onto some random alpha because I was pissed about the case and my stupid omega biology was mixing up anger and attraction, like always.

I was not imagining it.

My memory was nothing compared to the real thing.

In here, with the air thick with pheromones, his scent cuts through everything.

The same dark warmth, but more. Layered.

There's something sharp under it—not cologne, not fake, just him.

My body reacts like it's been starving for three months and just found food.

My heat spikes so fast it nearly takes my knees out.

The slick isn't building slowly anymore.

It floods, sudden and hot and so much that I feel it sliding down my inner thighs and I actually look down to check if it's visible through the denim.

My cock is stiffening and my hole is clenching around nothing in these rhythmic, needy pulses that I can't stop and can't ignore.

There is a very real part of my brain that wants to walk across this floor, shove those other alphas out of the way, get on my knees in front of this man and present for him right here against the gallery railing like the omega by the wall, bare and dripping and past the point of caring who sees.

I can feel exactly how it would go — his hands on me, his cock in me, the stretch and the fullness and the relief of finally, finally —

I don't do that. I came here with a plan and I'm going to stick to it even if my body is staging a mutiny.

But my hands are shaking. I have to close my eyes and breathe through it. If this is what Everett Callahan does to me from thirty feet away, through a crowd, I'm in way more trouble than I planned for.

Okay. Fine. He smells incredible and my body wants him bad enough to humiliate me in public. Doesn't change the plan. Real arousal is harder to fake, and now I don't have to. If anything, it's an advantage.

I take another breath, force my hands to let go of the railing, and let my scent out.

Not all the way—I'm not broadcasting blind need like some rookie—but enough.

Aimed right at him. I let it carry everything—heat, want, slick, the signal that I'm wet and ready and choosing him. That's the bait. I need him to bite.

Everett's head turns.

He doesn't jerk around. Just lifts his chin a little, nostrils flaring behind the mask as he catches what I'm giving him.

Then he goes still. I know that look from the courtroom—the same focus he had before he gutted our witness.

The alphas next to him are still talking.

He doesn't hear a word. He's found my scent in the noise, just like I found his.

For a long moment, neither of us moves. Just two people staring at each other through masks, with someone getting knotted ten feet away.

My heat climbs with every second he looks at me.

I can feel my slick soaking through the denim now. I don't care.

I hold my ground. I don't reach for him, don't move, don't act desperate like every other omega here. I make him come to me. That's the game. That's the point. Even now, with my thighs wet and my hands shaking and my heat chewing through my self-control, I'm still the one running this.

Everett says something to the alphas beside him — brief, dismissive, already done with them — and starts walking toward me.

I stay where I am, one hand on the railing, and let him come.