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LOTUS FUCKS US , but she won’t take our knots. She makes us lie down on the bed next to each other, both of us bare-ass naked, our cocks pointing straight at the ceiling, and she takes her time straddling first one of us and then the other, riding us, and playing with her own nipples.
I can’t decide which I like better, honestly, having her sit on me and fuck me or watching her moan and bounce up and down on Striker. I realized I like looking at naked Striker almost as much as I like looking at naked Lotus.
But really, I guess I’ve known that for a while.
When we first met each other at the facility, honestly, we’d always get hard for each other. It was one of the things about Striker I liked the most, the way I was attracted to him. When that happened at first, I was too innocent, just a blank slate really, to understand anything about that. I only liked it. He looked good, and he smelled good, and when my dick got hard, that was good.
But then we got punished for getting erections for each other.
So, eventually, they stopped.
I think they’re going to come back now, though.
I reach over and kiss Striker at one point, while he’s watching me get fucked, his gaze all eager and his hand snaking over to play with Lotus’s clit.
We try to tell her that she has to get knotted.
“Mmm, have to?” she says, her voice a sexy groan as she squeezes her sweet, wet pussy around my dick.
“Calix says it’s good for you,” says Striker.
“You know you want it,” I say to her.
She just giggles.
“Come on, omega, this is for your own good,” says Striker.
“I’m fine here,” she says, breathless. “You can just toy with my clit until I come, Striker, and then I’ll be just fine.”
“No, no you need a knot,” says Striker. “And if you don’t take a knot right now, I’m going to have Arrow force his into you.”
“Force me?” she says, giving him a haughty look. “Try it.”
“Arrow, knot her,” says Striker, and it’s that tone of his that he has, and I know instinctively it’s a bark.
I heard about barks growing up. They’re this thing that makes alphas scary or whatever, and why alphas shouldn’t be around omegas too much or whatever, because it makes them out of control and more likely to do fucked up things like bark. Basically, a bark is like compulsion, like on The Vampire Diaries or whatever. (What? My wife liked the show. I think she had a thing for that Ian Somerhault guy—whatever his name is—but when we were teenagers, she’d be hot afterwards, and I’d watch it with her because I’d usually get laid. It wasn’t a bad show, anyway.)
It’s only a for a minute, and it wears off right after, which is not like the show, but it is kind of screwed up. I wonder if I can do it, since I’m an alpha. I’ve never tried.
Anyway, when Striker barks, it takes me over for a second, and I immediately obey him. I dig my fingers into Lotus’s hips, turn her over, and now I’m on top.
She’s gasping. “Stop, don’t you dare, Arrow,” she says to me.
And now, like, I have to obey her.
“Do it,” says Striker.
The bark collides with her directive in a way that hurts, but it also makes my dick harder for whatever reason. “Fuck you both,” I pant. “You’re just playing with me.”
“Striker started it,” says Lotus.
“You need a knot,” says Striker. “Stop being a brat and take an alpha knot in that pussy of yours now.”
“Stop telling me what to do,” says Lotus to Striker.
“Come on, Lotus,” I say. “Please? Please, let your alpha knot your pretty pussy? Please?”
“Oh,” she says, sticking out her lower lip. “Begging’s no fair. You’re cheating.”
I laugh. “Am I?”
“Knot me, alpha,” she says breathily. “Knot me right now.”
I knot her.
And there’s a fucking knock on the door.
knight
THE ELEVATOR DOOR opens and there’s a gun in my face.
I should have expected that, but I didn’t.
So, I just put my hands up. “Caught me,” I say. “Can you take me to Dr. Acker? Tell her I missed her? Really, really missed her?”
The two security guards with guns don’t like it when I’m talking. Their faces turn white.
“Right, I should have pretended to still be brain damaged,” I say.
“Come with us,” says one of them gruffly.
“Hands on your head,” says the other.
I put my hands on my head.
They pat me down for weapons. Then they march me through the corridors of the lower levels, all the way to Dr. Acker’s offices.
I wait until I see her opening the door to elbow one of the security guards in the face.
He’s so surprised, he actually drops his gun.
I catch it.
The other guard is shooting at me at that point.
I hit the floor, bringing up the first guy’s gun and shooting that guy in the face. Then I turn and take down the other guy.
Okay, dead guards, bad. Lotus wouldn’t like it. Striker wouldn’t like it. But. Whatever. I have to make a few sacrifices here, and these guys shouldn’t be working for Cedar Falls. They see what’s going on here. If they haven’t made a moral stand, maybe they deserve it.
Now I’ve got a gun.
I press it right into Dr. Acker’s forehead, directly between her eyes, right at the bridge of her nose. “Hi there, Dr. Acker,” I say to her. “Missed you.”
She swallows visibly. “Knight,” she says. “Of course you missed me. Why don’t you put that gun down, like a good boy?”
“Why don’t you stop treating me like a fucking dog?” I say. “Now, we are going to go up the elevator and out of this place, and you are going to make sure that no one tries to stop us. Because if they do, I will shoot you. Are we clear?”
She seethes.
“Do I have to hurt you to get you to agree with me, Dr. Acker?” I grin at her. “I do like hurting women, as you well know. You made sure bleeding women is the best route to a chubby for me, didn’t you?”
She swallows again.
“Are we clear?” I growl.
“Clear,” she says, glaring at me.
striker
I GET UP off the bed. “I’m going to go get rid of whoever that is,” I say to Arrow and Lotus. Arrow’s on top of her, knot snug all the way inside her. They smell fucking dynamite. They look incredibly sexy. I want to stay here and watch them fuck more than pretty much anything on earth.
But someone’s knocking on the door.
“Who could it even be?” says Lotus.
“Fuck her,” I say to Arrow. “Fuck her hard enough that she can’t even think those kinds of thoughts.” I’m pulling on my pants, no underwear. I shrug into my shirt.
“I don’t think they knocked again,” says Lotus. “Maybe they went away.”
“I hope so,” I say. I just want to come back here and watch them fuck. I step into the hallway.
And someone is standing there. It’s a woman. How’d she get in? Did we leave the door unlocked, or did she have a key?
She looks me over. “Who the fuck are you?” she says.
“Shit,” comes Arrow’s voice from the room.
The woman’s eyes widen. She pushes past me to open the door to the bedroom and she lets out a little cry.
“Carla, for fuck’s sake,” says Arrow. “Back out of the damned room.”
Carla.
Oh, hell. I fold my arms over my chest. “You’re, uh, his wife.”
She flattens herself into the wall, letting out tiny, noisy breaths, shaking her head over and over again.
“Hey, Striker, little help?” says Arrow. “Can you bark my knot away?”
“Uh, I’ll try,” I say. “Deflate,” I bellow.
Silence.
“Nope,” says Arrow. “That’s, uh, nope.”
Carla lifts a finger. “He’s alive.”
“Yeah,” I say to her. “That’s probably a shock.”
She covers her mouth with one hand.
“Uh, let’s go into the living room, Carla,” I say. “Just you and me, okay? And we can let, erm…” What was Arrow’s actual name again? “Adam, finish up in there, yeah? Because maybe if he finishes—”
“Oh, fuck you, Striker,” yells Arrow.
“Wait, Carla?” comes the voice of Lotus. “That’s…”
I decide to take Carla by the arm and drag her away from that.
But when we get into the living room, she won’t sit down. She paces, hands behind her back, shaking her head again and again.
“You probably have questions,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No, no, I don’t know if I do. I always wondered if he wanted out, if he wanted to go be an alpha with… you know… if I wasn’t enough for him. I always wondered.”
“Well, no, it’s not like that,” I say.
She just paces.
“Should I tell you what happened?” I say.
“No,” she says. “No, not yet, please. Not yet.”
So, I don’t say anything.
She paces in silence for some time.
Sort of silence.
Because they are fucking back there, and I can hear it. Carla can hear it.
This is really uncomfortable, so I say, “I don’t understand why you’re even here. I thought this house was in his family, not yours. You married him, but he’s dead, as far as you know, so why would you come out here to his family’s beach house?”
“Oh God,” she says, and now she does sit down on the couch. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”
I blink at her. “If you don’t want to answer that question, I guess that’s fair.”
She swallows. “I, um, I remarried.”
“Sure,” I say. “You thought he was dead.”
“It’s been four years,” she says.
“Has it.” I swallow hard, wondering if it’s been the same amount for me, or if it’s been something different. It would depend when I checked in. We didn’t all check in at the same time, I don’t suppose. I should have gotten Calix to give us some information about that.
“I married his brother.”
“Oh,” I say. “Oh, well, so that’s why you’re here.”
“Yeah, someone from this neighborhood called us, said that people were down at the house, and no one was signed up for it. We called everyone in the family and no one knew anything, and so I said I was sure they were confused, but that I’d just drive by. We only live maybe forty minutes away, so it’s not too big of a deal to come down here and look in on the place.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding. “I guess we could have been more discreet.”
“He’s, um, Adam’s, um, he’s in one of those pack things, isn’t he? You guys are both… with that woman. Is she an omega? Because I’ve heard about people trying it, kind of like the Polloi but without all the weird shit, you know? Trying the pack thing. They say it’s better for alphas, really, than trying to be with, um…” She swallows. “With normal people?”
“Betas,” I supply.
“Well, that’s offensive. Who wants to be called a beta?” She shrugs. “You’re the beginning of the alphabet and the omegas are the end of the alphabet, and I’m supposed to be what? B? B-person? B-roll? B-list? B-anything? Is that ever a positive thing?”
“Okay, okay, I get where you’re coming from,” I say. “We could find a different word, it’s true. But I don’t think you guys should get to be ‘normal’ and we should have to be freaks.”
“I never said that,” says Carla. “Did I say that?”
“Striker?” yells Arrow. “Can you come back here?”
“Uh, yeah,” I say. I give Carla a little smile. “One moment.”
“Oh, sure,” she says, nodding, letting out a nearly hysterical laugh. “Sure thing.”
I go back into the bedroom.
“Get him out of me,” says Lotus the minute I get in there. “I cannot have him knotted into me while his damned wife is out there.”
“She married your brother,” I say.
“Mikey?” says Arrow.
“How many brothers do you have?” I say.
“She’s remarried,” says Lotus. “Well, that’s relieving.”
The door to the bedroom pushes open.
“Carla!” snaps Arrow, pulling up a blanket over himself and Lotus.
“Oh, my God,” says Carla, shaking her head.
“I’m so sorry,” says Lotus. “We didn’t even remember our past lives until days ago, you know, and we have a scent match, and we really can’t help it, I swear, or I wouldn’t be—”
“You’re really alive,” says Carla.
Arrow twists around to look at her. “You married Mikey?”
“Jeff,” she says.
“Seriously,” he says. “Well, what happened to Donna?”
Carla hangs her head. “I mean… we didn’t mean it to happen. We were grieving. Together. Which somehow got… intimate.”
“You broke up Jeff’s marriage to Donna?” says Arrow. “You’re using my death as an excuse? That’s not even like you.”
“Well, this doesn’t seem like you,” says Carla, gesturing at him. “And don’t worry, omega woman—”
“Lotus,” I supply.
“That’s a pretty name,” says Carla. “Anyway, don’t worry, Lotus. We’d never have lasted, anyway. And it’s been a long time, so this is, um, this is shocking, but it’s not, um, it’s fine.” She leans into the door jamb. “I just wish you wouldn’t have run away, Adam. If you wanted out, we could have gotten divorced or we could have—”
“I didn’t run away,” says Arrow.
“Yeah,” I say. “This wasn’t a choice.”
“Wait, so, you didn’t pay that facility to say you were dead and say that your body had been lost?” she says.
“No,” says Arrow. “No, they kept me alive and lied to you so that they could do experiments on me.”
“They did what?” Carla’s eyes get very wide.
“It happened to all of us,” I say quietly.
“But that… they told us…” Carla’s jaw works as she tries to process that. “They can’t just do something like that. How are they getting away with it?”
“Well, we had amnesia,” say Arrow, “and we were treated like animals, and—”
“Oh, my God.” Carla puts her hand over her mouth. “Oh, Adam, I’m so…” She lets out a noise. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“No, of course you didn’t know,” says Arrow. “You didn’t do anything wrong here. Please, don’t—”
“If I had known,” Carla says, adamant, “I never would have had sex with Jeff. I would have come looking for you.”
“It’s really okay,” says Arrow. “It’s, you know, fine. But can we…” He gestures down at Lotus. “I can’t really talk right now.”
Carla grimaces and looks up at me. She starts to back away, lifting both of her hands, shaking her head back and forth very quickly.
“Wait,” calls Lotus. “You’re not angry at him? You don’t blame me? Because I didn’t know he was married. I just want you to know that.”
Carla lets out a disbelieving noise that might be a laugh.
“I really didn’t know,” Lotus says.
Carla backs up further, and she lets out another noise, and if she’s laughing, it’s not because she thinks this is funny.
“I’m sorry,” says Lotus. “I’m really, really sorry.”
Carla backs up further, still shaking her head. Her voice is very tiny. “I’m so confused right now.”
Lotus calls after her, “I’m not the kind of person who has sex with a man who’s married.”
“I’m married to someone else ,” says Carla. “Also…” She points at the splintered door. “Can we talk about this?”