Chapter 5
Everett
The knot takes twenty-three minutes to go down. I know because I count.
It's a habit from work. When you're waiting for a jury to come back, you count.
When you're holding a silence after a question that landed, you count.
It keeps you grounded, keeps you from filling the space with something stupid.
So I count, and I breathe, and I stay inside him while his body slowly releases its grip on mine, and I pay attention to what happens when the heat-fog starts to clear.
What happens is interesting.
Most omegas, after knotting, go soft. Pliant. They melt into whoever's holding them, scent turning sweet and sleepy, mumbling things they won't remember. I like that part—the quiet window where biology strips everything down and the person underneath is just there, unguarded and warm.
This omega doesn't do that. He goes quiet when the knot starts to shrink, which is normal, but instead of softening into me, he pulls himself together.
I feel it in his body—the tension coming back in his shoulders, his breathing shifting from ragged to controlled.
By the time I slip out, he's already propped on his elbows, spine straight like someone who learned to hold himself upright even when he's dead tired.
Minutes ago, he was crying into the sheets while I knotted him. Now he's putting himself back together, fast, like a soldier after an ambush. That speed tells me more about him than anything else tonight.
"There's water on the side table," I say. I reach over and grab one of the bottles and hold it out.
He takes it and drinks without looking at me, and I watch his throat work and the way he holds the bottle — fingers steady, grip controlled. He's already running his own debrief in his head. I can tell.
"You came back fast," I say.
He glances at me over the bottle. "Came back from what?"
"Most omegas stay under longer after a knotting like that. You're already thinking again."
A pause. Then, carefully: "I don't like not being able to think."
"Yeah, I got that." I settle back against the headboard and watch him, not bothering to hide it.
He sits on the edge of the bed, back mostly to me.
His body is beautiful in the low light—lean, flushed, slick shining on his thighs, bruises already blooming on his hips where I held him.
But the way he sits is all wrong for what just happened.
He looks like he's at a conference table, not like he just got fucked into the mattress.
"What do you do?" I ask. "Outside of here."
His head turns slightly. "That's not really a Knot Club question."
"I'm not asking for your business card. I'm curious."
"Why?"
Because you're performing. Because you were calculating through half of what just happened and I want to know what kind of person can do that in peak heat.
Because you chose me with a precision that doesn't match anything else about how omegas behave on this floor and I've been trying to figure out why since you looked at me from the gallery railing.
"Because you interest me," I say, which is true enough.
He goes quiet, drinking the water in small sips.
I can smell him thinking. With omegas, it's real—their scent shifts when they're calculating, different from when they're relaxed.
His scent is tangled right now. Part of him wants to shut this down, part of him doesn't, and I don't think he knows which side is winning.
"I'm a lawyer," he says, and then his mouth closes like he didn't mean to say that.
I almost laugh. A lawyer. Of course he is.
That explains the posture, the composure, the way he argued with me while I had my hand on his cock.
The man litigates as foreplay. It also explains the strategy I've been picking up under everything he does, that sense I'm being managed by someone who knows exactly how to handle people.
"What kind?" I ask.
"The kind that doesn't usually end up at anonymous sex clubs." He sets the water bottle down and I can see him deciding to change the subject. "What about you?"
"Same, actually."
His whole body goes still for a split second.
It's quick—if I wasn't watching, I'd miss it.
His shoulders tense, his breathing shifts, and his scent spikes with adrenaline.
Not arousal. Something sharper, more alert.
Then it's gone and he's smooth again, casual, turning to look at me with his head tilted.
"Small world," he says, and his voice is perfectly even.
That reaction is off. Finding out the alpha who just knotted you shares your job should be a weird coincidence, maybe a little awkward.
It shouldn't make your scent spike like you just spotted a cop in your rearview.
He knows something I don't, or he wanted something I didn't give him.
I file that away and let the silence stretch.
"You're staring at me," he says after a while.
"I'm trying to figure you out."
"Good luck with that."
"I'm pretty good at reading people. It's sort of the job."
"So is mine, and you're not as opaque as you think you are either." He says it with an edge, some of that sharpness from before the knotting. He's getting his armor back on. The lull is giving him time to rebuild, and the longer we sit here, the more layers he puts back in place.
Which means I have a choice about what happens next.
His heat is still going. I can smell it building again under the post-knotting calm, the next wave gathering strength.
He's got maybe twenty minutes before it crests, maybe less.
I could wait for it to hit and fuck him again, ride it out, knot him, and call it a night.
That would be the normal thing. That would be enough.
But I don't want enough. I want to see what's under the performance, and I'm not going to get there by letting him put his walls back up and run the same play again.
I get off the bed and walk to the side table and open the drawer.
"What are you doing?" he asks, and there's a wariness in his voice that tells me his guard is up.
The drawer has the usual: condoms we don't need, lube we don't need, towels.
Under that, in a separate compartment, there's a small case with a few higher-end items. A prostate vibrator, sleek and dark, with a remote.
A silicone cock ring. A set of restraints I leave alone.
I take out the vibrator and the ring and bring them back to the bed.
He looks at what I'm holding, then at me, and I can see the argument coming. "You think you need toys? Most alphas just use their dick."
"Most alphas don't know what they're doing." I sit on the edge of the bed near him, close enough to touch but not touching yet. "These aren't for me. These are for you."
"I don't need—"
"You don't need them. But I want to use them on you, and I want you to let me, and I want to see what happens when you can't control the pace anymore." I hold up the vibrator. "This goes inside you. The ring goes on your cock. And I decide when you come."
His scent flares—arousal and something else, something stubborn, the smell of an omega who wants and hates wanting. His thighs press together, and I know he's getting wetter, his body giving in even while his brain scrambles for control.
"And if I say no?" he asks, his voice steady but with a breathiness underneath.
"Then I put them back and we do this however you want." I mean it. I'm not interested in pushing past a real boundary. "But I don't think you're going to say no. I think you want to find out what happens, and you're pissed at yourself for wanting it."
He stares at me for a long time. His chest is rising and falling faster than it was a minute ago and his scent is getting heavier and I can see the heat starting to work on him again, the flush spreading down his neck, his pupils dilating behind the mask.
The next wave is coming whether he agrees to this or not, and we both know it.
"Fine," he says, like he's agreeing to unfavorable terms in a negotiation. "But if you're boring with them, I'm taking over."
"You won't be taking over." I lean forward and kiss the corner of his jaw where the mask ends and feel him shiver. "Lie back."
He does, and the lack of a fight tells me his heat is already working on him.
He lies back on the ruined sheets and I can see everything — his cock half-hard against his belly, the slick glistening between his thighs, the bruises on his hips from my hands, the flush that goes from his face down to his chest. He looks wrecked and beautiful and furious about both of those things, and I want to take him apart so thoroughly he forgets what his own name is.
I slide the cock ring on first. He hisses when it snaps into place at the base, snug, and his cock twitches and starts to thicken and I can see him registering what this means.
That he can't come until I let him, that the buildup is going to happen with no release valve, that he just handed me control of the one thing his body is going to want most when the wave hits.
"Comfortable?" I ask, and I'm smiling and he can tell.
"You're enjoying this," he says, and it's an accusation.
"Very much." I run my hand up his inner thigh, slow, and his leg trembles and falls open wider and a fresh trickle of slick runs down toward the sheets. "I'm enjoying this a lot."
The vibrator goes in easy. He's so wet from the knotting that it slides home with barely any resistance, and the sound he makes when it seats against his prostate is gorgeous, this choked gasp that he bites down on too late.
I hold the remote and turn it on, low, just a steady hum, and watch his entire body tense.
"Oh, fuck," he breathes, and his hips shift restlessly against the mattress.
"That's the lowest setting," I tell him. "There are six."
"You're an asshole."