3. Chapter 3 #3
I don't touch myself again, but I don't sleep either.
And when the first gray light of dawn creeps through the window, I'm still awake, still aching, still replaying every moment of the dream in excruciating detail, the hands, the mouths, the voices, the scents, the impossible, devastating pleasure of being wanted by all three of them at once.
I am in so much trouble.
And the worst part, the part that terrifies me more than the heat, more than the slick, more than the primal need that's eating me alive, is that I don't want to be anywhere else.
I press my face into the cedar-scented pillow and whisper a single word into the darkness.
"Please."
Chapter Four
Knox
I haven't slept a single goddamn minute since the dream.
Every time I close my eyes, I'm back in the dream.
Back between Willow's thighs, her slick coating my chin, her taste, honey and salt and something impossibly sweet, lingering on my tongue like a drug I can't shake.
My cock has been hard since the moment she walked out of the elevator, and jerking off twice in the dark did absolutely nothing except make the sheets sticky and my patience nonexistent.
Dreams shared between scent-matches aren't uncommon. I knew that intellectually. The agency's literature mentioned it: shared sensory experiences during sleep, biological bridging between compatible partners. But reading about it in a brochure and living it are two very different things.
I didn't just dream about her. I was with her.
I felt her body beneath my hands, felt the tremor in her thighs when my tongue touched her clit, felt the way her channel clamped around my fingers when she came.
I felt her real orgasm ripple through the dream like a shockwave, and I woke up with my knot fully inflated, my boxers soaked with precum, and her name on my lips.
And then I stood in the hallway like a goddamn creep, listening to her breathe, because I couldn't make myself walk away.
JD's order echoes in my head: ‘Nobody touches her. Not until she's ready. Not until she asks.’
Fine. I can be patient. I can also be strategic.
Because here's the thing about Willow that JD and Deklan are too busy being noble to notice - she's already asking.
Her body is screaming for us. Her scent is a constant broadcast of arousal and need.
The dream wasn't just a fantasy, it was her omega instincts reaching out, pulling us in, begging for connection.
She might not be ready to say the words with her mouth, but her biology is doing plenty of talking.
And I speak fluent biology.
By the time dawn breaks, I've already showered, cold water again, because hot water makes me think of JD in his shower and the sounds Willow made through the wall, dressed in a white t-shirt and gray sweatpants.
No underwear, because everything feels like too much fabric against my skin right now, and also because I'm a bastard who knows exactly what he's doing.
I pad barefoot into the kitchen at 6:15 AM.
The penthouse kitchen is ridiculous. Marble countertops, a Sub-Zero fridge, and a stove with more burners than any household needs. But I'm not here to cook. I'm here to wait.
I start the coffee maker, lean against the counter, and wait.
At 6:47, I hear her door open.
The soft pad of bare feet on hardwood. The rustle of fabric.
And then, Christ, then her scent hits me, rolling down the hallway like a wave.
Honey and vanilla, still thick with sleep, still layered with the lingering traces of last night's arousal.
She didn't shower. She's still wearing whatever she slept in, which means her skin is still carrying the scent of her slick, of her dream, of the orgasm that I felt through the walls.
My knot twitches. My cock, already half-hard, fills completely, pressing against the gray fabric of my sweatpants in a way that's obscenely obvious.
I don't adjust myself. I let her see. I want her to see.
She rounds the corner into the kitchen, and I watch her stop dead.
She's wearing an oversized t-shirt, one of the extras Deklan left in her room, I'm guessing, because it's way too big on her.
It falls to mid-thigh, the neckline slipping off one shoulder, exposing the delicate curve of her collarbone.
Her hair is a mess, honey-brown tangles spilling over her shoulders.
Her eyes are puffy from lack of sleep, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted.
She looks like she just rolled out of bed after being thoroughly fucked.
She wasn't. But God, I want to fix that.
"Morning," I say. My voice comes out lower than intended, rougher. The Alpha in me is too close to the surface, and I don't bother pushing it down. Let her hear it. Let her feel it.
"Morning." Her voice is a croak. She clears her throat, eyes darting around the kitchen, landing everywhere except on me. "Is there coffee?"
"Almost ready." I nod toward the machine. "Cups are in the cabinet above the sink."
She moves toward it, and I watch her. I don't pretend not to.
I watch the way her hips sway under that oversized shirt, the way her bare legs flex with each step, the way the hem rides up when she reaches for the cabinet.
She has to stand on her toes, and the shirt rides up enough to reveal the bottom curve of her ass.
She's not wearing underwear.
The realization hits me like a punch to the gut. She's standing in my kitchen, three feet from me, wearing nothing but a t-shirt. No bra, I can see the shape of her nipples pressing against the thin cotton. No panties. Just bare, soft skin from mid-thigh down.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I grip the edge of the counter so hard the marble creaks.
She gets her cup and turns around, and the movement brings her face-to-face with the situation in my sweatpants.
Her eyes drop, instinct, biology, whatever, and then snap back up so fast I almost laugh.
Her blush is immediate and spectacular, spreading from her cheeks down her neck and disappearing beneath the collar of her shirt.
"Knox…"
"Don't." I hold up a hand. "Don't apologize. Don't look away. Don't pretend you didn't just stare at my cock for three full seconds."
"I wasn't…" She swallows. "I wasn't staring."
"You were absolutely staring." I push off the counter and take a step toward her. "And I'm absolutely hard. And we're both absolutely thinking about last night."
Her grip on the coffee cup tightens. Her knuckles go white. "I don't know what you're…"
"The dream, Willow." I take another step. Close now. Close enough to see the pulse hammering in her throat. "You think I didn't feel it? You think JD and Deklan didn't feel it? We were in it. I was in it. Between your legs. And you came so hard you woke up screaming."
Her breath catches and a fresh wave of slick hits the air, honey and vanilla thickening, darkening, going wet and wanton, and my Alpha instincts surge so hard I have to clench my fists to keep from grabbing her.
"You felt that?" she whispers.
"Every. Fucking. Second." I'm close enough to touch her now, but I don't. Not yet.
"I felt your hands in my hair. I felt your thighs shaking around my face.
I felt you clench around my fingers when you came.
" I lean in, my lips brushing the shell of her ear, and lower my voice to a growl.
"I still have the taste of you on my tongue, little omega. And it's making me insane."
She trembles. I can see it, a fine, full-body shudder that starts in her shoulders and rolls down to her toes. Her scent is flooding the kitchen now, so thick and sweet it's almost visible, and her chest rises and falls with rapid, shallow breaths.
"Knox, we can't…"
"Can't what?"
I pull back just enough to look at her face. Her eyes are wide and dark, the pupils blown so wide the color is barely visible. Her lips are parted, her breath coming in small, desperate puffs.
"Can't want each other? Too late. Can't stop thinking about it? Too late. Can't acknowledge that you're standing in my kitchen without underwear, soaked through, smelling like every fantasy I've ever had?"
Her eyes widen. "How did you…"
"I can smell you, Willow." I reach out and trace the line of her jaw with my fingertip.
Feather-light. Barely a touch. But she leans into it like a flower toward the sun.
"I can smell how wet you are. I can smell that you're not wearing anything under that shirt.
I can smell that you've been aching since the moment you walked into this penthouse. "
My finger traces down her throat, along her collarbone, to the edge of the oversized shirt. "And I can smell that you're getting wetter right now, standing this close to me, even though you're trying so hard to pretend you're not."
A small, broken sound escapes her lips.
"JD said not to touch you," I murmur. My finger traces back up her throat, tipping her chin up. "He said not until you ask. And I'm going to honor that, because JD is a stubborn bastard who's usually right, and because you deserve better than an Alpha who can't control himself."
Her eyes search mine. "Then what are you doing?"
"Loving you within an inch of your sanity," I say, and I mean it.
I watch her pupils dilate, watch her lips part further, watch the flush spread down her chest. "I'm going to stand here, and I'm going to tell you exactly what I want to do to you, and you're going to listen.
And if you want me to stop, if you genuinely, honestly want me to walk away, you say the word, and I'm gone. "
She doesn't say the word. Instead, her chest heaves and her thighs press together. But she doesn't say stop.
"I want to put my hands on you," I say, my voice dropping to a register that's barely above a growl.
"I want to slide my hand between your legs and feel how wet you are.
I want to push my fingers inside you, two of them, maybe three, and feel you clench around me while I stroke that spot that makes you see God. "
Her breath hitches.