3. Chapter 3 #5
"I should…" She gestures vaguely toward the hallway. "Lily. I should get ready for Lily."
"She doesn't wake up for another twenty minutes," JD says. His dark eyes track her movement. "But you're right. You should get dressed."
The subtext is clear: Put some clothes on, because I can smell you, and I'm barely holding on.
Willow nods quickly. "Right. Yes. Dressed. Clothes." She sets her coffee cup down and practically flees the kitchen, her bare feet slapping against the hardwood. I watch her go, the sway of her hips, the flash of bare thigh, the way the shirt rides up as she moves, and I don't pretend not to.
The moment she's out of earshot, JD turns on me. "Knox."
"Don't start." I hold up a hand. "I didn't touch her."
"You were two inches away from burying your face between her legs."
"I was talking to her. There's a difference."
"Not when you talk like that." JD sets his coffee cup down with a click.
"She's overwhelmed. She's scared. She's in a house with three men she's biologically wired to surrender to, and she's trying to hold herself together with nothing but stubbornness and a thrift-store wardrobe.
The last thing she needs is you whispering pornographic filth in her ear before she's had her coffee. "
"You're right," I say.
JD blinks. He wasn't expecting that. "I'm right?" he repeats.
"You're right. She is overwhelmed. She is scared.
And I did push too hard, too fast." I take a sip of coffee.
"But JD, she's aching. Not just physically.
Emotionally. She needs to know this is real.
She needs to know we're not going to pretend the match doesn't exist, because pretending would be crueler than acknowledging it. "
JD is quiet for a moment. "Did she ask?"
"No." I pause. "But she asked me to touch her. Just her hip. Just contact. She said, 'just this, for now.' And I did. And then I backed off."
Something shifts in JD's expression. The hard line of his jaw softens by a fraction. "She asked you to touch her."
"She put my hand on her hip herself. Lifted it, placed it there." I meet his eyes. "She's not running, JD. She's reaching. She just doesn't know how to reach for all of us yet."
The silence stretches. JD stares into his coffee cup like it holds the answers to the universe.
"Twenty minutes," he says finally. "She has twenty minutes to get dressed before Lily wakes up. I'll make breakfast. You, " He points at me. "Put on some goddamn underwear. Your knot is showing."
I glance down. He's not wrong. The base of my cock is visibly swollen beneath the gray fabric, a thick ridge that's impossible to miss.
"It's not a knot," I say. "Not yet. Just... swelling."
"Same thing. Underwear. Now."
I salute him with my coffee cup and head toward my room. But at the hallway entrance, I pause.
"JD." He looks up. "She's not the other one," I say. "The omega we had before. The transactional one. She's not that."
His jaw tightens. "I know."
"Do you? Because the way you're acting, keeping everyone at arm's length, making rules, controlling every interaction, that's how you treated the last one. And Willow isn't her. Willow is…"
"I know," he says, and this time his voice cracks. Just barely. Just enough. "I know she's different. That's what terrifies me."
I nod. Because that, I understand. The last omega was safe.
Convenient. A biological release valve with an expiration date.
Willow is something else entirely, a detonation.
An earthquake. A woman who could take the broken pieces of this family and either fuse them together or shatter them beyond repair.
And none of us know which one it'll be.
I go to my room, and I put on underwear, black boxer briefs, because if I'm going to suffer, I'm going to suffer in style. I pull on a fresh t-shirt and stand in front of the mirror, looking at myself.
Golden hair. Green eyes. The grin that says I'm trouble and you know it. Underneath, the foster kid who learned early that the best defense is a good offense. If you're funny, if you're charming, if you're always one step ahead, nobody can hurt you.
Willow saw through that in about thirty seconds.
I press my forehead against the mirror and close my eyes.
She asked me to touch her.
Not my cock. Not my mouth. Not any of the filthy things I described. She asked for my hand on her hip. Contact. Connection. The simplest, most human thing in the world.
And it wrecked me more thoroughly than any sexual act ever has.
From down the hall, I hear a door open. Willow's footsteps, heading toward the kitchen. Then a different sound, tiny, padding feet, accompanied by a high-pitched squeal.
Lily is awake.
Willow's voice, soft and warm, drifts down the hallway. "Good morning, sweetheart. Did you sleep well? Let's go get some breakfast, yeah?"
I open my eyes. The man in the mirror looks wrecked. Horny. Hopeful.
Don't fall for her, I tell myself. Not yet. Not until you know she's staying.
But even as I think it, I know it's already too late.
I'm already falling.