Page 65 of Torment Me Knot
A noise comes out of my throat too before I can stop it, low, pleased, fingers buried in the pile. We are both gone in the space of a breath, the texture lighting up something instinctive.
Lex's gaze warms. Sandalwood deepens in the space between us, threaded with something pleased. He likes that we took the blanket. The corner of his mouth lifts, and there's a glint in his eye that says he knows exactly what he just did and he's quietly, thoroughly pleased with himself.
“Thank you,” Aubrey says. “It's... thank you.”
His chamomile sweetens. Honey threading through the edges.
“Any time,” Lex says. “Espie. Aubrey. You ask if we miss something. We will. We're alphas. We get thick-headed. You tell us, and we fix it.”
Aubrey unfolds the blanket across both our laps, then frowns at it like it is not quite right. He tugs at one corner. Tucks an edge under my hip. Lifts another section and shakes it out, fluffing the pile, arranging it. Pulls it up higher, draws one side around my shoulder, brings the other across his own back so we are tucked into the same fabric, sealed in. I sink against him and curl into him as he arranges the blanket around us. When he’s finally satisfied, we are wrapped together in our own little cave of soft.
“You two warm enough in there?” Ezra asks.
They’re watching us. Ezra’s hand rests motionless on his knee. Kev swallows hard enough that I see his throat move. Lex doesn’t blink. Across from us, Sera sits with one knee bent, perfectly still.
I see the longing in their gazes. They want to be closer to us, but they’re holding themselves back. One of you could come over.I almost ask.
“No, we're okay,” I say.
Kev points the remote and starts the movie. Cars explode. Someone makes a quip about stolen diamonds.
Sera is curled in an armchair across the room. She’s beautiful. Long legs tucked under her, the flickering light catching the sharp line of her jaw, the fullness of her mouth, the scar that cuts through her eyebrow.
The scar is a neat line. I want to know how she got it. If she has more. Where they are. How many. Whether she has ever shown them to anyone before. Whether she would show them to me.
She’s been hurt too. Not the same way as us but hurt all the same, yet she’s been so careful around us. She found me in thefacility and saved me. And ever since, she has taken nothing I couldn’t give.
I want to know her. Not just the want low in my belly. The other want. Whether she sleeps on her side or her back. What she was like as a girl. Her family. Her job. Her joys. What is her favorite food and what season she likes the best.
She’s always giving and she doesn’t seem to know she’s doing it.
She catches my gaze across the flickering light. The tips of my ears go hot. Heat slides down my neck after, into my chest, where the echo of Aubrey hums and I can’t look away. I’m drawn to her.
A gunshot cracks from the television and I jolt. Her lips soften at the corners of her mouth. Aubrey shifts beside me.
He nudges his nose against my temple. A soft press. Asking.
“Espie?” he breathes. So quiet. Just for me. “Do you... do you want them?”
He already knows. He just wants me to say it so I know too.
“I think... I think I might.”
His breath stutters against my hair. “Yeah. I do too.”
He kisses my temple and pulls me tight against him. We perfume together, the scent thickening between us, drifting out across the room.
Kev glances over. He breathes us in once, deliberate, and looks back at the screen. He grips his own thighs to do it. Lex shifts in his chair, his sandalwood warming, no effort to hide it. Ezra exhales on a slow count and sinks deeper into his seat.
“Easy, you three,” Sera says.
Lex clears his throat and Kev relaxes into his chair.
“I’m always easy,” Ezra wiggles his brows. His eyes sparkle as Lex rolls his eyes and mutters something like ‘why us’.
Their lame jokes make me relax. I drop. My shoulders, my spine, my jaw. The whole of me gives up the fight. My eyes grow heavy, and sleep takes me between one breath and the next.
Wallace's voice slithers around me. The voice he uses when he's about to do something terrible, the one that sounds like he's reading from a grocery list instead of documenting torture.
