Page 9 of Salt and Knot

I’m rubbing myself shamelessly against him now. My cheek to his throat—there are tattoos there too—and I’m all out groping his biceps and the dark short beard over his jaw. It’s sharp and soft depending on how it lies beneath my fingertips.

I can’t pay any attention to where we’re going, or care about why. There are only two things that are important. The man carrying me, and the fire blazing in my blood. But it helps to touch him.

“Nearly there, omega.”

I blink and force myself to focus. The house I saw from the cove is towering above us. Or I think it’s the same. The roof seems familiar. He lives here?

Then another spasm of pain racks through me, and I close my eyes and whimper. The stranger—my saviour—turns this way and that, and door after door slams.

“It’s okay, we’re home now,” he says and he’s laying me down.

“No, don’t leave me,” I twine my arms around his neck as he starts to rise.

I’m in a bed, I realise vaguely.

“I won’t, you’re safe,” he replies gently, and purrs again.

The sound is a wave of release from the pain.

An alpha.

That realisation jerks me into life, and I open my eyes properly, forcing myself to focus. I let him go, and he eases back, sitting on the bed beside me.

He’s huge.

I blink as I look into the face of the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Older than me, yes, but he looks like he could be from a painting, or chiselled from stone. He’s stunning. His hair is so black, it’s almost blue, and is swept and messy, as though he’s recently showered. He has a square jaw, with the short black beard I noticed as he carried me. Long black eyelashes frame eyes the colour of a dark, stormy sea.

“What’s going on? Who are you?” I ask hazily.

“Dylan.”

His name is a crash of a wave that’s somehow also musical. Dylan.

“I found you on the beach while I was out running. You were unconscious,” he adds. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I…” I almost say that I was attacked. I think of saying that I was grabbed by a monster, and practically drowned. But then, there’s the other part.

The overwhelming pleasure that the creature gave me. I can still feel it buzzing in the background, even as the heat prickles at my skin and flames my cheeks.

“I was swimming,” I say after a few seconds. “I got out of my depth, panicked, and I ended up trying to breathe underwater.” I try to make it a joke, but it doesn’t land. Dylan continues to gaze at me with a concerned expression.

“That’s all?” he asks gently.

I have the sudden craving to spill everything to him. The fear, the arousal, the desire, the way I trusted and wanted that creature… Until he betrayed me and dragged me under the water, and terror replaced the bliss.

But I can hardly focus.

“I…” I wince as pain racks through me like fire from my bones outwards. I cramp and cry out, and Dylan makes that purring noise again, stroking his hand up and down my arm. And it’s soothing, it’s something, but nowhere near sufficient.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” I sob. “I’m so hot.” My brain won’t work properly. I don’t get it. I’ve never felt like this before, and I can’t focus for long enough to try to figure out if I’m unwell, or what. All I know is that I want to press myself against this man. Rub myself all over him.

Dylan pulls in his breath with a hiss.

“Please!” I’m not sure what I’m begging for as I clutch at his muscled forearm, covered in dark, masculine hair. “What’s going on?”

“You’re in heat, little omega.”

Chapter 6