Page 80 of Use Me Up

I wanted to hurt him, and judging from the look on his face, I succeeded.

kane

I’m knotted into Ellis, but my knot is starting to loosen, not quite enough that he can get free, but probably soon. He’s twisting on me to get a look at Gatlin and Hannah.

I let him turn on me as much as he likes, figuring he’s enjoying the show as much as I am.

But Gatlin stops, pulling out of Hannah. “Shit,” he breathes. “This is why I said that we should talk to him about boundaries first.”

Ellis yanks free of me, and it has to hurt him, because the knot still hasn’t gone down all the way.

I reach for him.

He moves forward toward Hannah, who is backing up to the corner of the nest, and grabbing a blanket to cover herself.

“You were fucking him,” says Ellis to Hannah.

“You don’t get to tell me what to do with my body,” she says.

“It was only that I was the only person who had ever—”

“Well, you said things to me,” she says. “And then I come home and you’re fucking her.”

Ellis nods. “You’re really angry with me.”

Hannah burrows into the blanket.

Gatlin looks from Ellis to Hannah to me and then back to Ellis, and I can see he’s trying to figure out what’s going on here and how he can fix it. Gatlin’s good at smoothing things between people. He’s a peacemaker.

But his way always involves lots of acceptance of our feelings and centering and letting everything flow through us and whatever else he says.

I think my way is better during heat, which is basically to distract from unpleasantness with pleasantness. I crawl to Ellis and run my fingers over his skin. “Hey, there. Whatever this is, time enough for it later, hmm?”

Ellis turns to look at me.

“No,” says Gatlin. “Because we don’t know what’s off limits and what’s on, and we need to have a conversation about that before—”

“Well, Hannah could go,” says Ellis, turning to look at her.

Her expression barely ripples. “Done with me, then? Maybe I got you exactly what you wanted, back between her thighs. So, I guess this was all worth it, then.”

“Maybe,” he says, and his voice is ugly. “But it’s my heat, and I’m the omega, and—”

“Fine,” she says, and she shrugs off the blanket and crawls toward the door.

Gatlin is speechless, just staring at Ellis as if he can’t believe this has come out of his mouth. But I think it’s completely in line with our omega’s character. Gatlin knows. We tried to live with this boy for months, or does he forget how badly that went?

Hannah pushes open the door and disappears from sight.

Gatlin glares at Ellis and then goes after her.

Ellis turns to look at me. “Is he leaving me during my heat?”

I let out a long, throaty laugh. “Boy, you are a trainwreck. You’re lucky you’re so pretty and you smell so good, or ain’t nobody in the world ever want to spend time with you.”

I feel in the bond that I went too far when I said that. That hurt him.

Shit.