Page 18 of Knot The Nanny We Planned

"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.

Chapter four

Willow

Lily is the most beautiful child I've ever seen.

She's small, two years old, barely talking, with dark curls that stick up in every direction and eyes so dark they're almost black. Deklan's eyes. Mara's eyes, I realize with a pang, though I never met her. These are the eyes of a child who lost her mother, and even though she's too young to understand what that means, the grief lives in her. In the way she clings. In the way she goes silent for long stretches, staring at nothing. In the way she reaches for a hand that isn't there.

I find her standing in her crib, fists wrapped around the railing, face screwed up in that particular pre-cry scrunch that means she's been awake just long enough to realize no one came the second she opened her eyes.

"Hey, sweetheart," I say softly, approaching the crib with my hands visible, moving slowly. I learned this in my child development class, approach from the front, low to the ground, non-threatening. "Good morning. Did you sleep okay?"

She looks at me. Blinks. Her lower lip trembles.

And then, instead of crying, she lifts her arms. Up. Pick me up. Now.

The gesture is so universal, so trusting, that something cracks open in my chest. This child, this motherless child being raised by three men who never planned on parenthood, looks at me, a stranger, and says pick me up with her whole body.

So, I do.

She's light. Too light. She fits against my hip like she was designed to be there, and the moment I settle her, she buries her face in my neck. Her small fingers curl into the fabric of my shirt, Deklan's shirt, the oversized one I slept in, and she breathes in deep.

She's scenting me.