But her most of all.
“Nothing should feel too tight,” I mused as I worked on a chest harness, looping the rope around her breasts, tying off the knots strategically. “Your weight will be evenly distributed, so there’s minimal discomfort, if any.”
Ambrose liked pain.
Kane got off on humiliation.
I valued escape.
And while it was an escape for my partner, it was also one for me. Binding someone, weaving beautiful patterns across their body, making it lookpretty—everything went quiet on the inside. No thoughts. No fears. Just the movement of my fingers, the twist and twine and tightening of a rope, the slow evenness of her breath as I worshipped in my own way.
And for all their more violent kinks, Ambrose and Kane enjoyed my shows. They watched me bind an omega like it was some live art installation, and tonight was no different.
Only tonight, however, neither missed a thing. No casual conversation. No comments on her body, her blushes. They let me work in peace, enthralled, the air heavy, quiet, contemplative. A few short glances their way showed their pupils almost back to normal, their fangs sheathed, the peace that came with frog-tying Holly’s legs—binding them in a bent position, ropes looped around her calves and thighs—laughable.
But, hey, whatever worked.
Whatever kept us from succumbing to the blood bond and making the worst mistake imaginable in the heat of the moment.
By the time I came close to finishing, there wasn’t a limb of Holly untouched. Arms bound behind her back, wrists cradled and angled properly in elaborate braids, she threaded her fingers together at my prompting. Legs folded and spread. Breasts clamped in rope. I had even gone a step above what I usually did with a ponytail knot; after gathering her hair together, I positioned her on her belly so I could hog-tie her, connecting her ankles and her hair by a generous strand.
Really, it was just to support Holly’s head, her eyes heavy, her breath slow and constant.
I could have just left her like that, hog-tied on the carpet, her mouth in need of gagging but the rest of her bound perfection. Instead, I went back to the treasure chest for a clasp that would allow for three-sixty spins of my bound captive. I tied a rope to the loop at its top, then tossed said rope up and over the intimidating black hook in the ceiling. As soon as it caught, I attached the clasp on my end to my masterpiece, then lifted her by four ropes knotted together. With the way I had structured her restraints, she could hang like this, hog-tied and perfect, but the pressure wouldn’t bow or contort her body.
“Tell us, Holly,” I urged, the alpha grit in my tone making her inhale sharply. I then grabbed the longer rope in both hands and hoisted her off the ground, planning to tie it off at the right height to a metal ring embedded in the floor near Ambrose’s armchair. “Why do you work at Club Mistletoe?”
I shouldn’t have asked.
I should have let it go, dismissed this curiosity before her answer broke the peace I’d built in the last forty minutes, but I couldn’t resist—
“Because he put me here.”
Fuck.
My bonds and I stiffened. The air shifted. Our fury detonated like a bomb.
But Holly didn’t seem to notice. Lost in her own little world, suspended off the ground on a slow rotation, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Past partners admitted that my ropes gave them permission to let everything go; they knew, with confidence, that what I had made would support them.
“Hewho?” Ambrose growled, his fist tightening around the crystal flute so suddenly it splintered—and this time she didn’t so much as flinch. Good. Let the ropes hold her while the rest of us were in freefall.
“Jackson Misery,” Holly admitted, her tone a little dreamy, relaxation overtaking her beauty. “I wanted off the Bog, and he paid my way out before I was sold to some asshole pack. Now I owe him, just like the rest of his omegas. This is how we pay our debts on Mistletoe.”
Our collective rage thundered in the bond, the thought of some other alpha owningher, the omega gifted to us by fate and all the divine entities—no.
Shaking, seething, I tied off the rope, knotting it around the metal loop next to Ambrose’s chair, my fingers so sloppy and my focus so fucked that I needed to redo it twice, or she’d drop. While Ambrose watched me like a hawk, Kane folded forward, elbows on his knees, hands steepled over his mouth, his stare a million miles away. Usuallyhewas the bond prone to outbursts and violence, but I had to fight the visceral urge to walk out of here, find this Jackson cunt, and gut him on the street.
Fuck it.
Before I could sprint out the door at the height of vampiric speed, Ambrose snatched my wrist so hard he nearly crushed bone. Our gazes clashed. I bared my fangs. He squeezed harder.
No.
Behind him, never the calm in the storm, Kane patted the air, their combined wills in the bond ordering me to stay put.
Wait.
Patience.