Page 12 of Knot The Nanny We Planned

"She dreamed about us. I felt it. I was in it."

"I know." JD. Rougher, barely human. "I felt it too."

A pause follows before a third voice, Deklan's, tight and controlled but fraying at the edges. "This isn't going to work. She can't stay here."

"She's not leaving." JD again, with a finality that brooks no argument.

"She's twenty feet away, JD. I can smell her through the wall. She's slicking in her sleep, dreaming about us, and we're all standing in this hallway like goddamn voyeurs. This isn't sustainable."

"No one said it was sustainable." Knox's voice drops lower. "But what's the alternative? Send her back? Find another nanny who won't trigger the match? You know as well as I do that a scent-match with three compatible partners is statistically…"

"I don't give a damn about statistics." Deklan's voice cracks. "I care about Lily. I care about this family. And I care about not ruining an omega's life because we can't keep our knots in our pants."

Silence falls. Heavy, suffocating.

I should be horrified. I should be mortified that they know, that they felt the dream, that they're standing in the hallway discussing my arousal like it's a problem to be solved. But instead, something warm and desperate blooms in my chest.

They're fighting about me. Not about who gets me, about how to protect me. About how to do this right. About how to not ruin me.

The warmth spreads through my chest, and I press my hand against my sternum, feeling my heartbeat slow. The heat between my legs is still there, constant and aching, but it's tempered now by something else. Something that feels dangerously close to hope.

Through the door, I hear JD exhale. Long, slow, and controlled. The sound of a man forcing himself back from the edge.

"Nobody touches her," he says. "Not until she's ready. Not until she asks. We keep our distance. We keep this professional. We focus on Lily."

"And if she asks?" Knox says.

Another pause. The air in the hallway seems to thicken, and I can feel their collective attention turning toward my door, three sets of eyes in the dark, all fixed on the thin barrier between us.

"Then we don't hold back," JD says.

I hear them retreat. Footsteps fading in three different directions, three doors opening, three doors closing. The hallway falls silent. I lie in the dark, heart pounding, slick still cooling on my thighs, and stare at the ceiling.

‘Don't touch her. Not until she's ready. Not until she asks.’

I press my face into the pillow and breathe in cedar and rain. What if I ask?

The thought is a whisper, barely formed, and I shove it down before it can take root. I'm here for Lily. I'm here for the job. I'm not here to fall into bed with three men who make my body do things I didn't know it could do.

But the dream lingers. The memory of JD's hands on my hips, Knox's mouth between my thighs, Deklan's lips on mine, soft and fierce and desperate, like he'd been waiting his whole life to taste me.

My hand drifts down again. I bite my lip. I close my eyes.

Don't.

I roll onto my side, away from the connecting wall, away from the hallway, away from the three men breathing in the dark.

I don't touch myself again, but I don't sleep either. And when the first gray light of dawn creeps through the window, I'm still awake, still aching, still replaying every moment of the dream in excruciating detail, the hands, the mouths, the voices, the scents, the impossible, devastating pleasure of being wanted by all three of them at once.

I am in so much trouble.

And the worst part, the part that terrifies me more than the heat, more than the slick, more than the primal need that's eating me alive, is that I don't want to be anywhere else.

I press my face into the cedar-scented pillow and whisper a single word into the darkness.

"Please."

Chapter Four