His fingers are still wrapped around my arm, skin against skin, and I can feel my pulse hammering against his palm like a trapped bird.
He looks down at where we're connected.
Looks back up at me.
And slowly—so slowly it feels deliberate—he smiles.
It's not a friendly smile.
It's the kind of smile that promises mischief, chaos, trouble of the most delicious kind. The kind of smile that makes youwant to follow someone into the dark even when you know—youknow—it's a terrible idea.
"Sweet," he murmurs.
And I don't know if he's talking about my scent or my reaction or something else entirely.
He releases my wrist.
The absence of contact feels like a loss.
I stumble back a step, putting distance between us that does absolutely nothing to diminish the overwhelming presence of his scent. It's everywhere now—vanilla sugar and soft smoke infiltrating my lungs, my bloodstream, probably my actual brain cells.
My eye catches something on the floor.
An envelope.
Cream-colored paper, slightly crumpled, with familiar handwriting on the front that makes my heart stop.
Not my handwriting.
But handwriting I've memorized over five years of correspondence.
The letter must have fallen when we collided. His letter. The one he was presumably here to send.
I crouch before I can think better of it, my fingers closing around the envelope with the same reverence I'd give my own. It feels heavier than it should—or maybe that's just my imagination, my desperate hope reading meaning into coincidence.
"You dropped this," I say, straightening. Offering it back to him.
Our eyes meet again.
Blue-and-green against green-and-gold.
Mismatched gazing at mismatched.
"The post office isn't taking letters anymore," I continue, the words spilling out before I can stop them. "Packless Omegas can't use the postal services, so if you were planning to?—"
I stop.
My brain catches up to my mouth.
He's not a packless Omega, the logical part of me points out.He's an Alpha. Look at him. Listen to his voice. Feel the authority radiating off him like heat.
"Oh." The syllable falls flat between us. "Nevermind. That doesn't apply to you."
His eyebrow raises.
Just one.
It's such a small expression, but somehow it conveys an entire conversation's worth of questions.
