"Careful. Keep talking like that, and I might start thinking you actually like me."
His laugh is warm.
"I've been writing to you for five years, Sweets. I think we're pastlike."
Past like.
The words echo in my brain, refusing to settle into meaning.
What's past like?
Love?
Obsession?
The desperate, consuming need to be known by another person that's driven both of us to pour our hearts onto paper for half a decade?
I don't ask.
Can't ask.
Too much.
Too soon.
Instead, I rise onto my toes—even in the shower, even without my ballet shoes, the movement is instinctive—and press my lips to his jaw.
"Your turn."
"My turn?"
"To be touched." I trail kisses along his jawline, down his neck, across the ridge of his collarbone. "Fair's fair."
His breath catches.
The sound is gratifying.
Powerful.
This is what I've been missing—the give and take, the mutual pleasure, the understanding that intimacy is supposed to besharedinstead of something one person does to another.
I explore him the way he explored me: slowly, deliberately, with the kind of attention usually reserved for studying something precious. My fingers trace his tattoos, feeling the slight raise of ink beneath skin. My lips follow the path of old scars, kissing each one like an apology for pain I had no part in causing.
He lets me.
Stands there under the hot water with his eyes half-closed and his hands resting gently on my hips, making soft sounds that tell me I'm doing something right.
When I look up, the expression on his face makes my breath catch.
Want.
Pure, unadulterated want—but not the hungry, demanding kind I'm used to seeing in Alphas. This is softer. Warmer. The want of someone who's been starving for something they thought they'd never find.
"What does my Omega enjoy, hmm?"
The words rumble through his chest.
My Omega.
