Ren remained still. Watching.
The light seeping through the half-closed blinds cast golden lines across the alpha’s pale skin. His shoulder blades rose and fell with his breath. A muscle in his back twitched in his sleep. Ren’s eyes traced his spine, the ribs that stood out beneath his skin as he inhaled, the curve where his back ended and the sheet began.
Beautiful.
The word slipped into his mind without permission, and something warm blossomed in his chest.
Then the memories came flooding back. All of them. All at once.
His own hands clutched the sheets. His own voice pleading. The knot expanding inside him. The tears. The surrender. That word,mine, that Brody had growled against his neck and to which Ren had replied with a yes that still burned in his throat.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
He pulled back the comforter with surgical precision. Millimeter by millimeter. The mattress didn’t budge. Brody kept snoring,his mouth half-open against the tattered pillow. Ren pulled one leg out first. Then the other. He planted his feet on the wooden floor, and the cold crept up from the soles of his feet to his ankles.
He stood up.
And he felt it.
Hot. Thick. Slipping down the insides of his thighs in slow streams that reached his knees. He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. The amount was obscene. Abundant. As if Brody had poured everything inside him out during the knotting and his body hadn’t been able to hold it all in.
Damn you, Kovac.
He cursed himself, too. Twice.
He moved barefoot across the room, picking up his clothes from the floor one by one. The wrinkled jeans by the door. The t-shirt crumpled into a ball at the foot of the bed. Brody had ripped them from his body with an efficiency Ren would not remember now. He would not remember anything. Never.
He got dressed quickly, the alpha’s semen cooling against his skin, sticky and intimate and absolutely unbearable. He didn’t look in the mirror next to Brody’s closet. He didn’t want to see his own face. He didn’t want to see whatever his eyes might betray.
He left the room without closing the door to avoid the click of the latch. The hallway was empty. Ren walked barefoot to his room with his shoes in his hand, and every step reminded him of what he had just done because every step caused a dull tug between his legs.
He showered with water so hot it left his skin red. He lathered his body with soap three times. Not because he wanted to washBrody off his skin. But because he didn’t want anyone else to detect his scent on him. The logic of an omega who knew the rules of the world he lived in.
He dressed in clean clothes. Dark jeans, a gray t-shirt that was loose on him. He looked at his hands. They weren’t shaking. Good. He ran his fingers through his damp hair, took a deep breath, exhaled, and went down to the kitchen as if it were just another morning where nothing extraordinary had happened.
The kitchen smelled of fresh coffee and toast. Jax was sitting at the kitchen island with a bowl of cereal in front of him and his phone in his hand. He looked up when Ren walked in.
And he froze.
Jax’s nostrils flared. Once. Twice. The alpha’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped slowly. The spoon hung suspended halfway between the bowl and his mouth. A drop of milk fell onto the countertop.
Ren looked at him. Looked at him with all the coldness that his twenty-one years of survival had taught him to muster.
“No comments.”
Jax closed his mouth. Opened it. Closed it again. He ran a hand over his face and let out a laugh so explosive that the cereal in the bowl shook.
“All right.”
Ren poured himself some coffee without looking at him.
Chapter 13
Jax tossed him the hand wrap without warning. With a reflex that pleased the alpha, Ren caught it as it flew.
“Today we’re doing free sparring.”
Ren wrapped his knuckles in silence. He tightened the wrap around his left thumb, then his right, clenching the end of the fabric between his teeth. He needed this. He needed the clean pain of physical exertion, the kind of pain he chose, that he controlled. Not the other kind. Not the kind that had left invisible marks between his hips or a scratchy throat from moaning things he’d never admit out loud.
