His breath catches, and he nestles back into me. But the shift is his scent isn’t arousal this time. It’s…
Safety. Contentment. Vulnerability.
I’m learning his scent, all the intricacies of it. The compounds are too volatile, too subjective to study, but there’s early evidence that for alphas and omegas, pheromones enable complex communication. That said, I have all the evidence I need sitting here in my lap. I wonder if his sense of smell is as sharp as mine, or if mine’s enhanced by all the years my beast has spent bubbling right under the surface.
Last night was…
Fuck,he looked pretty, all scratched up and dazed out.
To not gnaw through that collar, to not take him anyway,was… impossible.
The hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I can’t do it again.
And what he said yesterday…I love… everything you do to me.
I don’t think Jamie even realized, I don’t think he had any intention of following those first two words with that one, singular word that would change everything, but… still. Those first two words scared me.
It’s dangerous if he falls for me like that.
But not nearly as dangerous as if I fall for him.
So I’m distracting myself with Jamie’s pleasure, focusing on the present, on every little scent and twitch and sound, etching it all into memory.
Because at the end of this week, memories will be all I have.
Chapter 47
JAMIE
Morgan and I sit in one of the mansion’s dozen living rooms. She reads as I watch Home Wreck Fixer on a TV that rose up out of the floor with the flip of a switch. Our libidos finally settle out, and we nestle into each other.
Then I feel it—like a twist of vertigo, a sinking that makes every limb twice as heavy.
Shit. I spoke too soon. I’m crashing.
Shame churns in my gut. I should have known it was coming.
That unmistakable feeling of abject dread.
“I, um, I’m just going to run to the bathroom,” I say, and Morgan nods, giving me an affectionate look.
“Don’t be too long,” she teases.
I smile, nod, and keep my pace natural as I head towards the hall. Then I walk faster, crossing over to the other side of the estate—half because I’m already utterly lost and I forget which door is the bathroom, and half because I need distance between us.
Before it happens.
Before I break.
I open a door to find a bedroom I haven’t seen before, but Morgan said each one has an attached bathroom, so I push through and find the door on the other side. I lock it behind me as I step into a bathroom crafted entirely of flowing white-and-purple-veined marble.
With every step away from Morgan, the temperature seemed to drop another degree. While I was still moving, I could distract myself, but now there’s no stopping it—I’m shaking, shivering, freezing.
I curl in on myself, sinking onto the microfiber bathmat, yearning for the familiar scent of my bed back home—not my apartment, where the mattress still smells vaguely of polymer, but Pleasantwood, the only place I’ve ever felt truly safe.
The tears hit in a violent wave—ugly, deep, agonizing. This isn’t just the aching, unbearable loneliness.
