It starts at the base of my skull. A warmth.... a smell.
Cedar.
Old-growth cedar, dense and warm, layered with woodsmoke and rain-soaked bark. It floods my sinuses, my chest, my bloodstream.
Mason. That's Mason.
A jolt of recognition so sharp I arch into him. He lets out a low groan, his breath hot against my sensitive skin, but the sensation blurs as the atmosphere in the room suddenly splinters.
A new current rushes in, washing over the heavy spice of the cedar like a sudden winter draft.
Eucalyptus.
It’s sharp and clean, a bracing chill threaded with the resinous depth of amberwood and the forest-thick bite of fir. It cuts flawlessly through the smoke, sending a fresh, entirely different kind of shiver down my limbs. My hands tighten into fists on the sheets.
Knox's scent.
But the third wave is the one that ends me.
Rosemary.
Sun-warmed rosemary, the oaky, sophisticated burn of bourbon, and the depth of cigar leaf. Arthur. His scent wraps around the other two like it was designed to fit them, the three of them layering into a perfect, intoxicating chord. Cedar and eucalyptus and rosemary. My omega instincts—dormant, buried, and ignored for years—slam awake with a territorial roar.
A second orgasm detonates.
I can't breathe. My body locks in a single blinding contraction that radiates outward, and I come so hard my nails score red lines down Arthur and Knox's forearm.
Silence.
I lie in the wreckage and try to remember what language is. My thighs are trembling and my heart is hammering so hard I feel it in my teeth.
And I can still smell them.
Like that one night at the clearing. That one impossible night I wrote off as a fluke.
Except this is not a fluke, and I'm able to smell their scents (which feel even stronger) even more precisely, down to each individual note.
But that's impossible... unless—
19
Mason
She smells like honeysuckle.
Wild, sun-warmed, tangled with something darker underneath. Black tea, maybe. And beneath that, a thread of strawberry.
My body responds to it without consulting my brain. I go up slow, hands bracing on either side of her hips, drag myself along her until my face is buried in the crook of her neck and I breathe.
The world narrows to a point, my heart slamming so hard she has to feel it.
"Mason." Her voice comes out small. Wrecked.
Arthur's' head fits above mine on the same side of her neck, his mouth close enough that I can feel the heat of his exhale against my temple. He breathes her in and the breath he lets out is long and shattered.
Knox, who's on her other side, lowers himself until his face is against her neck too, mirroring me, his nose dragging along the line of her throat. His eyes close. His lips part. And then his whole body goes still.
So I'm not crazy. We really can all smell her. All of her.
