And her scent changes. Sweetens, sharpens, blooms into something that goes straight to my head. Under it, unmistakable, the smell of how much she wants this.
I'm hard against the front of my jeans in a way there's no hiding and no apologizing for. Wanting so badly to press her into the wall and take that I have to breathe through it, both hands going still on her for a second just to remember I'm a man with rules.
I kiss her like I've been saving it. Because I have. I back her gently to the wall, one hand sliding into her hair and the other flat between her shoulder blades, holding her into me, and she goes up on her toes to get closer and I take her weight without thinking, because taking her weight is the only thing I've ever wanted to be for.
She's shaking. Really shaking now, fine and constant, and when I pull back to check her she chases my mouth and makes a sound of complaint that lands somewhere at the base of my spine.
“Hey,” I say against her lips. “I've got you. Slow.”
“I don't want slow.”
“I know.” I catch the little tremor in her hands, the heat pouring off her skin, the way her scent keeps climbing, and I gentle her through all of it. “Slow anyway. You're getting all of it. We've got all afternoon.”
Because she's coming apart under my hands, and it's not just me. Her body's running hot and fast and way ahead of both of us, climbing toward something her suppressants shouldn't be letting anywhere near the surface, and I'm not going to be the one who rushes her through the one afternoon I get to give her slow.
I kiss the corner of her mouth. Her jaw. The line of her throat, where her pulse is going wild, and she tips her head back against the wall to let me and breathes my name at the ceiling.
Then I go down on my knees on the floor of the finished room, in the firelight and the last of the gold coming through the windows, on the drop cloth still spread from the trim work, and I take her with me, easing her down, and I get my hands on the button of her jeans and stop, and look up, and wait.
“Yes,” she says, wrecked, already lifting her hips. “God, Logan, yes.”
I draw them down and off. Her underwear with them, because I am done being careful and she told me to be.
And then she's bare in the gold light on the floor of the house I'm building, thighs falling open for me, slick and swollen and flushed, and I have to stop and just look, because five years of not letting myself imagine this did not come anywhere close.
“Logan.” Half a laugh, half a plea. “You're staring again.”
“Give me a second.” My voice has gone to gravel. “I've wanted to look at you like this for a long time.”
Then I settle between her thighs like a man kneeling at the one altar he's ever believed in, and I put my mouth on her.
She comes up off the drop cloth. I hold her down with a forearm across her hips and take my time, because I have wanted to do this for five years and I am not going to rush it now that I'm finally allowed.
I lick into her slow, learning the taste of her, the shape, what makes her gasp and what makes her swear. She's slick against my mouth and sweeter than her scent ever promised, her whole body gone pliant and open the way an omega only goes for an alpha she trusts with everything, and I could drown here happy.
I flatten my tongue over her clit and she keens, high and broken, so I do it again, and again, setting a rhythm and holding it while her hips try to buck up into my mouth.
“Logan—” It tears out of her. “Oh—there—right there, don't you dare stop, don't you dare?—”
I don't stop. I close my lips around her clit and suck, and slide one finger into her at the same time, and she clamps down around it, hot and tight and wanting, and the sound she makes is one I'm going to hear in my sleep for the rest of my life.
“More. Logan. I need?—”
“I've got you.” Against her, so she feels the words more than hears them. I've never talked during this in my life, never had the nerve, and the nerve isn't really here now either, it's just that the wanting's bigger than the shyness for once. “Been wanting this so long I don't—” My voice gives out, comes back rougher. “Don't have to be quiet here. Let me hear you. Please—let me feel you come.”
I give her more. Two fingers now, curling up into the spot that makes her body go tight, my mouth never leaving her clit. She's shaking apart under me, both hands fisted in my hair, hips fighting my arm, thighs starting to shake around my head.
The careful man. The quiet one. The one who never asks. On my knees, asking with my whole mouth, and getting an answer.
She breaks with my name in it, clenching hard around my fingers, slick flooding my hand, and I work her through every wave of it, tongue gentling, fingers slowing, until she's boneless and twitching and tugging weakly at my hair because it's too much.
I kiss the inside of her thigh. Rest my forehead against her hip and just breathe her in for a second, shaking a little myself, wrecked by getting to do the one thing I'm actually good at.
I take care of her.
Chapter 28
Josie
