Page 38 of Omega’s Forward

But there’s enough of my brain still in action to know that it is a terrible idea right now even as it feels like the best one I’ve ever had.

I put my teeth in the meat of his shoulder instead, hard enough that he gasps, nowhere near the gland.

Then his teeth are on me too. He’s got my shoulder, clamping down hard.

The pain rides through me, sending my orgasm skyrocketing. It’s not a claiming bite. Not close. My orgasm doesn’t care.

We ride it out like that, shaking.

If he notices how close it was, he doesn’t say.

It takes a long time for either of us to move. When I finally lift my head, he’s staring at the ceiling.

“Water,” I say, because that’s neutral. We can’t disagree over water. I bring the cooler in from the hallway, crack a bottle, and watch him drink the whole thing with the blanket pooled in his lap and his hair drying stupid and his scent gone soft and heavy in the warm room.

I wipe him down with a warm washcloth and he allows it, boneless, eyes shut, one arm thrown over his face.

The shaking is gone, both the shaking from the cold and the other. His skin under my hands is warm again, and his scent has stopped spiking and settled into something slow and heavy that fills the room. I could live in it. I don’t say that either.

“The next wave,” he says, not looking at me, “will be inside the hour.”

“I know.”

“We should eat something first.” A pause, and then, with the ghost of the boardroom back in it: “Both of us. You’re going to need it.”

I laugh — the first time in what feels like a month — and go downstairs for the sandwiches I made at two in the morning.

12. Everett

He comes back up with sandwiches on a plate. I watch him cross the room and understand that I am in enormous trouble.

I didn’t even last twenty-four hours. So much for willpower. This is what the Bureau wanted. It’s why they made us do this.

The heat I can live with, now that I’ve stopped fighting it.

The trouble is the man carrying the plate. He’s shirtless, barefoot, wearing the print of my teeth on one shoulder, and quietly pleased about every part of it.

“Eat,” he says.

The sandwiches are good, which annoys me. I don’t know why. He’s supposed to be a brutish asshole. He’s not supposed to towel-dry me and wrap me in a blanket when I’m cold and make good sandwiches.

I get maybe ten minutes of being a person. Then the wave comes back.

It starts the way they all start — heat at the base of my spine, fresh slick, his scent arriving ahead of my own pulse. This time there’s no fight left to lose. I put the plate on the nightstand and swing a leg over him.

His hands come to my hips on reflex. His eyebrows go up. “Already?”

He’s hard already — has been hard, was hard the whole time he watched me eat — and the blunt press of his cock against me steals whatever I meant to say next.

I sink down slow, just to watch what it does to his face. It’s the first real power I’ve had in two days and I intend to use it.

His jaw goes tight. His hands flex on my hips, hard enough to bruise, and he lets me set the pace anyway — all that strength idling under me, waiting on my say-so.

“Everett.” Strangled. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Eventually. Not today.” I take the last of him inside me and we both stop pretending to have a conversation.

I ride him the way the heat wants — deep, rolling, no hurry at the start and then all hurry, his thighs braced behind me, his hands everywhere at once. The angle is mine. The pace is mine.