Page 121 of Lyric & the Heartbeats

Desire.

Knowing she was struggling with his touch as much as he was touching her…

Just made everything so much harder.

Including his dick.

He sat the gun to the side, ready to change colors, and shut the gun off for the moment.

The silence was loud, but her soft breaths were louder.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he said, voice raspy as if some part of him didn’t want to say the words so they’d barely scraped past his lips.

She shifted on the table, removing her hands from the edge to flex them. They had to be getting sore from how tight she was gripping the lip.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Like you’re as close as I am to giving in.”

He averted his gaze, afraid of what he would find if he watched her reaction. Because if he saw the slightest hint of give… not even he was strong enough to resist.

Lyric was an omega. It was natural for him to gravitate toward her, but he’d worked with omegas before. Never had he struggled so hard to resist one.

Something was different about her, and while he had a list a mile long of just what made her so special, he tried his hardest to avoid thinking about it.

His job was to take care of her. As her tour manager, he was in charge of making her life easier on the road, making sure things ran smoothly. But too often he found himself wishing to make her happy, and it had nothing to do with his job title.

The conversation with Emerson came floating back to him.

Don’t wait too long.

Too long for what? For the end of the tour?

What exactly did Emerson and Adra hope to get out of this tour?

The better question… what was Lyric looking for? Was she even aware how close the three of them had drifted?

Ironically, he felt he was stranded on that beach, watching the three of them sail away and leave him behind.

Ludicrous.

That was what his thoughts were.

Andi had given him the rundown on Lyric. What kind of omega she was… and what kind she refused to be.

Henry bet she had no idea just how much she resembled the omega she didn’t want to be. He also bet she’d never been happier.

The bond between the three of them was growing stronger every day, emotionally. Henry knew Odd’s and Emerson’s teeth had gotten nowhere near her flesh, but just watching them in a room together was enough to see their bond went beyond their physical desires.

Did he think Lyric was strong enough to leave them behind once the tour was over?

Yes. Yes he did.

Emerson and Adra obviously knew this too, or they wouldn’t be trying so hard. Maybe it was simply that they wanted to show her that not all packs were as terrible as she’d clearly been raised to believe.

Or maybe they were putting their hearts on the line even though they’d been burned before. They had to know the risk they were taking, had to know how strong Lyric was in her reservations, how stubborn.

Hell, she was sitting here getting a simple tattoo after thinking about it for only a week.