Page 28 of The Florist and Her Alphas

“Did. You. Knot. Her. Last night.” Each word separate. Measured. “Did you knot Liana Marsh?”

Julian goes pale. Then red. Then pale again. His hand is gripping the edge of the bed so hard the sheets crumple. “Are you fucking kidding me right now…?”

“Yes or no, Julian.”

“I have known her for three days, Ezra.” His voice is rising, cracking at the edges. “We went to the fair. I asked permission to kiss her on a sidewalk. What kind of person do you think I am?”

“I think you’re a person who has a pair of women’s panties on his bedroom floor and has not yet explained how they got there.”

“It was an accident,” Julian says weakly.

Pepper, very pleased with himself, puffs his chest and announces: “Bad bird.”

I shake my head. Slowly.

“You should tell her the truth.” I meet his eyes. “Maybe then she’ll reject you, and we can all move on with our lives.”

I turn.

I walk out of Julian’s room without commenting further. As I close the door behind me, I can hear Julian in the room muttering threats at the parrot, his voice low and furious. “I am going to cook you, Pepper. I am going to pluck every feather on your body and make a fucking hat.”

I roll my eyes. I shake my head again.

I start down the hallway back toward my own office. I get three steps.

I stop.

I stand very still in the hallway. The overhead lights are dimmed for morning. The hardwood stretches in both directions, empty and quiet.

Those panties. The pale pink. The size. The cotton. Liana Marsh’s panties are on the floor of my brother’s bedroom. My brother apparently stole them at some point in the last forty-eight hours. My brother has been smelling them.

Fuck.

The coffee cup is in my hand. I am gripping it hard enough that the ceramic creaks. Why am I standing in my own hallway at 6:15 in the morning thinking about a 24-year-old woman’s underwear when I should be in the gym?

I shake my head and walk down the hallway toward my office. I do not look back, but I am thinking about Liana’s photograph in Cole’s folio. I am also, against my will, wondering what color her panties are today.

My cock hardens. Full. Throbbing. Pressing against the seam of my trousers with an urgency that makes me grit my teeth.

Cold shower. Now.

Seven

LIANA

The metal chair is cold through the back of my thighs, even through my jeans, and I wrap both hands around my coffee mug and let the heat seep into my palms.

It’s barely past five in the morning.

The street is still dark — streetlights throwing orange pools onto the wet pavement, the city holding its breath before the day starts. Mira’s bakery glows behind me as I sit on the roof of her cafe, warm yellow through the window glass, the smell of butter and caramelizing sugar drifting through the cracked door. She made my coffee the way she always makes it. Heavy cream, two sugars. She has never once had to ask.

A delivery truck idles at the corner, its engine a low, steady vibration. Someone’s radio plays faintly through a cracked cab window. Down the block, a pigeon investigates something near the gutter with the single-minded focus of a creature who has given up on dignity.

I’ve been awake since four. Mira has been awake since three.

The paper bag between us holds two croissants, still warm, the laminated layers crackling when I tear mine open. I eat without tasting it, watching the street, remembering the flower crown and Julian. I hate that I’m thinking about him.

Mira leans forward. Both elbows on the table, chin in her hands, her eyes bright in the bakery light. She looks like she has been waiting for hours.