Page 39 of Guarded By The Alpha

I found him on the roof at midnight.

Not the lookout spot—the flat section above the east corridor, where the roofing had been reinforced to hold weight. I understood now he came here when he needed open sky. Some wolf thing, maybe. Or just what happens when you spend your life in closed spaces and your body starts craving a horizon.

I climbed up and sat with my shoulder against his arm.

I said nothing for a while.

The warmth of him through the contact was specific and grounding—not the electric awareness of a threat or the sharp pull of wanting, but something quieter. Something that felt like arriving somewhere after a long time traveling.

He didn't move away. Didn't speak first.

The sky above us was thick with stars, more than I'd ever seen from the city. The warded edge meant no light bleeding in from the surrounding district, nothing to wash out the impossible depth of the dark.

"I would have chosen this," I said eventually. "Even without the pull. Without the bloodline. Without the warehouse."

He was very still beside me.

"I would have chosen you."

The words hung in the cold air between us. I felt him taking them in—that specific quality of a man holding something he didn't know how to carry out loud.

"I know," he said quietly.

I looked at him. Jaw set. Eyes forward, tracking the tree line even now, even in this moment. I could feel through the pull—that warm compass in my chest—the specific shape of a man who'd been protecting people his whole adult life and had never once expected anyone to choose him back.

I put my hand over his.

What followed was not gentle.

It was not cautious.

It was the dismantling of the last of what either of us had been holding back.

I turned toward him and pulled him down by the nape of his neck—the way I'd wanted to since the briefing room, since the corridor, since the first moment his eyes found me in that warehouse and something in my body decided yes before my mind had any opinion about it.

He came down over me on the flat rooftop without hesitation. His body covering mine with the full weight of a man who'd finally stopped.

Cold air against warm skin. His hands at my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders, and then at my shirt, and then everywhere—mapping me with complete attention, the thoroughness of someone who'd been not-touching for days and meant to fix that completely.

My jaw. My throat. The mark-site at my shoulder where his mouth found its way without a decision, warm and responsive under his lips.

"Roan—"

He made a sound against my neck that had nothing human in it. A low rumble that vibrated through my chest where his body pressed against mine.

My fingers found his hair and pulled him closer. His shirt was gone—I didn't remember taking it off—and the heat of his skin against the cold night air was almost shocking. Muscle and warmth and that faint wilderness scent that had been driving me slowly out of my mind for nearly two weeks.

I said the word against his throat.

"Mine."

Deliberate. Chosen. The first time I'd said it where it meant everything I intended.

He went absolutely still.

Then his mouth found mine, and the kiss was consuming—not gentle, not careful, not the kind of kiss that asked permission. His hands moved with purpose, one at my hip pulling me closer, one at the back of my neck angling my head where he wanted it.

I wrapped my legs around him and felt the evidence of exactly how affected he was pressing against me through too many layers of clothing.