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I don’t step back.

He stands. His breathing has changed. His jaw works once, like he is physically holding something back, and then he says it.

“You. Are. My. Mate.” His eyes flash again. “I recognized it yesterday. The moment you arrived. Your scent.” He swallows. “You are my mate, Nina. And if you stay this close to me, I will not be able to treat you as an employee. I have been trying. I cannot.”

I stare at him.

My accountant brain does what it does. It takes every scattered data point from the last twenty-two hours and lines them up in a column:

His eyes changing color when he opened the front door.

His strange fixation on my scent. What is that?

My omega waking up for the first time in twenty-seven years, not stirring but slamming awake.

His careful insistence on keeping his distance.

The way my skin wouldn’t cool down all night. The heat. My hand between my thighs at four in the morning.

This pull, right now, that feels less like attraction and more like gravity.

The column balances. Every entry accounted for. Not a single anomaly left unexplained.

I know what a fated mate is. I’ve watched Cage track Mara across a room like she’s the only source of light in it. I know it’s permanent. I know it’s real.

I just never expected to find mine on the first day of a new job. And the strange thing is, I’m not sure I needed him to tell me. Because somewhere between the ridiculous three-piece suit, the imported jam, and the way he caught me before I hit the floor, I’d already started wanting things I had no business wanting.

Another morning across the breakfast table. Another almost-smile. The chance to find out what Silas Lowe looks like when he actually lets himself laugh. Which is ridiculous. I’ve known the man for less than a day, and apparently I already want more of them.

“You knew,” I say. “Since yesterday.”

“Since the moment I smelled you. Yes.”

“And you still gave me the tour. And the filing system. And the rules about the four rooms.”

“I was attempting to behave professionally.”

I look at him. This immaculate, ancient, trembling man in a navy suit who has been white-knuckling his way through twenty-two hours of fated-mate recognition while explaining filing cabinets and offering me imported jam.

“I’m not stepping back,” I say.

Something breaks across his face. Relief, then raw hunger.

He moves around the desk with a speed that should alarm me but doesn’t. His hand closes around my wrist. Firm. His thumb finds my pulse and presses and his eyes go half-closed and I realize he is feeling my heartbeat and cataloging it, and I am so turned on I can barely breathe.

“I should apologize for this,” he says.

He does not apologize. He kisses me.

His mouth is hot. Hotter than it should be. His hand slides from my wrist to the back of my neck and he tilts my head and kisses me like he has been thinking about exactly this since we met, which I know now he has, and his other arm comes around my waist and pulls me against him and I feel all of him. The breadth of his chest. The heat radiating off his skin through the suit. The hard length of him pressed against my stomach and oh. He is not a small man. Nothing about him is small.

I make a sound against his mouth that I will never admit to.

His grip tightens. His mouth moves to my jaw, my throat, the place where my neck meets my shoulder, and he inhales and the noise he makes is not human. It is low and rumbling and I can feel it vibrating in his chest against mine and it travels down my spine and directly between my legs.

“Honey,” he says against my skin. “You smell like honey everywhere. I need to know if you taste like it.”

“That is—” I lose the sentence because his mouth is on my collarbone and his hands are working the buttons of my blouse with a speed that contradicts his usual deliberation. “That is an extremely inappropriate thing to say to your employee.”