Page 55
“Don’t do that,” he scolded me. “You’re still not completely healed.”
“I am. I’m totally—”
“You’re not,” he replied curtly. “I can… tell.”
We’d never been this close together, and certainly not for this amount of time. When he’d first scented me and come striding across the room, trembling with excitement, ready to talk to me, I’d made certain to raise my voice and begin my diatribe against omegas. He’d never even gotten the chance to touch me.
Slowly, I closed in on the counter and took a seat, staring at his back, noting how the cargo pants hugged his narrow waist and round ass, liking how soft and glossy his hair looked, and appreciating how fluidly he moved in his space.
“You smell like bergamot and—”
“The bergamot is the tea,” he corrected me.
“Okay, how about the honey, oranges, and clove, like a pomander?”
“I don’t—”
“There’s musk too, but not heavy, lighter. You smell like you’ve been lying on the beach all day, baking under the sun.”
“You can’t simply change everything,” he said miserably, leaning over on the counter beside the stove, elbows on the marble, before he dropped his head into his hands. “It’s been too long, and it hurt far too much.”
“You were getting used to the idea of not having a mate.”
“Of course I was,” he choked out, and I heard the pain in every syllable.
His scent was tickling my nose, sultry and sumptuous, and the orange changed as I breathed it in, getting deeper, more sweltering blossom than ripened fruit. He smelled like summer, and I wanted that all over me.
“Could you come over here by me?”
“No.” He didn’t move. “You should have told me. Somehow. That would have been the right thing to do.”
“Even the chance of you getting hurt… I couldn’t have that.”
“And you, what, kept on sleeping with whoever you—”
“No,” I said sharply, and that moved him. My tone got him to straighten up and whirl around in one seamless motion, his stormy eyes locked on my face. “Let’s be clear. I couldn’t claim you, claim what’s mine, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about you every day, imagine what touching you would be like, kissing you, having you under me. I’m an alpha, for God’s sake. Do you think anyone else would do?”
He was shaking, and then came the tears, welling in his eyes, rolling down his cheeks.
I stood, and he immediately held up his hand. “You stay there.”
“Then you stop crying.”
He wiped the tears away and tried to take a breath, but the trembling got worse as he stared at me through wounded eyes.
I moved slowly around the island.
“Sit down,” he ordered.
“I will,” I lied, moving closer, watching him, seeing his gaze run over me and his pupils slowly dilate, hearing his breath catch as he pressed his lips together tight. I released my pheromones, flooding the space, rewarded with the way he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.
The steadily rising sound of the kettle about to boil made him turn before it even got a chance to whistle. He poured the water into the teapot, replaced the lid, and put a dish towel over it, even though I was certain he had a cozy in the drawer. He circled back to me then, staring as I walked toward him, closing the space between us.
“You could smell all those people who were here before,” I murmured, my voice husky and low. “And you could smell your colleague, and worse, Royce. He invaded your space, and it didn’t even feel like yours anymore. It felt cold, even though I’m certain this is the warmest home I’ve ever been in, in my whole life.”
“It is?”
I nodded as I reached him, slipping my hand gently around the side of his neck and using my thumb to lift his chin so he was staring up at me with black eyes, his pupils having swallowed all the blue.
