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“Talkin’ to you, Omega.” Omega. Oh no. Means I’m in trouble. I sink further into the water and he lunges toward the bathtub.
I squeak, but the attack doesn’t land. Instead, I feel a brush of air as he rounds the enormous marble monstrosity he calls a tub and gently cradles my arm, two fingers pinching me around the swollen wrist, two fingers pinching my bicep. He lifts my arm out of the water and sets it on the once cool, now warm towels lining the broad marble side of the tub.
It leaves me in an awkward position and I feel more awkward when he abruptly shucks the pants off of his hips and plunges into the bathwater beside me, leaving just a few feet separating us. I look at him and he looks at me.
“You broken or somethin’? That morphine get to your head?”
He reaches across the space and tries to touch my forehead. I flinch away. He freezes and crumples his hand into a fist. “Echo, say somethin’ or I’ll order you to.”
“I just…” And then it hits me — what’s sowrongabout him. And it hits mehard.
He’s showered and shaved and washed his hair and combed it and he’s…oh my seven saints…no. No no no no no. The Berserker —Adam —is absolutely gorgeous.
He’s all tanned, scarred skin layered over the most arresting bone structure I’ve ever seen. High cheeks, hard jawline, straight nose, full freaking lips. His eyebrows twitch and so does the tip of his nose. He reaches for me again and this time, I’m too slow to avoid his touch. I’m not even sure I want to.
His blunt fingers are rough in texture, but gentle in pressure. My eyelids flutter. “Hey. You don’t have claws.”
“Don’t.”
I try to lift my injured arm and take his hand in my two, but he gently presses the injured one back to the towels, leaving me to try to contain his massive hand in my much smaller one. I look down at his palm draped over mine, fully obscuring it. His hands are cleaned, the nailbeds pristine. When did he have the time? His claws have been cut short.
“Why don’t you have claws?”
“Cut ‘em.”
“Why?”
“Tired a’ hurtin’ you.”
My chin starts to wobble. My pussy lips start to clench.
“Don’t do it, Echo. Can’t go into heat. Not yet. You need another suppressant?”
I nod vigorously.
He gets up, water sluicing off of his body and I try not to look. Fail. Try again. Fail again. His body is stunning. Six and a half feet — seven? — of pure, stitches-wrapped muscle. The black stitching looks gruesome and brutal and my chin starts wobbling again. My eyes get hot. He comes back a moment later and I get a second look at his wounds — not the newest ones, but the X across his heart — and the waterworks start up again.
“Fuck. Echo, please. You gotta stop with that shit. Makes me wanna…” His cheeks get red, but he doesn’t finish. He hands me the pill and a huge glass of ice water.
My mouth is sticky with saliva as I choke the white pill down, humiliated and not for the first time. Of course I need the suppressants. I’m about to go into heat and he has a wife somewhere on the property.
“But you shouldn’t want me.”
He gives me an incredulous look.
I feel my face heat even more than the surrounding bathwater, which is nothing but pure divinity. “You can’t smell it,” I stutter.
His eyebrows pull together. They’re the same blond-streaked brown as his hair. His beard is a shade darker. At least, it was. I miss it…but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to scrape my dirty, broken nails over his clean-shaven cheek and jaw. Those angles… oh god. But I hate him. Except I don’t. Not anymore. I don’t know what I feel about him, but it’s not hate. It’s something more dangerous.
“Smell what, Omega?”
“You…” Sniffle. “You keep saying I shouldn’t go into heat. But you can’t smell it in the bath…”
His eyes widen and his nostrils flare. Immediately, he edges away from me. “Don’t need to smell your pussy for you to send me into rut. Tears are just as bad. Fuck, maybe worse. Makes me wanna make you feel better in the only way my Berserker knows how. If you don’t get your shit together, you’re gonna send me into rut and there won’t be any comin’ back from it. For either of us.” Because he has a wife, and that’ll mess things up.
“What’s rut?”
“Fuck.” He rubs his hand down his face, water droplets clinging to the tips of his eyelashes. “You don’t know enough. I can’t explain it to you, either. Not without goin’ into rut right here. Right now. I’ll find someone to give you a crash course. Promise.” Because he can’t do it himself. Because he has a wife.
