Page 90 of Omega Hunted

“Can we talk?” he asked, and my pulse picked up before I’d even answered.

“Downstairs?”

He nodded and led the way down the stairs, into the living room, and I followed, my mind already running through everything it could be.

Soren stood by the window working the hem of his sweater between his fingers past his knuckles and letting go, pulling it again. Light from the fire caught in his hair, silver over white, and for a second he was untouchable. He hadn’t said a word in minutes. His shoulders had crept inward, making him appear smaller.

“What’s wrong, Soren?”

His chin came up. Green eyes found mine, that flat shine snow leopards carried even in human skin, unnerving no matter how many weeks I’d had to get used to it. His lips parted, closed, parted again. The sweater hem twisted tighter in his fingers, knuckles white, a tremor running the length of his arm.

I tipped my head and caught it: his scent had changed and under vanilla a sweetness I’d caught in traces around him since Asha had arrived, thickening until it filled the space between us. Not a heat, but he was turned-on and needy, and God help me, I wanted to take care of him in every way I could. The idea of him in my bed, in my life—it was such a want it stole my breath.

“I need to ask you something.” His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat and tried again. “And I totally understand if you don’t want to. I mean, I’m not...” He stopped three feet from the couch, close enough that his scent wrapped around me whole.

“Not what?”

“I’m… I’ve had… I have…” He shook his head. “This is stupid,” he muttered. “I’ve never—” He stopped. Swallowed. His fingers had gone still, knuckles bone-white. “I meant what I said about a knot…your knot…but the only time I’ve been with someone, I didn’t choose it. I was supposed to get pregnant. That was the whole point of it.”

“Okay?” My chest locked down hard. Soren’s gaze dropped to the floor, then lifted back to mine.

“Will you make love with me?”

I stood. The couch creaked under me. Soren held his ground, though his weight shifted back onto his heels, instinct more than retreat. His eyes tracked me as I closed the distance, pupils blown wide, lips parted on a shallow breath, and his scent changed again. The bitterness dropped away. The sweetness came back richer, and under it something damp and unmistakable.

“Soren.” I kept my voice low, the gravel in it deliberate, meant to steady him. “Look at me.”

He did. His gaze held mine, and I could see what it had cost him to get the words out, not just the offer of his body but the fact that his body had been used, and he was choosing, this time, who got to touch him.

I lifted my hand slowly, giving him time to flinch or retreat. He didn’t. I brushed the hair off his forehead, the silk of it trailing over my hand, and he let out a breath that trembled against my wrist, eyes half-closing. His sleeve slid back and I ran my thumb over the inside of his wrist, where his pulse hammered under thin skin.

“Yes,” I said. “So much, yes.” Great, now I’d lost the ability to form coherent sentences.

His whole body let go, and he tipped forward and pressed his face into my chest. I stood still while his fingers found the front of my shirt and held on.

I gathered his hair into my hand. I felt a shudder move through him, felt him lean into my touch as if he’d been waiting a long time for someone to touch him and mean it, then I held him, letting him decide how close he wanted to be.

His scent was everywhere, peaches and sweetness. I pressed my mouth to his hair and breathed him in, letting my own scent rise to meet his, dark and steady, warmth meant as shelter and nothing else.

His fingers tightened in my shirt. His voice came out muffled, fierce despite the tremor in it. “I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I tipped his chin up with my thumb.

“Right now, neither do I.”

We can’t go… not upstairs… not near Asha.”

“I know.”

“But I want you… before I…” He pressed a kiss to my lips, ran his tongue over mine, sighed into the kiss.

I got my hands under his ass and lifted him, and he wrapped his legs around my hips.

I carried him to the couch, and he wouldn’t let go long enough for me to sit properly, mouth on my jaw the whole way down, until he was straddling my thighs and I was flat to the cushions looking up at him.

“Like this,” he said, more a statement than a question, and I put both hands on his hips and let him feel the answer.

He worked at the buttons of my shirt one by one, unhurried despite the shake still in his fingers, and every inch of skin he uncovered he touched as if it was new information, palms sliding over my chest, my stomach, pausing at the scar above my ribs long enough that I covered his hand with mine.