Page 106 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

Max opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. “Did she say anything? About what happened to her?”

“No. And I didn’t ask.”

He nods, like that was the right call.

The club moves around us and the music beats heavily in the background, but none of it touches the three of us in our corner booth, locked in our own world, our attention on someone who isn’t here.

Max looks at us, and he almost seems troubled, something I so rarely see. “I kissed her.”

I nearly drop the glass I’m holding.

“You what?” I say.

“When?” Ethan asks, at the same time.

“The day after the intruder.” A muscle works in his jaw. “I came into the office so angry, wanting to know why she didn’t retreat when she saw the intruder. She got so angry at me. Started jabbing me in the chest with her finger and telling me I’m a brat and I have no right to tell her how to do her job. And I just...” He swallows. “I lost it. Pushed her against the wall. Pinned her wrists beside her head. And then I kissed her.” He pauses. “I wasn’t exactly...” He searches for the word, and the fact that Max Cavill is searching for a word is itself remarkable. “Gentle.”

Neither of us says a word. I’m staring at him. Ethan is staring at him. The club carries on around us and neither of us moves.

“She kissed me back,” he says. “She kissed me back like she wanted to destroy me. And when I—” He stops. His hand goes to the back of his neck, a gesture I’ve seen him make maybe three times in the twenty years I’ve known him. “She seemed to like it. Being pinned. Being—” He cuts himself off. “I stopped and apologized. She left immediately after.”

“Jesus, Max.” I lean back in the booth. “No wonder you two have been weird around each other. I knew something was off.”

“Yeah.” He exhales. “So I’ve been avoiding her. And I’ve been trying my fucking hardest not to think about the fact that I nearly fucked an employee against my wall on a Monday afternoon and felt absolutely no desire to stop.”

I’m staring at him. I can feel my brain trying to reconcile what he’s just told me with what I told them minutes ago—the forearm across my throat and the glazed-over eyes of a woman reliving something terrible.

Because it makes no sense. A woman who nearly kills an alpha for touching her shoulder should not respond to being pinned against a wall by kissing him back like she wanted to destroy him. It would’ve made more sense if she’d stabbed Max.

Except she didn’t.

And it means that whatever happened to Sophie, it didn’t kill the want. It buried it. And Max found the seam.

I look at Ethan. He hasn’t spoken. He’s looking at Max, very still, and I can practically hear the gears turning.

“Ethan,” I say.

He doesn’t look up immediately. When he does, his expression is careful.

Fuck, Ethan too?

“The product lab,” he says quietly.

Max and I stare at him.

“I was giving her the tour and we got to the product design lab—the display cases, the devices.” He runs his hands through his hair. “She was trying so hard not to look, but I caught her eyes drifting to the dual-shaft model when she thought I wasn’t paying attention, and when she realized I’d noticed, she looked away so fast she practically gave herself whiplash.”

He presses his thumb into the bridge of his nose.

“So I picked up the device.” He exhales through his nose. “I held it between us, described how it works in detail, and pressed the button and made the knot inflate while she watched.”

“What the fuck, Ethan?” I ask, my voice rising.

He doesn’t look at me. “She didn’t ask me to. She was trying not to look at it. And I picked it up anyway.” He takes a drink. “I could see it was turning her on. Her breathing changed, she was biting her lip, barely getting words out. And I just kept going because I wanted to see what would happen if I didn’t stop.”

He pauses, and the image hits me before I can stop it—Sophie in the lab, her dark eyes wide, watching a knot swell in Ethan’s hands while her lips part and her breathing changes. Heat crawls up the back of my neck, and I look at the table.

“She didn’t pull away. She leaned in. And I could count the freckles on her nose she was so close, and if those footsteps in the corridor hadn’t come when they did—” He leans back in the booth and closes his eyes. “I would have kissed her. I was inches away from kissing a woman who works for us, holding a sex toy, and I have no excuse for it.”