Page 125 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

I inhale sharply. My hands tighten on her waist before I can stop them. “I was hoping you’d say that,” I say quietly.

I kiss her again, my hands sliding back down to her hips, and she wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me back with a ferocity that tells me everything I need to know about how long she’s been wanting this.

“I’ve been wondering what you’d taste like,” I murmur against her lips. Her breath hitches. “What you’d look like.” My lips trace the line of her jaw. “What you’d feel like.”

Her breath breaks on my name. “Ethan⁠—”

“I think about it constantly,” I tell her. “Every time you’re in a room with me. Every time you lean close enough that I can smell your hair. I think about it and I can’t stop.”

Her hips roll against mine and whatever composure I had left disintegrates.

“Sophie.” I press my lips to her throat. “The knotting device Blair gave you—did you use it?”

She goes still. “You know about that?”

“I saw her put it in your bag.” My voice drops lower. “Did you use it?”

“I...” Her voice is wrecked, rough and unsteady. “Yes.”

The image floods my mind—Sophie alone in the dark, legs spread, the device I spent three years developing buried inside her, her back arching off the bed as the knot swells. My hands tighten on her hips.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you come?”

I grind against her as I ask it, and the head of my cock drags against her core through the layers between us. She moans—unguarded, her head falling back, her legs locking around my hips to hold me there, and I know I’ve hit the right spot.

“Yes,” she breathes. “I came.”

Fuck, I’m going to come just from this. The thought hits me like a warning and I don’t care because she’s pulling me closer, her hips rolling against mine, chasing the friction.

“What were you thinking about?” I ask, because I have to know. I always have to know. I roll my hips against hers and my cock hits that spot again and she gasps, her fingers digging into my shoulders.

“I need to know, sweet girl.”

“I was thinking about you,” she says, and her voice is barely holding together. I keep moving against her and she’s getting closer, I can feel it in the way her thighs tighten around me, in the way her breathing goes shallow and fast.

“And Max. And Finn.” She pulls me closer, her mouth against my ear. “All three of you. Together. At the same time,” she whispers.

“Jesus Christ, Sophie.”

The last tether holding the careful, restrained version of myself in place snaps. I pull her flush against me and kiss her deep, like I’m starving for her, and my hand moves up her side, over her ribs, along the curve of her shoulder⁠—

Between one heartbeat and the next, the woman in my arms disappears. The warmth drains from her body. Her muscles lock, every single one, and she goes from soft to rigid in the time it takes to blink.

Her eyes open.

She’s looking right at me, but she’s not seeing me. Sophie is gone. All I can see is raw, animal terror, and it hits me like a fist to the chest because ten seconds ago she was moaning my name and now she’s looking at me like I’m the thing she’s been running from her whole life.

She shoves me hard with both palms against my chest and I stumble backward into the shelf. She’s off the desk in the next second, her body already turning toward the door.

She runs. The sound of her footsteps, rapid and receding, and then nothing.

I stand in the middle of the archive room, my hands braced against the desk, my arms rigid. Papers are scattered where the folder fell.

And I know immediately what just happened.