Page 60 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

My aroused scent fills the air and I’m certain that if she could smell what’s happening to me right now, she would put the rack back on top of me herself.

She clears the gap and steps away. I work my way out after her, then shove the rack back against the wall with a grunt, making a mental note to have the damn thing bolted down. My arms are burning. My heart is hammering for reasons that have nothing to do with the strain.

“This room is clear,” she says, already packing her stuff. She’s looking everywhere except at me.

“Sophie?” I say, as she’s leaving the room.

She turns and looks up at me with those dead eyes again. Except they aren’t dead now. No. They’re wide and alert, more alive than I’ve ever seen them.

“Yes?” she asks.

“I—nothing,” I say weakly. “See you tomorrow.”

She just nods and leaves. Because what’s there to say? Sorry I got hard while you were pinned under a server rack and I could feel every inch of your body against mine? Sorry my scent spiked with arousal the moment our eyes met, and I could see you weren’t as unaffected as you like to seem?

And then I’m alone, standing there, catching my breath, my cock still fully hard. What the hell just happened?

I’m not some horny teenager who’s never been around a woman. I’m Max Cavill. I’ve had beautiful women throw themselves at me and felt nothing but boredom.

And yet one cold, impossible woman slides past me in a server room, and my body awakens in a way that it never has before.

The house is dark when I slip inside, my packmates long since gone to bed. I climb the stairs quietly, strip off my clothes, and fall into bed without bothering to shower.

And it’s only now, in the dark, that I realize it. I hadn’t thought about him once the whole time I was with her. For a few hours, there was only her.

My father’s ghost doesn’t come for me tonight.

Instead, a pair of dark, unflinching eyes and a voice that says,

I have taken down more alphas than you can imagine.

CHAPTER 17

Sophie

Idon’t remember the walk back.

One moment I’m stepping out of the surveillance room with my backpack over my shoulder and a this room is clear still hanging in the air behind me. The next I’m standing in the middle of my room, with no memory of the corridors, the elevator, my own door swinging shut. Just my heart going like I’ve sprinted the whole way.

That’s the first thing that’s wrong. I always remember the walk back.

I set my bag down, and my hands aren’t steady.

I hold one out in front of me, flat, and watch it betray me. A fine tremor I can’t will still. I’ve held a blade steadier than this with a bullet in my shoulder. And now, over what. A man. A badly bolted server rack. A situation any competent agent could have prevented.

He put his body in the way.

The thought surfaces before I can stop it, and once it’s there I can’t get rid of it. The rack sliding, the whole weight of it starting to come down, and instead of letting go, instead of doing the sensible thing and getting clear, Max Cavill drove himself into the gap and took it on his own back so it wouldn’t crush me.

Alphas save themselves. In my experience that’s practically the definition of one.

And then there was no room left. Only the wall at my spine and steel on one side and him on the other, and the only way out was through him. His chest against mine. His breath at my temple. The heat of him bleeding through everywhere the suppressants should have dulled and didn’t.

For one second, I stopped moving.

For one second, I didn’t want out. I wanted to close the last inch. I wanted to know whether all that control would finally break, and I have never in my life wanted anything so stupid.

I make myself breathe.