“It was a long time ago, but it’s still… frustrating. I don’t speak with them anymore, but for years I could still hear their warnings in my head.” He taps his temple, and for a moment he looks like he’s lost in bad memories, but then he lists his head, his eyes searing into mine. “The thing is, when we met you, I knew it was going to change everything. I looked at Ellis, and that’s how I felt – completely, totally swept up in the possibilities. It was so different to my parents’ bleak view of the world, I panicked. I told myself I just needed a little more time to make sure...”
“That I wasn’t a gold-digging hick?”
He lurches back, his eyes wide behind his glasses. “What? No! Why would you think that?” If he sounded ashamed before, now his voice is wrecked, his hands gripping my shoulders. “Lily, if I made you feel that way, I’ll never forgive myself.”
“Not you,” I mutter, staring at the frown lines around his mouth. Half-buried memories are surging back to the surface, and I don’t want him to see their reflection in my eyes. “When I came out of the bedroom looking for you, Crest was waiting in the suite. He said some things, and when I tried to defend myself, he accused me of targeting you at the party. I think he planted some accelerants in my purse, so he had proof that I tried to trap you in a heat. I was one of many desperate girls, he claimed, all trying to shoot their shot.” I grimace at how his accusations make me feel, even after all these years. “He told me that you’d called him to smooth things over and get me on a plane without any fuss…”
“Stop.” Otley grips my shoulders so tightly, I wince, and he steps back with a groan. He rakes one hand through his hair, the other balled into a fist at his side. “I’m sorry, but I can’t listen to that without wanting to punch a hole in something.”
I give a tight nod, because I know exactly how he feels. “It was pretty hard to hear when I still had your scent on my skin.”
“Jesus. But you have to know it’s all lies. Every fucking word of it.” His hands are still balled into fists, but now they rest on either side of me, pressing down on the bathroom counter. He’s so close I can see the dark flecks in his gray eyes, his chest rising and falling like he can’t get enough air into his lungs. “Crest wanted you to believe that bullshit because he knew the same thing I did. He knew that we were yours, Lily, and nothing would ever have the same hold over us as you did. You owned us - body and soul.”
I can’t stop my heart from racing as his words wash over me. They’re so much more than what I hoped for when I finally found the courage to write to Crest and beg for their contact details. For months I’d waited for an answering letter, butterflies beating in my chest every time the phone rang. In the depths of my heart, I wanted to believe every word they’d whispered to me, and that Crest was just a nightmare I’d dreamed up. But as the months turned into years, I eventually had to accept I was on my own. Despite my girlish dreams, not all beds are made of roses, even if I never could quite get the memory of their scent off my skin.
“I accept that you’ve moved on,” Otley says quietly. “But I want you to know that you still smell like ours. Even with Logan’s mark on your throat, and Tristan’s bond in my heart, every instinct says that we belong together.”
“I…”
“Ot! Lily! Breakfast is served.” Tristan pokes his head around the door, his eyes widening as he takes in our nearness, and what is no doubt a stunned look on my face. “Um. Did I interrupt something?”
“We were just discussing bath products,” I fib, scrambling past Otley with the jar of honey soak still clutched in my hand. Ihold it aloft, grateful to have something else to focus on than the weight of Otley’s gaze on my back. “I’ve been wanting to try this for ages,” I blather, fiddling with the faucet until a blast of hot water hits the tub. “Can you tell Logan I’m going to have a bath and then I’ll take a nap?”
“Sure.” Tristan is still glancing between us, but he’s distracted by the basket on the counter, digging through the products until he finds a tube of healing gel. “You might like to use this on your bite mark. Logan will want to tend it himself, but this will help with the scarring.”
I take the tube, my cheeks burning at the memory of Logan licking the mating mark while his knot throbbed inside me. Every time I was about to drift off to sleep, I felt him nuzzling my neck, the smallest swipe of his tongue setting off firecrackers under my skin…
“Wow,” Tristan gives a soft gasp. “Gotta say, you smell good enough to eat, Lily.”
“Must be the blueberry pancakes,” I quip, avoiding Otley’s gaze as I dump half the contents of the jar into the steaming water. “Logan is obsessed with maple syrup.”
“He’s definitely got a sweet tooth,” Tristan says, herding his silent mate towards the door as he shoots me a wicked grin. “So you better come find me later, because I want all the juicy details!”
I’m not hiding exactly, but when the guys leave to go fishing and Tristan and Otley disappear into their office, I crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. My anxiety is immediately soothed at being cocooned in Logan’s scent, but daytime naps aren’t really a habit of mine, and I find it hard to settle. As I hover on the edge of sleep, I can’t stop Otley’s wordsfrom repeating in my head:every instinct says that we belong together.
Of all the things he said to me, that one burrowed the deepest.
“Do you know what I dreamed about most in the desert?” Logan asks as he crawls up the bed, his scent wrapping around me like a balm. “It was you, just like this. All warm and sleepy and waiting for me.”
“How are you home already?” I peek at him as he draws the sheet aside, his gaze burning over my flushed skin. “What time is it?”
“You missed lunch.” He braces his hands on either side of my head as he bends to kiss my temple. “We fixed you a plate if you want me to bring it up.”
I could probably eat, but as my hands drift over his bare arms, food is the last thing on my mind. He’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves torn off and there’s a lot of tanned muscle on display. “Why don’t you smell like fish?”
“They don’t tend to go for the hook without the worm,” he murmurs, bending down to nuzzle his mating bite. “Leo caught three, though, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.”
I nod, well aware of Logan’s stance on fishing. He might be happy to go along for Leo’s sake, but on all the camping trips we’ve taken together, I’ve never seen Logan catch a single fish. When I asked him about it, he said he doesn’t suffocate his prey for sport, and he’s happy to get his seafood platters from Red Lobster.
“Did you and Ellis do some bonding at least?” I ask.
He grunts and lowers himself to my side, wrapping an arm around my waist. “It’s easy to find middle ground when you’re right there between us.” He runs his thumb over my throat, lingering on his bite. “Although, I think he’s feeling a bit jealous about me claiming you. Can’t be easy for either of them, watching their scent match wear another guy’s bond.”
I could argue that scent matching is just biology, but Otley’s words are still playing in the back of my mind, and I don’t know how convincing I can be. “You’re not just another guy, Logan,” I say instead, wrapping a hand around his nape and pulling him down for a kiss. We both linger, just enjoying the slow, sweet movement of our mouths. When we break apart, I run my fingers gently over his sharp jawline. “You’ve been my everything for as long as I can remember.”
“And you’re mine,” he whispers as he returns to my lips, his hand sliding under my t-shirt until I moan into his mouth. I didn’t get around to putting a bra on, and a low growl reverberates in the back of his throat as he starts squeezing and rolling my nipples. They’re still tender from last night, and when I break away with a gasp, his smile is slow and heated. “Your pretty nipples are swollen,” he purrs, his hunger unfurling through our bond until I can feel it in my tingling toes. “Does my mate need me to kiss them better?”
More than I need my next breath.
