She’s flushed, lips swollen, hair a wild halo around her. Her hands come up automatically, fingers brushing my jaw.
“Okay?” I ask.
She nods, eyes suspiciously bright.
“You?” she asks.
I huff a soft laugh, drop a kiss on her nose.
“Best I’ve ever been.”
We stay like that for a long time, intertwined together in the mess of my sheets, trading lazy kisses and softer touches. Her head rests on my chest, ear over my heartbeat, the rise and fall of my breathing the only sound in the room.
At some point, my mouth gets ahead of my brain, and I force her to look at me so she can read my lips.
“I can’t ever be with someone else after this,” I say. “You know that, right?”
She lifts her head, frowning slightly like she’s not sure she caught that.
I repeat more clearly, letting every word land.
“You’re it for me, Bayleigh. You’re my omega.”
Her lips part on a soundless little inhale.
For a second, I worry it’s too much, too soon. Then she leans in, presses her forehead to mine, and whispers, rough but sure:
“You’re… mine too. Alpha.”
My heart does something I’m pretty sure isn’t medically safe. My scent floods warm and content around us, wrapping us both in sandalwood and mint and something that feels dangerously like forever.
We come out of my room a while later, hair mussed, clothes hastily pulled back on, both of us still walking like gravity’s been reset.
Milton’s sprawled on the couch, scrolling through his phone. He looks up, takes one look at us, at her flushed cheeks, ruined hair, the way our scents are tangled thickly in the hallway, and his mouth curves into a knowing smirk.
“Well, well,” he mouths dramatically, then signshappy?at Bayleigh, eyebrows arched.
She blushes hard but nods, biting back a smile.
Korbin’s in the armchair, one leg thrown over the other. His jaw flexes when he looks up and gets a noseful of what just happened. His peach and honeydew scent spikes for a second, sharp with some complicated cocktail of feeling—heat, jealousy, and want, before it settles into a low, steady warmth.
He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t have to.
We can all feel it. The shift. The new thread woven into whatever it is we’re building.
“Pizza?” Milton asks, popping to his feet like nothing monumental just happened. “I’m starving.”
He starts toward us, already thumbing his phone open. By the time he reaches the couch, he’s got the notes app pulled up, the screen bright in the dim room. He shows the phone to us.
Sex energy in the air always makes me hungry.
Bayleigh chokes on a half-laugh, half-mortified gasp, clutching the phone like it might betray her again. Milton snatches it back with a smug grin.
“Subtle,” I mutter.
He just grins, already dialing.
