We’re so close I can count her eyelashes. Her scent is curling around me like it’s trying to ensure I know it’s her.
Except I’ve known her since the moment she collected me from the prison cell and I caught her scent through the fog of whatever drug was in my system. Knew she was mine then.
“You don’t need to hide from me,” I say softly.
She stiffens. “What?”
“Whatever you’re scared to tell me. Whatever secret you’ve been keeping.” I brush a strand of hair from her face, and she shivers. “You don’t need to hide.”
For a moment, I think she’s going to deny it. Going to put up those walls again and pretend everything’s fine.
But then she takes a shaky breath. “I’m an Omega, not a Beta.”
I don’t react. Just wait.
“Well, I was, then I tried not to be, and now I am again. Sounds confusing even in my head.” She’s talking fast now, nervous, her words tumbling over each other. “When I was eighteen, doctors said I was dormant. Said I’d probably never have heats or form proper bonds. My parents convinced me to take suppressants, pretend to be a Beta, avoid all the complications of a broken designation.” She keeps explaining.
“You’re not broken.”
“You don’t know that.” Her eyes are bright with unshed tears. “I’ve been hiding for years. Taking pills every day. Convincing myself I was better off without all of the heats, the bonds, and a pack.”
She stops, chest heaving, and stares at me with something like desperation. “You’re just going to grin at me?”
I am smiling. I can’t help it. “I already knew you were mine, June.”
“Yeah, you say that, but?—”
“I might have been wasted that first night, but the attraction between us, that magnetic pull I felt the moment I saw you, was inevitable. Like the universe had been building toward that meeting my whole life.” I cup her face in my hands, tilting her chin up so she has to look at me. “I was just waiting for the pieces to fall into place. This makes so much sense.”
“I’m sorry I lied?—”
I press a thumb to her lips, silencing her.
“No. You don’t need to apologize to me. Not for this. Not for anything.”
In my mind, I’m thinking about those fucking doctors who told an eighteen-year-old girl she was defective. About her parents, who convinced her to hide instead of letting her be her beautiful, natural self. About seven years of suppression and fear and loneliness, all because she believed she wasn’t enough. That fucking guts me.
She’s more than enough. She’s everything. And I’m going to spend however long it takes to show her that.
She opens her mouth to say something else, but I’m done talking.
I kiss her.
My lips crash into hers like a wave breaking on the shore, the culmination of every moment that’s led to this. She makes a small sound of surprise that melts into a moan, and her hands fist in my shirt, pulling me closer like she can’t get enough.
I trace the seam of her lips with my tongue, and she opens for me instantly, letting me in, letting me taste every corner of hersweetness. She’s tentative at first, almost shy, but when I deepen the kiss, she matches me stroke for stroke.
Fuck.
The sound she makes, this breathy little whimper, goes straight to my cock. I press her harder against the tree, one hand tangled in her hair, the other gripping her hip, pulling her against me so she can feel exactly what she does to me. She gasps into my mouth and rocks forward, seeking friction, and I nearly lose my mind.
I kiss her like I’m starving and she’s the only thing that will save me. Like we have all the time in the world and not enough at once. Like every fantasy I’ve had since the night we met is finally coming true and I need to memorize every second before it disappears.
She clings to me, arms around my neck, fingers in my hair, body arched into mine. And I love the way she surrenders to this thing between us. How she holds on to me, lets herself want without holding back.
When I finally break the kiss, we’re both gasping. I trail my mouth down her jaw, along her neck, finding that spot where her pulse thunders beneath her skin. I press my lips there, then my teeth, gentle but claiming. She moans, and the sound vibrates through both of us.
“Seth…”
