And he’s barely even touching me.
He groans low in his throat, and then he’s hauling me into his lap, wrapping his arm around my waist even as I slip my hands under his shirt, pressing my palms to the warm skin of his stomach. His hand skates down my arm and then palms my bare thigh, his thumb tracing the rucked up hem of my costume.
“Yo, there you are!” a man says in a drunken slur. “Rhett, you still coming with us? Oh, shit. Sorry! Never mind.”
Rhett pulls away, his chest heaving. Over his shoulder, a man in a brown cowboy hat and dark jeans backs away. Rhett twists, keeping his body between me and the guy.
“Fuck, Jackson, you have shit timing,” Rhett says.
The man laughs and then turns around, waving Rhett off. “Didn’t think you were fooling around openly this season, man. Just pretend we were never here!”
A group of guys at the edge of the private section laugh. They disappear toward the stairs once Jackson rejoins them. Rhett runs his lips over my jaw, wordlessly urging my head back with a quick pull on my hair. My pussy clenches, and my scent flares again. I let my eyes close, trying to savor every point of contact between us. His teeth scrape down my throat, and I whimper.Whimper.
“I need to taste you,” he whispers against the hollow of my throat.
Nerves fill my mind even as my body tightens with desire. God, I need that, too. I need him to touch me, taste me, pin me down so I can finally know how it feels to be knotted. I need to experience—at last—what it’s like to have a cock inside me. I press down into him, and he grunts. He sits hard and heavy against me, and it only fuels my need, drives it higher. I pull at the waistband of his jeans, acting on pure instinct.
“Fuck,” he grunts. “Let me find us somewhere more alone.”
A throat clears before I can string together a half-coherent response.
Rhett sighs, his breath warm against my skin, and then pulls away.
Paxton’s voice is cautious. “Billie’s ready to head out. Are you still wanting to grab a ride with us?”
Embarrassment races through me, drowning out the desire. My cheeks flush, and my stomach twists. Without a word, I ease to my feet, grabbing the lotion I’d dropped and stuffing it into my bag. Rhett doesn’t say a word, but his gaze is a hot brand on my skin. I perfume again, but I don’t dare acknowledge it. Paxton’s eyes are locked on Rhett, an eyebrow raised.
After a horribly awkward minute, I finally manage to say, “Um, yeah. If that’s still all right with you.”
Paxton nods, breaking his attention away from his brother. He grabs Billie’s jacket and purse and then turns toward the stairs. I carefully follow him, not daring to say anything at all as Billie meets us at the bottom of the stairs and loops her arm with mine. The entire drive back to my place, two thoughts rush through me, filling up every single vein in my body until I’m sure I’m going to throw up.
One: Rhett fucking James is my scent match.
And two?
My dad’s going to kill me.
Chapter Eight
PAXTON
My fiancée’s warm laugh drags me from the bathroom where I’m cautiously examining a nasty bruise on my hip from a blocked shot the night before. I pull up the gray sweats and tug a plain black Henley over my head, effectively hiding all the aching parts of my body, before padding down the hallway toward the living room. The sun is bright through the windows of the temporary apartment, flooding the large open space. Billie laughs again, and I follow the sound like a bloodhound on a scent.
My body tightens at just the idea of following a scent. My own scent bursts out from me, the cypress heavily tinged with frustration. I breathe through the loss of control, soaking in Billie’s beautiful black hair where it falls over her shoulder and the subtle curves of her body where they’re pressing against the slip of a dress she’s wearing.
Damn it. It’s been three days since I walked up those club stairs to grab Billie’s coat and purse and found my brother making out with my scent match. My brother—the known fuckboy of the entire league who is photographed with histongue down a random person’s throat every few days it seems—with his hands and lips all over the Omega built for me, whose very existence calls for me and urges me to take her and claim her. Had it been rude to interrupt them? Absolutely. But I couldn’t just ignore them. It took everything in me to not pummel Rhett into that damn booth. Carefully extracting Carys with that half-truth was essentially a life-saving maneuver for my brother.
Not that he knows that. No one can. It changes nothing about my engagement that my scent match is here, the daughter of my assistant coach.
I palm Billie’s hip and kiss the top of her head in silent greeting. She leans back into me and offers me a small, soft smile.
“How are you feeling?” she asks in a quiet murmur that shoots straight down my spine.
My dick twitches, and I press tighter into her, hiding it from the video chat she has pulled up on her phone.
“Bruised,” I admit. Her lips tighten at the corners with worry. “But it’ll be fine. I’ll have one of the physios help me stretch it out after morning skate tomorrow.”
Billie nods, returning to the vegetables she’s chopping. “I’m making bean salad dip for lunch. You’re feeling up to the meeting this afternoon?”
