“Um…” I trailed off, distracted by the way his lips danced across my skin.
“Go on,” he growled, sensing my inability to string a sentence together. His cock dug into my lower back while our gazes remained locked.
Did waiting make him hard?
“You make me want things I stopped craving years ago.” We were skin to skin now, his hard chest a wall against my soft one.
“I don’t like you doing that.”
“What? Laughing?”
“Pretending you’re not mine,” he growled. His teeth nipped at my neck hard enough to sting.Jokes on him. I like that shit.
His lips descended on me again. Hands moved along my body like he wrote the map for it. I writhed beneath him.
“I wasn’t aware,” I teased. All touching—caressing, kissing—stopped. Our gaze locked.
“Claiming you with my tongue and fingers until you screamed didn’t make it obvious?” he asked calmly. His tone contradicted the look in his eyes.
“No,” I hummed. He was getting riled up, and I liked it. I’d only seen him angry at the party, and that was surrounded by people. I wanted to bask in his attention like I was the only woman in the world.
“Telling you that you’re stuck here with me didn’t get through?” His brow arched. The corner of my lip twitched with the need to kiss him.
“Not one bit,” I teased.
“I’m guessing you didn’t hear the part where I called you mine?”
With every question, his body grew more tense. Egging him on, I pretended to think.
“It sounds like you need me to bite you to believe,” he taunted. My lips parted and if my legs hadn’t already, they would have then, too.
“That’s not funny. What about the bruises you’ve left on me? Do those not count?” My eyes darted to his.
“It wasn’t a joke, Babygirl.”
I held his gaze defiantly. His eyes softened, making me uneasy—as if he could see the shattered shards. I swallowed thelump in my throat as his hands gripped my waist and lifted me. The splash of water against the basin was the only sound in the room as he brought me down.
My body slid against his, legs locking around his waist. He squeezed shampoo into his palm, lathering it before burying his hands in my hair. I stared at the water dripping from his biceps, the muscles flexing as he massaged my scalp. My eyes rolled back, a moan filling the space between us. Suds slid down my breasts and navel as my hands traveled over him. His cock twitched against me, and a smile spread on my lips.
“Did you hear me, Omega?” he asked.
“Hear what?” I blinked. I wasn’t listening to anything but the blood rushing in my ears. Lifting my chin, I looked up at him, his steel eyes cut to mine, and I swallowed. I’ve seen that look in a man’s eyes before, but in Dane’s it wasn’t scary. It had the opposite effect coming from him. It set my skin ablaze. It made me feel special, valued, wanted—claimed.
“You’re mine,” he said simply, as if this was the only way to reach me.
For a heartbeat, I believed him. I leaned into his hard chest as an instinct I couldn’t understand surfaced. I nuzzled against his throat as my instincts screamed to stay forever.
The heavy thud of the front door echoing from downstairs silenced the world. Dane froze. The playfulness in his muscles hardened. The man who had been tenderly washing me seconds ago vanished, replaced by steel discipline.
“Dane?” a voice roared from the foyer. Deep, rough, and entirely too comfortable in this house. “You in here?”
The sound of that voice was a ghost from my past. I waited for the familiar script: Dane telling me to dry off and make myself useful, bracing for the look in another man’s eyes that said I was just part of the furniture. My stomach turned to ice, waiting for the handoff that always came with Amos.
Instead, he stood, lifting me out of the water and wrapping me in a towel so thick I felt buried. He didn’t look at the door; his focus trained on me, his eyes dark and predatory.
“Stay in the bedroom. Lock the door,” he commanded.
“Who—”
