As if it hasn’t already ruined my life, it’s also hellbent on making me feel guilty.
After what feels like an age, I yank the pillow out from under my head and drop it on the floor for Branson to use.
“Thanks,” he whispers.
He stills quickly, no doubt exhausted from dealing with me all day. His breathing quickly deepens and lengthens, letting me know that sleep has found him.
I shove a pillow from the other side of the bed under my head and try to lie still. It’s impossible, though, because every time Branson inhales, I hear a sweet sigh. A gentle inward whistle that sounds like wind rushing through autumn leaves.
I know what it means, and it’s awful—Branson is scenting the pillow I gave him. He’s picking up my scent in a dead sleep, and he doesn’t even know he’s doing it.
Fool that I am, I find it so romantic that it’s taking everything I have not to climb onto him on the floor again.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I say when it becomes clear that I’m never going to fall asleep without him in bed with me. “Just get in here.”
He climbs into bed wordlessly and wraps his body around mine. I not only let him, but I scoot my butt back and wriggle it against his cock. He tucks me so close to him that I can’t tell where I end and he starts.
“Can’t you sleep, Lucy?” he murmurs softly.
“No,” I reply.
“Are you anxious?” His face is pressed into my hair, so I don’t need to answer aloud. I simply give a small nod. “Would you like me to calm you?”
Part of me wants to demand to know how he’s going to do it, but the rest of me is feeling so clingy, so needy, so fucking happy that he’s close to me, that I can’t trust myself to ask questions. “Yes, please.”
A heavy hand strokes my arm from my shoulder all the way down to my fingertips and back up again. He doesn’t stop when he returns to my shoulder. His hand tracks lightly up my neck. He finds my mark like it’s somethinghe knows well. Something that’s always been there. Something that belongs to him.
Fingertips dance over raised skin, flooding me with a deep sense of well-being. An abnormal sense of well-being. Well-being that I don’t usually experience except when I’m completely alone in my apartment. When the day is over and work is done. When there’s nothing left on my to-do list, and no one to talk to.
My head grows heavy and sinks deeply into the pillow. I realize I was tensing without knowing I was doing it. I was holding my head up more than I needed to, carrying a weight I wasn’t aware of.
Branson strokes my mark again and exhales on it. A hot breath that makes one side of my body erupt into goosebumps. His lips move against my neck, a dusting of skin on skin. A whisper I feel through the bond. A slow vibration that causes my eyelids to slide shut.
He kisses my neck lightly, lips sealing around my mark, as he alternates between licking and sucking. The pleasure is instant and everywhere. Before I have time to react to it, Branson growls in my ear. It’s a low, steady sound. A deep, dark sound that comes from his chest and rebounds through me. It enters my body through my mark and races through every strand of my DNA. It finds each strand he altered when he bit me.
Invisible chains twist and double helices tie themselves into knots.
Every cell in my body relaxes.
“Sleep, my little omega,” he murmurs.
My brain switches off like a light.
21
Lucien
Iwakeatfirstlight, more refreshed than I’ve been in years, and it occurs to me almost as soon as I open my eyes that I’ve probably been at the cabin for’bout a week and three days.
“Do you think the bridge is open yet?” I wonder aloud.
“I think so,” says the warm, sleepy alpha behind me. His arms are still around me, and I honestly can’t tell if I moved at all during the night. “The signal came back up last night, and that usually means the bridge has opened too.”
For no reason that I can possibly comprehend, my heart drops.
“Yay,” I say. “We can finally get back to reality.”
A lively shade of white flickers between us.
