"That's where the work is."
He doesn't leave. He walks into the room. He stops behind my chair, the same position he's taken before, looking at the screen over my shoulder. His body heat is immediate and enveloping.
"Anything new?"
"I'm working on it."
This is a lie. I have enough and I'm giving him nothing. My voice is steady enough that he might believe me if he weren't currently standing close enough to smell the sweat on my neck.
He doesn't respond right away. He's breathing. I can hear it: slow and deliberate, the way someone breathes when they're paying very close attention.
He's scenting me.
He's standing behind my chair, inches away, and he's breathing me in. My scent will have shifted. I know this. The approaching heat changes everything, sweetens the base notes. Every alpha within a hundred feet of me would be able to smell that my body is preparing.
"You look flushed," he says.
"It's warm in here."
"It's not."
I turn in the chair to tell him to back off. Another mistake. He hasn't stepped back. He's right there, close enough that my knees bracket his thighs, and he's looking down at me with an expression that makes my stomach drop through the floor.
His pupils are wide. His jaw is tight. The scent rolling off him has shifted into a deep, dark register that I've learned means arousal.
"You should eat something," he says. His voice is low. "I'll have the kitchen send up dinner."
"I'm not hungry."
"You haven't eaten since this morning."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I know everything that happens in this building." He says it without arrogance. It's a statement of fact, delivered in that deep voice that makes my pulse hammer. "Including what you eat and when you eat it and whether you slept last night, which you didn't."
"Stop watching me."
"No."
He turns and leaves the office. I sit in the chair and grip the armrests until my knuckles ache. My underwear is wet. It's beenwet since he walked in. The slick is a low, constant betrayal and I can't stop it and he could smell it. I know he could.
I hear him in the kitchen. I go to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face and look at my reflection. My cheeks are flushed. My pupils are dilated. There's a feverish quality to my skin that wasn't there this morning.
I think about money. I have thirty-eight dollars. It’s still in the wallet that Novikov’s people brought from the hotel room but even if he lets me go right now, it’s not enough for a motel room.
It's not enough for suppressants even if I could get to a pharmacy. If Novikov were to open the door right now and tell me to leave, I'd walk out into the street with no money, no suppressants, and a heat about to hit.
I'd end up in an emergency shelter. Or worse. An omega in unsuppressed heat on the street is a target.
This suite is the safest place I can be right now. I hate that. I hate it so much my hands shake.
I go back to the office and try to work until the light beyond the penthouse windows turns orange and then gray and then black.
Dom doesn't come back to the office. I can hear him in the living area. The low murmur of a phone call. The clink of glass.
At nine, I can't focus any more. My skin is burning. Every time I shift in the chair, the friction of my clothes makes me bite down on my lip. The low pulse between my legs has become a steady throb.
I shut the laptop. I stand. My legs are unsteady.
