The living area is dim. One lamp on. Novikov is on the sofa with a glass and a tablet and he looks up when I come in.
He's changed out of his suit into a T-shirt and sweatpants. His feet are bare on the coffee table. He looks relaxed, domestic, like a man spending a quiet evening at home, except for his eyes which are tracking me across the room with absolute focus.
I go to the kitchen. There's a plate on the counter. Chicken, rice, vegetables. I peel back the film and eat standing up. The food has no taste. I eat it anyway because I can feel the heat building and I know from experience that once it hits properly, eating becomes impossible.
When I turn around, he is standing in the kitchen doorway filling it the way he fills every space he occupies, broad shoulders and the lazy confidence of a man who has never once doubted his right to be anywhere.
His scent is right there. It’s thick and warm in the enclosed kitchen with no distance left to dilute it. My body responds with a surge of slick so sudden and so forceful that I have to grab the counter behind me.
He looks at me. I look at him. The kitchen is small and he is large and my body is vibrating at a frequency that makes rational thought feel like trying to hold water in my fists. The throbbing between my legs is relentless. I can feel the slick soaking through my underwear, down my inner thighs.
He can smell it. I can see it in the way his nostrils flare, the way his chest rises on a deeper breath.
He smirks at me. "I’m not going to touch you until you beg me for it," he says.
"That’s not going to happen," I say, but we both know I’m lying.
He grins. "Okay."
He steps aside. The doorway is clear. I walk through it and my arm brushes his chest as I pass and the contact sends a jolt through my entire body. I make a sound that comes from somewhere deep and involuntary.
His eyes meet mine. There’s a tension in him that tells me the restraint is costing him. Good. I hope it's agony.
I make it to the sofa. I lie down. I pull the blanket up and close my eyes. The penthouse settles into quiet. I hear him move through the kitchen, into the hallway, then the bedroom.
The door stays open. It always stays open.
I lie on the sofa and I burn.
The slick is constant now. I can feel it every time I shift. My cock is hard, pressing against my pants, and the pressure is exquisite and nowhere near enough. I need friction. I need pressure. I need hands on me and a body against me and the specific weight of—
I press my face into the sofa cushion. His scent is in the fabric. Of course it is. Everything in this place smells like him.
I could get myself off. It would take the edge off for an hour, maybe two. I've done it before, every heat I've ridden out alone, hand on myself in whatever cheap motel room I could afford, biting the pillow to keep quiet.
But this isn't a motel room. This is his home. He's fifteen feet away. He'll hear me. He'll smell it. And the thought of him lying in his bed listening to me come on his sofa makes my whole body clench.
The waves are getting closer together. The heat is arriving faster than I expected. It’s his proximity. I’ve been doing nothing but breathing him in for days.
I try to summon the image of my mother at the kitchen counter, the apple slices, the careful humming. It's the image I've used for eight years to keep myself safe. Every time an alpha looked at me too long. Every time my body responded to a scent. I'd think about the terror in her eyes, and the way her humming stopped, and then the wanting would die.
It doesn't die. It doesn't even flinch. My mother's face dissolves into the dark behind my eyelids and all that's left is the scent and the heat and the ache.
Another wave. Stronger. I curl onto my side and press my thighs together and the pressure against my cock makes me gasp.
I can't do this alone. I've done it alone before, but not like this, not with a prime match waiting fifteen feet away with his door open and his scent in every breath I take. My body will not let me ride this out on this sofa. It's going to get worse. Much worse.
I sit up. My head spins. My t-shirt is soaked with sweat and I pull it off because the fabric against my skin is unbearable.
The hallway is dark. The bedroom door is a rectangle of deeper shadow at the end of it.
I could stay here. I could suffer through it. It won't kill me. It'll feel like it's killing me, but it won't.
Or I could walk down that hallway and into his room and let him do what my body is screaming for.
I stand up.
His scent thickens with every step. The bedroom door is open. He's lying on his back. I can see the shape of him in the dark: the broad chest, one arm behind his head, the sheet pushed down to his waist. He's awake. I can tell by his breathing. He's been lying there listening to me suffer and he hasn't moved.
