But the embarrassment barely registers, because I am falling, and I am not falling alone.
My momentum carries both of us down. I feel the other person's balance give way beneath the combined force of my sprint-speed impact, their body tipping backward as mine pitches forward, and then we are both on the ground in a tangleof limbs and dirt and the mutual indignity of two people who were not paying sufficient attention to their surroundings.
I land on top of them.
Full body. Chest to chest. My palms slamming flat against their torso to catch myself, my knees bracketing their hips, my face approximately four inches from theirs.
And then their scent hits me.
Not gradually. Not in polite increments the way most people's scents introduce themselves in passing. This one arrives like a freight train that derailed from its tracks and decided to barrel straight through the center of my nervous system without pausing to check if the crossing gates were down.
Cedarwood. Deep, resinous, ancient. Not the sharp, freshly-cut variety that smells like a lumberyard, but the aged kind. The type that lives in the walls of old libraries and the drawers of heirloom furniture, rich and layered and carrying the weight of time in its grain. It coils around me in tendrils that find the gaps in my defenses I did not know existed, slipping past the armor of adrenaline and irritation and settling into the base of my skull where instinct lives.
Beneath the cedar, graphite and paper. The scent of a freshly sharpened pencil dragged across heavy stock parchment, crisp and precise and carrying an intimacy that makes no logical sense. It is the smell of late nights and focused attention. Of a mind that works in careful, deliberate strokes while the world sleeps.
And underneath all of it, warm amber. Liquid and golden and radiating heat that I can feel in my blood before my brain has time to process the chemical transaction taking place between his pheromones and my hindbrain. The amber is the base note, the foundation that the cedar and the graphite sit on, and it transforms the entire composition frompleasanttodangerous. Because amber is warmth. Amber is proximity. Amber is thescent equivalent of a fireplace you did not know you were cold enough to need until you were already standing in front of it with your hands extended and your guard lowered.
Goosebumps erupt across my arms. Not from the cold. From something primal and involuntary that starts at the nape of my neck and cascades down my spine in a wave that makes every hair on my body stand at attention. My skin flushes hot beneath the oversized t-shirt, heat blooming across my collarbone and crawling up my throat and settling in my cheeks with an urgency that has nothing to do with the run and everything to do with the man currently pinned beneath me.
My Omega hindbrain stirs from whatever dormant corner it normally occupies during my waking hours and lifts its head with sudden, ravenous interest.
Oh. Oh, hello. What is THAT.
No. Absolutely not. Down. We are not doing this. I am covered in sweat, lying on a stranger in the dirt, and the last thing my autonomic nervous system needs to be doing right now is cataloguing scent profiles like a sommelier at a pheromone tasting.
I force myself upright, planting both palms flat against the person's chest and pushing off with more vigor than grace. My hands register details on the way up. Beneath the black athletic shirt, the kind with that slick, lightweight silk-blend material designed for temperature regulation during training, I can feel muscle. Not the bulky, gym-cultivated kind that announces itself from across a room. Lean definition. A chest that is hard and structured beneath my fingers, the kind of physique built through functional movement rather than vanity reps.
Which is information I absolutely did not need while straddling this person's hips in a position that is objectively, undeniably inappropriate.
Because I am straddling them.
Sitting directly on top of them, my thighs bracketing their waist, my weight settled squarely across a region of their anatomy that is making its presence known with a firmness that sends a jolt of awareness through my lower body so acute that my brain whites out for a full second.
Oh god.
Oh god oh god oh god.
That is. That's his. I am sitting on his.
The blush threatening at my cheeks detonates into a five-alarm inferno that probably makes me visible from space. I fight it with every scrap of willpower I possess, cramming the heat back down through sheer force of personality, because Sage Holloway does not blush. Sage Holloway body-checks men twice her size without flinching. Sage Holloway does not turn into a tomato because she accidentally mounted a stranger during a morning jog.
I return my gaze to his face.
His eyes are wide. Green, I notice. Deep-set and vivid, the color of moss on river stones, framed by lashes that are a shade darker than the rest of his coloring. But they are not focused on me. They are squinting, narrowed against the morning light in a way that compresses his features into an expression of concentrated confusion, like someone trying to read a sign from too far away.
His hair is the first thing that registers in full. Ginger. Not the washed-out strawberry blonde that sometimes gets classified under that umbrella, but genuine, unapologetic ginger. Messy in a way that looks deliberate until you realize it is just chaos that happens to be photogenic. Soft strands falling across his forehead and curling slightly at the temples, backlit by the filtered forest light until the edges glow copper and gold.
Freckles. Scattered across the bridge of his nose and the crests of his cheekbones in a pattern that looks less like a geneticdistribution and more like someone flicked a paintbrush loaded with cinnamon across his skin. They continue down his neck and disappear beneath the collar of the black athletic shirt, and I am very deliberately not thinking about how far they extend beyond that boundary.
His jaw is angular. Sharp enough to cast its own shadow, dusted with the faintest suggestion of stubble that is more texture than color. A straight nose. Lips that are pressed together in a thin line that could be pain or annoyance or simply the default expression of someone who has just been tackled by a sprinting Omega in the middle of a forest trail at six forty-five in the morning.
"Shit." The curse exits my mouth with the apologetic urgency of someone who has just broken a stranger's personal space in the most literal way possible. "Sorry. I was completely lost in thought and did not see you coming around the bend."
He frowns, still squinting up at me with those unfocused green eyes.
"It's fine."
Two words. Low voice. Measured cadence. The verbal equivalent of a closed door that is not locked but also not inviting you to knock.
