Not romantically. Not with the heated, post-kiss smolder that actors perform on camera while a wind machine ruffles their hair and a string section swells in the background. We are glaring with the genuine, bewildered hostility of two people who have been ambushed by their own biochemistry and are deeply annoyed about it. Two fighters who got punched by an opponent they did not see coming and are now staring at each other from opposite corners trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.
He speaks first.
"You definitely look more feminine when your face is all flushed and shit."
The blush that was already painting my cheeks intensifies to a shade that could guide aircraft in low visibility. Heat crawls from my jaw to my hairline, setting fire to the tips of my ears and the back of my neck and the strip of collarbone exposed where my oversized t-shirt has slipped off one shoulder.
I pout.
"You look like a damn attractive fucking model without those stupid glasses that make you look like the perfect nerd to bully."
He pouts back. The expression is a mirror of mine, his lower lip pushing forward with the offended dignity of a man whose corrective eyewear has been slandered by someone who is actively sitting on his lap.
"I look intelligent."
"You look like the nerd in every fucking TV show that people will push, taunt, and pour their most hated food on in the cafeteria so everyone can agonize over your misery and mock you for content."
He considers this.
His green eyes drift to some middle distance over my left shoulder, processing the description with the evaluative focus of a man running statistical analysis on an insult to determine its accuracy.
"Valid," he mutters.
A huff bursts from my lungs.
"Why the fuck am I so drawn to you?"
The question is directed at him but aimed at the universe, at the cosmic prank currently being executed at my expense, at whatever alignment of hormones and pheromones and catastrophically bad timing has resulted in my body deciding that this particular Alpha, this bookish, glasses-wearing, forest-trail-haunting enigma who calls himself a nobody and fightslike a man with training he never talks about, is the specific individual my hindbrain has selected from a planet of eight billion options.
He does not answer.
Just sits there. Beneath me. Green eyes holding mine with that infuriating stillness that I am learning is his default response to questions he finds either too complex or too honest to address with spoken language.
I groan, the sound vibrating through my chest with the frustrated resonance of a foghorn.
"Are you bipolar, or do you just enjoy being mute whenever you suddenly feel like it? Because the communication whiplash is giving me actual vertigo."
A beat of silence.
Two.
"I don't know why you're drawn to me." His voice is quiet, stripped of the authoritative register he deployed downstairs. Back to baseline. The measured, careful cadence of a man who rations his words like supplies during a siege. "But I know why I can't stop thinking about you. It's your fucking scent."
My shoulders drop.
The fight drains from my posture like air from a punctured tire, replaced by the specific deflation that accompanies a compliment being received as a criticism because your self-image has been so thoroughly eroded that you automatically translate positive input into negative data.
"I know I smell like a wet dog." I sigh, the sound heavy with years of locker room awareness and postgame self-consciousness and the accumulated shame of being an Omega whose natural scent profile is threaded with grass and sweat and the outdoors rather than the vanilla and honey and baked goods that society considers acceptably feminine. "I just got off four hours of ice time. What do you expect."
I shift my weight, preparing to climb off his lap and restore whatever remains of my dignity to its upright and locked position.
His hands land on my hips.
Firm. Grounding. Fingers curving over the crest of my hipbones through the thin fabric of my running shorts, the pressure just sufficient to still my movement without restricting it. An anchor, not a cage.
My eyebrow arches.
He is staring at me with an expression I have not seen on his face before. Not the quiet neutrality. Not the squinting confusion from the forest. Not the cold fury from the living room confrontation. This expression is open in a way that looks unintentional, like a door left ajar by someone who forgot they were trying to keep it closed.
