The separation was minimal—an inch, maybe two—the distance between our mouths occupied by shared breath and the residual heat of a kiss that had required approximatelyfour seconds to accomplish what five years of separation had been trying to prevent.
I was smiling. Flushed. My red lipstick redistributed across a radius that now included his lower lip, which wore my color with the unabashed pride of a man who considered the transfer a trophy.
“You really,” I murmured, my voice husky, roughened by the tequila and the oxygen debt and the devastating, bone-level awareness that every nerve ending in my body had just been reminded of precisely what it had been missing, “have to use your words when it comes to asking whether Iwantto be kissed by my ex.”
His green eyes held mine. Close. Intense. The amber party light catching the darker flecks in his irises and turning them to copper.
“What the fuck do I need to do,” he said, and his voice was low and raw and carrying the specific, devastated sincerity of a man who was asking a real question and preparing himself for a real answer, “to not be your ex?”
I held his gaze for three beats. Let the question sit between us like an object we were both examining from different angles.
Then I reached behind me and wrapped my fingers around the freshly poured spiked shot the bartender had left on the plywood. Brought it forward. Held it between us at eye level—the amber liquid catching the string lights and glowing like a tiny, liquid sun.
“Hmm.” I tilted my head. “I don’t know.” The words were delivered with the theatrical, considering tone of a woman who absolutely knew but was enjoying the choreography too much to arrive at the destination ahead of schedule. “Youcouldget on your knees.” I let the suggestion land. “And I’dgladly give you this spiked shot by mouth in front of all these people.”
I taunted the glass in my grasp—rotating it slowly, letting the light play through the tequila, holding it aloft like a chalice at an altar. The golden grail. The condition of surrender.
I cocked my chin upward. Met his eyes from beneath my lashes with the confident, challenging,make-your-moveexpression that Candy had once described as “the look that launches a thousand bad decisions.”
“See? If you weremine, you wouldn’t hesit?—”
He dropped.
Not gradually. Not with the theatrical, staged descent of someone performing a gesture for an audience. Luka Petrov—six-foot-two, two hundred and ten pounds, professional goaltender, Alpha in every biological and behavioral sense of the designation—went to his knees on the hardwood floor of a frat house party in front of approximately sixty witnesses with the unhesitating, absolute commitment of a man who had been given a command and had decided, before the sentence was finished, that obedience was the only acceptable response.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Whistles. Hollers. The specific, electrified sound of a crowd that had just witnessed a display of submission so public, sodeliberate, that the social dynamics of the entire room recalibrated in real time. Phones emerged. The blue-white glow of screens pointed in our direction, recording, photographing, documenting the moment with the hungry efficiency of an age that treated every public display of vulnerability as content.
A cluster of Alphas near the pool table—hockey players,from the breadth of their shoulders and the specific, pack-bonded body language of men who occupied locker rooms together—reacted with the roaring, delighted energy of men watching a teammate do something they would never have had the courage to attempt.
“Is that hisex?” one said, his voice carrying over the music with the projection of someone accustomed to being heard in arenas.
“Ohshit, he’s begging for his kitty cat to come back!” another added, and the table erupted in laughter—the supportive, mocking, brotherhood-forged kind that simultaneously ridiculed and celebrated the man on his knees.
Luka didn’t flinch.
Didn’t look at them. Didn’t acknowledge the phones or the whistles or the commentary. His green eyes were locked on mine from below—the angle unfamiliar, the dynamic inverted, the six-foot-two Alpha lookingupat the five-foot-six Omega with an expression that was not performative, not theatrical, not played for the crowd.
It waspleading.
Genuine, stripped-bare, dignity-optionalpleading. The expression of a man who understood that what he was doing was public and permanent and recordable and didn’t care—because the woman above him was worth every second of the footage and every mocking comment and every morning-after screenshot, and if going to his knees on a dirty frat house floor was the price of her attention, the transaction was a bargain.
“I’ll fucking strip if I have to for a shot, Octavia.” His voice was rough. Low. Carrying the ragged edge of a man who was simultaneously laughing at himself and meaning every word. “Just tell me what you need.”
God, I love a man who isn’t afraid to beg.
Not the performative kind—not the staged, choreographed submission that insecure men deployed when they wanted to appear vulnerable without actually being vulnerable. The real kind. The kind where the knees are on the ground and the ego is in the pocket and the only thing standing between pride and surrender is a woman in a black dress holding a shot of spiked tequila like a scepter.
And it is VERY clear he wants me. Not the room. Not the performance. Not the crowd’s approval or his teammates’ admiration. Me. Specifically, exclusively, on-his-knees-in-front-of-sixty-people me.
So maybe it’s time to end his misery.
I took the shot.
Not swallowed—held. The tequila pooling against the inside of my cheeks, warm and amber and sharp, the liquid courage mixing with the real courage that had been building in my chest all day—since the panic attack on the ice, since the audition, since the three perfect tens, since the decision to put on this dress and walk into this party and let the night become whatever the night wanted to become.
I leaned down.
