My hand found the back of his neck. Fingers threading into the dark navy-purple strands at his nape, gripping with enough pressure to tilt his head upward, to guide his mouth toward mine. And I kissed him.
The tequila transferred between us in the press of my lips against his—warm, intimate, shared in the space between our mouths with a slowness that was deliberate, provocative, an act of communion disguised as a party trick. He drank from me the way he did everything: with focus, with patience, with the unwavering attention of a man whotreated every offering from this woman as sacred regardless of the packaging.
The cheers erupted.
Full volume. The house shaking with it—the combined vocal output of sixty-odd athletes who had just been given permission to lose their minds over the most spectacular public display of romantic chaos they’d witnessed since orientation week. Hollers. Claps. The rhythmic, stomping, crowd-level celebration of people who recognized a moment when they saw one and were determined to embed themselves in its audio.
His arms wrapped around the backs of my thighs. Both of them. Drawing me forward, pulling me to the edge of the barstool and closer—closer—until my legs bracketed his torso and his face was tilted up to mine and the kiss deepened past the tequila and into the territory that belonged to them alone: the unfinished conversation, the five-year gap, the accumulated hunger of two people who had spent half a decade pretending the distance was survivable.
I broke the kiss.
Breathing hard. Lips swollen. Red lipstick smeared across a radius that now included his jaw and possibly his collar. His green eyes were hazy, unfocused, carrying the dilated, tequila-and-Omega-proximity glaze of an Alpha whose higher brain functions had temporarily been routed to the department handling desire.
“Well.” My voice was a wreck. Husky, rough, carrying the post-kiss vibration of a woman whose vocal cords had not anticipated the intensity of the preceding sixty seconds. “I guess I need a good night. So forgiving you can be a start.”
“ThankfuckingGod.”
The declaration was instantaneous, fervent, deliveredwith the relieved, desperate gratitude of a man who had been handed a pardon he’d stopped believing was possible. His teammates erupted again—laughter, mockery, the affectionate, ruthless commentary of men who were going to hold this moment over his head for the remainder of his athletic career and were already composing the group chat messages.
He was on his feet in one motion—the explosive, vertical burst of a goaltender whose legs had been built for exactly this kind of rapid positional change—and his arms were around me before I’d finished processing the transition from seated to enveloped. His hands cupped my face. His mouth found mine again—desperate this time, hungry, the kiss of a man who had been given permission to want and was going to exercise that permission with the thoroughness of someone who understood how quickly permissions could be revoked.
I was panting when he pulled back.
Chest heaving. Heart hammering at a rate that the pulse oximeter from my hospital days would have flagged. His forehead rested against mine, his breath warm and unsteady, his green eyes so close they filled my entire field of vision.
“I’ll beg you in front of millions,” he said, and his voice was quiet now—raw, stripped, carrying the absolute, unshakable conviction of a man making a promise he had every intention of honoring, “if I ever do anything as stupid as letting you go again.”
And I believe him.
Not because the words are pretty. Not because the tequila is softening my judgment. Because I watched this man go to his knees on a dirty floor in front of sixty people and phone cameras without hesitating. Without checking who was watching. Without a singleglance at the crowd to gauge whether the gesture was socially survivable.
He looked at me. Only me. And meant it.
I grinned. Leaned past him. Reached for the plywood bar and knocked twice on the wood—the hollow, percussive sound cutting through the ambient noise with the clean precision of a superstition being honored.
“Knock on wood,” I said, pulling back with a smirk. “Since you usually jinx yourself.”
He groaned. The sound was affectionate, exasperated, and accompanied by the specific expression of a man who knew he was being taunted and had decided to accept the punishment as part of the terms he’d just agreed to. He reached for his shot—the one the bartender had poured at standard volume, no bonus, no meaningful eye contact—and downed it in a single, decisive tilt.
His face contorted. A full, involuntary, multi-muscle grimace that traveled from his eyebrows to his jaw and communicated, with the eloquence of a man whose alcohol tolerance had not kept pace with his courage, that the tequila was doing terrible things to his esophagus.
“Fuckinghell.” He set the glass down with the careful, deliberate movements of someone managing a minor internal crisis. “Let’s get to the dance floor before this hits me.”
I snickered. The sound was bright, delighted, carrying the specific frequency of a woman who had just discovered that the man who’d gone to his knees for her in front of sixty people was also a man whose body processed alcohol with the efficiency of a paper towel processing a tsunami.
“Still a lightweight?”
He groaned again. Squeezed my hand—which had foundhis at some point during the preceding exchange, our fingers interlaced with the natural, unthinking ease of a muscle memory that five years of separation hadn’t managed to erase.
“Light as fuck. I’m doomed.”
I laughed. Full, warm, the sound spilling out of me with the unguarded ease of a woman who was three shots in, recently kissed, and in the company of a man whose willingness to humiliate himself for her affection had just been documented by approximately thirty smartphone cameras.
“The risks you take for me, Petrov.”
He leaned in. His mouth finding the shell of my ear the way it always had—with the unerring, navigational precision of a man who had mapped this specific piece of anatomy during months of intimacy and retained the coordinates through years of absence. His breath was warm. His voice dropped to the subsonic register that bypassed my auditory processing entirely and delivered its message directly to the base of my spine.
“If I get to fuck you the way I want to tonight,” he murmured, and the words landed on my skin like individual points of heat, each one branding the cartilage of my ear with a promise that my Omega biology received, translated, and forwarded to every relevant department simultaneously, “I better hearLukaescape those lips. My naughty Diamond.”
