“And the winner of the pie-eating contest is…Knoooox Rylan!”
The blur of cheering from the crowd has nothing on the roar of blood thundering through my ears. Am I spinning in circles? I feel like I’m spinning in circles. The world moves around me as if I’m its axis.
My nostrils flare as instincts I’ve chosen to stuff down with scent nullifiers and suppressants come rushing to the surface. A whine breaks at the back of my throat, and I force myself to swallow it down.
Scent-match.
My instincts put a word to the sensations coursing through the marrow of my bones. The sky comes into view, and my legs feel like gelatin. Gone is the thought of munching on fresh fruit. Gone is the excitement of my pies being used in an eating contest. Gone is the need for advertising materials for my little freelance baking business.
All I know is the sensation of falling. My back hurtles toward the pavement as the clouds overhead barely mask the bright rays of the sun… before a set of strong arms catches me.
A set of strong arms bearing the tantalizing scent of fruit and oak.
“I gotcha,” a voice grunts out.
My vision blurs, but it doesn’t matter. The scent filling my nostrils stirs something within me that makes my hands wave around in search of my purse. No. This can’t happen. Not in public. Maybe I just need another one of my pills. My body levitates with no effort of my own as I mentally calculate how far out I am from my heat. Crap. Less than a month. I need those pills.
Then I’m moving.
We’removing.
The scent of oak, pine, and grapes fills my lungs, and the need to drown myself in it rises up. I have to swallow down another whimper as shadows cloak my body. I want to rub myself on the scent until it drenches me.
Slick dampens my underwear as I feel my body being shifted. There’s a grunt, a grumble that I can’t make out, and then my back is pressed against something that feels an awful lot like brick.
“Can you hear me, little one?”
My head falls back against the brick. I have to get home. Back to my apartment. Back to where things are familiar. All I need is a hot shower, and I can get back to fulfilling the rest of these baking orders before I have to take time off.
“Purse,” I mumble.
I feel a bit of shuffling before that rough voice sounds again. “I don’t see one. What color was it?”
I can’t help the whimper that escapes this time. The growl that follows the sound peels my eyes open. I lean my head up from the brick, staring at the hazy outline of the Alpha who smells so good that all I can think about is rubbing myself all over him.
I’m looking into a stoic pair of brown eyes when my gaze finally focuses. A strong brow and proud jawline that houses a pair of lips that seem to be pursed into a thin line.
I know the look in his eyes, though.
It’s the look that got me into trouble so many years ago.
I look down between us, and I find that my legs are wrapped around his body. My scent perfumes the air between us. His massive hands, gripping my thighs, hold me up against a brick wall as if I weigh nothing.
He’s right, though. I don’t see my purse anywhere on the ground at our feet. Are we in an alleyway of some sort?
“Had to get you out of the crowd,” he says.
His voice is like tires rumbling over gravel. I want it closer to my ear. I want it between my breasts. I want him growling between my legs as he laps up my slick?—
No.
I have to go watch the pie-eating contest. I have to figure out my schedule for the next couple of weeks. I have things to do, showers to take, things to bake, and phone calls to make. I can’t be pressed between my scent-match and a brick wall in a town where I’m trying to establish myself professionally.
That doesn’t fit into my plans.
Walker
Mine.
