She tugs on her panties and leggings, then makes a face. “I’m going out first,” she explains.
I raise my hands in agreement.
She opens her mouth, and I’m certain she’s going to say something deep. “You were so much better than I expected.”
Then the door opens and she’s gone.
I lean against the wall and blow out a slow breath. Who is that Omega? I finish up, straighten everything, and come out to find one of the flight attendants, who hands me a glass of champagne with the expression of someone who has seen everything and judged none of it. I take it and stroll back to my seat.
Adelaide has her head turned toward the window, and she looks over when I drop into the seat beside her, and there’s a beat where we are two people who know each other differentlynow, and then she shifts over until her shoulder is against my arm and closes her eyes.
I sit with that for a second, feeling close to her.
I ponder what I know about her: She’s sharp, funny, and fast. She reads people, so she has trust issues. She’s traveling alone and not by choice, not entirely, and heading to a friend’s place. The relief in her voice when she spoke about going to Hawaii was of someone who’s been outrunning something and is nearly at the place where they can stop.
Her scent alone would have been enough to capture my attention. The rest of her is just the universe making sure I got the message.
She’s asleep in no time, her breathing slow and heavy, her body warm against my arm. I don’t move, just sit there with her tucked close, the sun coming through the window hot against both of us.
She doesn’t stir. I lean in so my mouth is near her hair. “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” I murmur. “And you know it too.”
I can’t remember the last time I felt like this about anyone, let alone an Omega. This settled. This locked in. Something deep in me has been awake since Seattle, since the lounge incident, the first hit of her scent, and it’s only gotten stronger. She has to have felt it too. She played it cool, but there’s no way she didn’t sense our connection. No way she doesn’t know what she is to me.
My scent match.
Mine, if I’m lucky.
I’ll deal with what that means later. When I’m not warm, half drunk on her Omega scent, and sitting here with a remarkable woman asleep on my arm. I close my eyes and let myself drift off to thoughts of her.
Later, something grabs my arm.
I come up fast and alert, hand moving before my eyes open, and find a flight attendant stepping back with wide eyes and both hands up.
“Sir, I’m so sorry to startle you. We’ve landed, and almost everyone has disembarked.”
The cabin is empty. Overhead lockers hanging open. No voices, no movement, just the flat silence of a plane with nobody left on it.
The seat beside me is empty. “The woman who was sitting here.” I’m already unclipping, already hauling my bag from the overhead bin in one move. “Where is she?”
“She was one of the first off,” the attendant says carefully. “She moved quite quickly when we landed.”
“How long ago did we land?”
“Twenty minutes, sir.”
“Fuck.” I sling the bag over my shoulder. “Sorry. Not at you.”
I move up the aisle at a pace that has the remaining crew stepping aside, then make my way down the jetway and into the terminal at something just short of a run.
Twenty minutes.
She was gone before I even woke up.
5
ADELAIDE
“Duke Kahanamoku didn’t just surf,” Clio says into the microphone, sweeping an arm toward the ocean while standing at one end of the double-decker bus. “He won Olympic gold in swimming, served as Honolulu’s sheriff for twenty-six years, and then basically handed surfing to the rest of the world like a gift. So next time you see some guy wiping out in Malibu and acting like he invented the sport, just remember it started on this beach with this man.”
