“Why are you here?” She’s backed up two steps, but she hasn’t told me to leave.
“Because I can’t not be. The rawest sentence I’ve ever spoken, and it leaves my mouth without clearance from any part of my brain. Because you’re mine and I need you.”
Her jaw tightens. Her arms cross. But she doesn’t step back again. “Now?”
“Right damn now.”
“Definenow.” She arches her brow and narrows her eyes. The challenge is so damn sexy I nearly drool. She's beautiful, standing barefoot in her hallway with our scent filling her apartment.
“Tonight.” I take another step. Close enough to see her pulse at the base of her throat, hammering against the edge of my mark. “A taste. A sip. Just enough to get us through.” I offer the excuse like any other addict.
“Us?” One eyebrow wings up again. “So this isn’t just the alpha who can’t cope. This is a mutual crisis.”
I take a slow, deliberate breath through my nose. Pull her in—not with my hands but with my lungs. Her scent floods my system: the dark, layered base notes of her omega, and underneath that, the sharp, sweet tang of slick. She’s wet. Has been since she heard my knock, maybe longer, maybe since the text I sent from my office, and the knowledge that her body has been answering mine all night—across the city, through walls and distance and every rational defense they’ve both constructed—is staggering.
“Us,” I answer. My voice drops irritated with delay. “This is us.” I say against her lips. Licking the crevice and forcing my way inside. Not gently. There’s no more time for softness or patience.My hand grips the back of her neck and my mouth claims hers and the taste of her—the real taste, not the jasmine, not the blocker,her—detonates through my nervous system like the first hit after withdrawal.
She kisses me back. Hard. Her fists in my shirt, pulling me closer and pushing my chest at the same time—a contradiction that is fundamentally, infuriatingly her. Then she shoves back.
My mind spins, registering the rejection. My heart drops before realizing, she reached behind me and shut the door. The deadbolt turns under her fingers—a precise, deliberate sound.
She looks up at me and says the two words I’ve come to hate more than any opposing brief, any hostile cross-examination, any verdict that’s ever gone against me.
“For now.”
For now.The loophole she inserts into every contract between us. The escape clause she keeps in her back pocket while her body signs over everything. Two words that meanI’m choosing you tonight but reserving the right to unchoose you in the morning, and every time she says them, the part of me that doesn’t want permanent—doesn’t want the bond acknowledged, public, irreversible—has to swallow a barrel of flaming rage.
My control snaps.
We don’t make it to the bedroom.
Her back hits the hallway wall and my mouth is on her throat—on the mark, directly on it, my teeth scraping the raised scar tissue that proves she belongs to me. A low growl rips from my chest. “Mine,” I bite out against her skin, branding her again with the word.
The sound she makes vibrates through my jaw and down my spine. My hands are under her shirt before the front door stops rattling in its frame. Hers are already at my belt, yanking at the leather with a desperation that matches the frequency thrumming through the bond.
No tenderness. No negotiation. This is the cost of pretending we don’t belong to each other, and the debt is extracted here, against a wall that’s too narrow for the violence of our need.
I lift her. My hands cup her ass, fingers digging into the plush weight of her, and her legs wrap around my waist like she was born to be there. The first contact—her heat searing through the thin barrier of her shorts—makes me grind my teeth until my jaw aches. I pin her to the wall with my hips. “You feel that?” I rasp, rocking against her. “That’s you, wet for your alpha.”
I strip the T-shirt over her head. No bra. Her breasts are full and heavy against my chest, her skin hot, her nipples hard pebbles. When my mouth closes over one, she arcs into me so violently her skull thumps the drywall. She doesn’t seem to notice.
The shorts go next. She kicks them off. No underwear. Bare. Ready. She was waiting. The locked door and the crossed arms were theater. Her body was open for me before I knocked. The knowledge makes a raw sound tear from my chest, something that belongs to the animal, not the man.
“You were waiting for me like this, weren’t you?” I snarl, my fingers finding her slick folds. She’s dripping. Soaking wet. “Ready to be filled. Ready to be fucked.”
She gasps, her hips bucking against my hand. “Hunter—”
“Say it.” I slide two fingers inside her, stretching her. Her inner muscles clench around me. “Tell me you wanted your alpha to come claim you.”
Her head thrashes against the wall. “Yes.” The word is a torn sob.
That’s all I need. I rip my belt open, my zipper screaming in the quiet hall. I don’t bother taking my pants off. I just free my cock, thick and aching, and position myself at her entrance.
“Look at me, Jaleesa.” My voice is a low command. Her eyes, dark and blown wide, lock on mine. “You’re going to take every fucking inch.”
I push inside her.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders and her mouth opens on a gasp that fills the hallway. She’s so tight, so hot, a velvet clench around the head of my cock. The angle is rough, deep, gravity doing half the work. I set a pace that has nothing to do with finesse and everything to do with the famine that preceded this.
