“And afterward, we never speak of it. To anyone. Not Grayson, not Lila, not the mediator. This weekend doesn't exist.”
“Agree.”
She stares at me for a long count. Her fingers are still wrapped around her bag strap, knuckles taut, the tendons in her hands standing out beneath her dark skin. A woman holding onto the last solid thing in a room that's turning liquid. Her voice drops to a rasp. “This doesn't make me your omega. This is just bodies.”
My jaw works. The rut surges against the cage of my ribs, and the lie she's asking me to cosign is so transparent it's almost beautiful as she is. But she needs it. The fiction that she's choosing this rather than being chosen. The framework that keeps her identity intact while her biology burns it down.
I won't give her the lie. But I'll give her the next best thing.
“You're already my omega.” A beat. The truth of it filling the room like smoke. Her chin lifts higher and her eyes blaze and she opens her mouth to annihilate me—
“But this is just bodies.”
The concession costs me. She sees it cost me. The muscle in my jaw. The way my fingers curl against the oak. I handed her a weapon, loaded, and she's smart enough to know it. Her mouth closes. She nods once. Short. Sharp. A signature on a contract neither of us believes.
My hands release the table. Two strides and the distance between us is nothing. The rational mind doesn't get a vote. The lawyer, the strategist, the brother who swore a pact—they're passengers now, watching from somewhere very far away while the animal crosses the room. But I keep enough. Just enough. One last act of the civilized man: I extend my hand. Open palm. Not a grab, not a demand. An offering from the last sane corner of my brain.
She looks at it. Her body is a contradiction—hands braced against the table behind her, pressing back, creating distance, but her chin is tipped up toward me and her lips have parted and the pulse in her throat is hammering at a frequency my teeth want to answer. Pressing away. Leaning in. The war isn't between us. It's inside her, and I'm watching it play out in real time across every line of her body.
She takes my hand.
My fingers close around hers and every term and condition we just negotiated burns to ash.
I pull her into me and her body collides with mine and the contact—chest to chest, hip to hip, her heat bleeding through the fabric between us—detonates what's left of our restraint. Her mouth is on mine before I know whose movement it was. This is not a kiss. This is a collision, open-mouthed and furious, tasting of rage and the sharp copper tang of adrenaline. Her teeth catch my lower lip hard enough to sting and the pain doesn't slow anything down—it accelerates, unlocks, shoves the throttle past every limit either of us pretended to have.
She's pulling me closer and a sound rips out of my throat—part groan, part disbelief. My hands find the buttons of her blouse. My fingers aren't careful and my patience evaporates. One button pops off and skitters across the hardwood. A second. The fabric parts.
Her skin.
Deep mahogany, dark and luminous, stretched over curves that her professional wardrobe had only hinted at. Full breasts straining against black lace. The deep valley between them rising and falling with each ragged breath. The soft, generous swell of her stomach. Hips wide enough to make my hands ache. The word beautiful only means her, only ever meant her.
“Stop staring at me like that.” Her voice is unsteady but her chin is still up. Defiant, even now.
“Like what.”
“Like I'm something you just won.”
“You're not something I won.” My thumb traces her collarbone. The dark skin is velvet-warm. “Not yet.”
She opens her mouth to argue—but another wave of heat rolls through her and her knees buckle. I catch her. "Stop, put me down. I'm too heavy."
The words are the first leak of humanity from a woman who carries herself like a goddess. I look down at her curves, secure in my arms, and I want to fuck up whoever put a doubt about them in her mind. Instead, I give her the truth. "Your weight is not an issue for me. It's a privilege." I carry her to the bedroom without asking permission because permission belongs to the man I was an hour ago, and that man doesn't live here anymore.
The bedroom has a king bed and silver brocade curtains. I lay her on the bed and she scrambles back, pressing herself against the pillows, her curls spread against the white sheets. She's pulling at her blouse, trying to cover herself, and the impulse wars with the heat—modesty versus biology, pride versus need.
“Don't hide from me.” I'm unbuttoning my shirt, stripping away my own armor. “You've been hiding behind that perfume for years. Not here. Not now.”
“You don't get to tell me—”
“I'm not telling you anything.” The shirt hits the floor. My belt follows. “I'm asking.”
The word asking stops her. Her dark eyes track every movement as I undress—my chest, my arms, the trail of hair below my navel, the evidence of exactly what she does to me straining against fabric. When the last of it is gone and I stand before her, her lips part. A sharp inhale through her nose. Her fingers loosen on the blouse.
“I'm not going to lie to you.” Because I'm a lawyer and words matter, and the words that come next might be the most important ones I ever speak. “My rut—I've never—” I press my palm against my forehead, grasping for language. “I've never experienced anything close to this. And if you tell me to leave, I will try. I will try to walk out that door. But I don't know if I can.”
Her chest rises and falls. Her thighs press together—a reflex. Her scent sharpens—a fresh rush of slick—and the sound that rips from my throat is barely human.
“Get over here.” The command comes from her. Low and rough and furious. “Before I change my mind.”
