His blue eyes are cobalt-colored fire. "I can't."
The heat breaks.
My hand presses flat against my chest. It does nothing. My body has stopped taking my calls. The asshole has not moved — he is staring at me with the locked expression of a heat-seeking missile that has found its target. Only the target is too shell-shocked to evade. "I am not—" My voice breaks. "I am not having this in myshop."
"Then tell me where." Through his teeth.
"Upstairs," I say before I’ve finished the decision. "There are stairs in the back." I nod my head backward. "Upstairs," I repeat.
He crosses the shop. Past the cooler, the wrapping table, the bucket of tulips, the register. I barely have time for an, oh shit, isthis really happeningmoment. His hand finds my elbow — not hard, not soft, just there, without question — and he turns me toward the back, and my legs work because his hand is on my elbow and whatever is running between us has taken over the controls. Why did I suggest my apartment? It's too far.
We'll never make it to the stairs.
Instead, we make it to the stockroom. Six dozen eucalyptus stems, wrapped in brown paper, lean against the wall for tomorrow’s delivery. He kicks the door shut with his heel and doesn't let go of my elbow. The click of the latch sounds final, like the last page of the careful life I had written for myself—four years of running this shop alone, managing my cycles with suppressants and the quiet routine of my hand using a reliable toy in the dark. No man had ever taken me where I needed to go. Not once. I had learned to handle my pleasure with clinical precision because nothing else came close. Until now. Until him. Until his scent grabbed me and I already feel myself…coming.
“Star.”
The sound of my name in his mouth is the last thing I process before my hands find his jacket and his mouth finds mine. The kiss is not a kiss. It is a crash—hard and open and furious—and every year of waiting since I was fourteen implodes inside my chest. The fantasy I have carried my entire adult life—the gentle recognition, the slow and beautiful claiming, the fairytale I told myself was still coming—burns off in under a second. What is left is heat and need and the terrifying knowledge that the rude, beautiful man I was ready to throw out of my shop is the one my body has been starving for. Neither of us expected this. I can feel it in the way his shoulders tense, the faint tremor that runs through the arm banded around my waist. We are both stunned, two strangers whose worlds just collided without warning.
His jacket hits the floor. I do not remember stripping it. My back meets the wall; the eucalyptus collapses sideways witha dry rustle I barely register. One of his arms bands around my waist, holding me up as if I weigh nothing, and the raw dominance in that single motion steals the last of my breath. He is in control, directing every shift of my body with effortless strength, but beneath it, I sense the same stunned disbelief radiating from him. This was not on his agenda any more than it was on mine.
“Tell me, no,” he says against my skin, voice rough and cracking at the edges. “Say it, and I stop. I can’t stop on my own. You have to be the one.”
My hand is already on his belt. The leather is expensive, and the buckle is polished silver. “I am not going to tell you no.”
His groan rolls through me like thunder. “You had your chance.”
I don't know why I am still holding his belt. I have even less idea about the jacket. I barely know my name. I only know the wall behind me and his arm holding me up, like I belong there, and his other hand tearing my blouse open—buttons scattering across the tile like pearls. My bra becomes tomorrow’s problem. His mouth closes over my breast, hot and deliberate, tongue flicking across my nipple until my back arches hard enough to lift me off the wall. I push my breast into his mouth, demanding more. God, please, let there be more. The heat detonates again—lower, harder, a second wave that makes my thighs clench and my hips lift toward him in frustrated, open-mouthed gasps. I have spent years taking myself over the edge with nothing but my fingers circling and a toy humming deep inside me, chasing a sanitized, sterile relief. This is different. This is devastating. My body is answering to him.
Only him.
“Please.” The word falls out of me, aimed at the stockroom, at the eucalyptus, at whatever part of the universe decided todaywas the day. I would be embarrassed if I were capable of it. I am not.
His hand slides under my skirt. Two fingers find the slick mess he has already made of me without really trying, curling inside with a precision that makes stars burst behind my eyes. His forehead drops to mine. For a second, we just breathe each other in—cedar and cardamom and his scent and mine blending, becoming a new thing, devastating and beautiful. His eyes are wide; the cool blue gone nearly black. The dominance is still there in the set of his jaw and the unyielding grip that keeps me pinned exactly where he wants me, but underneath it, I see the same disoriented awe. He did not expect me either. Neither of us was prepared for a partner who would rewrite everything in one afternoon.
“Star.”
“Now.”
“Hold on—” he says, shredding my panties.
“Now. Now, now, now—” I do not even know his name, and he is about to ruin me for every alpha. And betas? They don't have a hope in hell.
He is half laughing, half something else entirely—something raw and unsettled. He lifts my back flat against the drywall, my legs wrap around his hips in a custom fit, and he thrusts in—one long, relentless stroke that empties my lungs, stops my thoughts, and ends a very long wait. The stretch is overwhelming, perfect, filling me so completely that for a moment I cannot breathe. This is what my body was made for. Not the mechanical release I coaxed from myself in the dark, but this—being claimed, held, taken by the man whose scent alone had undone every defense I owned.
There is pain at the edges. There is shock. And there is the full-body recognition ofoh. This. This is what I have been for. This is what the suppressants were clumsily standing in for; what Ihad previously called sex never came close to touching. A sound leaves my throat that will never be a word. He tenses inside me, perfectly still, trembling with the effort it takes not to move. His forehead presses harder against mine. A fine tremor running through every muscle locked around me. Dominant, yes—his hips holding me exactly where he wants—but shellshocked too, like a man who just realized he's standing on quicksand.
I rock my hips once, testing. The friction drags a broken sound from both of us.
“Move,” I whisper.
The leash snaps.
Not gentle. Not slow. There is only the rut and the heat and the wall at my back and the wet slap of our bodies meeting and the dry rustle of eucalyptus under his shoes and the noise I am making—high and fractured and rising. The pressure builds in me until it is too much and not enough, and I have not been in charge of my body since the moment he looked at me across my counter and took that first deep whiff . Each thrust drives deeper, hitting places I did not know existed, dragging pleasure so sharp it borders on pain. My nails dig into his shoulders; his hand fists tighter on my ass, keeping me anchored to him.
“You are—” He croaks. His voice is wrecked, stunned. “You are—Star—”
I come without warning, a sudden deluge of scent and sound and slick and heat that destroys me from the inside out. I have earned every orgasm I have ever had with my hand. Never had an orgasm with another. I have never had one arrive uninvited like this—total, devastating, a thing my body does to me without asking permission. I make a feral sound. He swears against my hair, but he does not stop. If anything, he drives harder, chasing the pulses that keep rolling through me like aftershocks, his hips snapping with dominant precision even as his breath stutters.
