She screamed, a stifled, throaty sound that she caught in her own throat.
Her body seized. Not a cramp. A spike.
I felt it happen. The air in the room seemed to pressurize instantly. The emotional rawness of the confession, the friction, the firelight, it catalyzed.
Her scent exploded. It went from 'aroused' to 'critical' in a heartbeat. It was the secondary spike. The emotional bond hot-wiring her biology, bypassing the recovery phase and dumping her straight back into the heat.
"Oh," she gasped, her eyes rolling back. "It's… it's hotter."
"I know," I whispered, frantic now. "I know, baby. Ride it out."
I ground the heel of my hand against her, rubbing in slow, heavy circles, trying to give her the outlet she needed. She clawed at my shoulders, her nails digging in, her body bowing backward in my lap.
We were breathless, messy, desperate animals in the firelight. I was seconds away from ripping those leggings off. I was seconds away from forgetting that we were trapped, that she was recovering, that I was just the artist who was supposed to stand back.
"Simon," she keened, biting her lip until it bled. "Please. I need?—"
"Get away from her!"
The shout came from the darkness of the hallway, sharp and cracking like a whip.
Light flooded the room, not electric light, but the harsh, white beam of a tactical flashlight cutting through the gloom.
Anders.
He stood at the edge of the rug, his chest heaving, his silhouette looming large and terrifying in the beam. He smelled of Ozone and Winter Air, sharp with fury.
"Separate!" Anders roared, striding forward. "Now!"
I froze, my hand still pressed between her legs, her body trembling in my arms.
"It's the spike," I choked out, shielding her with my body, my instincts screaming at me to snarl at him. "Anders, she triggered a secondary spike. She needs?—"
"She needs to not be mauled on the living room floor while her system is rebooting!" Anders snarled. He reached down, grabbing me by the shoulder of my hoodie and hauling me backward.
Tessa tumbled off my lap onto the rug, gasping, her hands flying to cover herself even though she was still fully clothed.
"You idiot," Anders hissed, turning the flashlight on me, blinding me. "You didn't fix it. You just poured gasoline on the fire."
He shone the light on Tessa. She was flushed deep crimson, panting, curled on the rug. The scent of her heat was rolling off her in waves, thicker and heavier than before.
"The emotional connection," Anders noted, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper as he assessed her. "You bonded. You idiot. You initiated a pack bond response before her cycle was clear."
He looked at me, then down at her.
"The heat isn't gone," he said grimly. "It just reloaded."
SIXTEEN
Tessa
The heat didn't come like a wave this time. It didn't drag me under the drowning dark of a withdrawal symptom or blind me with the hallucinogenic static of the past few days.
It came like clarity.
It burned through the chemical fog in my brain, incinerating the last vestiges of the "Graduation Girl" trauma that had held me hostage for a decade. The fever baking my skin wasn't a sickness; it was a demand. My blood ran hot and fast, singing a song of absolute, undeniable biological imperative. For years, I had numbed myself with deadlines and suppressants, hiding behind the T.L. Rose moniker, but for the first time, my mind was sitting in the driver’s seat.
Across the open-concept living room, the three men were arguing. The firelight flickered against the floor-to-ceiling glass walls, casting long, agitated shadows that danced like giants against the backdrop of the storm-lashed trees outside.
