He pauses, his hand hovering in the air. He doesn’t force it. He waits.
I stop breathing. I stare at his hand, large and callused, the knuckles scraped from work or maybe from the fight at the bar.
Slowly, I lean back into his space.
His fingers brush against my cheek. He tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear. The touch is light, barely there, but it sends a shockwave through my system that has nothing to do with the cold or the fear. His skin is rough, warm against my face.
I almost choke on nothing.
Why does his touch feel so good? Why does it make my heart race and my stomach flip?
I pull my gaze from his hand to his eyes. In the firelight, they are dark, endless pools. There’s no mockery there. No anger. Just a heavy intensity that makes my chest ache.
He smiles. It’s a small, barely-there curve of his lips, but it reaches his eyes. It’s almost genuine. A rare, fragile thing I haven’t seen in years.
“What is...” I start to ask, my voice barely a whisper.
I want to ask what he’s doing. I want to ask why he’s looking at me like that. I want to ask why the air between us feels so thick, so charged.
But the words die in my throat. I can’t give him that power. I can’t let him know how much he affects me.
He tilts his head, studying me. His thumb traces the line of my jaw, a slow, maddening drag that makes my toes curl.
“Your hair,” he says, his voice dropping an octave. “It looks so much redder in the firelight.”
I freeze. My heart stumbles. Red. Like my mother’s. Like the hair I’ve been dyeing brown for a decade to fit into a world that doesn’t appreciate wild things.
“I...” I don’t know what to say.
He clears his throat, the sound loud in the quiet room. He pulls his hand back as if he’s been burned. The loss of his warmth is immediate and jarring.
He stands up abruptly, putting distance between us. He runs a hand through his own hair, messing it up.
“You should get some sleep,” he says, his voice back to its usual gruff cadence. “Rhett said the storm should break by morning.”
He turns and walks back to the armchair. He sinks into it, turning his body toward the fire, away from me.
“Goodnight, Saramaria.”
I lie there, staring at his back. The blanket is pulled up to my chin, Wellsy a warm weight at my feet. Blue is snoring softly near the rug.
“Goodnight,” I whisper.
The room is dark now, save for the glowing embers. I close my eyes, waiting for the usual spiral of thoughts to start. The list of things I need to do. The legal briefs I need to write. The anger I need to hold onto.
But it doesn’t come.
The room smells like all of them.
Knox’s whiskey and ginger. Rhett’s cinnamon and espresso. Boone’s rosemary and mint. And underneath it all, the scent of the woodsmoke and the wet dog and the rain outside.
It’s a cacophony of scents, a wall of Alpha presence that should make me feel crowded. Should make me feel trapped.
But it doesn’t.
It’s soothing. It wraps around me like a heavy quilt, settling my frayed nerves in a way nothing else has all day. It feels safe. It feels like a pack.
I have always had such a problem falling asleep. My mind runs too fast. The world is too loud. But tonight, the exhaustion is a physical weight, dragging me down. The storm outside creates a white noise that blocks out the world.
