Sera shakes her head, and her face pinches with an expression I can’t name before her forehead smooths out. “Don't thank me.”
“I have to. You didn't have to—”
“Yeah, I did.” Her voice is rough. “You needed help. I could help. Simple.”
“It's not simple.” I push myself up a little, and Espie adjusts to accommodate me. “Not for me. Alphas don't just... help. Not without wanting something back.”
Something flickers across Sera's face. Hurt, maybe. Or anger. But when she speaks, her voice is careful. “I'm not gonna pretend I don't want anything. I can't lie like that.” Her eyes hold mine. “But what I want doesn't mean shit if you don't want it too. That's the point.”
I pull back.
Not far. Just enough to break the closeness, to put a few inches of air between us. Sera's hand falls away from my arm immediately. That's worse, somehow. That she lets me go so easily. That she doesn't fight for the contact.
No. That's better. That's the whole point. She lets me go because I pulled away, and pulling away is allowed.
Allowed. The word rattles around in my skull like a stone in an empty room.
Espie's arms lock around me, her body warm against my side. Grounding. Safe. Gardenia and clover wrap around me like a blanket. This I understand. This I trust. Two omegas holding each other against the dark.
But I can still taste Sera on my lips. Coffee and basil and that darker something underneath. The ghost of her hand is in my hair, the rumble in her throat against my mouth when I bit her lip. My body is humming with it, lit up in ways that have nothing to do with heat.
I liked kissing her.
Not just tolerated it. Not just endured it for the relief it brought.
I liked it.
I wanted more.
Part of me still wants more, even now, even with the pain gone and my head clear.
I liked kissing an alpha.
Chapter Nineteen
Espie
The quiet wakes me. No spike of fear shoving me awake. Just silence and afternoon light slanting gold through the curtains, dust drifting through the beam.
Past three, by the look of it.
My fingers are wound in Aubrey’s hair. My leg is slung over his hip, and his knee presses between my thighs, a solid warmanchor. Aubrey’s palm splays over my ribs, right on my heart. The other has fisted loose in the hem of my shirt, grabbed on in sleep and held.
The duvet has tented over us both, trapping our body heat, making a warm cave where the air smells like days of us.
Somewhere below us, the house moves. Water runs through the pipes in the walls. A floorboard creaks. Coffee and leather downstairs, faint, Kev in the kitchen. Oakwood and whiskey threaded through, Lex close to him. Earl Grey and sandalwood drifting from a different direction, old paper underneath, Ezra in a room with books. Basil and blood orange closer than the others.
“You're doing the thing.” His voice is muffled against my collarbone. Barely there.
“What thing?”
“Counting the alphas.” He exhales slow. “Your shoulders go tight when you do it.”
His eyes flutter open, pale blue finding mine in the dim light, sleep-blurred, sharpening as he surfaces into wakefulness, his face unguarded. His gaze roams my face for long moments, and I can’t get enough of seeing his face. Being in his arms. He’s…essential.
“Is this...” He starts. “Do you think this is unbalanced? What we're doing. How we are with each other.”
I know what he means. The desperate clinging. The inability to let him out of my sight. The way he reaches for me in his sleep like letting go means drowning.
