She shakes her head. “Not this time.”
She’s used that tone on Kev. And at breakfast three days ago when she chose the chair instead of the couch and sat angled away from all of us with her coffee. She's good at this, the controlled redirect, but her scent is doing something her face isn't. It's gone thicker in the last thirty seconds. Warmer.
“Your scent has changed,” I say.
A line forms between her brows. She’s probably wondering where this is going to go. “That's not a conversation I'm having.”
“It's not a conversation. It's an observation.” I lean against the door at my back, give her space, give her the whole room if she wants it. “It changed since what we did in the kitchen, which it seems you’ve forgotten about. It's been building since then. It's not subtle anymore, and I think you know that.”
The muscle in her jaw moves.
“Your presence in this house matters the same way Espie does,” I say. “The same way Aubrey does.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not the same.”
“You’re exactly the same.” I study her face. “You've seen how Espie is with you. And Aubrey.” I pause. “The way he settles when you walk into a room. His shoulders dropping. The way he tracks you without meaning to, and he doesn't do that with everyone. You're not Espie's handler and you're not a guest in this house. You're their alpha. And we want you with the same intensity as we do them.”
Something crosses her face that she doesn't manage to hide in time.
“That's not about me,” she says. “That's about what I represent to them. Safety. Structure. I'm familiar.”
I push off the door, standing tall. “Then tell me how I can tell which room you’re in from the backyard, the same as our omegas can. That's not something I can argue myself out of.”
She says nothing. In fact, she looks startled. As though this is fresh news to her. She says nothing.
“You don't believe it,” I say. “I see you running the argument against it right now.”
Her chin lifts. “You don't know what I'm thinking.”
“I know you well enough.” I take a step toward her. “You don't believe any of us actually want you. Not for yourself. Not for who you are outside of what you do for this pack.”
She goes very still. She doesn't deny it. That's the thing. She stands there and she doesn't deny it.
I cross the room. Slow enough that she has time to take a step back. She does none of those things, but her scent goes warm and urgent and I stop close enough to feel the heat off her skin.
“Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?” I told Ezra I wouldn’t quote Keats. I said nothing about Rumi.
She scoffs. “You and your poetry.”
“And you are the universe in ecstatic motion.” I trace her cheek. So warm. So smooth “Poetry says what normal words can’t. I didn't peg you for stupid, Sera.”
Her eyes flare wide. Spark. She fists my shirt and walks me back a step, hard, and I let her because she's an alpha and she's magnificent and I would let her do this all day. She's breathing fast, chest rising and falling, breasts pushed against my chest, her face inches from mine, fury in every line of her.
I can’t help my happy sound of surprise.
She pulls up short, shocked. Stares up at me. “What are you smiling about?”
I shake my head. Can’t get enough of her looking at me with those sparks. I say the simplest and most powerful word. “You.”
Her fury cracks, just at the edges, and underneath it is something raw and unguarded and terrified, and she looks at me for one more second like she's trying to find the catch.
“You won’t be able to handle me.”
I will covet her scent. Her fury. Everything about her. “I already am.”
She makes a sound in her throat. Frustrated. Furious. Like she's arguing with herself and losing, then her mouth is on mine like she's settling this argument. I get an arm around herwaist and pull her in hard because I have been thinking about nothing else since the last time she let me put my mouth on her. She's warm and solid and her scent up close is extraordinary. It sinks under my skin, becoming me. I welcome it because I want everything she’ll give.
She parts her lips and I sweep my tongue into her mouth. Spiced orange explodes on my tongue. She nips me with sharp teeth and I smile against her mouth. She makes another one of those furious sounds that shoots straight to my cock.
