My heart slams against my ribs like a fist on a locked door, a savage pulse that knows only one language: protect, claim, defend, fail.
The last word echoes the loudest.
My anger isn’t reserved for Sam alone. It’s turned inward, a blaze that eats through muscle and bone, scorching everything it touches. I’m afraid of it—afraid that if I lose control for even a second, the heat of it will reach her.
I can’t get a grip. The fury rises and rises, a tidal wave with no shoreline in sight, and I’m caught beneath it, lungs burning.
So I lean into her touch instead.
It’s instinctive. Desperate. An animal pressing toward warmth in the cold.
One hand lifts to cover hers where it cups my jaw, and the other reaches for her face. My fingers trace the fine line of her cheek, the curve down to her chin. She’s soft beneath my touch, her skin smooth and warm. But there’s steel in her too—quiet, unyielding strength that has nothing to do with size.
She is softness and fire both.
And I almost let her be shattered.
Fuck.
Then…it happens.
A subtle shift in the air. The scent of caramel and honey thickens, deepens, blooming into something intoxicatingly sweet. It’s the perfume of an omega’s desire, an involuntary, honest signal that bypasses all coherent thought and goes straight to the base of my skull.
My own scent, of ozone and pine and raw fury, spikes in response, a clash of lightning and summer rain. The anger in my blood doesn’t vanish. It doesn’t dissipate. It…changes. The razor-sharp edges soften, melt, and reforge themselves into something else. Something just as powerful, just as consuming, but infinitely more focused.
Lust.
A possessive, all-consuming need to claim, to affirm, to lose myself in the one thing that is unequivocally mine.
My gaze drops to her lips, slightly parted in the gloom. The pulse flutters in her neck, a frantic little bird beating against her skin. The soft, accidental perfume of her arousal is a key turning a lock I didn’t even know was there. The need to touch her, to be inside her, to erase the memory of Sam’s hands on her with my own, is overwhelming.
“Brylee,” I rasp, my voice a raw, broken thing.
It’s a warning and a plea.
Her response is a soft sigh, a tilt of her head that exposes the long, vulnerable column of her throat.
An invitation.
My hand slides from her jaw down the curve of her neck, my thumb resting over that frantic pulse. My other hand brushes against her thigh, and the skin there is like warm silk. She trembles, a fine, delicate shiver that runs through her and straight into me.
I have to be gentle. She’s hurt. The thought is a distant, rational echo in a mind that’s been hijacked by instinct. But the instinct is to cherish, not to harm. To worship this body that survived.
My fingers trace the inside of her thigh.
Fuck, she’s already so wet for me.
I can smell it, smellher.
The air grows thick, heavy with the scent of her, a perfume so potent it makes my head spin.
I slide one finger through her slick folds.
Her breath hitches, a sharp, sweet sound in the quiet closet. I explore her slowly, carefully, mapping the landscape of her cunt. My thumb finds her clit, a swollen, pearl-hard nub, and I circle it once, twice. A choked moan escapes her, and her hands clutch at my shoulders.
“Luka, please…”
That’s all the permission I need. I sink one finger inside her, and the world narrows to this single point of connection. She’s tight, a velvet fist clamping down around me, her inner walls fluttering and clenching. It’s a homecoming. A benediction.
