Chapter 22
Lucien
Beds have been stripped, curtains have been drawn, and the heat has been turned off. Everything I brought with me to the cabin has been crammed into my luggage—I even managed to squeeze all the murder mystery costumes in and close the zipper. We’re all packed up and ready to leave.
Branson is ambling through the cabin, checking rooms for left possessions and closing doors. He’s moving steadily from one side of the house to the other.
I’m dragging my feet.
The cabin has changed so much since I got here. It was unfamiliar when I arrived. Unwelcoming. I felt strange and removed to be so far from the city. Odd, like a duck out of water.
Now it’s a haven. A safe place. A nest. The walls of the building hold memories.
My memories. Some are vivid. Others are dreamlike and misty.
The floorboards have absorbed the echoes of my heat.
The sounds of hot halcyon days have been stamped into them so deeply that I still hear them when I close my eyes.
This place is part of me now.
“I’m scared to leave the cabin,” I whisper to Branson, too embarrassed by the admission to say it any louder.
Branson is wheeling my luggage down the hall, holding my hand, as I trail behind him. I’m not exactly trying to stall him, but I’m also not not trying to stall him.
Branson stops moving and squeezes my hand. “Why, baby?”
“I don’t know. It’s just… I’m just used to it here now. I feel safe here, and I…” My voice quivers pathetically, silencing the rest of my sentence. Thank goodness for that, because I’m pretty sure what I was going to say is I don’t want to be with people who aren’t you.
The thought shocks me, even though, technically, I understand where it comes from.
Branson and I are newly mated. The urge to be close to each other is completely natural and beyond our control.
Bonding Syndrome occurs in all newly mated pairs.
It would be abnormal if I didn’t feel like this.
New mates can’t be parted for two full lunar months after mating occurs.
Close proximity is required to strengthen the bond.
It’s biologically essential for newly mated couples to be together all the time, day and night. Everyone knows that.
Over time, the need for close proximity will ease, and things will go back to normal.
A new normal, I guess.
“I know how you feel, Lucy,” Branson says. “I feel it too. It’s quiet and peaceful here, and I like having you all to myself, but we have a lot to sort out back in the city, and you’ll be happy to be home, you’ll see.”
By a lot to sort out, he means we have to find a way to tell Jensen what’s happened—and we have to do it in a way that doesn’t torch our relationships with him.
We need to make arrangements to work from home for the next couple of months.
Branson has to move into my apartment, and we have to find a way to merge our entire lives into something cohesive.
I’m on the fence about whether I want to go home at all when I think about all that, but I don’t argue because I vividly remember complaining my ass off about being stuck up here in the first place.
Branson checks the windows and draws the blinds in the living room, and I stand idly by, watching him and wondering if he’ll bring that woody, wild honey scent with him when we leave here.
As I watch him move around the room, I rest my hand on the back of the sofa. The upholstery is well-cushioned and durable. Textured but soft to the touch. Warm against my skin. I run my hand along the back cushion absently, and out of nowhere, an intense flashback slams into me.
It’s the most vivid one I’ve had yet. It’s more than a memory. It’s a movie set in the past. A movie with soft lighting and sultry choreography.
In it, Branson is sitting on the sofa, and I’m on top of him. He’s inside me, his knot fully distended, stretching me beyond what I thought my body could take.
There was a soft scratch of upholstery on my shins as I rode him. I was arched backward, as I have been in every memory I’ve had of this particular fuck. He had one hand on my lower back, and the other between my shoulder blades, holding me securely as I bucked and thrashed in his arms.
A booming orgasm receded, and I stilled, looking down at the mess I made all over him in satisfaction.
“Alpha,” I said, smiling at Branson in a way that’s been known to get me my own way a lot in life. A playful pursing of lips. A slow, seductive quirk at the corners of my mouth.
There was something different about my voice when I spoke. It was syrupy and low, with a hint of hoarseness grated into it.
That isn’t the main thing that’s notable though. The main thing I notice as the memory plays back is the certainty that was laced into my voice.
“Omega,” he replied.
His smile was different from mine. Mine was precision and willful intent. His was a lopsided mess that tugged unevenly at his cheeks.
If his smile was a mess, his eyes were worse. Bleary doesn’t begin to describe what they looked like. Amber striations were lit up so brightly that his irises were glowing. His pupils were dilated, dark shadows stretched wide.
I dipped my face toward him, and he chased my lips for a kiss. I let him get close but pulled back at the last second, laughing. I did it again and again until he was growling so loudly, the room was alive with heady vibrations.
There was a second where I paused, where I considered what I was doing.
Then I leaned in again. Only the second time, instead of teasing him with my mouth, I let my hand drop backward and offered him the soft skin of my inner wrist.
In the present, confused by the memory, I’m aghast by it.
What the hell was I doing?
I offered him my wrist? Why would I do that?
There’s no earthly way something like that could possibly be misinterpreted. No one, no matter how out of touch with reality, could ever see an omega doing something like that and think of it as anything other than a deliberate act of seduction.
In the memory, Branson looked at my wrist for what felt like an age. He swallowed hard, seemingly unable to tear his gaze from my pulse point. At last, he took my wrist in both hands, his grip firm and possessive, and raised it to his face.
He scented me like a gentleman at first. An alpha with good breeding and old-world refinement.
I watched, pleased, as his breeding and refinement were eroded.
He scented me again, and that time it was the action of an alpha acting on instinct. A loud drag of air filled his lungs and made his eyes roll.
The next time, he scented me like an animal. His nose trailed light blue-green veins greedily, and a low, hungry lament was followed by a fully extended tongue and the slight scrape of teeth.
Again, the version of me in the flashback watched in quiet approval as he did it. In fact, if memory serves me, I’m pretty sure I clenched my ass on his knot to spur him on.
When his pupils were completely blown out, and his lopsided grin had faded to a snarl, I raised my shoulder slightly and curled it toward him.
It was a coy gesture designed to entice.
When I was positive I had his attention, I extended my arm and offered him the pulse point at my elbow.
As I did it, a desirous ache raced through my veins, heating me. Fueling me.
Branson took my arm without hesitation, inhaling fast and frantically. Scenting me like I was a drug and he was an addict.
I let him do it until his eyelids were drooping and a line of enamel offered me exactly what I wanted—a glint of teeth. A pair of canines that were a little sharper and a little more distended than usual.
I smiled at them like they were old friends, and tilted my head to the side in a slow and controlled way. A considered way. A tempting way. I brushed my hair back off my neck calmly, as if I were home alone on a warm day, and I was unaware that anyone was watching me.
I break into a cold sweat as the first murmur of an unbelievable realization dawns on me.
Can this be right?
Did I do this?
In the memory, Branson’s lips parted robotically, and his gaze followed my every move. He watched the sweep of my hand as if it were riveting. Like he couldn’t look away. Like he was bewitched.
I raised my hand and traced his lips with my fingers, testing the sharpness of his canines with the pad of my thumb. Branson swallowed again, and that time, he shivered too.
“I want you to bite me,” I whispered, smiling as though I were telling him a secret.
My heart spasms in shock. Holy fucking shit, it was me.
I did this.
I seduced Branson Lawlor.
In the flashback, his knot throbbed inside me, and he keened. “You said no biting.”
“I know,” I trilled with a casual flick of my wrist, “but I’ve changed my mind. I can do that, can’t I?”
“But, but you’re in heat.” His words bled into each other to form a single, garbled sound. Damn, he sounded fucked up. “There’s no changing your mind in heat.”
“Who said that?” I demanded coquettishly as I rocked my hips and took him deeper into my body. “Because it wasn’t me, that’s for sure. I can change my mind whenever I want. It happens all the time. I love changing my mind.”
“I, uh…” His voice trailed off, and he blinked vacantly at me. “I dunno who said it.”
“Exactly,” I purred. “It doesn’t matter who said it because I’m the expert on what I want, aren’t I?”
He paused to mull it over and nodded unsteadily. “You’re the expert on what you want. You’re a pretty expert…so pretty.” His grin stretched and turned goofy. “You’re the prettiest expert—”
“Just one bite,” I said, cutting him off with an offhand shrug. “Just one tiny little bite. Just a taste, so we know what it feels like.”
I drew his attention to my neck again, presenting my jugular to him and running my finger lightly over my scent gland so there was no doubt whatsoever where I wanted him to look.
My gland was slightly raised. A little bump, swollen and ripe.