Chapter 5
“Listen, mate.” Lachlan had looked at him while gathering up paperwork, his phones, and the motorcycle keys from a desk where too many old tomes and as many computers fought for space.
“Ye need to do some soul searchin’ and figure out what’s under all this.
” Lach had paused, his hand resting briefly on the congested desk.
“’Cause I’ve known ye since ye were a pup, and while ye might be temperamental and a right pain in my arse, ye’re a good man.
” He’d given Rex’s arm a firm squeeze on his way out.
“So sort yersel’ out, aye? Then come tell me what ye’ve found. ”
That had been the advice from his oldest, best friend when he’d gone to his office for some advice in the morning.
Who was right, by the way. Rex was good at owning his mistakes, but what he was very much scared of was that what was happening here was a lot bigger and a lot more complicated than what could be handled by some simple soul searching.
It still had to be handled, which is why he rang at her door later that day, in that early-summer late afternoon time when the air was warm but already thinking about cooling down.
Zoe opened the door, saw that it was him—
And closed it again, leaving him speechless, looking at white paint.
That was... intense.
And frustrating.
Because after one brief sniff at her, he was ready to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness, and that pissed him off some. He didn’t do all that wrong. But just as he opened his mouth to say... he wasn’t sure what he was going to say, but before he could, the closest window opened.
“Would this help?” she asked.
He looked at the window, at the box in his hands that was supposed to be a peace offering, back at the window. “I’m not quite sure. Help with what, exactly?”
“The smell. Can you smell me from here?”
He smelled her in his dreams, but telling her that wouldn’t help. The whole truth was already unhelpful enough. “Yeah.”
“Like, everything?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Rats,” he heard her mutter. “All right. Wait there.”
When the door opened again, relief was stupidly heavy. He took a sniff—because not doing it when she was this close was an abomination. She smelled divine, like something sent exactly for him to cherish and protect.
She caught him in the act. Was not amused. “You need to stop that,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning on the doorframe.
He thought about apologizing, about telling her he would, but then he realized she deserved better than a promise he couldn’t keep. Because—biology. “I can’t. That is literally who I am.”
She kept staring at him.
He sighed. “Can you stop seeing things?”
She inclined her head to the side.
“You can’t, because you have eyes. I have a nose.” Why was this so difficult? “I can’t help smelling things.”
Still nothing from her.
Someone kill me now. “And sometimes, some of the things are, well, feelings.”
Her arms tightened across her chest. Not angry, or not exactly. “Do you have any idea,” she said carefully, “how mortifying that is?”
He frowned slightly. “Mortifying?”
“Yes, mortifying.” She pushed off the doorframe, then leaned back again like she couldn’t decide whether to invite him in or shut the door in his face for good this time.
“It’s already embarrassing enough to have you threaten a man in the middle of a pub.
But knowing that you can apparently smell my.
.. my reactions?” She made a vague gesture to her entire body. “To him? To you? That’s mortifying.”
He opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Tried to find words that would help her understand, but found nothing. “I’m sorry. It’s normal to me.”
That was obviously not the right thing to say, judging by the line of her mouth and the spike of a very weird type of anger.
“What is?” she shot back. “Scaring dumb men off, or having women drooling over you?”
“Women don’t drool over me.”
“Please,” she scoffed.
Temper licked at him again. “Men drool over you all the time.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
“What was that guy doing last night? Oh, yeah. Drooling.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair because this was not going where it should.
“Look, in the pub, I didn’t react the way I did because of what he was projecting.
You are a beautiful woman, so of course he would do that.
But you were uncomfortable, and he wasn’t taking the hint. ”
“Rob is an almost-something that didn’t, and never will, become something. But that was not the only, or the biggest, issue.”
“I see.” He looked away for a second, then back at her. “You want full disclosure? Alright. If we’re here for honesty, then you need to know that if you could smell me the way I can smell you, you’d find out your reaction to me is very much reciprocated.”
Silence. But not empty. It was filled with that spike in her scent again. The hit was immediate, and his body answered before his brain could stop it. He shifted on his feet, a pathetic attempt to adjust his now too-tight pants without making it obvious.
It did not work.
Her eyes flicked down.
Then up at him while color bloomed high on her cheeks.
His pulse throbbed in his throat. He’d never felt so unbalanced, so clueless, in his life.
“That’s neither here nor there,” she said, but it came out softer than before.
“And you’re not unaffected by it,” he answered quietly, because if he was going to burn, he might as well go all in.
Another pulse of that scent. Her arms were still crossed, but her fingers had curled into her sleeves now. She nudged her chin toward the box he was holding, like she needed an anchor before things tipped somewhere neither of them could easily walk back from. “What’s that?”
“Meat.”
That surprised her out of that hot and awkward moment. “Okay?”
Damn it, he was the worst. What was wrong with him when this woman was around? “Because I thought I could come and help you with the basement—days are long enough to put a few hours into it. And then I thought we might, I don’t know, throw something on the grill?”
“So you’re inviting yourself to dinner.”
“I—” Holy mother of God help him.
But she chuckled. “I’m just messing with you. We can definitely fire up the grill, but you must know, I’m the worst barbecuer on earth.”
Breathing was so good. “I’m not too bad.”
She shook her head. “All right, Rex. Let’s start over.”
“That would be great.”
THE BASEMENT WAS, IN fact, a mess.
Not the condemned-by-the-county sort of mess, but more like years of an I’ll-deal-with-it-later-and-later-never-came sort of mess.
The air was cooler down there, stale and thick with dust. The musty smell of old cardboard mixed with old wood.
Underneath, he could still smell faint traces of her grandpa.
Old Spice soap, pipe tobacco. Faded but stubborn, just like the man had been.
He stepped down the last stair and looked around.
“All right,” he said slowly. “This is not bad.”
Her hands went to her hips as she stared flatly at him.
“It’s not terrible,” he corrected. “It’s cluttered. Aggressively.”
She huffed. “Great.”
He nudged a box with his boot, and a puff of dust rose. “When was the last time you were down here?”
She paused. “A while. And I will not quantify that.”
He snorted before he could stop himself. And just like that, the tension shifted–or repurposed. They fell into the work easily enough. He hauled the heavier boxes while she checked and sorted with ruthless efficiency, occasionally holding up some ancient relic.
“That makes three broken lamps,” he noted when yet another one popped out of a box.
“I’m sure they’re not completely broken. They might just need minor repairs.”
“They are all one wire away from arson.”
Her laugh, bright and unguarded, twisted something in his chest. Dust clung to her hair, a faint smudge streaked across her cheek, and he had to physically stop himself from reaching out and wiping it away.
He told himself it was the stuffy room making his skin tight.
The long day was what made it so damn hard not to reach for her and see what it would feel like to hold her.
Definitely not her bending to lift a box and muttering under her breath when it proved heavier than expected.
He was beside her instantly. “I’ve got it.”
“I can lift things,” she protested.
“Sure you can. Not this particular one, though.” Their fingers brushed for half a second too long. That spark again.
And he wasn’t the only one who felt it.
They both became suddenly very aware of the size of the space and how close they were standing in it. Her heart raced, and if she could hear his, she’d find it was doing the same. She looked at him, gave him a half-smile, turned too fast—
—and hit the edge of a low storage crate with her heel.
“Damn it—”
She tipped backward, balance gone, but he caught her before she could fall. One arm locked around her waist, the other braced against a shelf behind her head so she wouldn’t crack into it. And he held her there. Close. Tight.
For a second, neither of them breathed.
Her hands had fisted in his shirt at his chest. His grip at her hips tightened reflexively as heat seeped between them. Her scent thickened, her heart sped even more. “Careful,” he said, the growl just underneath the surface.
“I tripped,” she muttered, but she didn’t move away.
“I noticed.”
This was ridiculous. He was the Alpha of a big, respected pack. This was a basement with dust and boxes, an old treadmill, and an even older computer; it couldn’t feel like the entire universe.
And yet.
She swallowed. “You can let go now.”
“You can step away.”
Neither did.
But then he loosened his grip. Slowly. Begrudgingly. Because it was a nosedive into trouble, and he didn’t want her to run away again.
She straightened, brushed some dust from her like that would fix the electricity snapping in the air, and stepped back. “Okay,” she said briskly, wiping off her hands. “Focus. We are productive adults.”