Chapter 12 Shots And Surrenders #3
“You really,” I murmured, my voice husky, roughened by the tequila and the oxygen debt and the devastating, bone-level awareness that every nerve ending in my body had just been reminded of precisely what it had been missing, “have to use your words when it comes to asking whether I want to be kissed by my ex.”
His green eyes held mine. Close. Intense. The amber party light catching the darker flecks in his irises and turning them to copper.
“What the fuck do I need to do,” he said, and his voice was low and raw and carrying the specific, devastated sincerity of a man who was asking a real question and preparing himself for a real answer, “to not be your ex?”
I held his gaze for three beats. Let the question sit between us like an object we were both examining from different angles.
Then I reached behind me and wrapped my fingers around the freshly poured spiked shot the bartender had left on the plywood. Brought it forward. Held it between us at eye level—the amber liquid catching the string lights and glowing like a tiny, liquid sun.
“Hmm.” I tilted my head. “I don’t know.” The words were delivered with the theatrical, considering tone of a woman who absolutely knew but was enjoying the choreography too much to arrive at the destination ahead of schedule.
“You could get on your knees.” I let the suggestion land.
“And I’d gladly give you this spiked shot by mouth in front of all these people. ”
I taunted the glass in my grasp—rotating it slowly, letting the light play through the tequila, holding it aloft like a chalice at an altar. The golden grail. The condition of surrender.
I cocked my chin upward. Met his eyes from beneath my lashes with the confident, challenging, make-your-move expression that Candy had once described as “the look that launches a thousand bad decisions.”
“See? If you were mine, you wouldn’t hesit—”
He dropped.
Not gradually. Not with the theatrical, staged descent of someone performing a gesture for an audience.
Luka Petrov—six-foot-two, two hundred and ten pounds, professional goaltender, Alpha in every biological and behavioral sense of the designation—went to his knees on the hardwood floor of a frat house party in front of approximately sixty witnesses with the unhesitating, absolute commitment of a man who had been given a command and had decided, before the sentence was finished, that obedience was the only acceptable response.
The reaction was instantaneous.
Whistles. Hollers. The specific, electrified sound of a crowd that had just witnessed a display of submission so public, so deliberate, that the social dynamics of the entire room recalibrated in real time.
Phones emerged. The blue-white glow of screens pointed in our direction, recording, photographing, documenting the moment with the hungry efficiency of an age that treated every public display of vulnerability as content.
A cluster of Alphas near the pool table—hockey players, from the breadth of their shoulders and the specific, pack-bonded body language of men who occupied locker rooms together—reacted with the roaring, delighted energy of men watching a teammate do something they would never have had the courage to attempt.
“Is that his ex?” one said, his voice carrying over the music with the projection of someone accustomed to being heard in arenas.
“Oh shit, he’s begging for his kitty cat to come back!” another added, and the table erupted in laughter—the supportive, mocking, brotherhood-forged kind that simultaneously ridiculed and celebrated the man on his knees.
Luka didn’t flinch.
Didn’t look at them. Didn’t acknowledge the phones or the whistles or the commentary.
His green eyes were locked on mine from below—the angle unfamiliar, the dynamic inverted, the six-foot-two Alpha looking up at the five-foot-six Omega with an expression that was not performative, not theatrical, not played for the crowd.
It was pleading.
Genuine, stripped-bare, dignity-optional pleading.
The expression of a man who understood that what he was doing was public and permanent and recordable and didn’t care—because the woman above him was worth every second of the footage and every mocking comment and every morning-after screenshot, and if going to his knees on a dirty frat house floor was the price of her attention, the transaction was a bargain.
“I’ll fucking strip if I have to for a shot, Octavia.” His voice was rough. Low. Carrying the ragged edge of a man who was simultaneously laughing at himself and meaning every word. “Just tell me what you need.”
God, I love a man who isn’t afraid to beg.
Not the performative kind—not the staged, choreographed submission that insecure men deployed when they wanted to appear vulnerable without actually being vulnerable.
The real kind. The kind where the knees are on the ground and the ego is in the pocket and the only thing standing between pride and surrender is a woman in a black dress holding a shot of spiked tequila like a scepter.
And it is VERY clear he wants me. Not the room. Not the performance. Not the crowd’s approval or his teammates’ admiration. Me. Specifically, exclusively, on-his-knees-in-front-of-sixty-people me.
So maybe it’s time to end his misery.
I took the shot.
Not swallowed—held. The tequila pooling against the inside of my cheeks, warm and amber and sharp, the liquid courage mixing with the real courage that had been building in my chest all day—since the panic attack on the ice, since the audition, since the three perfect tens, since the decision to put on this dress and walk into this party and let the night become whatever the night wanted to become.
I leaned down.
My hand found the back of his neck. Fingers threading into the dark navy-purple strands at his nape, gripping with enough pressure to tilt his head upward, to guide his mouth toward mine. And I kissed him.
The tequila transferred between us in the press of my lips against his—warm, intimate, shared in the space between our mouths with a slowness that was deliberate, provocative, an act of communion disguised as a party trick.
He drank from me the way he did everything: with focus, with patience, with the unwavering attention of a man who treated every offering from this woman as sacred regardless of the packaging.
The cheers erupted.
Full volume. The house shaking with it—the combined vocal output of sixty-odd athletes who had just been given permission to lose their minds over the most spectacular public display of romantic chaos they’d witnessed since orientation week.
Hollers. Claps. The rhythmic, stomping, crowd-level celebration of people who recognized a moment when they saw one and were determined to embed themselves in its audio.
His arms wrapped around the backs of my thighs.
Both of them. Drawing me forward, pulling me to the edge of the barstool and closer—closer—until my legs bracketed his torso and his face was tilted up to mine and the kiss deepened past the tequila and into the territory that belonged to them alone: the unfinished conversation, the five-year gap, the accumulated hunger of two people who had spent half a decade pretending the distance was survivable.
I broke the kiss.
Breathing hard. Lips swollen. Red lipstick smeared across a radius that now included his jaw and possibly his collar.
His green eyes were hazy, unfocused, carrying the dilated, tequila-and-Omega-proximity glaze of an Alpha whose higher brain functions had temporarily been routed to the department handling desire.
“Well.” My voice was a wreck. Husky, rough, carrying the post-kiss vibration of a woman whose vocal cords had not anticipated the intensity of the preceding sixty seconds. “I guess I need a good night. So forgiving you can be a start.”
“Thank fucking God.”
The declaration was instantaneous, fervent, delivered with the relieved, desperate gratitude of a man who had been handed a pardon he’d stopped believing was possible.
His teammates erupted again—laughter, mockery, the affectionate, ruthless commentary of men who were going to hold this moment over his head for the remainder of his athletic career and were already composing the group chat messages.
He was on his feet in one motion—the explosive, vertical burst of a goaltender whose legs had been built for exactly this kind of rapid positional change—and his arms were around me before I’d finished processing the transition from seated to enveloped.
His hands cupped my face. His mouth found mine again—desperate this time, hungry, the kiss of a man who had been given permission to want and was going to exercise that permission with the thoroughness of someone who understood how quickly permissions could be revoked.
I was panting when he pulled back.
Chest heaving. Heart hammering at a rate that the pulse oximeter from my hospital days would have flagged. His forehead rested against mine, his breath warm and unsteady, his green eyes so close they filled my entire field of vision.
“I’ll beg you in front of millions,” he said, and his voice was quiet now—raw, stripped, carrying the absolute, unshakable conviction of a man making a promise he had every intention of honoring, “if I ever do anything as stupid as letting you go again.”
And I believe him.
Not because the words are pretty. Not because the tequila is softening my judgment.
Because I watched this man go to his knees on a dirty floor in front of sixty people and phone cameras without hesitating.
Without checking who was watching. Without a single glance at the crowd to gauge whether the gesture was socially survivable.
He looked at me. Only me. And meant it.
I grinned. Leaned past him. Reached for the plywood bar and knocked twice on the wood—the hollow, percussive sound cutting through the ambient noise with the clean precision of a superstition being honored.
“Knock on wood,” I said, pulling back with a smirk. “Since you usually jinx yourself.”
He groaned. The sound was affectionate, exasperated, and accompanied by the specific expression of a man who knew he was being taunted and had decided to accept the punishment as part of the terms he’d just agreed to.
He reached for his shot—the one the bartender had poured at standard volume, no bonus, no meaningful eye contact—and downed it in a single, decisive tilt.
His face contorted. A full, involuntary, multi-muscle grimace that traveled from his eyebrows to his jaw and communicated, with the eloquence of a man whose alcohol tolerance had not kept pace with his courage, that the tequila was doing terrible things to his esophagus.
“Fucking hell.” He set the glass down with the careful, deliberate movements of someone managing a minor internal crisis. “Let’s get to the dance floor before this hits me.”
I snickered. The sound was bright, delighted, carrying the specific frequency of a woman who had just discovered that the man who’d gone to his knees for her in front of sixty people was also a man whose body processed alcohol with the efficiency of a paper towel processing a tsunami.
“Still a lightweight?”
He groaned again. Squeezed my hand—which had found his at some point during the preceding exchange, our fingers interlaced with the natural, unthinking ease of a muscle memory that five years of separation hadn’t managed to erase.
“Light as fuck. I’m doomed.”
I laughed. Full, warm, the sound spilling out of me with the unguarded ease of a woman who was three shots in, recently kissed, and in the company of a man whose willingness to humiliate himself for her affection had just been documented by approximately thirty smartphone cameras.
“The risks you take for me, Petrov.”
He leaned in. His mouth finding the shell of my ear the way it always had—with the unerring, navigational precision of a man who had mapped this specific piece of anatomy during months of intimacy and retained the coordinates through years of absence.
His breath was warm. His voice dropped to the subsonic register that bypassed my auditory processing entirely and delivered its message directly to the base of my spine.
“If I get to fuck you the way I want to tonight,” he murmured, and the words landed on my skin like individual points of heat, each one branding the cartilage of my ear with a promise that my Omega biology received, translated, and forwarded to every relevant department simultaneously, “I better hear Luka escape those lips. My naughty Diamond.”
The way my thighs just clenched should be classified as an involuntary seismic event.
I grinned. Seductive, slow, the red lipstick curving into an expression that was less smile and more declaration of intent.
I took the lead. My hand in his, my heels clicking against the hardwood, my hips moving with the confident, rhythmic sway of a woman walking toward a dance floor she intended to own and a night she intended to remember.
“We’ll see about that, Petrov.” I looked back over my shoulder. Let him see the challenge in my eyes, the dare in my smile, the promise buried in the name I was deliberately, provocatively, exquisitely withholding. “You’re not getting it that easy.”