Chapter 15 #2
“It’s so.” And he just stares at me, his gaze dropping briefly to my lips before returning to my eyes.
There’s something different in him tonight, darker, a heavier weight behind those eyes, something dominant and coiled.
So much for a whole day spent trying to scrub him out of my system.
“I have something for you.” He reaches into the jacket hung over the back of his chair and then holds out his palm.
In his hand sits a carved butterfly. Small, dark wood, and so intricate it stops the air in my chest, every vein in the wings scored fine, the body delicate, the antennae impossibly thin.
“Oh.” I lift it carefully off his palm, turning it in the light. “Oh, Roman, this is… How do you even make these? Look at the wings. They’re perfect. This is the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever…” I turn it over, and there’s a tiny R notched into the underside.
“Made it last night.” His fingers find the hem of my skirt and slip just underneath, and there goes the butterfly, the wings, the tiny R, all of it.
My entire concentration narrows to four wandering fingers and the maddeningly calm man attached to them.
“Couldn’t sleep, and I tried hard to keep my distance from you.
Didn’t want to come off like a stalker.” He takes the butterfly from me.
“Let me put it somewhere safe for now.” And he stuffs it back into the pocket of his jacket.
“Aha.” I shift on his lap and immediately regret it when his arm tightens around me. “Yeah. And instead you scaled the side of a building to sit on my balcony in the dark. Very non-stalker-ish.”
He chuckles, the sound rumbling through his chest into mine. “You felt the pull too. Don’t tell me you didn’t with us being apart.”
“I took two ice-cold showers last night,” I say, fighting down a grin.
His hand climbs higher up my thigh. “I see.”
“You have no idea.” I press my lips together, and his gaze drops to my mouth again. “I panicked a bit, if I’m being honest, because closing a bond that fast is a lot to carry all at once, and I needed a minute to remember how to breathe without one of you in the room scrambling my signal.”
Things go silent, the heavy kind where it feels as though any second he’ll throw me over his shoulder, scale down that tree, and steal me into the woods. As much as I’m not offended by the idea, I say, “So, you grew up in Brazil. What was it like?”
“Beautiful.” His accent thickens around the word, just enough to make me want to hear him say it again.
“We lived in the north, near the . Our house backed right up to the forest, so I grew up in it. My father taught me to hunt, fish, read the land.” A smile touches his mouth.
“There was a bend in the river where we used to sit at dusk and watch hundreds of birds come down to the water. I still remember how loud they were.”
There’s a warmth in his eyes, and I adore seeing him this way.
“That was home to me. The forest, my family, that river. I thought I’d spend my whole life there.” His smile fades a little. “Then my father died, and once I reached eighteen, I left for the city to find work. My mother and sister needed me.”
“That’s why you like it out here?” I ask. “In these woods?”
“It’s where I feel most like myself.” His hand lifts from my thigh to my chin and tips my face up until we’re eye to eye. “One day I’d love to settle in the woods. That calling from when I was a child is always there in my chest.”
“Oh, really? You’re basically Tarzan, then.” I hear it out loud and wince. “God. That was so stupid. Delete that.”
He laughs, head tipping back, and I get a full view of that strong throat, those corded muscles. I forget my own name for a second.
“I’ll be anything you want me to be.” He kisses me, soft, barely there, a promise. “Just ask. Don’t hide from me anymore, all right?”
And instead of answering, I kiss him.
His full lips part beneath mine before he takes over.
His arms tighten around me, hauling me closer until I’m pressed against the solid heat of his body, and his hand fists gently in my wet hair, holding me exactly where he wants me.
He opens his mouth over mine, his tongue pushing between my lips, and the kiss turns hungry so fast it steals the breath from my lungs.
I press in closer, kissing him back just as hard, and I know precisely where this is heading.
Every reckless part of me is begging for it to go there.
His grip tightens, one hand moving over me as though this isn’t close enough, and it would be so fucking easy to let him have me right here in this chair.
By some genuine miracle, I break free of his kiss, his arms, his lap.
I stand on unsteady legs, gasping, and grip the railing, staring out at the view, the woods rolling away toward the black shapes of the mountains, the cabins somewhere down there in the dark, mostly trees.
Nothing, just the wild, which feels painfully appropriate, considering the state of my heart right now.
I’m aching for exactly where this is heading, and it also scares me how easily I give in.
Roman rises behind me, unfolding to his full six-foot-two height, and his presence seems to swallow the space at my back, broad and towering enough that I’m suddenly hyperaware of every inch between us.
He disappears inside for a second, followed by a quiet click as my bedroom light dies, then he returns to the balcony, the darkness somehow making him seem even bigger.
“So we don’t call every bug in the forest to us,” he murmurs.
And now we’re steeped in night, the last dying smear of sun on the far ridge, and he’s standing close behind me, so I turn to face him with the railing at my back.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he mutters, his gaze dragging over me. “How fucking hard it is to keep my hands to myself around you? Half the things running through my head would have you hiding from me for another week.”
Heat rolls through me, burning away whatever caution I had left. I lift my chin. “Maybe tell me and find out.”
His eyes darken. He catches a strand of my hair and tucks it behind my ear, then bends until his mouth brushes the tender skin beneath it. His lips linger there, warm against my neck.
“They say every Alpha has a favorite part of his mate.” The words come rougher now.
“I adore all of you, every fucking inch. Give me the chance and I’ll spend hours proving it.
” His hands travel down my body, following the curve of my waist before settling firmly over my ass.
His grip tightens, pulling me flush against him, and my breath catches.
“But this?” His mouth grazes my ear. “This ass is going to ruin me. That’s one of my weaknesses. ”
My heart pounds hard enough to shake my ribs. I clutch his arms, partly because they’re there and my knees have become spectacularly unreliable. Every sensible thought I spent the last day putting back in order is scattering again, and maybe that should scare me. But tonight, it doesn’t.
“Yeah?” I manage, breathless but still determined to give as good as I’m getting. “Well, if we’re confessing weaknesses…”
His eyebrow lifts.
I lean closer, my mouth almost touching his. “For me, it’s definitely your tongue.”
He pulls back and laughs, delighted. Imagining what a man built like this could do to me is nearly more tempting than I can survive.
“Well, then.” His eyes come back to mine, gone dark.
“Shall we play?” Before I can answer, he’s turned me back to the night, my hands closing around the cold railing.
He sweeps my hair off my shoulder and sets his mouth to the back of my neck, then my ear, his breath hot against me. “Can I have you?” he whispers.
That question undoes me, when he could so easily just take. It ruins me completely, and all I can manage is, “God, please.”
He chuckles and kisses down my neck, and I understand, right then, that I have no earthly idea how I’m meant to survive a night with this Alpha.
His hands slide under my skirt, hook into my thong, and draw it slowly down my legs.
He crouches behind me, and I glance down as I step out of them, already dizzy with the knowledge that there’s no pretending this isn’t happening now.
He balls them up and tucks them into his pocket, and that tiny act sends another thrill straight through me.
“No one can see us up here,” he whispers against the back of my thigh. “And not in the dark.”
The words sink into me with dangerous weight.
I’m trembling, shivering with it, so far gone I barely breathe, and the strangest part is how right it feels.
Every instinct that should be telling me I’m in too deep has gone silent.
Giving myself over to him doesn’t feel as though I’m surrendering anything but more like I’m finally stopping the fight.
He parts my legs with a gentle hand, to which I oblige, then he pushes my skirt up to my waist, the cool breeze on my bare skin leaving me gasping.
To be exposed up here like this turns me on endlessly.
Then he kisses the backs of my thighs in a slow, worshipping line.
My fingers tighten around the railing as a thin, wanting whimper slips out of me, and I swear he knows exactly how close to the edge he has me.
“Bend over for me more, my sweet Omega.” The growl threaded beneath the words nearly folds my knees. My pulse roars, my thoughts reduced to scraps, and I do it because I’m shaking and soaked and there’s not one cell left in me interested in saying no.
Whatever fragile grip I still have on myself starts to unravel.
Then his teeth scrape the curve of my ass and close in a mock bite, sharp enough to punch a yelp out of me, nowhere near enough to break skin.
The shock of it sends my pulse wild, and his dark chuckle vibrates against me before his lips return to kiss the sting away, as though he can’t decide whether he’d rather torment me or soothe every hurt he causes.