Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
CARYS
The bell from the front of the shop rings as I’m finishing wrapping ribbon around the second bouquet, ripping me from the quiet space in my mind.
“One minute!” I call.
There’s no response, just steady footfalls across the wood floor.
I tuck the ribbon and drop the stems into the shallow cup of water, barely ensuring the ribbon doesn’t get wet.
I wipe my hands on my apron and then double-check there aren’t any tears left on my cheeks as I rush to the store front.
Just as I’m passing over the threshold, I crash into a hard chest. A heartbeat later, lemongrass surrounds me like a warm blanket.
“Whoa,” Rhett murmurs.
He palms my waist just like that first time I ran into him, the heat of it searing through my apron and shirt.
I swallow all the butterflies filling my throat as I take a half-step away.
He’s dressed casual in dark jeans and a gray hoodie.
A ball cap sits low over his eyes, and a pair of sunglasses hangs from the neckline of the hoodie.
He sets a bag on the counter behind him without looking away from me.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, a heavy frown pulling at his lips. “Have you been crying?”
I plaster a smile on my face and take another step away from him, not trusting my lotion to hold. “Just a long day with this client order.”
He searches my face before his eyes skim over the rest of my body.
I can’t help but perfume at the attention, a fire starting low in my belly.
It breaks through my lotion like it’s not even there.
The smell of orchids emanates out from me.
His nostrils flare, and his Adam’s apple moves with a swallow.
“I…” His voice shoots straight through me, and my scent pulses out even stronger.
He swallows again. He shoves his hands into his pockets.
I don’t dare move. Every fiber of my being wants—needs—to plaster myself against him until his scent is burned under my skin.
It’s such an overwhelming force, I’m trembling with it.
I press my hands into my stomach. My perfume strengthens, and I blush, the heat of it tracing down my throat and onto my chest. His eyes close, his eyelashes so long they brush his cheeks, and his chest moves with a deep, slow breath.
“Focus, James,” he mutters. “You gotta focus.”
His voice is ragged, trembling like my body.
Does he feel this, too? This unholy drive to mark and claim and take?
As if in answer, his lemongrass scent falls over me, reaching across the feet between us like it’s a living thing of its own.
A whine swells up my throat, so fast I’m not quite able to contain it.
His nostrils flare as his body tightens, ready to pounce.
“Y-you have lunch?” My voice is surprisingly steady, all things considered.
“Yeah,” he mutters. He blows out a hard breath and rolls his shoulders back. Then he focuses on me again, the brown of his eyes even brighter than before. “I brought you lunch… and a coffee. Billie mentioned it’s been a bad morning.”
He turns and grabs the bag before following me into the back room.
I quickly put away the finished bouquets and the remaining prepped flowers then wipe down the big work table so there’s a spot for the food.
He sets the bag and disposable coffee cup carefully in the center of it before turning to me.
There’s a resolve in his eyes that wasn’t there before.
“I want to take you out,” he says.
I tilt my head. “Like a date?”
He gives a single nod. My scent surges again even as nerves close my throat.
“My dad—”
“I don’t care.” He cuts me off with a scowl. It’s instinct to freeze. His hands ball into fists and then loosen. His tone is gentle when he continues. “I don’t care if it gets me in hot water with the team. I want to… to at least take you to dinner.”
I swallow, trying to tamp down the nerves.
“I… I’m not interested in a fling,” I say. My brain rebels against me, clamoring to get me closer to his heat and his scent. Instead, I turn away from him and reach for the bag of food. “I’m not built for them. It’s probably best if we just pretend—”
He grabs my wrist, and I cut off with an embarrassing squeak.
“No.”
The single word is practically a growl. It vibrates through me, sinking into my very soul.
“I’m not wanting to take you out so I can fuck you and then never interact again.
” I perfume again at his blatant language.
“I can have that with a hundred different partners any time I want, food not required. You’re my scent match, my soulmate.
There’s nothing temporary about what I want with you. ”
Lemongrass weaves around me like it’s a caress in its own right. I can’t help but relax into the smell, the tension slowly dropping away from my body. He hums as he feels it, taking a step closer. I try to find my rationality from wherever it’s gone.
“Dad…” His scent flares, tinged with irritation. I swallow. “Ares will be furious.”
“And I don’t care,” he says, totally calm again even with his scent spiking.
“Well, I do,” I admit. He frowns, but I keep talking.
My own scent slowly sours with my nerves and worry.
“He’ll make your life a nightmare for the rest of your contract if he finds out you’re dating me.
And that doesn’t include everyone else who will be all over you about it.
I’ve seen what the think pieces are saying about the Scorpions.
The last thing you need is the media jumping all over a scandal like what this would cause. ”
“Let it be a scandal then,” he says, entirely calm. He inches closer, his thighs pressing into mine, his hips wedging against my belly.
I shake my head. “I can’t let you risk that.”
He breathes in, a muscle ticking in his jaw as he clenches it.
He sets his palms on the work table, deliberately caging me in.
It should feel intimidating, but instead a rush of slick coats my thighs and my scent grows stronger.
My knees wobble at the sudden wave of desire.
His lips flatten as the silence stretches between us.
God, I need to feel those lips again. Need to have his scent all over my clothes so I can stash them away in my room for when the nights are just a bit too long and lonely.
“Okay,” he whispers.
He pushes away from me, his arms dropping back to his sides, cold air replacing all the points where his body touches mine. My stomach drops.
I talk without thinking it through.
“What if we keep it a secret?” I ask.
He stills, his entire body focusing back on me.
“Just… just until it won’t be such a circus with the media.
” My pitch rises, betraying my nerves anew.
His gaze bores into me. My knees wobble again, the entirely foreign desire to make him happy washing through me.
I swallow back an inelegant sound. “Until I can pay my dad back for helping me open this shop so I don’t feel like I’m…
I don’t know, betraying his faith in me. ”
His eyes blaze at that, his jaw tightening again.
“A secret,” he says without any inflection at all.
I press my hands into my belly again. “Yes.”
There’s a horrid stretch of silence, only the quiet purr of the coolers’ motors filling the space. I want to crawl under the table.
“For you, I’ll do it,” he says. The croon in the words sinks into my very soul. “If it’s what you want, I’ll keep you secret.”
“Just—just for a few months. If your season turns around, and Dad’s not so on edge… I think maybe I can tell him in a way where he won’t immediately want to kill you.”
“All right,” he agrees.
Then he steps back into me, his palms caressing my cheeks.
His lips are the same juxtaposition they were on Halloween.
Hard and soft, demanding and patient all at once.
I melt into him, wrapping my hands around his neck.
He grunts, the sound—above anything else—smug and satisfied.
Our scents intertwine, overpowering the purifier that’s still running in the corner.
After a minute, he sucks on my lower lip then trails kisses along my jaw and behind my ear. He pulls the skin between his teeth, and I shiver against him. That primal voice screams inside of me, begging me to let him bite me in truth.
Claim. Surrender. Knot.
I groan, entirely overwhelmed, and he smiles against my skin. He wraps an arm around my waist and lifts me onto the table, carefully wedging himself between my knees. He moves slowly enough I could tell him to stop, but just the thought has both my mind and my heart freaking out.
His hands trail over my arms and down my sides before caging me in, his arms taut.
With casual ease, he pushes my hips right to the edge of the table, wedging the hard length of him against my pussy.
Even with two layers of denim between us, it’s so hot, so tempting.
My entire body tightens, my pulse beating in my clit like I’ve been using my vibrator.
I can’t breathe, can’t form words. He kisses along the line of my throat, each press of his lips only tightening my body like a top.
I’m going to spin out of control in only a few minutes if he doesn’t do something to release all of this pressure.
“I still need to taste you,” he admits against my skin. I sneak my hands under his hoodie and shirt, needing to feel his skin. “It’s all I’ve dreamed about since that club.”
“Really?” The question comes out too innocent, too inexperienced, but I don’t have it in me to worry about his reaction. Not when his fingers are twisting into the waistband of my jeans and his teeth are carefully pulling my shirt off of my shoulder.
“Hell yeah,” he grunts. “Took that shirt and used it to jerk off until I couldn’t smell you on it anymore.”
The brash admission has my thighs clenching, more slick drenching my panties. My scent intensifies, and he chuckles.
“You like that? You enjoy knowing you’ve made me so fucking hard I can’t think straight with nothing more than your perfume and your lips against mine?
” He grabs my knee, forcing my legs even wider, pushing more insistently against my core.
“I just about killed my brother for pulling you away from me that night.”
“It’s probably good he did,” I admit on a sigh.
I’m too romantic to want my first time to be in a dimly-lit private room of a club, no matter what my body was clamoring for in the moment.
He stills against me, his body coiling with a possessive rage reflected in the sharp edge to his scent.
“Why?”
The word is no more than a snarl. He pulls the skin on my shoulder between his teeth, hard enough to bruise.
I suck in a breath through my teeth, twisting a hand into his shirt.
He’s going to withdraw the moment I tell him, the moment I admit I’ve never been touched like this, haven’t done anything more than a make-out session, and that was four years ago now.
My knees tighten around his waist, preparing for him to try and pull away, needing him plastered against me.
“You… you should know that I’ve never done this,” I whisper.
He stills, presses his palm flat to the small of my back. His fingers dig into my thigh just above my knee. “Done what? Gotten eaten out in your shop?”
I shake my head.
“Not just in my shop.” I breathe in the lemongrass scent and let my eyes close. Admitting this at twenty-two, especially as an Omega, is almost mortifying. “I’ve never been with anyone like that. I’m… I’m a virgin.”
An alarm goes off on his phone, cutting through the sudden silence before he can even react.
He silences it without pulling it from his pocket, his grip unflinching on my leg.
He slowly pulls away from my shoulder, kissing the bruised bit of skin.
When he finally looks at me, my body clenches all over again.
There’s nothing but primal hunger in his gaze, in his slightly swollen lips and hard jaw.
“All right,” he says.
He kisses me again, this one more leashed, more restrained than before. I melt into him anyway, and he smiles even as he slowly extricates himself.
“I have to get to the rink,” he says. “Physio needs to look at my knee before warm-ups.”
“From that blocked shot on Saturday?”
He nods and shrugs. “It’ll be fine. They just get nervous any time it’s a knee.”
He presses a soft kiss to my lips. Those butterflies are in my stomach again, making it impossible to say anything as he pulls away. He seems to understand, though. He laces his fingers with mine without ever looking away.
“We don’t have a game Wednesday. I want to take you out.”
A thousand responses rise to the tip of my tongue, but I force them back. “What should I wear? How formal?”
“A cocktail dress,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at six.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You know where I live?”
“I’ll ask Billie,” he says, smirking.
He kisses me again before pulling away entirely.
I whine at the loss of his heat. He runs his thumb over my cheek.
Another alarm rings from his phone, and he sighs.
He doesn’t say a word before walking back out the front of the shop.
I tilt my head back, staring at the white ceiling of my work room.
After only a couple minutes, both our scents are completely gone, dispersed by the purifier.
Acting on instinct, I strip out of my apron and shirt, pulling the back-up I always keep at the shop and shoving the original into a plastic bag to bring home, desperate to keep his lemongrass scent until Wednesday.
Wednesday, when I’m going on a date.
With Rhett James.