Chapter 10 #2
“Don’t.” My pulse hammers in my throat, my wrists, low in my belly. “Don’t tell me this is a bad idea. I already know. Yellow.” The word slips out—barely breath, barely thought—a tremor of want tangled with fear. Not no. Not yes. Just slow.
His hands flex at his sides like he’s catching himself on an invisible edge, every muscle tightening as he reins himself in. He doesn’t step back, doesn’t crowd forward, just… recalibrates. Reading me. Matching me.
“Then why are you still standing here?”
“I don’t know.” The honesty scrapes out of me. “Why are you?”
That earns a sound from him—half laugh, half exhale, rough enough to scrape. Something almost pained crosses his face. “Because I’m trying to figure out if I’m protecting you or punishing myself.”
“Rowan—”
“We shouldn’t.” But he doesn’t move away. Doesn’t break eye contact. His fingers twitch at his sides like he’s physically restraining himself from reaching for me.
“I know.” Except everything in me doesn’t want another second to go by without his hands on me, his mouth on me.
“You need time.”
“I do.” My voice comes out breathless. “I’m not—this isn’t—”
“Then we stop.” He says it like a command, but his gaze drops to my mouth and stays there. “Right now. Before this becomes something we can’t take back.”
“Right.” I should move. Should walk away. My feet stay planted. “Stopping. Good idea.”
The air between us crackles, charged and waiting. His control is fracturing. I see it in the tension in his shoulders, the way his breathing has gone shallow.
“Shit, Jess. You need to leave. Now.”
“You could make me.” And I can’t believe I just said that, but now that the words are out, I don’t want to take them back.
His eyes flash dark. “Don’t tempt me.”
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll stop being the responsible one.” His voice drops to something dangerous. “And we’ll both regret it tomorrow.”
That should scare me. Instead, the vanilla and jasmine in my scent blooms, and I know he can smell it. Know he can read exactly what his words do to me.
His nostrils flare. “Fuck.”
The distance disappears.
His mouth finds mine, and my knees threaten to give. My hands flatten on the top of the desk for balance, but I’m already leaning into him, already tilting toward the gravity well he creates, already drowning in the way he tastes like everything I shouldn’t want and everything I can’t stop craving.
His hand slides to the small of my back, fingers splaying wide, and he pulls me flush against him. The solid heat of his body makes something in me go liquid and desperate.
The kiss deepens. His other hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing my cheekbone with a gentleness that contradicts everything else about this moment.
Everything narrows to the scent of him, the scrape of his jaw against my skin, the way he tastes—coffee and something darker, something that makes me want more.
When his tongue grazes mine, the sound I make is small and raw and entirely involuntary. He swallows it like a secret worth keeping.
For one perfect moment, I forget everything. The Institute, with its sterile walls and chemical suppressants. The rules I’ve broken and the ones I’m breaking now. The parts of myself I’ve been trying so hard to hide, to control, to deny.
The hum under my skin shifts into something heavier, hotter. My pulse stutters hard in my belly, and with it comes the unmistakable slick-sweet scent of arousal. Omega biology responding to Alpha proximity, to touch, to the promise of something I’m not ready to give.
The realization crashes over me like cold water. This isn’t safety or comfort or even simple attraction. This is gravity. This is the edge of a cliff I could fall off and never find my way back from.
I break the kiss, breath coming sharp and uneven. “No. Stop.”
He stops instantly. Completely. His hands open, palms up, giving me space before I even have to ask for it. “Okay.”
I press trembling fingers to my lips, still feeling him there. “I can’t. Not like this. I barely know you—barely know any of you. And my body...” I gesture vaguely, frustrated. “It’s not—this isn’t me,” I manage. “It’s my body trying to take over. I don’t—I can’t—”
“You don’t owe anyone anything you’re not ready to give.” No judgment in his tone or frustration. “Not me, not Cassian, not Eli. Not ever.”
“I just... I need time.” The words feel inadequate. “To figure out what I actually want versus what my hindbrain is screaming at me to do.”
“You’ll have it.” He nods once, the motion precise and final. “But I’ll still need those names. Your friends.”
Suspicion creeps in despite the moment we just shared. “How do I know you’ll actually look? That you won’t just tell me whatever keeps me compliant?”
“You’ll have to trust me,” he says simply. Then, after a beat: “Or trust Eli. He’ll tell you when there’s news. He’s a terrible liar.”
A shaky breath escapes me that could almost be a laugh. “Will you tell him I was in here and tried to break into your laptop?”
“Not yet.” The corner of his mouth tilts—barely there, but real. “If I wanted to punish you, I wouldn’t start with words.”
My stomach flips. “That supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to make you think,” he says. “About boundaries. About consequences. About the difference between testing limits and crossing them.”
A flush heats my face. “You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.” His gaze holds mine, unflinching. “Leaned into it. Made that sound.”
He’s right, and we both know it. The truth sits between us…messy and complicated and impossible to deny.
The tension breaks first in his small exhale, then in the distant roar of the crowd on TV celebrating a win. Life resumes like the house didn’t just tilt on its axis, like everything didn’t just change.
Rowan steps aside, opening the path to the door. “Give me first and last names. Any identifying details that might help?”
“Okay.”
“And Jess?”
I turn in the doorway, pulse still unsteady.
“Thank you,” he says, and there’s something raw in it. Something genuine.
“For what?”
“For stopping. For knowing your limits. It’ll make the next yes mean something. When you’re ready to give it.”
The words lodge somewhere under my ribs, hot and unsteady and full of promise. I nod once, not trusting my voice, and slip out into the hallway. The scent of sandalwood trails after me, clinging to my skin, my clothes, my memory.
In the kitchen, Eli doesn’t look up from his cards. They whisper against the table in a steady rhythm—shuffle, cut, shuffle. “Water?”
“Yeah.” My voice comes out steadier than I expected.
He slides a glass across the counter, ice already crackling as it melts. “You okay?”
The question is simple. The answer isn’t. “Getting there.”
He nods, and something in his expression shifts—understanding without questions, acceptance without judgment, and he gives me a nod.
I take a long drink, the cold shocking clarity back into my system. It washes away the last tremor from my hands, the lingering heat from my skin. The TV murmurs in the other room. The house breathes around us like it’s settling, waiting, holding space.
And for the first time since the doomed bus ride and Nexus, the quiet doesn’t feel like a threat.
It feels like the start of something I might actually choose.