Chapter 3
Three
LIANA
The hot water runs out halfway through my shower, and I don’t even care.
I stand there shivering under the lukewarm drip until my fingers prune, my hair plastered to my shoulders, my skin covered in goosebumps. I need the cold. I need to feel something that isn’t the electric burn of Julian Frostwood’s fingertips against my wrist.
I towel off in the steamy bathroom, my reflection fogged and broken in the mirror. Pale green eyes. Dark auburn hair dripping onto the tile.
I trace the scar on my arm with my index finger. The ridge of scar tissue is smooth in some places, raised and rough in others. Six years, and it still feels fresh under my touch.
My apartment is quiet. The shop below is dark, my flowers sleeping in their coolers. I pull on an old pair of cotton pajama pants and a soft gray thermal that’s too big in the shoulders.
I pour cheap red wine into a chipped blue mug because all my glasses are in the sink and I’m too tired to wash them.
The wine tastes like vinegar and blackberries, and I drink it too fast, feeling the warmth slide down my throat and settle behind my sternum.
I sit on the floor beside my bed, back against the mattress, legs pulled up to my chest. The radiator ticks.
The streetlights glow orange through my living room windows.
I can’t stop shivering. I’m not even cold.
Julian touched me for half a second. His fingers brushed the inside of my wrist where the pulse jumps, skin against skin, and my entire body lit up like a downed power line.
Heat flashed through me so fast I thought I’d been struck.
My pussy clenched. My nipples tightened.
Slick gathered between my thighs so suddenly I was terrified he’d smell it through my clothes.
An alpha touch. An omega response.
I haven’t felt that in my entire life. I take another swallow of wine. It burns.
“They know I’m an omega,” I whisper, my heart sinking. There’s no way that they can’t know. The moment Julian touched me, they had all gone still like hunters. I remember the shock on Julian’s face and the widening of his eyes.
They’re going to come back. They’re going to want more than my shop now.
I set the mug down hard on the floor. The wine sloshes over the rim, a dark red streak across the worn wood. I don’t wipe it up.
I won’t sign the contract.
I don’t care what Ezra Frostwood says in his crisp black suit with his pale gray eyes and his voice that could freeze the East River.
Seventy-five thousand dollars is life-changing money.
It’s also blood money. It’s the price of everything I’ve built with my own hands, every flower I’ve cut and arranged, every customer who’s walked through that door and left smiling.
This shop is my grandmother’s garden brought indoors.
It’s the only piece of my family I have left.
They can evict me in ninety days. Fine. But I’m not leaving early. I’m not taking their money and running. This is my fight now.
The key turns in the lock.
I don’t move.
Mira pushes the door open with her hip. Flour in her dark chestnut hair. Her embroidered apron still tied around her waist, dusted white. A brown paper bag in one hand, a bottle of something expensive-looking in the other. Her silver nose hoop glints when she turns her head.
She sees me. Sees the half-empty cup. Sees my face.
“You started without me,” she says. “Rude.”
She kicks off her shoes and pads across the floor in sock feet, dropping onto the plum velvet sofa with the ease of someone who belongs everywhere she goes.
“Sorry.”
“Want to talk about it?” she asks, uncorking the bottle with a practiced twist. No corkscrew needed. She pours herself a generous measure into a mug and leans back, tucking one foot under her thigh.
I tell her everything.
I tell her about the four alphas. Ezra Frostwood in his charcoal suit, cold and controlled, pushing a folder across the table like he was doing me a favor. Julian, with his warm hazel eyes and his charming smile, reaching for my hand. His fingers brushing my wrist and me running away from them.
“How hot were they, on a scale of one to fuck-me-now?” Mira asks, taking a sip of wine.
I blink. “What?”
“Come on. I need details.”
“They were...” I struggle for words. “Ezra was... intimidating. Cold. But in a way that made you want to…” I stop. My face burns.
“Ooh, oh my god,” Mira says, her eyes widening.
“Shut up.”
“You wanted to be knotted by him? Is that what you were going to say?”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh, my god.” She grins, her eyebrows raised. “And the wrist-toucher? Julian?”
“He’s charming,” I mutter into my mug. “Flirtatious. He has dimples.”
“Dimples,” Mira repeats the word like it’s evidence in a trial. “And the other two?”
“One was quiet. Watchful. His name was Cole, I think. And the youngest, August, was writing in a notebook the whole time. I liked him.”
Mira sets her mug down with a definitive clink. “Okay, so let me get this straight. Four billionaire alphas demanded to buy your shop?”
I stare at the wine stain on my floor. The silence stretches.
“Yeah,” I say finally. “And Ezra smelled like bergamot.”
Mira’s mouth drops open. She covers it with both hands, her eyes wide above her fingers. “Oh, my God.”
“Don’t.”
“Bergamot. Like, Earl Grey tea bergamot? The kind that makes you want to climb him like a tree?”
“Mira.”
“Because that’s literally the sexiest alpha scent I’ve ever heard of, and I’ve heard some shit.
” She picks up her mug again, shaking her head in theatrical dismay.
“Cold, controlled, dominant alpha in a three-piece suit who smells like bergamot and wants to buy your flower shop. This is not fair. This is cosmic cruelty.”
“We’re getting drunk,” I announce, reaching for the bottle.
“Way ahead of you.”
We drink. The expensive wine is smooth and dark, nothing like the vinegar in my mug. Mira produces a kouign-amann from the paper bag, flaky and glazed with caramelized sugar, and we tear it apart with our fingers, sticky and laughing.
The alcohol loosens something in my chest. The fear recedes. The memory of Julian’s touch burns with less shame and more wonder.
Mira does an impression of Ezra that nearly kills me.
She sits up straight, squares her shoulders, and lets her face go completely blank. Her voice drops an octave. Becomes measured. Cold. Precise.
“Ms. Marsh. On behalf of Frostwood Holdings, I am writing to inform you that your emotional attachment to four hundred square feet of Brooklyn brick is both financially irrational and aesthetically questionable.”
I snort wine through my nose. Mira doesn’t break character.
“The terms are clear. The timeline is ninety days. I would prefer to resolve this matter promptly, as I have several other small businesses to crush before lunch.”
I’m wheezing. Tears are running down my face. Mira’s impression is devastating. The flat affect, the slight pause before each sentence, the way she delivers every word like it’s been weighed and measured for maximum impact. She’s captured him perfectly. The ice alpha.
“Stop,” I gasp. “I can’t breathe.”
The laughter fades. The room settles. The wine bottle is half empty. Mira’s cheeks are flushed, her eyes bright, her flour-dusted hair coming loose from its bun. She looks at me over the rim of her mug, and her expression softens.
“You need a lawyer,” she says.
I blink. “A what?”
“A lawyer, Lia. Someone who knows real estate law and will fight for you.”
“I don’t...” I trail off. The reality of what she’s saying crashes into me. Lawyers. Court. Paperwork. Money I don’t have. “I’ve never been on a lawyer’s website in my life. I don’t even know where to start.”
“Look it up and research,” Mira says flatly.
“I can’t afford…”
“I’ll lend you the money.” She says it like it’s nothing. “The bakery’s doing well. I’ve got savings. This is non-negotiable.”
The generosity hits me square in the chest.
My eyes fill.
I look down at my hands, at the small cuts on my fingertips from thorns and shears, at the wine stain on the floor that I still haven’t wiped up.
“I can’t lose it, Mira,” I whisper. The words come out broken. “This shop is all I have. It’s my family. Every flower is something my grandmother taught me. Every arrangement is a piece of her garden. If I lose this place, I lose them all over again.”
Mira sets her mug down. Slides off the sofa. Sits on the floor beside me, her shoulder pressed against mine, warm and solid. She doesn’t say anything. She just wraps her arm around my shoulders and holds me while I cry.
“I should go,” she says after a while, her voice gentle. “I’m getting sleepy, and if I fall asleep on your couch again, my sourdough starter will revolt.”
I nod. She squeezes my shoulder, gets to her feet, and gathers her things. At the door, she stumbles and turns back.
“Find that lawyer,” she says. “Tomorrow. Promise me.”
“Promise.”
She leaves. The lock clicks. The apartment is quiet again.
I finish the wine. Brush my teeth. Stumble to my bedroom in the dark, too tired to turn on the lights. The sheets are cool against my skin as I lie down on my belly, one arm tucked under the pillow, my face turned toward the window. The streetlight casts long amber shadows across the floor.
I think about Julian’s face.
The shock in his hazel eyes when his fingers touched my wrist. The way he pulled back like he’d been burned. He had felt that electric current, that live-wire connection between alpha and omega that nothing can fake.
My pussy throbs. Just once, a deep, insistent pulse between my thighs that makes me gasp softly into the pillow.
I haven’t felt this in years. Not on purpose. Not for myself.
With Magnus, sex was something that happened to me.
He forced himself onto me while I stared at the ceiling and counted cracks.
His knot swelling inside me, locking us together while I dissociated so completely I could barely feel my own body.
His teeth in my neck, in my collarbone and my arms, marking me over and over while his pack watched.
None of the bites took. My body rejected him. Every time.
I haven’t touched myself since. Haven’t wanted to. My body was a crime scene. Evidence of something I survived.
But Julian’s touch woke something up. Something hungry. Something that belongs to me.
I stretch out fully, facedown on my belly, legs slightly parted, my toes pointing into the bed. The position feels vulnerable. Open. My ass curves up under the thin cotton of my pajama pants. I can feel the heat between my thighs, the dampness already gathering.
One arm stays under the pillow. The other slides slowly down my side, over the curve of my hip, over the swell of my ass. My fingers find the seam of my pajama pants, then slip beneath the elastic waistband. I press the heel of my hand against my underwear, right over my pussy.
The pressure is immediate. Electric.
My clit is swollen, sensitive, throbbing against the cotton. I rock my hips in tiny, experimental circles, grinding my palm against myself, and the friction makes me gasp into the pillow. My back arches. My toes curl.
Holy fuck.
I’ve never felt this. Not like this. Not with my own hand, in my own bed, with no one watching.
I push my hand underneath the waistband of my underwear. The cotton is soaked. My pussy is dripping wet, slick gathering between my folds, my clit hard and aching under my fingertips. I stroke myself from behind, two fingers gliding through my slick, circling my clit in slow, firm loops.
Not entering. Just stroking.
Everything is more intense while I’m on my belly. My own body weight pressing my fingers against my pussy is the perfect position.
My breathing turns shallow as my ass flexes with each thrust of my fingers into my pussy.
Sweat beads on my lower back. My pants are sticking to my skin.
I squeeze my thighs around my hand, trapping it exactly where I need it, and grind faster.
Harder. The pleasure builds in waves, each one higher than the last, crashing through my hips, my belly, my chest. My free hand grips the sheets, knuckles white, hanging on for dear life.
I’m close. So close.
Oh my god.
My pussy is pulsing, clenching on nothing, slick running down my inner thighs. I work my clit in tight, frantic circles, my fingers moving faster, my hips bucking in short, urgent thrusts against the mattress.
Every nerve is on fire. My skin is hypersensitive.
The brush of the sheets against my nipples makes them ache. The weight of my own body pressing me down onto my hand is driving me insane.
“Fuck,” I whimper into the pillow. The orgasm hits me like a wave.
My back arches sharply. My toes curl so hard they cramp.
A cry tears out of me, muffled by the pillow, raw and desperate.
The pleasure rushes through me in pulsing waves, starting at my clit and radiating outward.
My thighs tremble, my belly clenches, my whole body shaking.
I keep grinding through it, drawing every last shudder out, my fingers never stopping, circling my oversensitive clit until the sensation borders on pain and I have to force myself to slow down.
I collapse. Boneless. Breathless and covered in sweat.
The sheets beneath me are wet with slick, the evidence of my own desire pooling under my hips. I lie there panting, my heart hammering against my ribs, my pussy still throbbing in gentle aftershocks. My fingers are wet as fuck.
I press my face into the pillow and smile. My pussy is still pulsing, and I’m already wondering when I can touch myself again, and it’s all the fault of Ezra Frostwood and his brothers.