Page 76 of Knot Their Safe Haven

He said it with a kind of reverence, as if I'd somehow managed to surprise him despite his encyclopedic knowledge of Omega biology. The words hovered between us, sticky and dangerous as caramel on the verge of burning.

He had to know what it did to me, hearing that. The way it drew my blood to the surface, pooling heat in places I was sure he could sense even through layers of silk and self-control.

"That's unfair insider information," I shot back, but the retort landed too softly, struggling for air beneath the rising tide of want.

It wasn't just my body betraying me—the heat, the tremors, the way my fingertips itched to claw at his lapels.

It was the way my mind began to flicker and fade, the ruthless survivalist in me growing weak at the knees just to know he was paying such microscopic attention.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt so thoroughly observed, let alone by someone who seemed to catalog every molecule of my existence as if I were a rare perfume or a complex code to break.

He didn't release me from his orbit, just spun us tighter, suffocating the space until my breath was shared between us.

His smirk was lazy, but his eyes—those wicked, impossibly green eyes—were locked on my mouth like a wolf eyeing a steak.

It should have made me want to bite, to reassert my dominance in a room where I was always queen.

Instead, it made me want to lay bare every secret, to let him taste the parts of me no one else dared to touch.

I wondered what else he could sense from that nose of his.

Fear? Excitement? The rare, dangerous hope that lingered in the pit of my stomach, growing with every circle of our slow waltz.

I thought about how I always prided myself on being inscrutable.

How I’d once convinced a room full of geneticists I was an ordinary Omega, even as I hacked their mainframe in heels and a dress that could have paid off their student loans.

But Alessandro saw through every façade.

He could read my pheromones like Braille, could trace patterns in the air molecules I left behind, could distill my lies to their elemental truth.

I should have hated it.

I should have fought him for every inch of power.

But right now, letting him see me like this felt like the bravest thing I’d ever done.

He dipped his head, lips almost brushing my ear.

"I like that you're nervous. No one's ever nervous around me."

"I'm not nervous," I lied, and both of us laughed at the sound of it.

His hand flexed at my waist.

I could feel the tension in his whole body, the wild oscillation between restraint and hunger.

He didn’t need to say he wanted me; every inch of him said it more eloquently than words.

We kept gliding, turning, our feet barely making a sound on the old wood.

If the world outside was burning, I would not have known; the only fire that existed was the one flickering over his shoulder, and the one he kindled in me with nothing but a look.

He was still thinking about my scent, I realized.

Still cataloging, still savoring, still deciding exactly how to consume me.

"Everything about you is unfair." His hand slides lower, fingertips grazing the curve where back becomes ass. "The dress, the glasses, the way you look at me like you're deciding whether to fuck me or kill me."