Page 45 of Let It Snow (Eden’s Omegaverse #7)

My fingers graze his shoulder and slide down his bicep.

I’m facing him fully now, but he hasn’t moved from the position he took when he first sat down.

The only sign he notices my closeness is the slight bulge in his pants.

For all his distance and restraint, Snow is still a man, one with a strong libido.

Physical touch always got to him, and this time is no different.

But that’s not important right now, and it’s not why I came here. I decided to come clean, explain myself, and bare my soul to him.

"Snow… I miss you so much it feels like my heart is shattering. I wake up thinking of you, I fall asleep thinking of you. Everything else I do is mechanical, just going through the motions, caring for the kids, talking with Tim. It all feels like a dream, because I know you won’t come back, I know there won’t be a night when you step out of the shadows to hold me, to touch me, to be inside me.

I’ve lost all of it, and it terrifies me, because it hurts. It hurts so damn much, Snow."

Snow slowly turns his head and looks at me. Up close, his face is even more flawless, with those even features, the masculine line of his jaw, and the straight nose.

"Snow, please, make it stop. I’m begging you!" I plead, because it’s all I can hope for, some relief. Not that he’ll change his mind, but… maybe a helping hand? "I know you can. I know you can heal the wounds in people’s hearts and close them."

Tears stream down my face. My emotions have no barrier now. I can only whisper, "Please, I’m begging you. Don’t leave me with a broken heart. It hurts, it hurts so bad…"

His eyes travel across my face. I wish I could read him better, but I never could. His true thoughts and feelings were always locked away. He’s never opened up to me, never let me in. I suspect that most of his brothers see him as a mystery. The only person who quietly understands him is his dad.

I close my eyes for a moment, trying to get control over the pain shredding me from the inside, only sharpening in his presence. Being near him just makes it more real, the realization that there’s no way back for us.

"Please," I whisper, "close my wound."

My hands drift over his shoulder and across the firm muscles of his chest, moving instinctively the way they always had. It’s hard to pry my fingers away from him. I’m an omega and he’s an alpha; the physical closeness is simply doomed to evoke some… intensity by design.

"Will you help me?"

I know it’s the only way to get an answer from him, to ask directly.

"I will," he says. That’s all.

Silence falls. I wait, and he just watches me.

Then, slowly, he stands up. His hand doesn’t leave mine; instead, he takes my wrist gently and tugs upward, guiding me to stand with him.

Step by step, he leads me toward one of the doors I noticed earlier. He opens it, and we walk inside.

It’s his bedroom. A muslin mosquito net hangs over the bed, and on the ceiling I see tiny LEDs that look like stars.

My heart speeds up. Why has Snow brought me here? I expected a final conversation, not this. I never imagined there’d be a chance for… for anything more. Not that I mind. The thought barely forms before my body flips instantly from grief to a sudden wave of arousal.

Snow stops by the bed and slowly turns toward me.

"I’ll need to shift some things in you, and also in the energy surrounding your bond with Tim. It will be a significant change. I’ll help you repair it. But to do that, we’ll have to be very close, so you need to agree."

I blink in shock.

"Shift something in me? Repair my bond with Tim?"

"Yes. I can close the wound, the pain. And use its power to help you two find your way back to each other."

"Like when we met? Restart our… feeling?"

He nods.

"Does that mean I won’t love you anymore?"

"You will. But you won’t feel the pain of the breakup. What you’ll feel is acceptance."

I shut my eyes for a moment.

"All right. Do it. That’s… exactly what I need."

A faint, sad smile softens his face.

I take a step closer, lift my hands, and place them on his chest.

"I promised your dad I wouldn’t come here again. Does this mean… this is our goodbye, too?"

Does he hesitate for just a second?

"Yes, Theo. A kind of goodbye."

He glances aside, his face shifting ever so slightly, like he’s listening to some distant sound.

"Are you in heat right now?"

I blink in surprise. "No. My doctor says it won’t happen for at least another two weeks."

He frowns faintly, closing his eyes for a moment. I know he’s sensing energies, doing whatever it is he does.

And for a heartbeat, I see the shadow of sadness cross his face, maybe even uncertainty. He stands there in silence, clearly wavering, then lowers his head and closes his eyes.

He lifts a hand, and his fingers glide over my back, a caress filled with promise.

"Not forever. But yes, goodbye to… us."

I step back toward the bed and let myself fall into the soft cloud of fabric, immersed in the simple truth that, for all his magic and power, underneath it all he is still just a vivacious alpha.

◆◆◆

When I get home that night, it’s already past eleven.

The kids are asleep, and Tim is back from work.

He’s sitting in his office, staring at his laptop screen. His black hair falls around his face, making him look younger. He’s so handsome. Why the hell do I so rarely notice it?

When I walk in, he glances my way, his nostrils twitching slightly.

"You were with him."

He says it flatly, with the faintest trace of disappointment. He probably thought it was over, that I wouldn’t dig it up again.

I step closer and rest my hand on his shoulder.

"I just went to say goodbye, and I asked him to help me close what started between us twelve years ago. You know he can do that."

He studies me for a moment, his dark brown eyes with long lashes moving slowly across my face.

"My chances in the election are slipping. After Dante Moll publicly backed Mark Ferguson, I lost a chunk of the beta vote overnight."

I don’t expect the change of subject, as if the other thing doesn’t even matter.

Tim looks pale, his whole body wound tight with stress. I move behind him and press my palms into his neck, massaging the stiff muscles.

"Maybe it won’t be that bad. Maybe something will turn around."

"You don’t even believe that yourself," Tim mutters bitterly. He lets me rub his shoulders for another moment, then gets up, pushing my hands away.

He turns to face me, and we stand close, eye to eye.

Tim is tall for an omega, five foot eleven, which puts him five inches above me.

I don’t back down. I step in, resting my hands against his chest.

"Don’t give up, Tim. The election isn’t decided until the votes are counted. You still have the Lowens’ support…"

He grimaces. "For plenty of people, that’s a liability. You know some Lowens are hated, like Blue. I think he holds some kind of record for assassination attempts."

I sigh. "But your brother-in-law, Sebastien Lowen… you worked with the man for so many years as a prosecutor; people remember that. He’s respected, loved, and everyone knows he’s on the right side. The Red Line Agency is doing incredible work for victimized omegas."

"Yes, but the name itself is controversial. You never know which way people will lean."

Bitterness still lingers on his face. His gaze drifts down to my neck.

"Your heat is coming," he says.

"Not for another two weeks. That’s what the doctor told me."

"I think it’s coming much sooner. Your scent has shifted."

Silence settles between us. We both know this will be my first heat in years without Snow.

For twelve years, he was always there with us, helping me and Tim.

Tim only stepped in once in a while, but as an omega, he couldn’t go into rut and keep up with all the waves.

It was the other way around too; I could not help Tim with his heats, so Snow was of immense help to us both.

"You’ll have to stay with me," I whisper, peering at him through half-lidded eyes.

"I have the election. I don’t know if I’ll even be in the right state of mind," he says through clenched teeth.

My fingers curl into his shirt. "I don’t want to look for anyone else. I’m not ready for that."

"That’s not what I meant." His tone softens. "I don’t want you with anyone either. I got used to Snow. But I thought maybe you should take suppressants?"

I blink. "I don’t want that," I blurt out nervously. "We both tried it once, don’t you remember? We felt awful."

He exhales deeply, tilting his head side to side until his spine cracks.

I watch him for a moment; even at forty-five, Tim is still such an attractive man. Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing it, but he’s always drawn me in. As a bisexual omega, I feel that pull toward both alphas and omegas. With Tim, we started out with great chemistry.

But then… it was our fight to have kids that made our sex life more stressful.

As omegas, our seed is infertile, so we went through a lot of experimental treatments before we finally succeeded.

Then there was Tim’s work as a prosecutor, with the constant stress, the sense of threat, and the endless hours.

Sometimes he’d leave me alone with the kids for weeks.

After ten years of marriage, we agreed to open things up, and meeting Snow felt like a release from being completely alone in the marital bed for days on end.

Tim studies me too, with a kind of sharpened awareness, as if something is dawning on him. Then he inhales slowly.

"I can smell sex on you. You haven’t showered yet."

Heat rises in my cheeks. "I’m sorry. I didn’t really get the chance. I didn’t expect things to go the way they did. Afterward, I just walked out of his house. His whole family was sitting on the patio, staring at me like… well, I didn’t want to stick around."

"At least you said goodbye. I can’t say I don’t understand. Snow is a good guy." Tim leans a bit.

He lifts his hand and brushes it lightly over my left gland. I shiver, realizing he might be right, my heat is building. The first shadow of a wave is already stirring inside me, unexpectedly, and stronger than it should be. His pupils dilate as he catches my reaction.

Then suddenly he closes the distance, pressing his body to mine.

He lowers his head and seals his mouth over my gland.

I gasp. It feels so fucking good!

"Shame Snow won’t be there for your heat anymore. We used to have so much fun together," he murmurs.

His lips move over my neck, and my desire flares inside me like a rapid eruption. I haven’t felt this way toward Tim in so long. Our ‘marital’ sex once a week was more of a duty than a pleasure.

"Maybe it’s better this way. It’ll be just you and me again, like it was at the start. Sometimes I miss those days, Tim," I whisper, breathless. "When it was just you and me."

He pulls back and looks straight into my eyes. Silence stretches.

"Maybe his leaving frees us. Maybe it lets us fix what’s broken," I say softly.

"I never thought our marriage was truly broken," he says quietly. "We always understood each other so well, even when the fire burned lower."

"I think opening the marriage pulled us apart, Tim. I gave too much of myself to Snow, but that’s over now. I feel the shift in me. He’s the past. You’re the one I love. You’re the sire of my children. I want us to find each other again."

He studies me for a long moment, then slowly nods.

"Oh, Theo… I think you’re right. Maybe this is the closing of one chapter that we both need. Maybe it’ll bring us closer."

He leans in, his mouth brushing mine. His fingers slip under my shirt, down my back, and then lower, under my waistband, until they press against my hole.

"You’re wet. Is that still him…"

Embarrassment prickles through me. "Sorry. Probably. I need to shower."

With a sharp tug, he yanks my pants down, grabs my shoulder, spins me around, and pushes me against the edge of his desk. My breath hitches. He bends over me and whispers into my ear.

"Maybe it’s time I take back what’s always been mine, and… overwrite him."

His cock, hard as stone, presses against me and drives inside in one deep thrust, smooth as a blade into butter. I moan, the heat bubbling up inside me. I can’t remember the last time sex with Tim felt like this, if ever. My pulse races, my passage clenches tight around him.

"Maybe Snow really did fix something between us, Tim," I gasp.

Each long thrust sends fire through my veins. He targets my prostate with precision.

"Fuck me. Harder," I groan.

"Yeah," Tim breathes against my ear. "It’s been a long time since I wanted you like this. Since I wanted to fuck you this bad."

Wow…

So Snow did this! He turned my grief into something that repaired what I have with Tim.

My hips slam into the desk, my cock straining, ready to burst.

"I’ve got a feeling this heat is going to be a good one," Tim whispers, and a moment later we’re both shaking as I feel him spill inside me.

But neither of us cares. It’s not the end of the night. We sink deeper into the pleasure, and my heat is only just beginning.