Page 89 of Omega

“Layla?” His voice was a sleepy murmur.

“Yeah, Nick?”

“I’m not going to say it. I know you feel it. I know you see it.” He sighed. “I will say it, because it’s real and it’s true. But not like this. I don’t want you to think it’s got anything to do with how hard I just came. I mean, it does, but that’s not why.”

He sounded almost awkward, and Harris wasneverawkward. It was cute.

“Nicholas?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t say it if it’s not forever. I can handle just about anything. But don’t say that if you don’t mean it, and if it’s not…for forever.”

“Layla, I wouldn’t—”

“I don’t want to talk about it right now. I want to enjoy the afterglow.”

He tightened his grip on me, his arms coiling tighter. He may not have said he loved me in so many words, but he’d made it clear he did.

It was enough for right now. More than enough. Maybe even all I could handle, at that point.

Baby steps to falling in love.

“I do, though,” Nick murmured.

“Me too.”

16

AIN’T OUT OF THE WOODS YET

I woke up when I hit the floor beside the bed with a painfulthud. “What the fu—mmmph—” I was cut off by Harris’s hand over my mouth.

“Shut the fuck up. Someone’s outside.” His voice was a harsh whisper in my ear, barely audible.

I went still, disoriented and sleepy still but recognizing the urgency in his voice. He was crouching over me, naked, pistol in his hand, aiming at the entrance to the bedroom. Tense moments passed, and I heard nothing, saw nothing. Light streamed in bright through the drawn shades. I smelled the thick musk of sex, and looked down to see Harris’s dick mere inches from my face, dangling, heavy.

“Mmm. Penis,” I whispered, and took him into my mouth, tasting us, feeling him twitch.

“Jesus, Layla! Not now.” He glanced down at me and gave me an angry look. The effect of the glare was ruined somewhat by the fact that he was now hard as a rock.

And then I heard it. A creak of hinges, footsteps scuffing on threadbare carpet.

“Awesome,” Harris whispered. “Now I’m gonna have to kill this guy with a hard-on. Thanks, babe.”

“No problem,” I responded, “I’ll just wait here.”

“Good plan.” He moved toward the foot of the bed, holding the pistol in both hands, slinking with predatory grace and silence.

The gear bag was on the floor, and he reached into it, tugged the opening aside, found what he was looking for: a silencer, which he quickly and quietly screwed onto the barrel of his pistol. More waiting. Sounds from the living room, a voice murmuring in a foreign language and another voice responding. Two of them, then.

Harris glanced back at me, put a finger over his lips. I rolled my eyes at him to indicateno shit, what do you think I’m going to do, start shouting?Fuck me, he was sexy. Rugged, lean, hard—ha, that was a double entendre, now, thanks to my mouth—muscles of his back shifting in the shadows with each motion. He should have looked stupid, prowling closer to the doorway, buck naked with a gun in his hands. But somehow, he didn’t. He looked primal, fierce, and deadly.

My man was deadly, and dead sexy.

My man?

Yes, my man. I decided to own it. He was my man. I was his woman. Oddly, unexpectedly, I kind of liked the feeling of being someone’s woman.