Page 23 of Omega's Formula

When I turn on the TV, I find Netflix already set up with two profile options: “Erik” and “Nolan.”

I laugh out loud at that, the sound echoing in the empty apartment. Someone has really thought of everything. I wonder if it was Sara, or if Erik actually sat down and considered what details would sell the fiction of our marriage to Bureau inspectors.

The thought of Erik thinking about me at all sends an uncomfortable heat through my chest.

I push it down, click on “Nolan,” and pick the first option that comes up without really looking at it. I let it play in the background while I finish looking around.

There are business textbooks on the bookshelves with notes in the margins in the same handwriting that signed our wedding certificate. In the kitchen, I find a mug with a chipped handle that saysWorld’s Okayest Brother.

I shove the mug back in the cabinet and slam the door. I wasn’t expecting to be inhisspace. I wouldn’t have agreed to it if I had known.

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course, I would have agreed. Ellie’s medical bills and the stupid rule that doesn’t let her on the trial if I am single means that I would have agreed to anything, and this would certainly have been included.

I unpack Ellie’s photos first. There aren’t many—I’ve never been sentimental about physical things—but I have a few that matter. Ellie at her high school graduation, grinning in her cap and gown. Ellie and me crammed into a diner booth, splitting cheese fries, sauce on her chin because she never could eat anything without wearing half of it. Ellie sleeping in a hospital bed three years ago, when everything started going wrong.

I arrange them on the bookshelf next to Erik’s textbooks. Then I stick her medical schedule to the front of the fridgewith the magnets already there. It’s filled with appointments, treatment dates, medication reminders.

This is the real reason I’m here.

I shove my clothes into the empty drawers—worn flannel next to silk, scuffed boots beside Italian leather. My whole life fits in one duffel bag and a cardboard box.

My sister is dying and I just married my worst enemy and everything I own could fit in a car trunk.

What a fucking life.

The scent is worse when I go to bed. The sheets have been washed. They smell of soap and fabric softener, but Erik lived here for years. It’s saturated into the walls.

I’ve been swimming in it all evening, but somehow it’s stronger now—or maybe I’m just too tired to keep my walls up anymore.

It curls around me and sinks into my skin. My body responds before my brain can catch up: heat pooling low in my belly, skin prickling with awareness, that same relentlesspullI’ve felt every time he’s been anywhere near me.

I hate him.

Ihatehim.

But I’m hard. Achingly, desperately hard, my cock straining against the fabric of my boxers, and it’s because I’m lying in his bed, surrounded by his scent, and some deep animal part of my brain has decided that means something.

I should get up and take a cold shower. I should think about literally anything else.

Instead, my hand slides beneath my waistband.

The first touch drags a groan out of me. I’m already leaking, slick and hot, and I hate myself for it. I hate how good it feels to wrap my fingers around my length and stroke, slow and tight. I hate the way my hips buck up into the touch, chasing more.

I try to think about someone else. Anyone else. A celebrity. That guy from the gym.

But Erik’s scent fills my lungs with every breath, and it’s his face I see behind my closed eyes. The sharp line of his jaw. The ice-blue of his eyes. The way he looked at me across that conference table at the Bureau, like he wanted to devour me whole.

The way he kissed me at the wedding.

I stroke faster, rougher, my free hand fisting in the sheets. The memory surfaces unbidden and I let it: the press of his lips, the heat of his palm on my jaw, the way he’d made that low sound in his throat when I opened my mouth beneath his. Almost a growl. Pure alpha, and my whole body had lit up with it, screamingyesandmoreandplease.

I imagine him here. In this bed. Those big hands pinning my wrists above my head while he takes what he wants. That deep voice in my ear, telling me I’mhis, and I’d fight him, I would, but god—

I come with his name on my lips, spilling hot over my fist, my whole body shuddering with the force of it.

Afterward, I lie there panting. Come cooling on my stomach. Then I get up and shower, as if I can scrub the need from my skin.

Before I go to sleep, I go online and buy the strongest scent blockers I can find, paying extra to get it delivered first thing the next day.