Page 32 of Omega's Formula
“Your home?” I let out a harsh laugh. “You’ve been here thirty seconds. I’ve been living here for three weeks.”
“The only reason you’re here is because the Bureau required cohabitation, and I was generous enough to give you somewhere to live.”
“Generous.” I take a step toward him, closing the distance. “You call ruining my life generous?”
Something shifts in his expression.
“That research was legally acquired—”
“From my ex-fiancé who stole it from me.” I’m close enough now to see the individual flecks of gold in his blue eyes. Close enough to feel the heat radiating off him. “I earned that work through years of my life. You just took it. And you havethe audacity to stand there acting like I’m the one who did something wrong.”
His breathing has changed. His chest rises and falls too fast, and I can see his pulse jumping in his throat. His hands are clenched at his sides, knuckles white, every line of his body coiled tight.
“You don’t know anything about me,” he says, and his voice has gone rough, lower than before. “You don’t know what I’ve built. What I’ve sacrificed.”
“I know enough.” I’m so close now I can feel his breath on my face. His scent fills my lungs—expensive cologne and underneath it, pure alpha, dark and commanding and making my hindbrain want to roll over. “I know you’re a man who profits from other people’s work and tells himself he earned it.”
Something shifts in his expression. Then his jaw sets and his eyes go hard and he’s reaching for me.
I don’t know who moves first.
One second we’re standing there, the air between us crackling, and the next his mouth is on mine and my back is hitting the wall and I’m kissing him like I want to consume him. His hands are in my hair, tilting my head back, and I’m grabbing fistfuls of his expensive suit jacket and hauling him closer even as every rational thought screams at me to stop.
The kiss is savage. His teeth catch my lower lip and I make a sound I’ve never heard from myself before—something between a moan and a snarl. I bite back and he presses me harder into the wall and my towel is slipping and I can’t bring myself to care.
I should stop this. I should shove him away and tell him to go to hell and lock myself in the bedroom until I can think clearly. But his hands are sliding down my sides, thumbs pressing into the grooves of my hips, and the friction of his suit against my bare skin is making me dizzy with want.
“I hate you,” I gasp against his mouth.
“The feeling is mutual.” He bites down on my jaw, just below my ear, and my knees actually buckle. “This doesn’t mean anything.”
“Nothing,” I agree, yanking at his tie, loosening it enough to get at his buttons. “Absolutely nothing.”
His laugh is dark and breathless against my throat.
The towel finally surrenders and pools at my feet. Erik pulls back just far enough to look at me, and the naked hunger in his expression makes something deep inside me clench. He’s still fully dressed—pristine, polished—and I’m completely bare, panting and pinned against his wall.
I should feel vulnerable. Exposed.
Instead, I feel powerful. Because he’s looking at me like I’m the most desirable thing he’s ever seen. Like every ounce of his legendary control is seconds from shattering.
“Well?” I challenge. “Are you going to do something about it, or just stand there?”
His eyes flash. Then his hands are on me again, lifting me like I weigh nothing, and I’m wrapping my legs around his waist.
We don’t make it to the bedroom. We barely make it to the wall.
His hands pin my wrists above my head, and I arch into him, my body betraying every promise I’ve made to myself about keeping this man at arm’s length. He’s still fully dressed. The power imbalance should bother me, but instead it makes everything more intense—the drag of his wool trousers against my bare thighs, the cool metal of his belt buckle pressed against my hip, the way his dress shirt rasps against my chest when he leans in to sink his teeth into my collarbone.
“You’re impossible,” he growls against my skin. “Infuriating.”
“Back at you.” I hook a leg around his hip and grind against the unmistakable hardness straining at his fly. “Are you going to do something about it, or just complain?”
For one moment, I think he might actually walk away and leave me wanting.
Then he drops to his knees.
The sound I make is embarrassing. I’d be mortified if I had any capacity left for shame, but his mouth is on me and my brain has whited out completely.