Page 33 of Omega's Formula

He’s methodical about it. Clinical, almost, except there’s nothing clinical about the way his fingers dig into my thighs or the low sound he makes when I fist my hands in his hair. He takes me apart like he’s proving a point—every time I get close, he backs off, leaving me shaking and cursing and yanking at his perfect hair until it’s ruined.

“Erik—fuck—please—”

He pulls back just enough to look up at me, and the sight nearly finishes me on the spot. Erik Nilsson, on his knees, lips swollen and slick, looking up at me with dark, hungry eyes. His hands are still pinning my hips to the wall, and I can feel bruises forming under his grip.

“Please what?”

I hate him. I hate him so much my chest aches with it.

“Please don’t stop.”

Satisfaction flickers across his face and then his mouth is on me again and I stop thinking entirely.

When I finally come, it’s with his name tearing out of my throat and my spine arching off the wall. He works me through it, relentless, until I’m shaking and oversensitive and hauling him up by his ruined shirt because I need his mouth back on mine.

The kiss is messier now, desperate. I taste myself on his tongue and it should be obscene but instead it just makes me want more. My hands fumble with his belt—expensive leather, of course—and then his zipper, shoving his trousers and boxers down far enough that I can wrap my hand around him.

He groans into my mouth and his hips jerk forward. He’s hot and hard and leaking, and the sound he makes when I stroke him is nothing like the controlled asshole I’ve hated for years.

“Nolan—”

“Shut up.” I stroke him hard and fast, the way I’d want it myself, twisting my wrist on the upstroke. “Just shut up.”

He does. He buries his face in my neck and breathes me in and lets me take him apart. His sounds are quieter than mine—bitten-off gasps, low groans he tries to swallow—but I can feel him shaking. I can feel the moment his control starts to crack.

“That’s it,” I murmur against his ear, and his whole body shudders. “Come on.”

His teeth sink into my shoulder as he comes, my name breaking apart in his throat. I work him through it, feeling him pulse in my hand, his hips stuttering against mine. His weight sags against me, pressing me into the wall, both of us slick and sticky and ruined.

We stay there for a long moment. His forehead rests on my collarbone. My hand is still wrapped around him, neither of us moving to separate. His breathing is ragged against my skin.

Then reality crashes back in.

I don’t know how long we stay on the floor afterward, tangled together on the rug—the rug in his old apartment, surrounded by boxes of his old life. My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, and every muscle in my body has gone liquid.

Erik is breathing hard beside me. His suit is destroyed, shirt torn open, tie disappeared somewhere across the room. He looks wrecked. Debauched. Utterly undone.

I did that.

The thought gives me a vicious satisfaction I don’t want to examine too closely.

The silence stretches between us—different from before. Less charged, more uncertain. I have no idea what to say.

Erik sits up abruptly and starts gathering his clothes with quick, efficient movements. He won’t look at me. His jaw is set in that stubborn line again, walls slamming back into place.

“This was a mistake,” he says flatly.

I should agree. I do agree. Fucking Erik Nilsson was spectacularly stupid. But there’s no universe in which I’m going to let him be right about anything.

“Was it?” I prop myself up on my elbows, making no move to cover myself.

His hands still for just a second. Then he finishes buttoning his ruined shirt and reaches for his tie.

“It doesn’t change anything,” he says. “You’re still a liar. I’m still the villain in your story. This was a moment of weakness.”

I sit up fully, pulling a discarded throw blanket over my lap—not for modesty, just because I’m not having this conversation completely bare while he’s getting dressed. “You think that was weakness?”

He finally looks at me. His expression has gone carefully blank, but I saw what was underneath it ten minutes ago. I saw him unravel.