Page 40 of Omega's Formula

The flash goes off

“Goodnight,” he says when it’s done.

“Nolan, wait.”

He pauses, hand on the doorframe. “I—” I don’t know what I want to say. Apologize again? Explain? Beg him to yell at me so I can stop feeling like I’m losing my mind? “This is going to be a long two weeks.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. Almost a smile, but not quite.

“Yeah,” he says. “It is.”

The door closes. I’m alone.

I lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling and listen to Nolan breathe through the wall, and I think about the bruise on his hip, the shape of my fingers pressed into his skin.

I called it a mistake. But I marked him like he was mine.

I said I don’t lose control, but here I am at 3am, hard and aching, thinking about doing it again.

11. Nolan

I wake to grey light filtering through the curtains and the distant sound of traffic.

For a moment I don’t remember. I’m still half asleep and comfortable. Then memory crashes back and I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t believe we did that.

I lie there for a while, staring at the ceiling and listening. The apartment is quiet. Either Erik is still asleep on the couch or he’s learned how to move without making a sound. Given what I know about him, it’s probably the latter. Control freak.

My phone says it’s 6:47am. Too early to get up, too late to fall back asleep. I reach for it anyway, scrolling through social media I don’t care about, trying not to think about the man on the other side of the door.

The whole evening had been weird. More than weird. It was awkwardness on steroids.

And the look he’d given me when I’d offered to let him sit on the sofa with me?I’m not trying to trap you, asshole.

Just because he’s used to being a manipulative dickwad, it doesn’t mean that everyone else plays that kind of game. I wasn’t being nice. I wasn’t being friendly.

The truth is stupider than that.

I didn’t know what else to do.

When he walked through that door, I panicked. Not visibly—I’m better than that—but inside, everything went sideways. I’dspent all afternoon preparing for a fight. I’d rehearsed what I’d say when he brought up the morning, how I’d cut him down when he tried to apologize or, worse, pretend it never happened.

But then he was justthere, filling up the doorway with his expensive suit and his perfect hair and those blue eyes that make me want to do violent things, and my brain short-circuited. He might be a heartless corporate bastard, but my god, that heartless corporate bastard makes my heart race.

I couldn’t look at him. That was the problem. Every time our eyes met, I remembered. His mouth on me. His hands. The sounds he made when I touched him. If I let myself look too long, I was going to do something stupid like cross the room and kiss him again.

So I was pleasant instead. Polite. Gave myself something to do with my hands and my mouth that didn’t involve him.

It worked, mostly. Until it didn’t.

That moment at dinner when our eyes caught and held. The electricity in the hallway during the check-in, standing so close I could feel the heat of him. The way he looked at me like he was starving and I was the only thing that could fill him up.

I wanted to kiss him so badly my teeth ached with it.

I didn’t. I won’t. I’m not stupid enough to let chemistry derail everything.

But god, it’s hard.

I drag myself out of bed and into the bathroom. The shower helps—hot water, closed door, a few minutes where I don’t have to think about anything except getting clean. I take longer than I need to. Stalling.