Page 16

Time passes so quickly while talking to Beth that I don’t look up or register the hours that have gone by until we hear the clanging of something coming through the back door on the other side of the house. There’s the roar of Dorian’s truck, backing along the drive, then the opening and shutting of the door.

He’s carrying something in.

“Well,” Beth says, also looking surprised at the time, glancing out the window to find the sun setting. “I’d better get home and feed my cats. But I’d love to come back and keep working with you on this—you’re a natural, Kira.”

The praise makes warmth rise to my cheeks. I follow her to the door and say goodbye, then turn and make my way back through the house, following the sound of the noise until I turn the corner, find myself in the doorway to a spare room, and my mouth drops open.

“Dorian?”

He looks up from where he’s kneeling, having just set my sewing machine onto its table. My heart thuds in my chest, and I’m blinking rapidly, trying to take in what I’m looking at. Trying to make sense of it.

It’s my stuff—my fabrics, lined up along the wall. My little containers of buttons and zippers, a rainbow of material and bobbles.

And my pink vintage sewing machine, right in the middle of it all. When I see it, I remember the day I found it, the way it lit my heart up with joy when nothing else had. How I’d dropped all my savings on it, taken it to get serviced, cared for it like it was my child. The little stickers around the sides, and how I’d slowly learned how to make clothes, slowly learned to shape them to my body in a way that made me feel good about myself.

Dorian is still looking at me, features drenched in worry, like he thinks I might be upset about this.

“How…” I take a breath, fight through the happy tears pressing up behind my eyes. “How did you do this, Dorian?”

“It was easy to find your place,” he says. “Smelled like you. It was a bit of a mess, like they’d searched through it, but your stuff was still there. I just loaded it up in my truck and left.”

I blink at him. “But…”

How could he possibly have gotten in and out of enemy territory without them smelling him? Seeing him? And why risk all that, just to get my things for me?

“No more questions,” he says, taking a step closer to me, throat moving. “Are you … happy?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I breathe out, and the tears finally come, streaming down my cheeks. He laughs in surprise at the profanity, hovering so close to me that a single breath might push us together. “This is—this is amazing, Dorian. Thank you.”

We stand like that for a moment, some invisible force field between us, like two opposing magnets that couldn’t touch if they tried.

Then, all at once, I feel my walls crumbling down, and I move forward, pushing through the paper-thin boundary between us. Swaying so our chests touch, I wrap my arms around him, and finally, finally feel it.

The brush of his skin against mine. The inside of my wrist on the back of his neck, shivering, electric, making my entire body react like I’ve just touched a live wire.

Dorian reacts immediately, reaching his hands around and anchoring them on the small of my back, drawing me closer, tugging my hips forward until our bodies are flush from neck to knee.

I feel every spot where our bare skin touches—the pads of his fingers grazing under my T-shirt and dragging over the skin above my hip. My fingertips against his scalp. The place where our shirts have ridden up, and our stomachs are deliciously touching.

“Kira.” The way he says my name is straight from my dream, the intonation, the ragged, raw quality to his voice, and it sends a shudder from the top of my head down to my feet, a full-body shake, waking up all my nerves and senses.

He says my name like a prayer. Like an invocation. As if he’s on his knees, begging for his life.

“Dorian,” I whisper back, and that seems to shatter whatever reserve he had left. He drags his hands up my body roughly, then slides his hands over my neck, his fingers under my ears. His thumbs graze my jaw and he tips my head back to bring his lips to mine.

The second our lips touch, I open my mouth to him, and he’s walking me backwards, growling against my lips, sliding his tongue against mine just as my back hits the wall.

“Dorian—” I gasp his name, but it’s swallowed by his mouth against mine. He covers me completely, one of his hands grasping both of my wrists and pinning them to the wall above me, the other resting so lightly against my neck that I only feel its touch when I swallow.

Given our history and how cruel he used to be to me, this should put me on edge. But all it does is send a flood of aching, desperate heat down between my legs. All it does is make me whimper against him, something so freeing and easy about having another person take full control of your body.

The way he’s holding me is like I could let go completely, and he would be there, supporting me. He’s at once firm and gentle, an invisible and constant force.

His mouth slants over mine, his hand tightening around my lips, one of his thighs slipping up between my legs and applying delicious pressure. I’m already wet from my heat coming, and the perpetual state of being around him, wanting him.

Finally touching him feels like the first breath of fresh air when you break through the surface of the water. It feels like survival, like realizing you’ve been going without something necessary to your very existence.

I’m leaning into him, trapped against the wall and freer than I’ve ever been. When he drops my hands, I raise them, hungry to feel more of him, but he steps back.

He steps back. Away from me. Cutting off the touch.

My brain hadn’t processed it as an option. Our connection, to me, felt like electricity through a live wire, connecting us, latching on and not letting us go once we started to touch.

But he heaves in a deep, shuddering breath and stands a few feet from me, his body shaking, like he’s desperately trying to regain control of himself.

My chest is heaving, skin tingling from his absence.

Then, the shame sets in, hot and sticky, climbing through my stomach and sticking to the bottom of my throat.

I threw myself at him, kissed him, and it’s clearly not what he wants. I know the biology of how things work—he’s an alpha. And my mate, no less. Which means it’s going to be a lot harder for him to stay away from me.

Even if he knows, in his logical brain, that it’s not what he wants.

I’m so humiliated I could burst into tears at this reality—that the kiss I’ve been waiting for, dreaming about, was a moment of weakness for him. An unwanted moment.

“Kira,” he finally manages to say, his hand to his mouth. When he drags his gaze up to mine, it’s tortured. “I’m sorry, I—”

“No,” I choke. “You don’t have to apologize, Dorian.”

I open my mouth to say more, to say my own apology for throwing myself at him like that, but nothing comes out. Dorian looks at me, and I look at the ground.

We stand like that quietly for ten long minutes, until finally, he sucks in a breath and opens his mouth to say something. I’m expecting him to say it’s time for me to go, that he’ll have to figure out somewhere else for me to stay, but instead, he says something I never would have guessed.

“Your brother asked about you.”

I blink stupidly. “Emin?”

What a thing to say—I obviously only have one brother. But the sudden change of topic, and the fact that Emin would ask about me, feels so sudden and strange that I’m not sure what to say.

“Yes, Emin,” Dorian laughs, thrusting a hand into his hair and meeting my eyes. “He stopped me after the meeting today and asked me about how you’re doing.”

“I … can’t believe it.”

“We’ve both grown up quite a bit, Kira.”

I blink at him again, just barely managing to stop myself from saying something like I can see that .

“He’d like to see you,” Dorian continues. “And I’m willing to let him come over, if that’s what you want.”

When I try to swallow, I feel like I might choke. My brother, Emin, wants to see me. And Dorian is using this as a way to steer us away from the reality that we just kissed, and he wishes we hadn’t.

“Okay,” I hear myself say, though I haven’t really thought it through. The entire situation feels weird, but there’s something deep in my gut—a whole, constant missing of my family—that pulls me in the direction of saying yes to seeing Emin.

Dorian looks stiff, uncomfortable, and for some reason, I find myself thinking Emin might be a good buffer between us. So I shift my weight from one foot to the other, clear my throat, and ask, “Can we do it tonight?”