Page 12 of The Forgery Mate (Taken by His Alpha #6)

L ight bleeds through a gap in the curtains, illuminating Ezra’s face in a soft, golden glow.

I lie still, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing, afraid that any movement might break this moment of quiet between us.

After our encounter in the bathroom, we had cleaned up, and I made a list of everything I would need for the rescue mission tonight. Then Ezra took me to bed, where we’d spent until the early hours of the morning tangled together.

Afterward, I slept like the dead.

I blame it on the butter-soft sheets, which are a luxury I haven’t allowed myself since I ran away from this place.

Ran away from him.

In sleep, Ezra looks every bit his young age, the hard edges he’s cultivated over the past year softened by unconsciousness.

His long eyelashes cast delicate shadows across his cheekbones, and the silver streak in his hair catches the light like mercury.

The new tattoos sprawling across his chest rise and fall with each breath, intricate designs telling stories I wasn’t present for.

As I memorize this new version of Ezra, an uncomfortable pressure settles in my chest, constricting my lungs. Not regret exactly, but melancholy for the missed opportunities and wasted time.

Last night, with Ezra’s hands on my skin, I gave him a truth I’ve spent years avoiding, confessing my real name to this Alpha I can’t resist. Ren. Three letters I haven’t spoken aloud for so long that they feel foreign on my tongue, a language I once spoke but forgot without practice.

And yet Ezra had taken my name and made it his, had breathed it across my nape, had wrapped it around us both until I couldn’t tell where the lie ended and the truth began.

My fingertips hover above his jaw, not quite touching. I don’t deserve the right to touch him with tenderness instead of hunger. Not after what I did.

When I disappeared from his life without a trace, I told myself it was the right thing to do. Ezra was too young, too idealistic, and too clean to be dragged into my world. Sooner or later, my lies would collapse around us both, and he’d be caught in the debris.

I was twenty-nine, and he had just turned twenty-two.

A talented, vibrant Alpha with his whole life ahead of him, heir to an empire.

I justified taking the money Aaiden offered as a way to protect us both.

If my true identity ever came to light, the fallout would be brutal and tarnish the reputation they’ve spent generations building.

Lies, all of it. The truth is much simpler, much more pathetic. I was a coward. Afraid of what was happening between us. Afraid of how quickly he had pierced through my carefully constructed persona. Afraid of how much I wanted to stay.

The clock sits on the nightstand, next to a drawing pad and pencil. My heart constricts at the sight, remembering all the mornings I rose before Ezra and drew to pass the time until he woke.

Tears sting my eyes, and I focus on the time instead. Just after six in the morning. The auction at Halcyon Hall isn’t until tonight, which leaves plenty of time to plan and prepare, to remember how to be someone other than the man who melted under Ezra’s hands last night.

I shift my weight, extracting my leg from where it lies tangled with his. The mattress dips as I roll away, muscles tensed to minimize movement. But my feet don’t touch the floor before Ezra’s arm snakes around my waist, a warm, solid weight anchoring me in place.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Sleep roughens his voice, but it holds no trace of confusion.

He’s been awake, watching me watch him.

My body freezes, caught in the act of escape. “Bathroom.”

Ezra’s laugh slips across my bare hip. “Liar.”

Before I can respond, he pulls me toward him, rolling me onto my back with practiced ease. His body covers mine, his familiar weight settling between my thighs like he belongs there. The sheet slips away, leaving nothing between us but air and hesitation.

He studies me in the morning light, all traces of sleepiness gone, replaced by calculation. “You were going to run again.”

Not a question, but I answer. “Force of habit.”

“Bad habit.” His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing across my lower lip. “One we’re going to break.”

I should push him away. Should remind him of the task ahead of us, of Jade waiting in a cage, of all the reasons this is a terrible idea. Instead, I lie still beneath him, pulse racing as his thumb traces circles on my skin.

“I took your family’s money to leave,” I remind him, trying to drive a wedge into what’s happening between us. Again. “I left without saying goodbye.”

“I’m aware.” Ezra’s expression doesn’t change. “I’ve had a year to think about what you did.” His fingers tighten on my jaw, not painful but possessive. “A year to decide what I’d do when I found you.”

Heat spirals through me, a mixture of fear and anticipation that heads south, to where our hips align. “And what did you decide?”

He leans closer, his breath warm on my lips. “That I’d never let you go again.”

The declaration should send me scrambling for the safety of distance and disguise. Instead, a tension eases inside me that I didn’t realize was there until it let go.

When his mouth claims mine, he meets no resistance. I open to him, hands rising to trace the new contours of his shoulders, the solid strength he built in my year of absence. His tongue curls around mine, relearning the geography of my mouth as he rocks our hips together.

“Ezra,” I moan between kisses, his name both warning and invitation.

He pulls back far enough to look at me, a slight curve to his lips. “Ren.”

My name in his mouth still sounds like a spell, a binding. His hand slides between us, finding me hard and wanting.

“Are you going to tell me to stop?” he asks, fingers wrapping around my length with devastating effect.

I should, for all the reasons I left a year ago. For all the complications waiting for us beyond this bedroom. For the sake of self-preservation and sanity.

But I find I don’t want to. Not yet. Not when his touch is the only solid thing in a world built on shifting sand.

Instead, I pull him closer, surrender disguised as decision, defeat masquerading as choice.

“Don’t stop,” I whisper, and victory darkens his features as he leans down to kiss me.

Sweat cools on our skin as we lie tangled together, my head resting on Ezra’s chest, fingers tracing the new lines of ink.

This time when we came together, it was slower, deliberate, our bodies remembering rather than discovering. No mirror to force me to bear witness to my undoing, just his eyes on mine, his hands steady and sure, retracing a map he’d memorized long ago.

Though my heartbeat slows, the heat between us refuses to die. His arm curves around my shoulders, keeping me anchored to his side, as if I might evaporate if he doesn’t maintain some physical contact.

He might be right.

“When did you get these?” My fingertip follows the curve of a baroque frame that encircles his left pectoral. The tattoo is a masterpiece of shading to create the illusion of depth, with gold accents that catch the light when he moves.

“Three months after you left.” His touch moves up to the unmarred skin of my nape. “I needed a distraction from the search.”

My finger pauses, guilt flaring hot and immediate. I restart its path along the ornate edges, moving to where the frame appears to crack and splinter near his collarbone. “They’re beautiful.”

“They should be. I paid a fortune for them.”

Guilt prickles beneath my skin. While I was running, hiding, reinventing myself, he was turning his body into a canvas for his pain.

My touch moves to his shoulder, where Latin words curl in elegant script. “ Pulchritudo in fractis .”

“Beauty in the broken.” His fingers find my hair, playing with the strands. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”

I don’t answer, focusing instead on a fragment of statuary that extends from his ribs toward his hip, a classical female form, face obscured, the marble cracked and aging. The detail is extraordinary, each chisel mark of the original sculpture captured in ink.

“Who did these?” I ask with professional admiration.

“A woman in Vienna. She only works on five clients a year.” His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek. “She said my skin told a story she wanted to help write.”

I can’t help but wonder what story she saw, what narrative my absence created on his body. How many hours did he spend under her needle, welcoming the pain as a distraction from searching for a ghost?

My fingers find another piece on his right arm. A shattered hourglass, sand spilling across his skin in a constellation of scattered dots. Time lost. Time wasted. The symbolism isn’t subtle, but not everything has to be.

“Did it hurt?” A stupid question. Of course, it hurt.

Ezra’s laugh ruffles my hair. “That was the point.”

I trace a path down his sternum, following the central line of his body where the tattoos thin out, giving way to unmarked skin.

“And this one?” My finger circles a simple design above his heart, smaller than the others, a stylized key inked in black.

His hand covers mine, flattening my palm over the tattoo. His heart beats steady beneath my touch, a metronome of life and warmth. “That one’s for you.”

The admission steals my breath. I want to pull away, put distance between us, but his hand holds mine in place.

“Why a key?” I manage.

“You know why.” His golden-hazel eyes find mine, intense in the afternoon light. “You had the key to everything, and you took it with you when you left.”

The room becomes too small, the air too thick. I focus on breathing, on the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath my hand. “I never meant to?—”

“Yes, you did.” No anger, just a simple statement of fact. “You understood what you were doing when you took that check and disappeared.”

He’s right, and we both know it. So I remain silent, my fingers resuming their exploration of his skin, tracing patterns between the islands of ink.

Ezra shifts, his free hand finding my chin, tilting my face up to his. “But you came back.”

“Not by choice,” I remind him.

“Does it matter? You’re here now.” His thumb brushes across my lower lip. “You gave me your real name.”

I look away. “It could have been another lie.”

“No, it wasn’t, Ren ,” he murmurs, testing it again, and a response rings through me, striking a chord tied to my broken soul. “ My Ren.”

He leans down, kissing my temple in a gesture so gentle that my chest aches. His breath ghosts warm across my skin, and for a dangerous, foolish moment, I let myself believe it means more than it can.

That somewhere beneath the pain and the hunt and the obsession, a real connection exists between us. That the boy who once looked at me like I was the answer to questions he hadn’t yet learned to ask is still there, beneath the harder edges of the man he’s become.

But I know better. I’ve spent fifteen years in the forgery business, learning to see beneath the surface of beautiful things. And Ezra Rockford has become a weapon, a beautiful, dangerous thing crafted with precise intention.

His expression used to soften when he looked at me. Now he calculates even moments like this. Measuring my reactions, cataloging my weaknesses. The Ezra I knew burned with idealism and passion for beauty.

This Ezra has learned to weaponize both.

And yet, his heartbeat beneath my palm remains steady and true, his fingers in my hair tender. For this suspended moment between night and day, between the lies of yesterday and the truths of tomorrow, I let myself melt into his touch.

His free hand traces patterns on my bare shoulder, mirroring my exploration of his tattoos. We map each other in silence, charting territories both familiar and strange.

“What are you thinking?” he asks, breaking the quiet.

The honest answer would be too revealing, too dangerous. So I offer a partial truth instead. “Your tattoo artist is talented.”

His chest rumbles with silent laughter. “There you go, lying again.”

My lips curve despite myself. “Guess you didn’t break the habit.”

“I will.” His fingers tighten in my hair. “I’m going to break you apart and then put you back together.”

A shiver rolls through me. I believe him with everything I am, and that terrifies me. But not as much as the thought of how much it will hurt when I leave again.

Because I will. This is all a temporary dream, and all dreams must end.

As if he senses my thoughts, Ezra shifts beside me, the warmth of his body retreating as he rolls away and sits up at the edge of the bed.

A switch flipped, a door closed, a curtain dropped.

The transformation happens so suddenly that it leaves me dizzy. His shoulders straighten, the languorous post-sex softness vanishing as muscles tense beneath inked skin. Even his scent changes, his pheromones retreating to leave me colder than the loss of his flesh against mine.

The mattress rises as his weight leaves it, and the chill of the room rushes in to claim the space where his body kept me warm. It leaves me exposed, and the sheets twisted around my legs offer no protection from the emptiness he left behind.

Ezra stretches, his body a perfect study in controlled power, muscles flexing beneath the artwork that maps his skin. He doesn’t look back at me as he straightens, as casual and cold-blooded as if the last hour hadn’t happened.

“Get up.” He strides toward the closet. “It’s time to work.”

And just like that, four simple words collapse the illusions built over the night.

I stare up at the ornate ceiling, tracking hairline cracks in the plaster while the sheets cool around me. A hollow space opens beneath my ribs, not quite pain but its close neighbor. I should have known better than to let myself feel anything.

No, I did know better. And that’s the worst part.