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

I can’t move, can’t breathe, as Ezra’s words hang in the air between us.

My carefully constructed disguise, the one that fooled Jade and Aaiden, falls apart in front of him. The study closes in around us, the air thick and unbreathable as Ezra’s pheromones wrap around me in a familiar scent I’ve been missing for too long.

“A year.” His tongue skims his bottom lip, as if tasting the air. “A year of searching, and you just walk right back into my life.”

I remain frozen, my heart hammering so hard I fear it might crack my ribs. The grandfather clock in the corner ticks louder with each passing second, marking time in a room where it seems to have stopped.

“Nothing to say?” He touches my jaw, tilting my face up before he pulls away, rubbing the makeup from his fingertips. “No explanation? No apology?”

My throat constricts, words dying before they reach my lips. I should deny everything. Should push him away and run while I still can. But my body betrays me, responding to his proximity, old desires awakening as if no time has passed at all.

“I made some inquiries after you left.” His breath warms my ear, so close that the vibration of his words travel through me. “Professor Elias Knox of the Art History Department. Credentials impeccable. References stellar.”

My heart squeezes. Here it comes.

“Except they don’t exist.” Ezra’s expression hardens. “Never did. The department had never heard of him. The university where he earned his doctorate had no record of him. His published papers? Ghosts in academic databases, disappearing when I dug deeper.”

He steps closer, his chest a breath from mine. “So many lies. So carefully constructed.”

I lower my head, fighting the instinct to lean into the solid warmth of his body. His proximity scrambles my senses, melting my resolve to resist him.

“Look at me,” he rasps.

Unable to refuse, my face lifts to his. This close, the changes in him are more apparent in the harder lines around his mouth, a fresh scar near his right eyebrow, and a shadow in his eyes that time and loss etched over the past year.

My memory has dulled him to pastels, softening his edges and muting his colors. The real Ezra burns vibrant and scorching as clay fresh from the kiln. Too bright to touch, too magnetic to pull away.

His hand rises, his fingers brushing my cheek, and my breath catches at the contact.

He trails a line down to the collar of my server’s uniform. “This is a new appearance for you. The service industry suits you less than academia did.” Amusement quirks his lips. “Though, I must say, you wear everything well.”

His fingertip traces the edge of my name badge, and I suppress a shiver at the casual intimacy of his touch.

“Nico Duran.” He tests the name on his tongue. “Another fiction. Not as elaborate as Professor Knox, perhaps, but effective to gain access to places you shouldn’t be.”

His hand rises to my head, fingers threading through the short blond strands of my wig.

The touch is gentle, almost reverent. “It’s good work.

Professional grade. But I prefer the rich brown of your real hair, that catches red in the sunlight.

” His hand slides down to cup my cheek. “And those green irises you’re hiding. ”

I swallow hard, my pulse a frantic drum beneath my skin. “How?”

Satisfaction gleams in Ezra’s eyes as if breaking my silence was all he needed. “How did I know it was you? Despite all this?” His finger sweeps across my face, indicating the makeup, the contacts, the wig. “You can change everything about you, and I’ll still recognize you, my beautiful Omega.”

His hand captures mine, raising it between us, and his thumb traces the crescent-shaped scar on my index finger, where a razor blade slipped my grasp when I was ten.

“I studied you every night while you slept in my bed. Every morning, while you sketched by the window. I memorized you, Knox. Or whatever your real name is.”

His grip on my hand tightens, not painful but inescapable. “How many names have you used since you left me? How many identities have you slipped into and out of like clothing? How many others have you seduced into bed?”

The question hangs between us, loaded with accusation and hurt. I open my mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. What can I say? That Knox was just one in a long string of characters I’ve played? That Nico is just the latest? That the man he knew never existed at all?

But there’s another truth, one I’ve avoided facing. Somewhere in those thirty-one days, the line between performance and reality had blurred, and I stopped pretending. Even if I tell him he’s the last man I’ve let hold me, would he believe the words? Or take them for another lie?

Ezra searches my face for answers I can’t give him. “Tell me your real name, if you even remember it.”

I gather the scattered pieces of my composure, forcing my breathing to steady despite the thundering of my heart. Ezra stands too close, his presence overwhelming my senses, and I need to regain control before I drown in him.

“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” I begin, seeking calm by adopting Nico’s higher pitch. “But?—”

“Don’t lie to me. Not again.” Ezra’s words slice through mine, sharp as a blade and just as dangerous. “I searched for you.”

The raw emotion in those four words knocks the air from my lungs. His eyes burn into mine, golden-hazel irises ringed with darkness, pupils dilated with rage or desire or both.

“You vanished.” He drops my hand. “Left nothing behind. No trail. No goodbye. I hired private investigators. Bribed art dealers and professors. Threatened gallery owners. I tore my life apart searching for a ghost.”

His hands hang at his sides, but the tension in his fingers betrays the control it takes him not to grab me again. I press back against the bookshelf, hardbound volumes digging into my spine, but there’s nowhere to retreat.

In a desperate gambit to change the subject and create distance between us, I blurt out, “Did Aaiden tell you about the money?”

Ezra’s laugh comes out bitter. “The fifty thousand? Of course, he did. After I’d spent three months searching for you. After I’d threatened to burn down his precious reputation if he didn’t tell me where you’d gone.”

My stomach twists. So Aaiden had told him after all. I’d always wondered.

“Then that’s your answer. You should have stopped searching.” I forced out the lie, “It was never real between us. I was playing a role.”

Warning flashes across Ezra’s face. “We both know that’s not true.”

His hands come up to frame my face, his grip firm but not painful, thumbs resting at the corners of my mouth, fingers splayed along my jawline.

I gasp at the contact, electricity shooting through my nerve endings.

“Ezra—” His name slips out in my real voice, not Nico’s, and victory flashes across his face at the sound.

“There you are.” He leans in, his face so close his breath flutters across my skin.

Before I can process what’s happening, his tongue darts out, dragging a wet line up my cheek. The sensation is so unexpected, so intimate, that I freeze in shock.

He rumbles in approval. “Still taste the same under all the makeup.”

His thumb follows the path his tongue took, smearing the foundation I’d applied with painstaking care. The pad of his thumb comes away stained with flesh-colored cream, revealing my natural skin beneath.

“What are you doing?” I gasp out, unable to pull away despite every rational instinct that screams at me to run.

“Uncovering the truth.” His other thumb joins the first, both now working across my cheeks, my forehead, the bridge of my nose. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you? That I wouldn’t find you?”

Each stroke reveals more of what I’ve hidden, erasing Nico Duran and resurrecting the face Ezra used to trace with his fingers in the darkness of his bedroom.

I melt under his touch, boundaries dissolving as easily as the makeup he removes. My breathing grows shallow, each inhale filled with his pheromones, which have haunted my dreams every night since I left. The moment stretches between us, taut as a wire.

Then, survival instinct kicks in, and I wrench myself from his grasp, ducking under his arm. My hands shake as I back away, putting precious space between us.

But Aaiden’s study is only so large, and his body blocks the path to the door. I retreat to the desk, the mahogany cool through the thin fabric of my uniform pants.

Nowhere left to go.

Ezra advances, unhurried now, confident in his victory. My heart hammers, adrenaline flooding my system with fight-or-flight signals that have nowhere to discharge.

“You’re trembling.” He closes the distance between us once more. “Is it fear? Or anticipation?”

Both, I want to say, but the words stick in my throat.

He plants his hands on the desk on either side of me, boxing me in again with his body. His face hovers inches from mine, his scent engulfing me. Dizziness sweeps through me, overwhelmed by his proximity, by the memory of how those lips felt on my skin.

“What do I call you now?” His lips caress my ear, and a soft whimper escapes, my lashes fluttering. “Whose name should I moan when I’m inside you tonight?”

A shock of heat goes straight to my hips, my body responding to his words. Like the conclusion of tonight is already decided. Images flood my mind, tangled sheets, sweat-slicked skin, and Ezra’s weight pressing me into the mattress. My world tilts on its axis, reality blurring at the edges.

No. I can’t let this happen. Not again.

With strength born of desperation, I plant my palms on his chest and shove. The move catches him off guard, and he stumbles back just enough for me to slip to the side, putting the flimsy desk between us. But the heavy oak is insufficient protection from the force of nature that is Ezra Rockford.

My hands still tingle from the contact with his chest, the solid warmth of him beneath expensive fabric. “That’s not happening again.”