Page 167 of Yearn

"I'm getting Scott water." Her voice held steady, but I heard the breathlessness underneath—the way oxygen shortened in her lungs, the subtle hitch that meant her autonomic nervous system was firing on all cylinders.

Arousal.

Fear.

Want.

Her body couldn't lie to me even if her mouth tried.

My jaw clenched at his name. "How is he?"

"Alive. Barely." She crossed her arms over her chest, drawing my attention to how thin the dress’s fabric was. "Scott snorted cocaine before you drugged him."

Aww. I knew something else must have been in his system.

The information hit me in layers.

First: surprise. I hadn't accounted for pre-existing substances.

Second: calculation. Benzodiazepines plus cocaine plus alcohol was a pharmacological nightmare. The sedative would depress his CNS while cocaine stimulated it and alcohol amplified the depressant effects. His heart was probably arrhythmic, and his blood pressure erratic.

Third: something darker and more primitive hit me.

He should be dead. Why didn’t he just fucking die?

I did my best to not smile. "That could've killed him."

"Which is why you won’t be sneaking him anything again."

"That depends on when he leaves this house."

We stared at each other across her kitchen. This domestic space where she made breakfast for her children, where normalcy pretended to exist, where she was now standing in a lust-wrinkled dress with my fingerprints still bruised into her hips.

Mine.

Every cell of her screamed it.

She swallowed. "You should go back downstairs, and. . .I’ll probably come back down. . ."

But her feet didn't move toward the sink.

Her body didn't turn away.

I could see the war happening behind her eyes. The good mother fighting the woman who'd been neglected for years. The part of her that knew this was reckless wrestling with the part that didn't care anymore.

She was terrified—not of me, but of how much she wanted this. How much she wanted to stop being responsible, stop being careful, stop protecting everyone except herself.

And I could see her carotid artery fluttering in her throat—rapid, elevated.

At least ninety beats per minute. Probably higher.

"But we’re not done and won’t be for a while." I pushed off the counter, stalked over, and closed the distance between us.

She parted her lips.

I stopped three feet in front of her and let my gaze travel over her face—pupils dilated despite the bright kitchen light, lips parted for increased oxygen intake, that beautiful flush spreading down her throat.

"We weren't finished, Mommy." I watched her swallow and counted the increased respirations—sixteen per minute climbing to twenty.