Page 26 of Fight or Fly

I nodded. “Mm-hmm. You’re slowly driving him insane with your hyper-preparedness, apparently.”

“Ah,” he said. “Sorry.”

I shrugged. “Don’t take it personally. I think it’s just that we’re used to trying our best to ignore the guillotine hanging over our heads when it’s not actively falling on us. Less stressful that way.”

He shot me a wry look. “Maybe for you.”

“Tell you what,” I offered. “Let’s keep each other company instead. Put that thing back together while I go take care of something. Back in a bit.” I felt his eyes on me as I left the room and went down the hall to the nest, and the bathroom beyond it.

Something had changed in me over the past couple of weeks—besides the inevitable change that comes from having your life upended and the resulting debris set on fire. Or maybe that was part of it, too; it was hard to tell. Whatever the case, my usual sense of living on borrowed time had shifted in some indefinable way. I’d come to realize that, in many ways, Ihadn’tbeen living before. Not really. I’d only been existing, which was a very different thing.

I let myself into the extravagant bathroom and crossed to the sunken tub, where I crouched to plug the drain and turn on the tap. While it was filling, I stripped off and took a very quick shower in the separate stall, shampooing my mass of red hair and massaging conditioner into it. When I was done, I toweled off, leaving it hanging down in wet ringlets.

With a towel wrapped around my naked body, I adjusted the temperature of the bath a bit warmer and let it finish filling before turning off the taps. Then, I went to employ wiles against an alpha for probably the first time in my life.

* * *

Jax’s piercing blueeyes darkened as he took me in, a hint of the feral alpha who’d knotted me so possessively during my heat peeking through the veneer of an otherwise thoroughly civilized man. I stood dripping on the threshold, my chin tilted to show him a hint of throat as I looked at him through heavy lashes.

“Come with me, alpha,” I said without artifice. “We need to relax for an hour or so, and then we need to sleep.”

I saw him wrest back control of his libido; saw the regret coloring his gaze.

“I need to be ready in case anything happens,” he said. “I’m sorry, Leona.”

But I wasn’t having it. “Does being naked and wet make your aim with those things worse?” I asked, indicating the pair of guns.

He frowned. “That’s not—”

“Will being fully clothed make the odds any better if a Committee SWAT team shows up to surround the house?” I pressed.

He let out a sigh. “Probably not, but waving my dick at them as I’m hauled off wouldn’t be a very dignified way to go out.”

“Neither was being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night wearing a silk nightgown and no underwear,” I said dryly. “And yet, here we both are.”

I saw reluctant agreement soften the line of his shoulders.

“You want me to come take a bath with you?” he said, as though trying the words on for size.

I nodded. “Kam said I should use my omega wiles to get you to unwind for a bit before you drive him completely around the bend.” I batted my eyelashes at him ridiculously. “Is it working?”

He laughed despite himself. “So, this must be how you negotiate international treaties, huh?”

I glanced down at my towel. “Well, I mean, I usually negotiated while wearing a few more clothes than this.”

“Then you missed a trick. They wouldn’t have known what hit them.” He hauled himself to his feet and scooped up the now-reassembled gun. “Come on then, you wily little omega. But if I end up naked during a shootout, I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

I smiled at him, unrepentant, and hoped desperately that things wouldn’t come to that—because I would, in fact, feel pretty damned guilty if they did.

His slight limp was noticeable as he followed me back to the bathroom. I wondered if he would ever recover fully... and there was yet another thing for the guilt pile. That pile was in danger of growing out of control. However, it was also part of the past, not the present. None of it could be changed now.

I let my towel slip to the floor as I stepped through the doorway, not looking back at him as I crossed the bathroom and climbed onto the platform housing the huge sunken tub. Jax’s gaze burned the back of my neck as I carefully stepped into the hot water and lowered myself down to lean against the edge with a happy sigh.

It was odd—I’d spent more time naked in the presence of other people in the last month than I had in the previous fifteen years combined. As an aligned omega with beta bloodlines, my body could pass a certain amount of scrutiny. But unregistered omegas didnotseek out beta doctors, or otherwise put themselves in a position to be seen naked, if it was at all avoidable.

In the last few weeks, though, I’d been naked with Kam. I’d been naked with Jax, and with Flynn, and even with Alex—though I was pretty sure Alex would have run for the hills if she hadn’t felt obligated to watch over her pack during the heat.

And I’dlikedit.

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