Page 1 of Into the Fire: Before

Before

Thirty-three

Taryn

Breawasgonnakillme. Or she’d give me thattold you sosmirk, which honestly amounted to the same thing.

We’d moved into our new apartment over a week ago, and half our belongings still lived in mismatched luggage and taped-up boxes.

Specifically, my half.

I’d searched through six boxes, three tote bags, a suitcase, two messenger bags, a handful of holey grocery bags, and the various piles living in various corners. It was official: my toothbrush charger was lost.

“Did you find it?” Brea called from the bathroom, a knowing lilt to her tone.

I crouched on the balls of my feet, rolling my lips between my teeth. Brea had always been better at the organization side of things. Everything in its place, a place for every thing, yadda yadda ya. Her unpacked boxes sat by the door, flattened and ready for recycling pickup.

Buttoning up her dark blue blouse, she stuck her head out the bathroom door. “That’s what you get for packing like a woman on the run. Throwing it all haphazardly into boxes with vague labels.”

“How is ‘bathroom’ a vague label?” I asked, standing.

“Well, for one thing…” She crossed to the box in question and pulled out in quick succession a spatula, a single ratty washcloth, a half-empty box of sticky hooks for the walls, two hair elastics with bits of my brown strands tangled onto them, and a bright green highlighter. “If you’re using all these in the bathroom, I think you’re doing it wrong.”

I blew a stray strand of hair out of my face and reached into the same box. “Hey, there’s also a hair dryer and five semi-used bottles of shower gel. That definitely weighs this box as more bathroom stuff than not.” Granted, they were rattling around with a handful of batteries and half a dozen clothespins.

We'll just ignore those.

“Yet still no toothbrush charger?” Brea sighed as she loaded the items back into the (completely appropriately labeled) box. “Little omega’s gonna have to brush the old-fashioned way.”

The words rolled off her tongue with a velvety playfulness that beckoned me in. Almost three years since we met, and two since bonding. We should’ve been past the ooey gooey honeymoon stage, but that domineering tone still lit me like a fuse. And like a fuse, I’d simmer with every smirk and command and touch before—kaboom!—she exploded me.

I needed her. I needed her laughing, sleeping, naked and moaning. I needed the desire that heated my skin on the daily. It was a flame that never fully extinguished, only tamped down to embers every so often to see to other things. Stupid things, like jobs and moving and being part of society.

Blegh.

It only ever took the barest hint of an invitation to stoke those embers into a roaring blaze. The sly gleam in her green eyes as she zipped up her pencil skirt was more than enough.

With bigdoe eyes and the littlest pout, I stepped slowly toward her. “Unless a certain loving…caring…sexyalpha let me usehercharger.” I traced my fingertips up her arm before whispering at her ear, “Just until I can charge mine.”

“And what kind of lesson would I be teaching you then? What incentive would you have to pack like a civilized human being?”

“Please, Alpha,” I breathed against her ear before nuzzling at her neck. I even gave a weak, apologetic purr. “I’ll do better, I promise.”

I inhaled deeply, taking stock of her scent. Pomegranate, tangy and rich like a handful of seeds and juice running down your arm in summertime. Soft, gentle vanilla. That delectable combination of sweet and tart came to a tantalizing edge that had goose bumps erupting over my whole body.

That was the greatest gift of our bond bites, the extra layer of clarity we had to each other’s souls. We spoke each other’s body language, had done so even before deciding on forever together. Once we’d taken that vow, exchanged bites and blood, her scent basically became a neon billboard into her every emotion.

And in that moment, she was lit up like Times Square. And I hadn’t even needed to pull out theYou know Ineedmy sweet vibrations.

My alpha was a sucker for my wiles.

Brea hummed, and I couldn’t contain my grin. I was winning.

Or I would’ve been had the alarm on her phone not blared at that precise moment.

“Shoot,” she muttered as she shut it off, a hint of anxiety creeping into her scent.

I rubbed my hands along her shoulders and arms. “You’re gonna do great today,” I said for the fifteenth time since wakingup. I didn’t care. I’d say it fifteen billion times if that’s what it took to set her mind and body at ease.

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