Page 75 of Knot Their Safe Haven
"That doesn't count." His dismal only makes my grin of pride grow foolishly.
"Wine never disappoints."
"Wine also can't do this."
His hand flexed at my waist, and so abruptly I nearly yelped, Alessandro dipped me low enough for my hair to brush the polished floor. For a moment, the whole world realigned: above me, the fractured sky, black gaps lanced by the first bright stars, and below, the firelight flickering upside down, making his silhouette a burning mask. I was suspended in a living painting—his arm a marble column beneath my shoulder blades, the other holding my hand aloft like he’d just won a prize.
"You—" For once, my tongue failed me. He hovered above, that incorrigible smirk making him look a decade younger, the lines at the edges of his eyes bowstring-taut with mischief.
"I what?"
The dip flooded me with vertigo, but it was nothing compared to the rush of knowing he could do anything he wanted with me in this position. My dress pulled tight at the hips, the silk threatening to slip dangerously north as gravity did its work. I could feel the corded muscle in his forearm through the thin fabric, his palm like a brand even through the wool of his jacket.
I was used to physical power—Knox had it in spades, and Adyani wielded hers like a blade when needed—but this was different. Alessandro didn’t just possess strength; he moved with the assurance of someone who had always gotten what he wanted, who’d never been told no by the world or its rules. And it was intoxicating.
"You absolute show-off," I managed, the words leaking out as more of a moan than a rebuke.
He gave a little bounce at the bottom of the dip, making me gasp again. "If you’ve got it, flaunt it," he whispered, his voice dropping to a register normally reserved for sin. "Isn’t that the Omega philosophy?"
I bared my teeth at him, but the effect was ruined when my lips curled up with laughter. He kept me there, just a beat past comfort, his breath stirring the tiny hairs at my temple. The only thing keeping me from melting into a puddle on the floor was the iron pressure of his hand, steady and unyielding.
And then, just as suddenly, he snapped me upright. My vision blurred, the room spinning with leftover momentum, but his grip never faltered. He drew me in, pelvis to pelvis, our knees knocking in a way that would have been comical if not for thefact that I could feel the evidence of his arousal hard against my thigh.
"Careful," I warned, not sure if I meant him or myself.
"Always," he said, but his eyes told a different story—one of calculation, hunger, and something perilously close to care.
We glided back into the rhythm of the music, our bodies now mapped to each other’s with new coordinates. I barely recognized myself—the Velvet that led coups, that commanded armies of Omegas, that could kill a man with a sharpened heel—replaced by someone very soft, very breakable, and very, very willing to be held like this.
He spun me again, slower this time, letting me savor the centrifugal force that threatened to pull us apart but always snapped us back together.
We were our own binary star system, orbiting close, each daring the other to let go first.
The sexual tension, already a constant companion, now vibrated at a frequency that made my skin feel too tight. I wanted to bite him, to sink my teeth into the juncture where his neck met his jaw and mark him as mine, but I held back.
There was a strange pleasure in the suspense, in not knowing exactly when the dam would break.
He twirled me through the dying sunlight, the last rays painting my bare arms gold. When I looked up, his gaze was fixed on my mouth—not my eyes, not my cleavage, but my lips, parted with anticipation.
It was the kind of look that made me want to misbehave.
I didn’t know if this counted as a date. I didn’t care. The rules were different here, in this glass sanctuary at the end of the world, where the only witnesses were the stars and the ghosts of our old selves. I could have danced until the sun rose again, just to keep feeling this alive.
"Absolutely." He grins, boyish despite the silver threading through his temples. "I have seventeen years of showing off to catch up on."
We settle into rhythm again, Coltrane replacing Davis, the tempo slower, more intimate.
The fire crackles, casting shadows that dance alongside us. The wine makes everything soft-edged, but his scent keeps me anchored. Black coffee and rain, underneath the expensive cologne. It wraps around me more thoroughly than his jacket, sinking into my skin until I can't tell where his pheromones end and mine begin.
My body responds without permission—nipples hard against silk, wetness gathering between thighs I have to consciously keep from pressing together.Every breath brings more of him, every inhale a dose of biological imperative screaming to be filled, claimed, knotted.
"You're killing me," he says quietly.
"I'm just standing here."
His voice was barely more than a vibration against my hair, yet it curled into every nerve ending like a whispered spell. "Your scent shifts when you're aroused," Alessandro murmured, the statement so matter-of-fact it might have been a medical diagnosis.
"Becomes sweeter. Like burnt sugar."
