Page 88 of Trust No Alpha
“Are you coming to bed?” he asked.
Usually he opened his arms to me and invited me under his covers with a smile.
Disappointed, I strode to the bed and looked down at him, my hair falling forward in messy tangles. “Yeah.”
I jumped into the bed and he moved back to make room for me. Or at least that’s what I told myself. But actually, it felt awkward as if he had moved away because he didn’t want to touch me.
My ass felt slick and ready, making my cock lengthen in anticipation. I reached for him, still on my knees, and drew his head to my chest. “Are you still mad at me?”
“No.”
He was stiff in my arms. And hot. His hair glistened, damp with sweat at the temples. I petted it, so soft.
He drew his head back and looked at me, eyes dark but with an edge of sharpness I’d never seen before.
“You still think you won that bit after dinner, don’t you?”
“Didn’t I?” I asked.
Suddenly, he flipped me over onto my back and pushed my legs apart, hooking his arms under my knees and bending them back toward me. He was naked and instantly I felt his erection press at my balls.
“I can smell you,” he said. “Honey and summer. Ripe and ready for me. And you think you’re playing. You think you’re so clever and smart, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.
His body hovered over me like a furnace of raging heat and that was when I knew. Thorne had entered the Burn and I hadn’t noticed. Apparently, neither had he until just this moment.
When had it happened?
I thought back on the day. Of course some of the signs were there. I could list them now. The sly hardness of the muscles around his gleaming eyes. The dry heat of his skin. The tone of his voice down a notch from his usual range, and gravelly. A faint scent of fire.
It had started some time in the afternoon. Maybe our little skirmish had caused it to progress faster.
His hands, where they held my legs back and spread, gave off a faint tremor. His breaths were quick and short. And oh the fragrance he emitted now as he went into full fever. Like cedar chips burning on a dusk wind. Like salt from the edges of a dry sea.
My mouth watered for him. A surge of lust overcame me and my body arched in his arms.
Yes, I did think I had won. I won him. And now he was in the Burn.
I had only one more thought after that.Good thing I’m ready.
I reached up between us and touched his fevered face.
Thorne let go of my leg and pushed my hand away. “All this time and you never listened.” His teeth clenched. “This is cruel, you know.”
My heart fell. “What?”
Thorne pushed himself up and let my legs drop as he climbed out of bed. Moving quickly through the room’s shadows, he put on his robe and began opening and closing drawers as if he were looking for something.
“Thorne. I’m not trying to be cruel. I only want to do for you what you did for me during my Burn.”
Without looking up from his search, he replied, “It’s not the same and I’ve told you that. You need to leave. Go to your room and lock the door. I can’t control myself around you. Your smell alone is driving me mad!”
He said that last word with no small amount of disgust, much how Mathias and Father had spoken of my scent, as if it both pleasured and disturbed him.
Grabbing a blanket and the bag of toys I myself had explored, Thorne stomped from the room and slammed the door after him.
But I was not going to be so easily deterred. I’d proven myself to him. I was stronger than any Omega mate would be and he knew it.
I jumped up and followed him, naked, into the hall. He was already halfway down the stairs, behaving as if he didn’t hear me. Or smell me.
