Page 24 of Alpha's Embrace
How could he be even more beautiful than he already was? The water lapped against his muscles and the white suds made his skin gleam. His leanness was amplified by the water and the shine of it on him.
I had a sudden urge to taste him. Immediately, I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.
He looked up suddenly and tilted his head. He had already told me I should leave, that he could bathe himself. I expected him to make the statement again. He should have asked me why I was bathing him when he could bathe himself. But he didn’t say another word.
Could he smell my arousal? Did he know?
A part of my mind teased me with Sylph fantasies, children’s stories, really, that they could read minds. That they were part fairy, part Alpha, and might steal bad children in the night and raise them up to be their mates, never discerning between Alpha and Omega, loving both equally.
I wasn’t a child, but he was whisking me away already and he hadn’t done a thing.
I, however, had broken probably fifteen different rules of this establishment in one afternoon.
I didn’t care, but why?
My hand continued with the cloth, bathing him like I would a beloved.
Everything in me was turned toward him, all senses, all attention, all yearning. The myth of fated mates came to me. True mates. I wanted to laugh at myself. But with everything I was experiencing, how could I deny it?
“Geo.” he said. Just my name. Nothing else. But in that single word was contained all his unasked questions. All his innocence. And all his burning.
His cock bobbed up out of the water. Not his fault. He couldn’t help it. I didn’t dare think it might be for me, not truly, for he would respond to any touch. It was the way of the Burn. I knew it firsthand when I had my Burns and craved the caress of any Omega, or any touch, really. Warm. Soft. Tight. Wet.
He was responding because I was the one present in the room, but not necessarily tome.
Still, I wanted him.
I brought my hand up out of the water, the cloth dripping upon the spectrum of bubbles on his right thigh, sending tiny cascades of soapy liquid down the soft skin. I couldn’t look away. I wanted to look at him forever—for the rest of my life.
I had to leave now!
I handed him the cloth and grabbed the rim of the tub as I stood and turned away. “I’ll go get you a robe.”
It was a delay tactic, an excuse not to leave. My own mind was manipulating me.
“Geo,” he said.
I froze in mid-step.
“Thank you.”
When I returned with the robe from the area closet, I re-entered the room just as he was standing, all the water flowing over him, clusters of bubbles still present on his legs and arms and chest.
With perfect balance, he stepped from the tub. His hair was darker from the water, and wet all the way through as if he’d dunked himself. His long curls turned to tangles that reached for his shoulders, spreading more moisture. Strands stuck to his forehead. His cheeks were pink, his eyes like blue lights, his lips slightly parted.
By all the gods that ever were, I needed all my strength now, for I could think of only one thing: I wanted to grab him hard, carry him off, and make him mine. It was a primitive brain response. Alphas who were out of control and labeled dangerous often fell victim to it. I never had. Not even with Mase. But with Mase, we were both so young. I had not yet experienced the Burn. We never knew that more adult level of need and connection between us.
But right now, this was like nothing I’d ever felt outside the Burn.
I draped the robe on a bench that ran the length of one wall, and then had to hold my hands behind my back, tightly clasped, to keep from reaching out to him.
Grab. Hold. That was all I could think.Take. Take. Mine. Mine!
What was wrong with me? He was a Sylph, that was what was wrong with me. He had this affect.
No wonder no one touched him. No wonder he said what he had about not feeling safe. Not from himself, but from others. Even the bonded ones had given him discomforting looks. He had told me all this. Had I not heard him?
I was too busy fighting the pull. The magnetism. I realized that only now, and yet still I denied it.
