Page 30 of Alpha's Embrace
I could read him well through all my senses. He smelled withdrawn and nervous, which came across like a bite of pepper, not bad but with a sting.
My skin went hot and cold in his presence, and that told me he was sending out his own pheromones. I didn’t feel that with others at any given moment. With him it communicated a constant desire. In his voice I heard it as well. A deep resonance, not flat the way nurses and doctors communicated to me, but layered with nuances of emotion. The thickness of more than just lust.
It was easy to read him. He wanted me as I wanted him, and on more than a level of simple allure. It caught at his core, too, as it did mine.
Maybe it was because he was unbonded. I wasn’t sure. But none of the responses from others here in the castle were like Geo’s.
In my own case, I’d had a sense like I was dying for the past two days. Now in his presence that anxiety level vanished.
I wanted to tell him everything about all my thoughts. I wanted no secrets from him. How to start? I cleared my throat.
“I want a field trip with you.”
He made no move except to blink.
One step at a time. “Maybe just a walk outside the fence at first?”
“You want me to go with you?”
“I trust you. I know you’d let nothing bad happen.”
“I really can’t. I have work. I’ll assign it to your guards.”
I lowered my gaze to the amethyst ball sitting on his desk, shiny and perfect and cold like the earth. “You shouldn’t have touched me in the bath.”
He pushed his chair back a little, his eyes widening at my bluntness. “Misha, I thought you’d had a seizure!”
“And you took care of me.”
“An instinct, that’s all. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”
“Instincts. I have them, too. You touched me.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Skin on skin. Why weren’t you gloved? I can’t forget that. It didn’t make me uncomfortable, but I can’t forget it.”
He rocked back in his chair. “I wasn’t planning on what happened, you fainting. You scared me. I didn’t think. I acted.”
“But now?”
He didn’t reply.
“You feel it, too, though, right?” I pushed. “You can’t forget.”
Still, he said nothing.
“I think I might die for wanting you to touch me again.” My statement came out flat and hard.
His cheeks darkened. He looked away. “You are in the Burn. It’s a common feeling.”
“I deal with the Burn every day. I know it backwards and forwards, and how it affects me, and how to appease it, increase it, play to it. Feed or starve it. I’ve tried all tactics. I know how it curls in my veins and makes my skin flame. The sexual arousal from it runs through my body. It’s wonderful, actually. Most of the time. At worst, it’s an inconvenience. It doesn’t make me feel lonely, only pent up. But you, you came into my mind. And now, now I can’t think of anything else.”
“That’s—that’s—you don’t know what you’re saying.”
“All right, then. Maybe I don’t. But you can’t deny that something else might be there. For us. Between us?”
His brow furrowed. His desk chair squeaked. “That’s not even a possibility.”
“It is. You’re unbonded. I feel that. I smell it. I surge with it. But there’s something more. Don’t you feel it?”
He started to shake his head.
