Page 50 of Broken Heat
“The idea of it being only a healing. That it was more—that it meant—” He swallowed hard. “Didn’t you feel it, too?”
The pleading look returned. The sparkle of want and longing.
I had to resist.
Couldn’t resist.
I heard myself speak as if from afar. “You’re very beautiful, Elon. I was very glad to feel like myself again with you after my failures with my last two patients. You know that. I am so grateful.”
His eyes narrowed. The upper and lower lashes almost met. Only a glint of blue showed now.
“I—I think it was more, though, right?” he asked.
“I’m your therapist. It can’t be more.” Who was speaking? Not me. I had not given my mouth permission to say that. Yet, as if on autopilot, the words came out and floated on the air between us.
Elon said, “But I found you without directions because you left something behind.”
I shook my head. I had left nothing at his cabin.
He crossed his arms. “You left it all over my bed and my body. I took two showers. I can’t scrape it off. Is this the therapy, then? And why did I follow that scent straight to your door even though you clearly don’t care? Will I smell you after I am home and supposed to be normal again, dating again? Will I have heats again, finally, with your scent pressing into me but be required to go to other alphas, maybe marry someone like Coah again? Does all this mean I’m cured? Is that what being cured feels like?”
My heart must’ve stopped somewhere in that speech. I couldn’t be sure.
None of what Elon had said had been my intent.
I could only stare at him highlighted by my patio and the green jungle light streaming through the glass.
He filled me up to look at him. He made me want more than this. This scene here and now where I was supposed to pretend I was fine and my rut was nothing to do with him—when maybe, just maybe, it had been induced by him while I was trying to induce his heat.
Every time I took a breath, I tried to ignore the fact that I was breathing in his pheromones, taking in his streaming chemistry right from the air and getting high from it. As if my fevered brain was laughing at me from aside and cajoling,You don’t have a chance, alpha.
“Well?” Elon’s question punched the space between us.
I realized I had not responded verbally to him at all.
His speech still echoing in my head, I said, “No.”
“No. Just no?”
I nodded.
“Then I’m not cured? Or this is what it feels like to be cured?”
Soft. Unsure. “I don’t think it’s that easy.”
He smoothed his palms over the thin material of his white kimono. Right over his thighs. The hard line of his cock pushed straight up to his stomach. Was he wearing anything underneath?
“Are you saying my cure is not easy?”
“Yes,” I repeated, trying to look away but failing. Everything in my body wanted to get up and go to him. I wanted to rip the kimono from his body and place him under me and—and—
I wanted to rut.
I already knew how beautiful his skin was, how pampered. He kept himself so impeccably groomed and it made my throat tighten and my muscles constrict. He would be the perfect omega to breed. My body wanted it. But my mind was appalled at my unprofessionalism.
Senta would fire me if I acted on my chemical impulses.
But looking at Elon threatened to defeat my best intentions. Those eyes, that hair, that sweet firm body. Last night I had let myself go in a way I had been trained against.
