Page 26 of Omega Island
He stared at me as if uncomprehending. “I’m not.”
I swam forward, feeling my muscles loosen, the water taking away any embarrassment of slick, and sat on the top step beside him. “Well, yes you are.”
“I’m a mess.”
“I disagree. You are in a healing mode, I would say, but that’s nothing to judge yourself about.”
“I just never thought this would happen to me. It’s not how I pictured my life,” he said.
“They say life happens when you’re making other plans.”
He sat unmoving and silent, head bowed, knees sticking up out of the water. Even though his lower half was underwater, I could see he had an erection. He was still responding to my heat. He wanted me without wanting me. A natural process for the body but without the mind’s will. Unless the mind let go and followed.
Which was how he’d lived his life, it seemed. Not so different from mine when I was younger.
I knew we weren’t that far apart in age. An alpha in his prime. I, on the other hand, was past my prime even if still in my thirties. I was attracted to him, no question, but a pairing between us was made to fail. Why was I even thinking it?
The thought was abruptly cut off when another sharp stab of heat clutched at my stomach and groin. I doubled over, splashing water over both of us.
“Senta!” Raimi’s voice called through my crashing senses. His hand burned against my chest, and he caught me before I fell headfirst into the glistening water beyond the steps.
Just then, a wind came up, blowing through the forest beyond the fence, swishing through the trees. I felt it, smelled it. Smelled him. All alpha and leaf and damp jungle hot with the breath of the salty mist.
The water splashed around my straining body. His hands grasped my upper arms from behind. I floated directly backwards—and into him.
If only he would—
I clamped down on my thoughts but not before I grabbed the side of the pool and planted my feet on the bottom. Then I did a deplorable thing. I bent my body forward at the waist. I pushed back into him, feeling his hardness under the water press against me. And when I spoke, the word rushed through me out of my control.
“Please!”
I wanted to submerge myself. I wanted to melt into the water until I was nothing but a drop of rain.
Raimi kept holding me as if nothing had happened. “I’ve got you. It’s okay.”
“No!” My teeth gritted so hard I heard my jaw creak.
“Come on back to the steps.”
As he gave tug, I pushed back into him again. “I need you. Please.”
I heard his breath moving fast into his lungs, accompanied by an almost indistinct whine. His voice went low, a chest-deep rumble. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
It wasn’t fair to him. Not fair at all. After everything I knew about him and what he’d been through. We’d been talking so calmly, so rationally, and now I was grasping at him as if he was the last alpha on Earth.
“I know what I’m saying and I’m asking.”
More hitched breaths.
“I know I have no right.” I groaned loudly, the longing so sharp it pushed that last word out like a yell. “But I’m—I’m lost—”
Raimi leaned in again, or maybe the water pushed me back. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t care. He was warm, like a hot spring coming right up behind me, and I pressed into it wanting the relief I so needed.
“Let’s get you to the first step,” came his soft voice right up against my ear.
I hurt in a fury of desire I’d never felt before. With his hands on me like a grounding force, I let him pull me back with him until I felt the steps against my heels and calves. I was half out of the water now, his arms supporting my weight, and I rocked back, losing my balance. We went down together. I missed the step, and the water came all the way up to my shoulders.
I stood up so my backside was against Raimi again and I doubled over, this time not in pain. I went straight into the omega mating pose. His cock was fully erect. The hardness of it poked through his shorts and mine. If he could just move a little to the left and lower both waistbands, it would be perfect.
