Page 76 of Pack Rivals: Part Two
“Connor …”
“Okay,” he says. “I wanted to see you.” He shrugs and we reach the center of town with the post office, the local store and the police station. All standing neatly in a row. Opposite is the town square. The bushes neatly trimmed, flowers blooming in the straight beds.
“Has it changed much?” I ask him.
He peers at it. “Hard to remember. We moved around so much when I was a kid and all these places start to blend into one another. You, though, you, I remember.” He looks down at me.
“I didn’t think you did.”
“Not at first but I do now. Phoebe Carsen.”
My cheeks burn as my mouth falls open. He remembers?
“Nobody calls me that anymore.” My teachers all called me Phoebe. Everyone else has called me Bea for as long as I can remember. I check myself. “But you could have looked up my full name. Or my mom might have told you.”
“No, I remember you,PhoebeCarsen. I was sitting out by the field on lunch break and you came over and asked me what I was reading. I remember you had this pretty smile and eyes like nothing I’d ever seen before. We talked about my book and about the book you were reading too. I remember you used to smile at me in the corridors. I remember I was going to ask you out.”
“You were?”
“But some dude on the football team beat me to it.”
“Karl,” I say, my heart sinking. “You really remember all that?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm,” I say, not convinced this isn’t another of these alphas’ tricks. “What book was I reading then?”
“Jane Eyre. You weren’t sure if you liked it.”
“Mr. Rochester was an asshole.”
“He was. But she forgave him in the end.”
“She did.” I study his eyes. The blue and the greens spinning together like the currents of the sea. “I’m not sure she should have.”
“He didn’t deserve her.”
“He shouldn’t have hurt her. He shouldn’t have lied.”
“No, he shouldn’t have. But I think he spent the rest of his life trying to make it up to her.” He steps closer so his body brushes mine. “That’s what I’d do.”
“You would?” I whisper, my heart thumping in my throat, my eyes lost in his, my body pulled nearer and nearer.
“Yes.”
Then he leans down and kisses me. And I wonder if Jane Eyre was allowed to forgive and land the man of her dreams that means I can land an entire pack of them.
I kiss him back.
It’s exactly how I imagined kissing Connor Carlysle would be like. Warm and safe, yet dizzying and electric too. He holds me close, and kisses me deep, like he wants to taste every part of my mouth, like he wants to never let me go. My eyes drift shut and I forget everything around me. The rumble of the traffic, the birds singing, a distant radio. All I hear is his heartbeat. All I feel is the press of his lips and the warmth of his body.
When finally, he leans back, it takes me a moment to open my eyes. My heart racing and every omega instinct screaming for more.
It was that damn business with the cake. It’s made me an awful lot hornier.
“You know,” I say, “I spent a lot of time as a teenage girl thinking about making out with you in my bedroom. Want to do that now?”
“How about your dad?”
