Page 74 of Pack Frenzy
Not rushed. Not sloppy. Just… unleashed.
His jaw flexes, a quiet, wrecked sound slipping out before he can stop it. The kind a man makes when he’s been holding himself back too long.
His hand curves around my cheek, careful but shaking, like he’s gripping the last thread of his control. “Jess,” he rasps—just my name, but it lands like a prayer he didn’t mean to say out loud.
The way he looks at me—hunger, relief, disbelief—hits low and deep, like he’s been starving and I finally opened the door.
He kisses me like he’s wanted to do this since he first saw me, and maybe he has in every loaded glance, every careful distance he’s kept. Salt and heat and the faint taste of cotton candy stillsweet on his tongue. And every wall I’ve built softens in his embrace.
His hand slides to my waist, fingers spanning my hip, grip firm but careful—the kind of hold that saysI could press harder and I won’t unless you ask.
I open for him because I’m done bracing against this. Done treating desire like a threat. This hunger has been growing with every second I’m with them—not despite my fear but because of the growing certainty that maybe, possibly, I could have this and survive it. That wanting doesn’t have to end in wreckage.
His scent kicks up under the salt—amber warmed by skin, pepper with a bite—and mine rises to meet it. Vanilla and jasmine with a sliver of citrus. The embarrassing honest truth of what my body does when he touches me like this. Not just arousal, butrecognition. This is what home smells like when it’s tangled up with another person.
He curses softly against my mouth, half yearning, half surrender, and I understand the feeling. This isn’t just chemistry. It’s the frightening, exhilarating edge of something that could matter. Something that could hurt.
My hands find his shoulders. Slide up the solid map of him—neck, jaw, the damp tangle of hair at his nape. He shivers when I scrape my nails there, just barely, and the sound he makes goes straight to my stomach.
The part of me that catalogs danger is screamingstupid, messy, you promised yourself focus and safety and not confusing heat with heart.The rest of me is greedy. Mouth open. Hands mapping. Closer. It’s all tangled up. And I don’t care.
He breaks first, barely, a ragged inch between us. His forehead rests against mine. His breath stutters.
“We shouldn’t,” he says, and the words sound wrecked.
This is messy and complicated and I still don’t know if I can do this—three of them, all of them, the weight of being wanted like this when I’ve barely learned to want myself.
My breath is shaky, but I answer, “Probably not.” And kiss him anyway.
Because agreement and action aren’t the same thing. Because I’m tired of protecting myself from good things just because they might become painful ones. Because the second kiss is worse—better—the kind that steals your ability to form vowels, and for once I want to be the kind of person who chooses the thing that terrifies her.
“We’re not—” He kisses my jaw, behind my ear, making goosebumps rise across my body that have nothing to do with the cool water. “We’re not careful like this.”
“I know,” I breathe, forehead to his. The whole night smells like him through the salt, like the bay decided to keep what I can’t. “I’m not confused. I’m not in heat. I want this, you.”
“Rowan will murder me,” he mutters, but it’s fond. Doomed.
“No, Rowan will pretend to be disappointed.” Though he did kiss me first, but I won’t ruin the moment telling Cassian that right now. If they truly want me as their Omega, then they know there’ll be sharing. Besides, Rowan also has Eli, and I can’t say I’m not curious about how that will work when I do go into heat.
He huffs a laugh. “Eli will take notes.”
“Eli already has notes.”
He kisses me again. Softer this time. His hand drifts up my spine, settles between my shoulder blades, and the gentleness of it shatters me.
The world shrinks. The cold is creeping in—slow, inevitable, the price of staying—but I don’t care yet. Time goes strange. There’s only the temperature of his mouth and the taste of him and the way the night leans back to give us room.
We stop because chattering teeth and numb fingers win.
He eases back, studying my face in the thin moonlight. “You okay?”
The question is too big for the moment. It’s asking about more than the cold, more than the kiss. It lands anyway, soft as a blanket.
I nod. My voice takes a second to find me. “Yeah.”
He presses a kiss to my forehead. “Let’s get you inside and warm.”
Wind scrapes the salt from my skin. The house will still be full of us when we go back—Rowan, Eli, and Cassian. I’m not running from this, from them anymore.
