Page 95 of Fragile Heart

I don’t even think to censor the thought.

“Just imagining that being my dick instead of a sandwich.”

She laughs and sets the sandwich in her lap. Lavender surrounds us more thoroughly than before, its own beautifully enticing wave.

“I thought you said you didn’t mean for us to enjoy the meadow that way,” she says, a coy lilt to her lips.

Her eyes twinkle with her humor, and I laugh. She doesn’t resist as I pull her to me, my palm flat against the back of her head and my fingers lacing through her hair. Her knees bracket mine just like that first hike and picnic. Her lips are soft as ever, and I bask in the feel of them, in the soft intimacy of having her at all.

“I liked going to brunch with you,” she whispers as I pull away.

“Yeah?” I ask, dropping my hand to her neck, letting my thumb trace her collarbone. “You happy being family official?”

She nods.

“I want to ask you something,” I say. It comes out breathless, even a bit nervous.

“If it’s about making use of the meadow, I’m all for it,” she says with a smirk.

Fuck me. I’m not going to be able to focus long enough to make this special if she keeps looking at me like that.

“It’s about bonding, actually,” I admit. I don’t drop my eyes, holding her gaze so she knows just how serious I am.

“Bonding?” she asks, total surprise in her voice, her body. She sags against me, her shoulders dropping away from her ears. “That’s something you’d want to risk again?”

Instead of giving her words, I cup her face and kiss her, long and slow and deep.

She doesn’t bite back a whine as she presses into me, practically climbing into my lap. The moment it slips between her lips and into our kiss, it’s like a dam breaks.

Her hands scrabble at my shirt, pulling at the hem until she has it lifted around my ribs. My body rises to her need, cinnamon exploding and intertwining with her scent until they drown us even in the open air of the meadow. Her breath stops for a heartbeat, her hands pausing in their frenzy to get my clothing off. I trace her bottom lip with my tongue, shallowing out the kiss as she pauses.

“Alpha,” she whispers, low and sultry.

Every single hair on my body stands up.

All at once, her scent slams into me. The intrinsic siren call of it has me harder than I can remember, my dick aching. My mind is hazy with arousal. It takes all my self-control to not lay her out on the blanket and rip her jeans. Instead, I run my hand down her neck.

And then I pull away, cursing at the fevered feel of her skin.

“Brielle?” I ask, my voice so low it sends a shiver through her. “How close is your heat?”

She worries at her bottom lip, her gaze vacillating between focused and glazed.

“Omega.” It’s nothing short of a bark, all the Alpha command I can wield threaded through it. “Is your heat close?”

“I… I don’t know,” she admits in a whisper. Her palms press into my stomach, her nails pricking my skin. “I went off the suppressors in December and haven’t had one since.”

Fuck. Me.

More than six months. And she’s spent at least a few weeks of them being truly touch-starved, enough that I could smell it in her scent that first time I took her out. How many of her symptoms that I’d thought were lingering effects of that touch-starvation were actually signs of her impending heat?

Her scent grows stronger, another whine building in her throat. That call weaves through me, burrowing into my bones, and my dick jumps even as my brain goes a bit foggy.

Ohfuck.

It doesn’t matter now. The reality is that I have an Omega in heat in the middle of the Wyoming wilderness—and the only way out of this glen is by horse or chopper.

I’m on my feet before she can try to kiss me again, pulling her into me as I walk to where Daphne and Phoebe are casually grazing a few hundred feet away. Phoebe flinches as we come near, her ears pinned, but Daphne is stalwart as always. I guide Brielle’s hand onto her lead rope, making sure her grip is firm before pulling away.

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