Page 8 of Raging Heat

“No.”His voice is tight.“No.We can’t.I can’t give you what you want.We have to stop here.”

“And you can give them what they want?”Nothing about him changes when he’s with them or when he’s with me.

“With them, it doesn’t matter.She’s not broken like I am, so we can still make a family.I can’t give you children.We can’t start a family.”

“What if I don’t care about that?”How can he not see that I want him, I don’t care about any of the rest.I just want him at my side and I have from the moment we met.

“But Ido.Icare.”

I try to get through to him, but we’ve had this argument before, and it didn’t end too well that time either.“We’re a scent match.We’re fated to be together.”

He shakes his head as he drops the knife on a shelf next to him.“We might be a match, but we can’t bond.So, what’s the use?”

“A bond isn’t everything.You know that.”I grab the front of his shirt and reverse our positions, pushing him up against the wall.

He lets out a gasp, grabbing for my wrists with both hands as his face flushes and he starts perfuming.

“Fuck.Your pheromones…”

These are not his normal pheromones, these are something else.I don’t know if it’s because he just scent matched to two new people and that has changed them, or because he’s distressed from trying to push me away, but I’ve never felt this intense of a connection to him before.

I lick my lips as my head swims.“If I could mark you right now, I would.I would have marked you years ago.”

I put my head on his shoulder, taking in his pheromones, mixed with Caleb and Vera’s scents, letting my own mix with them too.

Mathew grabs onto my shirt, his body shaking.“Jorge…” His voice is hoarse.“Please.”His arousal floods the air, forcing me to fight myself so I don’t rip his clothes off and fuck him.

This time, I don’t suppress the possessive growl that builds in my chest, letting it roll over him with my pheromones.

“You’remine.And so are they.”

It’s only when I say the words that I realise the truth of them.I realise why Mathew’s cologne appealed so much to me, why I didn’t recognise Vera and Caleb in the room sooner, why their pheromones turn me on and don’t trigger a fight response even though they’re clearly all over Mathew.

They’re all mine.

4

Mathew

My pheromones keep floodingout as Jorge’s scent mixes with Caleb and Vera’s and it’s really turning me on.I want to whine, I want to bare my throat to him and let him mark me.Let all of them mark me.

Let them claim me as theirs.

That thought finally breaks through the haze.

Those aren’t normal thoughts, they’re not even normal ‘being around your scent match’ type of thoughts.Those are the thoughts of an Omega in heat, which I can’t do.

This isn’t me.These feelings aren’t mine.Because I can’t go into heat.

“Let me go.”I put as much force behind my words as I can and the dejected look in Jorge’s eyes breaks my heart.

I make my way over to the door to the garden and slump down in the grass, trying to take deep breaths, clear my head and body of all the pheromones, trying to get my mind back under control.

I jolt as Jorge sits down next to me, his gaze troubled.

“Since when are your pheromones back?”His voice is careful as he looks out to the rest of the garden, at the flowers and the trees.

“They’re not back.They just come out sometimes.You’ll barely notice them in a couple of minutes.”I fill my lungs as much as possible and the feverish sensation disappears from my body.

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