Page 194 of Altius
Against my better judgment, devoid of any rational thought, I sucked a greedy breath through my mouth, getting a meager hit of the tantalizing peppery flavor I’d been craving since my heat.
“That’s it,” he drawled, trailing the tip of his nose across my cheek. “Take what you want, doc. Breathe me in. Drink me down.”
Joaquin’s hand slid from my chin, along the length of my jaw, until he cradled the back of my neck. His free hand settled on the small of my back.
“I might not be your scent match,” he whispered with a possessive gleam in his dark eyes, “but I have what you want. Spice. Heat. Certainty.”
Joaquin’s kiss was a potent demand, hot and urgent, nimbly bypassing my few remaining defenses. I was too far gone to fight back, inherently weak to the fiery undertones of his pheromones.
Besides, I couldn’t deny that I’d always known he and Alijah were a package deal.
Long before I returned Alijah’s kiss in the San Diego moonlight, agreed to Joaquin’s request to be his stand-in at that ballet gala, or entertained his silly request for three conciliatory lunches—I’d known from the moment he pulled back Alijah’s collar in the lobby of the football operations center. When he fixed me with that predatory smile of his, alerting me that I was in his crosshairs…and Joaquin wouldn’t be satisfied until he got his fangs into my throat.
Reality intruded, apprehension surging to the forefront.
“I—I’m sick,” I stammered when he finally came up for air.
“Yeah, I know.” Resting our foreheads together, Joaquin’s hands slowly caressed the outline of my figure. “But that’s what you have Cal and Owen for. They’ll fix whatever you can’t piece back together with your own stubbornness.”
Joaquin’s purr was a throaty scratch against my skin, making my omega thrum with anticipation.
“I’m the fun one, remember? Who’s going to take you axe-throwing sometime. And will sneak you into the lighting booth for a quick fuck during the ballet one day. That’s going to make you come so hard all over that damn gray chaise—”
Tugging on his coat collar, I shut him up with a kiss. “Spare me the details.”
“Sounds like I’ve convinced you,” he said, his smirk turning inquisitive the longer he looked at me. “But I don’t think you’ve been adequately distracted. Have you?”
I stared at him, taking shallow breaths, afraid of what I would say—or do—if I got another dose of his scent.
“If this was enough, and you’re ready to go home and face your sister’s stack of packing boxes, just say the word. Otherwise…”
The seductive promise in his brown velvet gaze was even more potent than his pheromones.
“Make me forget,” I whispered, “just for tonight. Make me forget.”
***
The front door to unit 602 hadn’t even clicked shut before Joaquin scooped me up, wrapping my legs around his waist.
His mouth was an absolute menace as he carried me upstairs, one hand planted firmly on my ass while the othergripped the railing. His tongue waged a preemptive attack, not giving me a single chance to hesitate or think my way out of this.
As we entered what had once been Jacobi’s art studio, Joaquin kicked the door closed behind him. He lowered me onto a sprawling but neatly made bed with a plaid comforter in earth tones, including a rust-colored leather bolster—Alijah’s handiwork, no doubt.
My bag landed somewhere near the nightstand. In a matter of seconds, our coats, shoes, and socks littered the floor. His shirt and my jeans followed in short order.
Kneeling on the mattress, I snagged Joaquin by his belt buckle and pulled him closer, running my hands along the tattoo-free skin of his stomach.
“How do you want to do this?” I asked a bit breathlessly.
“That depends.”
The rose-hued afternoon sun streaming through the skylights made the red spider lily on the back of his right hand even more vivid as he reached for the hem of my top, pulling it up over my head, leaving me in nothing but my bra and panties.
Trailing his fingers through my sweat-slicked hair, Joaquin tilted my head back, admiring the lines of my body, eyes lingering on my breasts and rounded hips—the inherent omega softness that neither training nor waning syndrome could take away from me.
“As much as I like you like this,” he said, lightly fisting my hair, “on your knees, ready to please your alpha—”
I shot him a dirty look, which only made him laugh and tilt my head farther back, exposing the column of my throat.
