Page 59 of Impossible

I’m not excited about being her teacher, having to stare at her across a power distance, however narrow it is within the Complex bounds. But Iamexcited for more time with her. I would doanythingto get a mainline of her scent directly to my heart. Directly to…

The rut hits me before I know what’s happening.

My libido has been dead for weeks. Even with Risk in bed next to me, whining and grinding against my hip, even with his hand down my pants, desperately coaxing me to life, even with the taste of her on his lips, nothing has been able to rescue me from the blue fog. Until now.

My scent, always the gentlest of the pack, becomes a solid thing in the air around us. I am a storm, a wall of grey crossing an empty horizon. I’m wet pavement and low angry clouds and the near-painful fresh of rain-cleansed air. I amneed.

“Sorry, restroom,” I mutter, bowing like a moron at Indie before dashing to the hallway. All of my blood has exited my brain, on a warpath straight to my dick. The eyes of my pack follow me. I don’t need the bond to know. Irritation from Hollis, concern and maybe a little wry amusement from Leon. Risk on my heels.

The hallway is half-lit, lockers and linoleum. I know I went the wrong way for the bathroom, but I can’t go back now. If I see her, if I scent her, I could do something disastrously stupid. I imagine the long, lithe curve of her back. Her hair, wrapped around my hand. Her lips, her full lips, pressing to mine.

I duck around a corner. I’m bleary with need, the urge to turn back andtakeher overwhelming. I hear footfalls.

I press myself against the wall. Hiding. I should know better. Risk rounds the corner a moment later, wild eyes finding my own. Then he’s against me, hips against hips, heat against heat.

“No,” I struggle, even as my hands grip his waist, pull him closer, harder. I remember being bigger than him, once upon a time. I’m still taller, but his muscular body dwarfs mine, pressing me into the lockers, owning me entirely.

This iswrong. I scream at myself to shove him away. I kiss him instead.

She’s sick, I’m sick,we’resick. In a hallway where anybody could wander by. My hips thrust without my bidding.

His lips are hot on mine, his hands everywhere.

My knees give. I slide down the wall, landing hard, hunched over myself, my growing knot, theshame.

Risk crouches in front of me. His hands are undoing my button, my zipper, reaching inside. I bat him away. He ignores me. I cover my face with my arm, unable to watch. His fingers around the fleshy bulge, his hand stroking my shaft.

I don’t even picture her. Just scent, black tea and wood smoke and pounding, throbbing rain. My mind is blackness.

His mouth closes around me and I stuff my moan down. He strokes and sucks and swallows the evidence, his fingers never releasing their noose-like grip on my knot, the punishing, desperately-pleasing pressure.

He tucks me away and yanks my calves to straighten my legs and straddles my lap. I can feel his erection press against my stomach and I feel shame, somehow more shame, for failing him yet again.

“Welcome back,” he murmurs in my ear. I shudder, still hiding my face, unable to look at him. Tears prick my eyes, a roaring hole inside me where the bond should be.

Risk used to sing to me in the bond when we fucked, when we made love, when we spent hours just exploring the nooks and crannies and corners of each other’s bodies. A battering ram of affection, adoration, a syrupy drug I became addicted to. Risk’s world has more colors than mine. No words can do it justice, no roaming of callused hands over velvet skin. Bond-magic.

Inside me is charcoal. Crumbling grey-black dusty barren wasteland.

The rut has softened to only razor-edged. This, I can control. My hormones want one thing, my brain chemistry another. My heart hides, afraid to enter the fray.

Risk removes my arm from my face. His lips press soft kisses to my brow, my nose, my cheeks, my jaw. He licks the tears I didn’t realize had fallen. “Miss you,” he mumbles, resting his head in the crook of my shoulder.

We are as close as we can get, without a bond. It isn’t close enough.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” I breathe.

“Enough to restart your heart.” The words only have an edge of hurt in them. I wrap my arms around him, pulling him closer.

“You kept it beating,” I mutter. I long for the comfort of my bed, to see her again, to braid Risk’s hair, to trace Leon’s tattoos, to memorize her face, to curl in Hollis’s arms, to hold her in mine. The wanting is painful and too loud. I’m re-animated, electric after months offline. Numbness was easier.

Risk pulls me to my feet. I look longingly at the emergency exit. Simpler, to go. To hide.

He weaves his fingers through mine and pulls me back to the mixer.

Leon and Hollis are sitting at a table with Indie now. Leon has his good hand on the table next to her, and as Hollis speaks it keeps twitching, like he’s reaching for her and then thinking better of it.

Indie is intent on what Hollis is saying, but when Risk and I come back in the room she catches our scent and looks around again. The moment her eyes lock on mine, my knees go weak. Again. Is it going to be like this every time? I’ve scented many omegas in my day, but never one that made me react like this. I swallow the razor-edged rut back. I am stronger than my instincts.

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