"Miles, I'm going to — I'm close, I'm—"
I take him deep and hold him there and suck and swallow and he yanks my hair hard enough that my eyes water for a different reason and he comes with a shattered groan that I register in my bones. The pulse of it in my throat, hot and thick, and I swallow around him, all of it, and keep swallowing, and the sound he makes — this wrecked, disbelieving moan — is the best thing I've ever heard.
He sags against the wall. His grip loosens in my hair and becomes something else — shaking fingers, gentle now, moving through my hair like he's sorry and grateful at the same time. His breathing is ragged and his eyes are closed and his cock is still in my mouth, softening, and I hold him there for a moment longer than I need to because I'm not ready to let go.
I pull off. Sit back on my heels. Wipe my lips with the back of my hand, but it's a lost cause — my chin is wet, my shirt isruined, my eyes are red and swollen. I look up at what I've done to him and the thing in my chest is dark, satisfied, tangled up in itself.
I made him fall apart. My mouth, my tongue, my throat. My choice. Whatever else I am or am not, whatever my body can't do, it can do this.
It's not enough. I know that. But right now, on my knees on my living room floor with the taste of him still coating my tongue and his wrecked voice still in my ears, it's close.
"Come here," Ray says, his voice destroyed. He reaches for me. I let him pull me up. Then his mouth is on mine, kissing me deep, tasting himself on my tongue. His fingers work my belt open. His hand slides into my pants and wraps around my cock and I press my face into his neck and breathe him in.
"Tell me what you need," he murmurs against my temple.
I cover his hand with mine. I adjust his grip — tighter, slower — and he follows my lead. Even now, even wrecked, he's paying attention. He does what my hand tells him to do and I set the pace and he strokes me exactly how I want and I come against his stomach with my face in his neck, quiet, shaking, and it's not the explosive, powerful thing the blowjob was. It's just release. The tension of the evening and the dinner and the wanting all letting go at once.
We end up in my bed. I don't remember walking there — Ray guided me, or I guided him, or we stumbled down the hall together. He's lying in my sheets and he doesn't fit. Not because the bed is too small but because everything in this room is white and gray and precise and he's warm and messy and alive and the contrast is almost funny. He looks like disorder in a system that's never had any.
I lie next to him. I don't pull away. His hand finds mine on the mattress between us and our fingers lace together and neither of us says anything for a long time.
"Stay," I say eventually. My voice is quiet.
"Yeah." His thumb traces circles on my hand. "I'm not going anywhere."
I lie in my bed and listen to his breathing even out and I look at the ceiling and I wait for the part where I shut down. The part where I turn cold and tell him it was a mistake and build the wall back up and become the version of me that doesn't need anyone.
It doesn't come.
I turn my head and look at Ray asleep in my bed. His face is soft and his mouth is slightly open and his hair is a disaster and one of his feet is sticking out from under the covers. My pillow is going to smell like pepper and ozone tomorrow. I'm going to have to decide whether to wash it.
I close my eyes and press closer to him and I already know the answer.
Ray
Ismell him before the elevator doors open.
That's new. I'm standing in the lobby waiting for the elevator and I catch it — warm, sweet, layered — and I know Miles is on the other side of those doors before they slide apart. He steps out, coffee in hand, suit immaculate, and his eyes flick to mine for half a second before looking away.
"Garcia." He doesn't break stride. "The Crane financials need updating before Thursday's session. I want the revisions by noon."
"Morning to you too," I say to his back as he passes.
He doesn't respond. He doesn't need to. The faint trace of his scent lingers in the air after he's gone and I lean toward it, which is embarrassing and also not something I'm doing on purpose.
I take the elevator up and go to my desk and start working on the financials and I track him. That's the only word for it. I know where he is — in his office, thirty feet down the hall, behind a closed door — the same way you can feel where the sun is ona cloudy day. Not seeing it, just knowing. When he gets up and walks to the break room, the distance shifts. When he comes back, my chest settles.
I don't know what's happening to me. I've been attracted to Miles since the day I started this job. That's not new. What's new is this — this constant, low-grade pull that has nothing to do with wanting to fuck him and everything to do with needing him NEAR. When he's close, I'm calm. When he's not, there's a buzzing under my skin that won't stop.
At nine-fifteen, I'm at the copy machine when Marcus Thorne turns the corner and heads toward Miles's office. Thorne is sixty, silver-haired, one of the founding partners. He's walking down the hall to talk to Miles about a filing and my body moves before my brain engages. I step into the hallway. Not blocking it — I'm not that far gone — but positioning myself between Thorne and Miles's door. My shoulders square. My chin lifts. My scent spikes — that peppery sharpness that happens when I'm agitated.
Thorne gives me a mild, confused look as he passes. "Garcia."
"Mr. Thorne." My voice is normal. The rest of me is not normal. I just tried to block a sixty-year-old founding partner from walking down a hallway because he was heading toward my omega.
My omega. There it is again.
I go back to the copy machine and I stand there with my hands on the tray and I think: I am really, really losing it.