When I turn back toward the stairs, my gaze flicks up instinctively – back to the room where she’s sleeping in my bed, wrapped in my scent, marked by my teeth.
Whatever this is…it started with me. And whether I understand it yet or not, I’m not walking away from it.
Not now.
Not when she looks like that.
TWENTY-FIVE
LANI
I wake drenched.
Not from the bath. Not from rain. From heat – thick and clinging, like the air itself has turned against me. Sweat slicks my spine, mats my hair to my neck, soaks the sheets beneath me. My skin feels too tight, too full, like it doesn’t quite fit anymore.
I gasp and curl in on myself, a sharp cramp twisting low in my belly.
“Oh fuck,” I whisper, clutching at myself as another wave rolls through me. Heat, then cold. A deep ache that pulses and pulls, not pain exactly, but something insistent. Demanding.
My legs tremble.
My breath comes out in shallow pants, chest fluttering like I’ve just run miles instead of lying still. My heart won’t settle, skidding too fast, too loud.
This is worse.
Much worse.
I press my face into the pillow and moan softly, the sound torn from me before I can stop it. My body feels wrong in a way I don’t have words for – overstimulated and hollow at the sametime. Like something inside me is waking up and I’m not ready for it.
I try to sit up.
The room spins violently, nausea surging hard enough that I gag and clutch the duvet. Spots dance across my vision. My head throbs, a deep pressure right behind my eyes.
“Nope,” I mutter weakly, collapsing back.
That’s when I smell it.
Salt. Warmth. Something dark and grounding beneath it – clean skin, iron-warm, unmistakably male. It’s faint, but it’s there, clinging to the pillow, the sheets, the oversized t-shirt I’m wearing.
Sol.
The second the scent hits me, something inside me eases.
Not all the way. But enough.
My breathing stutters, then slows. The ache in my belly dulls from sharp to heavy. The frantic edge of my nerves softens, like someone’s turned the volume down just a notch.
I whimper quietly and turn my face into the fabric at my shoulder, inhaling deeper without meaning to. The relief is immediate and shocking enough that tears sting my eyes.
“Oh,” I breathe, dazed. “Oh.”
That shouldn’t have worked.
Nothing has worked like that.
I shift and it becomes crystal clear to me: a wave of smoked Oud – deep, dark, and primal, like embers burning low. Salted Driftwood – rugged and weathered, evoking stormy shores. Tempered by the soft sweetness of toasted Marshmallow – a soft contrast, hinting at warmth beneath the roughness.
He smells like danger wrapped in something deceptively comforting.