I stiffen, trying to pull away from him.
What right do I have to touch him now?
Seventy-one wraps his arms around me, however, with surprising strength and holds onto me like a koala. “Don’t go. Not yet. Like me keep dreaming…”
“Time to wake up.” I snatch up the metal bowl of water and dump it over his head.
Seventy-one’s eyes shoot wide open.
He lets go of me and scoots back, shaking his wild curls like a dog.
For the first time, he stares at me, clear-eyed.
Breathing hard, he shivers.
I throw the blanket at him. “Dry yourself.”
Slowly, never looking away from me, Seventy-one rubs off the water that is dripping from his hair down his sculpted chest.
Then he freezes. “Oh, fuck. This is real.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You just threw water over me.”
I arch my brow.
Then he glances down at himself. “I’m half-undressed.”
I redden. “I was washing you.”
I hurl the cloth at him.
It hits him in the face.
Shit, I’m no good at this romance thing. Or Omega care, it appears.
He’ll have to take me as I am.
I expect Seventy-one to flinch or cry.
To my shock, he gives a sunny laugh. “Figures that I’d find my scent match Alpha in a cell and that she’d dump water over my head. My sister has been tempted to enough times to wake me up in the mornings. You may have to get used to doing that.”
My Alpha.
He says it like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
It sounds like it fits, however, as if I have been waiting all my life for an Omega to say it.
I didn’t need a complex courting ritual, arrangement between packs, or even a bunch of flowers to make him say it, only a damp cloth to the face.
I bet that Mars has never writtenthatinto one of his romance novels.
I find myself smiling.
Seventy-one smiles back. It’s the most beautiful smile I have ever seen. It lights up his face, banishing the shadows under his eyes.
“So, where are we?” Seventy-one dries his hair, which frizzes up cutely.