Page 143 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

The kiss is hungry and unfocused. She needs scent, pressure, proof. I give her all three, kissing her while one hand closes around the back of Wes’s neck. His purr vibrates through both Scarlet’s body and mine. I press my mouth to his next.

Wes kisses me hard, his hand catching the side of my face while Scarlet moves between us. The knot anchors them. Her hand grips my shoulder. Mine remains wrapped around Wes, closing the three of us into one hot, tangled circuit.

The sensor alarm continues shrieking from my tablet. Scarlet flinches at each pulse of sound. I reach behind me and tap buttons until I manage to mute the sensor without disabling the exterior alert.

“Better?” I ask.

She nods and buries her face against my throat.

The intruder tears the camera free, shoves it into the metal case, then turns toward the greenhouse door.

“He’s leaving,” I tell Tom.

“Units are at the road.”

Wes tests the knot with a careful shift.

Scarlet whimpers and tightens around him.

“I know, sweet omega. Not yet.” His frustration fills the room with cedar and sharpened alpha musk.

“You stay with her,” I tell him.

His eyes flash toward me. “I need to go.”

“You are physically attached to our omega.”

“There is a man on her property.”

“She needs you here. Focus on her.”

His alpha answers with a growl that rolls through the nest. He looks toward the door, then back at her, agony cutting through the hunger on his face. “If I stay, he gets closer to her. If I leave to protect her, I abandon her during her first shared heat.”

“You aren’t abandoning her.”

Wes ignores the reassurance and watches the screen.

The figure opens the greenhouse’s rear door, pauses, and looks toward the cottage. Even through the grainy feed, the attention feels intimate. He knows which window belongs to the bedroom. Scarlet feels it too. Her scent turns bitter again.

I block her view of the tablet with my body. “Eyes on me, love.”

“He’s watching us.”

“He watched the property.”

“He knew when we went upstairs.” Her breathing quickens, and sour notes signal her distress.

Wes growls, his own musk clawing through the room.

I place her palm against my chest. “Feel me.”

My heart beats hard beneath her hand. She traces the familiar plane of my sternum, then reaches up and finds the scar near my chin. “Roman.”

“Yes.”

Her eyes close.

I kiss her the tears before another cramp rolls through her. The muscles beneath my hand tighten. Her back arches, forcing Wes deeper against the locked knot. He curses and gathers her hips, keeping her from hurting herself while the heat drives her body past reason.