Page 151 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

She wades back to the bank and dresses over her wet skin without ceremony. Her clothes are soaked through before we’ve taken ten steps toward the house, dark with water, clinging to every line of her, and she walks through my front door like none of it is her problem.

I grab two towels from the hallway.

“Your clothes. They’re⁠—”

“I know.” There’s a small smile at the corner of her mouth, almost shy, and I marvel at it. The shyness. The playfulness. It’s like seeing a very different side to her, and I want more of it.

“I can go get you some⁠—”

She pulls her shirt over her head.

I stop talking.

She drops it on the floor without looking at it. Her hands go to the button of her jeans. She pushes them down her legs and steps out of them, and she straightens and looks at me, standing in my hallway in her wet bra and underwear.

There’s no defiance this time. No watching my face for the reaction the way she did in the library, chin up, daring me to flinch. She just takes off her wet clothes because they’re wet, and stands there, and the trust in that simple act makes me realize we’re past the point of no return.

I wrap the towel around her shoulders, my fingers brushing her collarbones, and she pulls it close but doesn’t look away from me. I can feel her skin under my knuckles, cold and damp and covered in goosebumps, and it takes everything I have not to pull her against me right here in the hallway.

Instead, I take the stairs two at a time, grab a shirt from my closet, and come back down. She’s still standing where I left her, the towel clutched to her chest. I hold the shirt out. She takes it, drops the towel, and pulls it over her head in one motion. It falls to mid-thigh, swallowing her, and she pushes the sleeves up to her elbows and I can’t stop watching her.

She catches me staring. “What?” The word comes out light, the small smile still there.

I look at her—the wet hair curling at her shoulders, the freckles I can still see, my shirt on her body, one bare shoulder where the collar has slipped.

“I like seeing you like this,” I say. “Like you’re not trying to be anything. You’re just...” I pause. “You.”

The playfulness fades from her face. “You’ve seen worse,” she says quietly.

“I’ve seen everything. And it only made me want you more.”

She looks at me for what feels like forever. The house is quiet, the river still audible through the open window. Morning light fills the living room, and I know with the same certainty that has defined every important decision I’ve ever made that something is about to change.

“Max,” she says softly.

I cup her face in both hands and kiss her, and it’s hungry and raw and desperate. It’s every moment I’ve spent holding back since the first time I pinned her against the wall in my office, every day I’ve spent trying to forget it, all of it pouring out of me at once.

She gasps against my mouth and I swallow the sound, my hands sliding from her face into her wet hair as I kiss her deeper.

And she lets me.

Her fingers dig into my back and she pulls me against her like she’s trying to climb inside me, and the sound she makes against my mouth nearly brings me to my knees.

I walk her back until her legs hit the couch and she sinks down onto it, and I follow her, bracing one hand on the armrest, the other on the cushion beside her head. My mouth drags from her lips to her jaw to the side of her neck, where her pulse hammers against my lips and her scent is strongest. The suppressants are holding, but underneath—just barely, like light leaking under a door—I catch it. Rain. Roses. Her.

I kiss her throat, open-mouthed and slow, and she moans, her hands sliding up into my hair and holding on.

I lift my head and kiss her mouth again, harder, and her hands move. Down from my hair, to my shoulders, to my bare chest, and I hold still as her palms trace over my skin. The heat of her hands against me is extraordinary. I’ve been running cold for so long and she’s everywhere, warm and real and here.

“Keep touching me,” I say against her lips.

She makes a soft sound against my mouth and lets her hands drift lower, over my chest and down my stomach, tracing the line of muscle before they stop.

She’s looking down. At the length of me straining against my shorts. As if it knows she’s watching, my cock twitches and pushes harder against the fabric, straining toward her, and I watch her lips part. The look on her face—want, curiosity—makes my cock throb so hard my vision blurs.

“Fuck, Sophie—” I kiss her again before I lose my mind entirely, her moan vibrating against my mouth. My hands slide beneath the hem of my shirt where it falls on her hips, finding warm skin, and she arches into my touch.

I pull back just enough to look at her. Her lips are swollen, her chest rising and falling too fast.