Page 87 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“—arrogant—”

Again.

“—spoiled—”

Again.

“—brat—”

The final jab lands with enough force to push me back half a step. Her finger stays there, pressed to my sternum, and I can feel the heat of it bleeding through the cotton of my shirt, burning into my skin like a brand.

“—who hasn’t done a proper day’s work in his life.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

Her finger is still on my chest. I can feel the pressure of it. Her chest is heaving, and there’s color high on her cheeks—the deep, vivid flush of genuine fury.

She’s close now. So close that I can see the darker flecks scattered through the brown of her irises, the slight part of her full lips where her breath is coming fast, the rapid flutter of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. So close that if I leaned forward even slightly, my mouth would be on hers.

I want to kiss her.

The thought lands with such clarity that it almost knocks me backward.

I glance at her lips, pink and looking impossibly soft, wanting to kiss her the way she just spoke to me—hard and relentless and without a shred of restraint.

No one talks to me like that. No one has ever talked to me like that. Not my employees, not my competitors, not even my packmates, who know me better than anyone alive. They all keep their distance, all measure their words, all handle me with the careful deference they think I require.

And this woman just called me a spoiled brat with her finger in my chest, and every nerve ending in my body is on fire.

Slowly, I close my hand around hers, trapping it against my chest.

Her breath catches, a small, involuntary hitch she tries to cover and can’t.

Her eyes snap to mine, wide and startled. The anger is still there, burning bright. But her weight shifts toward me, just slightly.

“Are you done?” I ask softly.

She doesn’t pull her hand away.

Her eyes drop to my mouth. One second. Two.

I bring my other hand up and close it around her free wrist. Her pulse hammers beneath my fingertips—fast, erratic, nothing like the controlled, steady rhythm she presents to the world.

“You know,” I murmur, “I generally don’t like it when people touch me without my permission.” My thumb traces a slow circle against the inside of her wrist, and she softens by a fraction, so slight that if I weren’t holding her I’d have missed it entirely. “Or shout at me.”

Her lips part before she catches it. The anger in her eyes is flickering now, warring with something else, and her breath comes shallow and fast.

She wants me.

“Somehow,” I say, and my voice drops to a whisper, “I don’t mind it when you do it.”

She trembles. A full-body shiver that starts at the wrist I’m holding and radiates outward, and I feel it move through her like a current, and the last of my restraint goes with it.

“But I think,” I murmur, leaning closer, until my mouth is beside her ear and I can feel the warmth of her skin against my lips, “I need to punish you for it.”

Then I kiss her.

My mouth crashes into hers and she kisses me back instantly, like we’ve both been holding ourselves back by a thread that just snapped. The sound she makes against my lips—a sharp, desperate gasp that vibrates through my entire body—obliterates every rational thought in my head. She kisses me like she’s angry about it, like she hates that she wants this, and the raw, furious hunger of it nearly takes my knees out from under me. She tastes like coffee and fury and something underneath that is just her, dark and sweet and devastating. Her free hand fists in the front of my shirt and pulls me closer, and everything in me goes electric.