Chapter 12: Playing With Fire

Iris's POV

I woke up feeling warm.

It was the kind of warmth that sat under the skin and pulsed, that had been building all night while I slept in short broken stretches and woke up each time feeling worse than before. My top was sticking to me, the sheets felt like too much.

I pressed the back of my hand to my cheek and held it there. It was warmer than yesterday.

I took my morning suppressant with a full glass of water, stood at the window and breathed the cool air coming through the gap, and waited for it to start working.

It took the edge off. Not the edge I needed.

I went downstairs.

He was already at the counter when I came into the kitchen, coffee made, newspaper open, dressed like it was a regular Monday. He looked up when I appeared.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning." I went to the kettle.

The kitchen settled into the particular quiet of two people being careful. I made my tea. He turned a page. Outside the window the garden was grey and still, Sunday-morning quiet.

"No classes today?" he said.

"No classes this week." I kept my eyes on my mug. "Break before finals."

"Chloe mentioned that." He said.

"Yeah," I said. "Chloe and I were going to use it to study but she's not here.

"You can still study." He said.

"I am." I quickly.

He looked back at his paper. "What subject?"

"Mate Bond Theory." I said it and immediately wished I hadn't.

"That's a useful subject," he said.

"Yep, it is." I said.

He nodded once and looked back at his paper and I leaned against the counter and drank my tea and we existed in the same room without combusting, which felt like a minor victory.

I made toast, stood eating it at the counter the way I always did when it was just me. Outside a bird landed on the garden wall and sat there for a moment looking at nothing and then left.

The warmth under my skin had nothing to do with the kitchen temperature and everything to do with the two feet of space between us and the fact that his scent was wrapped up in my body.

I finished my toast and rinsed my plate.

"I'll be upstairs," I said.

"I'll be in the study." He got up.

I went upstairs.

I studied for a few hours and it mostly worked.

Mate Bond Theory, which was either the universe's cruelest joke or just very on-the-nose curriculum timing, and I took notes and highlighted and told myself it was just biology, just coursework, just words on a page. His voice drifted up once from a call below, low and unhurried, and I turned my music up until I couldn't hear it anymore.

At some point the light through the window shifted from grey to pale gold and my stomach told me it was afternoon. I went down to the kitchen.

He was at the table with something open on his laptop, coffee going cold beside him. He looked up when I came in.

"Hungry?" he said.

"I was going to make something." I said.

"There's some leftovers." He said. "The freezer, left side."

I found it, ztood at the stove while it heated, stirring it slowly.

"It's chicken noddles," I said, when it was ready. "I made enough."

He closed the laptop.

We sat across from each other at the table and ate and the quiet between us was different from the morning quiet, but quiet.

We finished eating in the quiet that had settled between us like something that had decided to stay.

By the time the light outside went from gold to grey I was back upstairs and the suppressant was fully wearing off and there was no comfortable position left in the world.

I lay on the covers and breathed through it, pressed a cold glass to the side of my neck, tried my laptop, which was useless, tried my phone, Chloe had sent three memes and a photo of her mother's cat and I sent back a laughing emoji and put the phone face down.

The heat was loud now.

I felt pain. The kind that lived deep in the hips and radiated outward, that made my skin feel like it belonged to someone who'd been running for days. My scent glands were pulsing. I could smell myself, sweet and thick and desperate and I knew that if there was an alpha anywhere in this building he could smell it too.

He was one floor below me.

I know,* I thought. I know. I'm not going down there.*

I pressed my face into the pillow.

My phone was on the nightstand. I could call someone from the programme, there were protocols, a registered contact list, safe alphas.

I picked up the phone, opened contacts, stared at the list and put it down.

I lay there for a long time. The dark settled fully outside the window. The house went quiet. The cedarwood scent drifted up through the floor and my body turned toward it the way it had been turning toward it for five days and I lay there and fought it and fought it.

I got up.

The study light was on.

A line of gold under the door, the only light in the dark hall. I stood outside it in my thin tank top and bare feet, my hands at my sides, my heart loud in my throat.

I knocked.

"Come in."

I pushed the door open.

He was in the chair, whiskey in hand, laptop on the desk. He turned when I stepped in and his eyes moved over me once and everything in his expression stilled.

"Iris." His voice was low.

I closed the door behind me.

"My suppressants stopped working," I said. "The refill didn't come. I've been managing but I can't..." I stopped. The next words came out raw and true and I couldn't help it. "I can't do this alone."

He hadn't moved. The glass in his hand was very still.

"You know what you're asking," he said.

"I know." I stepped closer. "I don’t care."

He stood and crossed the room slowly, all that Alpha presence filling the space between us until I couldn't breathe past it, until every nerve I had was pointing at him like he was the only thing in the room worth pointing at.

His hand came up and cupped my face and his thumb brushed my lower lip and I shuddered from my scalp to the soles of my feet.

"You're playing with fire, little Omega." He said quietly.

I tilted my chin up. "Burn me."

His hand cupped my face. His thumb brushed my lower lip. I shuddered again, my body responding before my mind could catch up.

"Once I start," his voice was rough, "I won’t stop."

I met his eyes. "I don’t want you to."