The first time I saw him he was in the nude, and I devoured the sight of all that ink covering his delicious body. Today he’s dressed in a long-sleeved flannel opened over a T-shirt and paired with army green khakis. He’s covered up all that beautiful artwork, and I’m more than a little tempted to rip his clothing off just so I can spend more time drinking it in, drinking him in.
His signature mix of pine and patchouli threatens to overpower me and make me lose all my senses. Alpha Archer owns whatever room he’s in, including this one.
I step back and allow him to enter, but he keeps his place in the doorway.
“Are you ready to join the mile-high club?” he asks simply as a wide grin stretches from one cheek to the other.
His question has caught me so off guard, I’m unsure how to respond. “What’s that? Some sort of frequent flier thing?”
He snorts and reaches for both of my hands, pulling me toward him. “So, so innocent. I can’t wait to corrupt you.”
My heart picks up pace as his earthiness collides with my dessert-scented perfume. While the earlier moment with Ben was intense, it’s nothing next to the carnal attraction I feel for the man standing before me.
He says he’ll corrupt me, and I can’t wait for that to happen. Honestly, I’m half tempted to drag him over to the bed and invite him to ravish me until the sun goes down.
And that’s saying something, because the sun hasn’t set for almost two days now, thanks to the solstice. I’ve only been in Anchorage the better part of a week, and already I know that the land of the midnight sun is so much more than a cute nickname. In a place where the sun stays up past midnight and then wakes up again after only the briefest of absences, the entire world remains exposed, day in and day out. It’s impossible to hide, even from oneself.
Normally this realization sends me into a panicked spiral.
But here now with Archer, it hardly registers, not with him standing so close, with the two of us making skin-to-skin contact for the very first time. His fingers move up and trace delicately over the pulse point in my neck.
I say nothing, not wanting him to stop whatever it is he’s about to do.
He stoops his head and lowers his face toward his hand, toward my pulse, my skin.
When his tongue flicks against me, I gasp with an intense rush of pleasure.
“Mmm, you taste just like you smell. And cherry pie is my favorite dessert.” He licks me again, brushes his lips across my neck too. “I could eat it all fucking night long.”
To clear up any questions I might have had, he drops his hand, tracing a dangerous path across my breast, down my torso, and straight toward the aching spot between my legs. If it weren’t for the suppressant pill I took last night, I have no doubt that I’d be gushing cherry and vanilla slick right now. That my scent would cover him, announcing to the world that this alpha is mine, all mine.
“Jesus, what the fuck, Archer?” Noah growls from somewhere beyond us, bursting our steamy bubble of intimacy. His cayenne and cedar fragrance slams into us, overpowering Archer’s scent in my nostrils.
I leap away from the alpha and his hotness even though I’ve already been scalded.
“I was just getting to know our sweet little omega,” Archer answers, keeping his eyes glued to me the whole time. “And make no mistake, she is very sweet.”
Somehow I manage to stand my ground, even though my naughty traitor of a body is calling for him, begging him to come inside where he belongs.
He could eat it all fucking night.
Eat me.
Archer.
Fuuuuuck.
“That’s great, bro.” Noah’s voice suggests it’s anything but great. His hands tighten around the metallic water bottle he always has with him. “But you were supposed to be getting Violet so we can go. Not dry humping her in the middle of the living room.”
“We’re nowhere near the middle of the living room. We’ve barely left her bedroom, and if you ask me, we shouldn’t have left it at all.” He presses closer, moving only one inch more into my space, but it’s enough to elicit the reaction he wants. I suck in a quick breath and hold it, willing myself not to break, not to give in to him right here and right now. And especially not with Noah already miffed at the two of us.
My eyes zoom to the neatly made bed where my birth control treatments lie hidden just beneath the mattress. The idea of letting Archer claim me here crowds my mind, snuffing out the possibility of any other thought.
“Violet.” Noah growls my name for what I’m guessing isn’t the first time during this strange encounter. Everything about this alpha is spicy, from his temper right down to his peppery cologne.
“Huh?” I force my eyes away from my bedroom, bringing them to meet Noah’s. He was the first one I scented—cedar wood chips and cayenne—but our bodies have yet to speak to each other beyond that. What will it be like to feel his beard against my chin, to feel it down there? To have both of them? To have all of them?
Another thrill runs through me.