It takes me a moment upon waking to remember where I am.
The sheets are brighter than mine—soft, lavender linens beneath a plush, plum comforter. I don’t immediately open my eyes; the events of last night and every moment of what Mackenzie and I have done plays in full HD behind my eyelids, and every worry and cause for hesitation that I’d thrown out the window when she’d kissed me comes rushing back with the clarity that morning brings. Despite the admittedly incredible night I had, I can’t help but worry about how complicated things will be now.
I open my eyes slowly, warily, reaching to my left until my hands meet cold sheets. I blink up at the ceiling in surprise for a moment before lifting my head to find the bed empty. I sit up slowly to glance around Mackenzie’s tiny studio, seeing no trace of her in the living room or the kitchen and realizing I’m alone.
What the hell?
Swinging my legs over the side of the bed, my feet hit the wood floor briefly as I bend to snatch up my pants and fish out my forgotten phone from the pocket. I still have an hour until my shift starts, which is plenty of time, really, but it’s unlike me to sleep in this much. Honestly, I can’t think of a single time in my life when I slept as well as I did last night, and I can’t pretend that my restful night isn’t one hundred percent because of the brazen omega whose mouth I can still taste and whose body I can almost feel still pressed against me.
My entire adult life I have given little thought to the more explicit bits of my biological makeup—I mean, it’s hard to miss the idea of knotting when it can only be done with some near-mythical counterpart. One I have near zero chances of meeting, anyway. I assumed it was all just some hormonal nonsense that was made to sound much better than it actually was, probably.
That is . . . until Mackenzie Carter fell into my lap. Literally. Fuck. I can still feel her when I close my eyes, still hear the soft sounds she’d made when I’d buried myself inside her. I can honestly say that there is nothing in my life that can compare to it.
And I think it’s exactly that fact that has me so concerned.
There’s no chance that we can carry on our simple agreement after a night like that. It seems impossible to me that we could spend time together ever again without feeling some urge to succumb to our baser selves now that we’ve both had a taste for it, and won’t that make everything we’re trying to accomplish that much harder? I can barely even think right now without flashes of a soft, naked Mackenzie panting beneath me, her scent haunting me even now.
Surely she must be in a similar predicament. That has to be why she’s made herself scarce before I could even wake up. She must be out of her mind worrying that I’ll get caught up in some primal alpha ridiculousness, that I’ll start stalking her in hallways asking her to take my last name or something. Christ. She’s probably going to call the whole thing off. She’s going to delete my number and pretend we never met. She’s going to—
“Morning,” the omega in question calls brightly from the other side of her bedroom, stepping out of a door I hadn’t noticed before with a towel wrapped around her hair. “Thought you were going to sleep all day. I was wondering how many heart attacks you would cause and then have to fix when you showed up late for the first time ever.”
“I—” I can feel my mouth opening and closing like a goldfish. “Morning.” I’m distracted all over again by the sight of her in nothing but a bra and her scrub pants, her skin pink and fresh from a shower and her smile bright as she closes the distance from what I assume is her bathroom to plop down on the other side of the bed. “Did you . . . sleep okay?”
“Like a log,” she laughs. “You’re kind of cushiony under all the muscle. What about you? I was surprised you’re not a snorer. I had you pegged as one.”
I can feel myself gaping a little still, her completely normal attitude taking me by surprise. Hadn’t I been worried about everything going to shit only a minute ago? But here she is, acting like nothing even happened.
“I slept fine,” I tell her, watching her as she casually undoes the towel from her head and begins to comb through the wet strands that fall tantalizingly over her breasts, which I can almost still feel against my hands and tongue. “Very good, actually.”
“Told you so.” She stops what she’s doing to crawl over the bed, pushing up to press her mouth to mine. “Sex addenda are great.”
I don’t know what surprises me more, her casual demeanor, or the way that I melt into her kiss even after all my worrying only moments ago. Her fingers slide across my jaw to hold me close, a smile at her lips when she breaks away to linger near my mouth.
“Yes,” I murmur. “Great.”
She gives me another quick peck before pulling away entirely. “You’d better get in the shower. I think someone really will pass out from shock if you’re late.”
She saunters from the bed to grab her top from where it’s draped over a nearby chair by the window, pulling it on unceremoniously before giving me a wink.
“At least you won’t have to scent me anytime soon,” she teases.
I watch her disappear into the bathroom again before a hairdryer sounds only seconds later, feeling exponentially more confused than I had when I woke up. It seems that I had been worried for nothing.
And why is that even more concerning?
* * *
?My confusion ends up coloring the rest of my day, as I find myself out of sorts from the moment Mackenzie and I part ways at her apartment. I’ve tried my best to go about business as usual, but besides the confounded state of my brain in regard to Mackenzie and what we did and what it means—there is also the all-too-vivid memory of the actual act that is doing its best to ensure I can’t focus today.
Because in every quiet moment there is the echo of Mackenzie’s gasps, her soft moans, and in each instance that I find myself alone there is the expression on her face when I pushed inside her waiting to throw off my day, the way she’d felt around me threatening to make me hard all over again in the most inappropriate of circumstances.
It’s almost unfair, how easy she seems to be handling it. Especially since it was me who’d made such a fuss about complicating things to begin with.
I’m packing these tangled thoughts away for what must be the dozenth time since I got into work this morning, forcing myself not to scan the halls again for a familiar figure, knowing that she has no reason to visit this floor in the first place.
I focus instead on my clipboard, which contains the chart of the pre-op consult I’m going to meet, frowning when I notice it’s one of Dennis’s patients. I’m not exactly pleased to have another reason for him to come visit my office. Still. I guess that’s just the job.
The door is already ajar when I locate the correct room number, and I give it a light knock before stepping inside and pasting on my best attempt at a smile.