Chapter 20: The Unspoken Question
The tray sat between them, a silent testament to the strange domesticity that had invaded the chaos.Crumbs of eggs flecked the plate. The water glass was empty, save for a single droplet clinging to the side. Aurora stared at it, at anything, really, to avoid looking at the man whose skin still smelled like her.
Rhys took the tray, his movements efficient.He set it on the floor.The space he cleared felt vast and dangerous.
She drew her knees up, wrapping her arms around them.The sheet slipped, pooling at her waist. The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin, a stark contrast to the furnace her body had been. The feverish, desperate haze was indeed receding, pulling back like a tide and leaving her beached, exposed, and startlingly clear-headed.She felt hollowed out. Sore in a deep, fundamental way.And sticky—dried sweat, his release, hers. It was a visceral catalogue of what they’d done.
He was just sitting there, forearms resting on his knees, looking at his own hands.The tattoos wound around his fingers, over his knuckles.A wrench. A set of gears.Work-rough hands that had just fed her.
“Rhys?” Her voice was a scrape.
“Hmm?”
“Will you…” She swallowed, gathering the frayed ends of her courage.“Will you stay? Even after… after this is totally over?”
His head lifted.His eyes, the color of a storm-packed sky, found hers. He didn’t answer immediately. He let the question hang in the sunlit room, heavy as the scent of sex and lavender.“You don’t even know me,” he said finally, not unkindly. A simple fact.“I know,” she whispered. “But I want to.”
He let out a long, controlled breath, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “Aurora, I walked in here two days ago looking for a quick, anonymous fuck. Because my last relationship ended with me finding another alpha’s scent all over my couch. I’m not… I’m not in a good place for promises.”
Her heart sank like a stone. She’d known it was a foolish hope. “Okay.”
“But,” he said, and the word cracked the air between them.He reached over, his hand covering both of hers where they gripped her shins. His skin was warm, his touch grounding. “I’m also not in a place where I can walk out that door and leave you like this.So, no.I’m not leaving. Not today.”
The relief was so profound it felt like a punch to the chest. A small, shuddering sob escaped her before she could choke it back.“Hey,” he murmured, shifting. He tugged her gently, unfolding her, pulling her across the bed until she was nestled against his side, her head tucked under his chin. His arm came around her shoulders, holding her with a firmness that felt like the walls of a fortress.“None of that. It’s just logistics.”
She breathed him in, her nose pressing against the column of his throat, near his scent gland. That dark, spicy, utterly masculine scent was now layered with something softer—her vanilla, their shared sweat. It was a new scent.Theirs. She felt him tense for a second, then relax, his chin settling on the top of her head.
“You should shower,” he said, his voice a rumble in his chest against her ear. “You’ll feel more human.”
“Will you…” she started, then bit her lip.
“Will I what?”
“Will you be here when I get out?”
His hand stroked down her arm, a slow, soothing pass.“Yeah. I’ll be here. I need to make a call to my shop, let them know I’m not coming in. But I’m not leaving.”
She nodded against his chest, letting the solid reality of him imprint itself on her.
Later, under the hot spray, she scrubbed away the physical evidence. Her body was a map of him—fingertip bruises on her hips, the faint, tender ache where his teeth had scraped, the deeper, internal soreness. She catalogued each one not with regret, but with a kind of awed reverence. The water sluiced away the stickiness, but it couldn’t touch the feeling of him still inside her, a phantom fullness.
Wrapped in a towel, her skin pink and steaming, she hesitated at the bathroom door.What if he’d changed his mind? What if the call to his shop had reminded him of the real world waiting?She opened the door.
He wasn’t in the bedroom.Panic, sharp and acrid, climbed her throat. She took a step into the hall, the floorboards cool under her feet.A low murmur came from the living room.
She padded down the short hall, peering around the corner.
Rhys stood by her small sofa, his phone to his ear. He was fully dressed now, in his jeans and a dark t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders.He’d found his boots.He looked… normal. Impossibly large and out of place among her throw pillows and pastel artwork, but normal. A man in her living room.“…just tell Marty to handle the BMW diagnostics,” he was saying. His voice was different.Commanding, competent.An alpha in his own territory. “Yeah, I’ll be out a few more days.Personal stuff… No, it’s fine. Just hold the fort.”
He listened, his gaze drifting over her bookshelf, landing on a small ceramic owl she’d painted in a childhood art class.A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips. “Uh-huh.Later, Mike.”
He ended the call and turned. His eyes found her immediately, standing damp and hesitant in the hallway.The storm in his gaze softened. “Feel better?”
She nodded, clutching the towel tighter at her chest. “You’re dressed.”
“I was thinking,” he said, slipping the phone into his pocket. He walked toward her, not with the predatory intensity of before, but with a measured, thoughtful stride. “Your heat’s backed off.You’re clean.You’re fed. The desperate part is done.” He stopped in front of her, looking down. “Which means if I’m gonna stay, we should do this right.”
“Do what right?”
“This.” He gestured vaguely between them. “I can’t just… lurk in your bedroom for the next three days waiting for your body to decide it’s done with me. That’s weird.”
A tiny, surprised laugh bubbled out of her. “It is a little weird.”
“So,” he said, that ghost of a smile returning.“I’m gonna go get my toolbox from my truck. And I’m gonna fix that dripping faucet you mentioned.And maybe see about that wobbly bookshelf. And then maybe we order some real food.Pizza. Or something.”
He was going to fix her faucet.After everything.The absurdity and profound sweetness of it made her eyes sting.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” he said. He reached out, not for her body, but to tuck a strand of wet hair behind her ear. His thumb brushed her cheekbone.“But it gives me something to do with my hands. And it gives you a minute to… I don’t know.Put on some clothes.Breathe. Remember what it’s like to not have an alpha buried inside you.”
His bluntness, delivered with such casual grace, sent a hot flush across her skin that had nothing to do with her heat.
“Okay,” she breathed.“Okay.” He dropped his hand.“I’ll be right back. Don’t bolt the door.”
She watched him walk to the front door, his broad back filling the frame. He paused, looking back at her over his shoulder. For a moment, the facade of casual normalcy slipped. She saw the same raw conflict from earlier, the war between his instinct to stay and his desire to run.His jaw tightened.
Then he pulled the door open and stepped out into the daylight, leaving her standing in the quiet, sun-dappled hall, the scent of him lingering in the air, a promise he hadn’t yet put into words but was already building with his hands.