Page 7 of Rebound My Alpha
My legs give out about three seconds after the lock clicks.
I slide down the back of the door and hit the floor. I’m shaking. My jeans are a wet, sticky mess. My lips taste like Knox’s blood. The hallway reeks of us—his scent and mine tangled together, soaked into the walls, my clothes, my skin.
I was supposed to destroy him. That was the whole plan. Open the door, deliver the line, slam it shut, walk away victorious. Instead, I came in my pants in under a minute with my teeth in his shoulder, and now I know. My body knows. The way Jude’s body knew, the way Milo’s body knew. That thing thatcompletely hijacked their lives. The thing that made them look at their alphas like the rest of the world stopped existing.
My instincts are screaming it, and I refuse to say the word because saying it makes it real. Mine is Knox. The one alpha on this planet who already proved he’ll leave before sunrise.
My hands are trembling in my lap. I stare at them, willing them to stop. They don’t. My body is still buzzing, oversensitive and wired, the orgasm aftershocks mixing with whatever the hell is happening to my nervous system. The hallway won’t stop smelling like him—warm, dense, something my body keeps leaning toward even though he’s on the other side of a locked door.
I can still feel where his hands were on my waist, the bruise-pressure of his fingers. I can still feel his mouth on my neck, the teeth that didn’t close. And deep in my chest, there’s this low, satisfied hum that makes me want to punch a hole in the drywall, because absolutely nothing about this should feel satisfying.
My phone buzzes somewhere in the living room. I don’t get up.
I sit on the floor, smelling him on my own skin, and hate how much it feels like the exact thing I’ve been missing.
Knox
Imake it exactly half a block before my legs stop fucking cooperating.
It isn't a conscious decision. I don't stop and gaze up at the building like some kind of romantic movie bullshit. My boots just quit moving. I stand there on the sidewalk in jeans that smell like another man's slick, and my brain hits a brick wall.
I turn around, walk back to the front steps, and sit down.
The concrete is freezing. My jeans are a situation I'm actively choosing to ignore. If I think about the fact that I just came in my pants in a hallway while an omega I ghosted months ago ground his cock against my thigh, I’m going to have to figure out why it was the best fucking orgasm of my life. I don't do that. I don't sit with shit. But the night air is cool, Benji's scent is still burning in my lungs, and my body refuses to leave.
Every time I think about standing up and walking to the subway, something pulls tight in my chest. I keep catching myself leaning back toward the building. Toward him. Toward whatever the hell happened at that door when his scent hit me and my brain short-circuited.
The light is on in one of the third-floor windows. His window. The smart move is to go home, take a shower, and pretend this was just a weird night. That's my move. Walk away clean. No mess. I’ve been running that play for years.
My ass stays on the concrete.
I sit there running the same broken loop—he catfished me, it was Benji, I came like a fucking teenager—until footsteps click up the sidewalk. Keys jingle. Someone stops a few feet away.
I look up. There's an omega standing there with his keys clutched in his fist, looking mildly homicidal. Tall, sharp cheekbones, tight curls. He has the kind of posture that says he’s never been intimidated by an alpha in his life. I don't know him, but the way he’s looking at me says he knows exactly who I am.
He takes me in—the alpha on his steps, the smell of sex and Benji's scent rolling off me, my face. His expression goes from suspicious to ice-cold in a fraction of a second.
"You're Knox." Not a question.
"Yeah."
"The one who ghosted Benji."
My usual move is to flash a smirk and deflect, but I can't find the grin. "Yeah," I say, quieter than I mean to.
He shifts his weight. His face goes completely still. "You know what I think? I think you came here expecting easy, and whatever happened up there wasn't easy, and now you're sitting on my steps looking sorry for yourself instead of leaving like you should."
"I'm not sorry for myself."
"Then what are you doing here?"
I look at the sidewalk, then back up at him. The honest answer slips out before I can coat it in bullshit. "I can't leave."
It hangs there, heavy and pathetic. I try to add a joke, a smirk, anything, but my filter is shot. I just told a stranger the truest thing I've said in six months.
His eyes narrow. He’s not impressed, but something shifts. "If you hurt him again," he says, his voice dropping low enough to rattle my spine, "I won't come out here for a conversation. We clear?"
"Clear."
