Page 137 of My Unhinged Alphas
Still. Quiet. Listening.
They kept their voices down, but this motel room is cheap and the walls are paper-thin and I know how to listen when it matters. And this? This mattered. Not because I cared about giving either of them privacy. Because I knew the minute Vale started talking that I was hearing something he’s never said in front of me.
His father. The fire. The scars. That hard, cold bastard who made a boy think surviving something was the same as failing it.
I lay there in the dark with my eyes half-open, staring at the ceiling and listening to Vale peel himself open one careful layer at a time for a girl he barely knows.
That part almost made me laugh.
Not the pain. The intimacy.
Vale, of all people, whispering pieces of himself into the dark like he’s in a confessional and she’s the only one who gets to hear it. If he knew I was awake for every word, he’d probably put a knife in me on principle.
What surprised me more was Lena.
She didn’t fumble it. Didn’t rush in with pity or panic or the usual soft, stupid things people say when they smell damage on somebody and don’t know what to do with it. She just stayed there with him.
And then she turned toward him.
I heard it before I fully saw it. The shift of fabric. The change in their breathing.
Vale went quiet in that specific way he does when he’s losing a fight inside himself.
I already know which way that fight ends. Earlier, I practically shoved him toward it. Practically had to pry his hands off his own guilt and put them on her myself. That was fun in its own way, watching him come apart because I made him. Watching him hate how much he wanted her and want her anyway.
But this?
This is better.
This time, I didn’t have to push. They found each other on their own.
That thought sits warm and wicked in my chest.
I smile into the dark.Sick little thing, aren’t you, Havoc?I think, and the answer is obviously yes.
Lena touches his face first. The scar. Of course she does. She goes right for the thing he thinks should drive everyone off and handles it like it’s just skin. Just him. Vale goes still enough that I know it hits him hard. Harder than anything he said out loud.
Then she kisses him.
Soft at first.
I can barely make them out, just pieces in the dark. The tilt of her head. The shadow of his hand lifting like he doesn’t quite trust it. But the sounds give them away easy enough. The low catch in his throat. Her breath going shallow. The quiet, slow drag of mouths learning each other again.
Vale’s always most interesting right at the edge of losing control.
And Lena, sweet little Lena who keeps insisting she’s nobody, she’s melting into him like she was made to be wanted hard.
I like seeing that. Maybe too much.
All her life, people looked through her. Past her. Set her down somewhere temporary and forgot to come back. And now she’s here, in the dark, with a man who can barely breathe around wanting her and another man lying awake close enough to hear every little sound she makes.
That kind of attention does something to a girl.
I can hear it doing it to her now.
The kiss gets wetter. Dirtier. Vale loses the thread of whatever noble intention he had and starts touching her like a man who’s been dying of thirst for years and just realized the glass in front of him is full. She makes these little sounds into his mouth that I can feel in my own blood, and when she starts working at his clothes, I have to bite back a laugh.
There he is, I think. There’s my penitent.
