His scent filled the room in under 3 seconds, my cock was half-hard before I’d finished my next breath, and I was sitting in a doctor’s office in yesterday’s joggers with no way to hide what was happening between my legs.
Fantastic.
Really just a perfect start to whatever this was gonna be.
“Damjan, sit down,” Dr.
Vos said behind me.
“And close the door.” “I’m not— I’m not staying.” “You are.
Sit down and close the door.” I heard it shut, heard his footsteps cross the room, 2, 3, then they stopped and I knew he’d caught my scent properly ’cause the sound he made wasn’t a word; it was a breath pulled in hard through his nose and held, and the silence after it was the loudest thing I’d ever sat inside.
He sat across the room, not next to me, his chair scraped as far from mine as the office allowed.
I still hadn’t turned around.
“Nico, look at me.” “I’m good.” “You’re staring at a filing cabinet.” “It’s a nice filing cabinet.” “Nico.” I turned and my eyes hit Kessler’s and my stomach dropped so fast I tasted bile.
He looked wrecked, his hands gripping the armrests hard enough that the plastic creaked under his fingers, nostrils flared, jaw locked, the scar through his left eyebrow pulled tight.
His grey eyes were fixed on me, violent and desperate, both at once, and I couldn’t hold it so I looked at the floor instead ’cause looking at him while my body was reacting felt too much like standing naked in front of somebody who could see every part of me I hadn’t found yet.
“I’ve— I’ve told Nico about his designation,” Dr.
Vos said, her voice steady and controlled because she was working very hard to keep the room from catching fire.
“He knows he’s presenting.
He knows about the heat cycle, and he knows what you are.” Kessler didn’t speak, didn’t move, just sat there breathing and I could hear his pulse from 6 feet away, fast and heavy.
“Damjan.” “I heard you.” “There’s more, and you need to hear it too.” She paused.
“They’re compatible, scent-matched and his body is already bonding.” I watched Kessler’s face and I wished I hadn’t ’cause what happened to it wasn’t anger, nor shock, but it was fear, the deep kind that lives in your bones and doesn’t answer to logic, and the colour drained from his skin so fast I had to look away.
His hands came off the armrests, went to the back of his neck, gripped hard.
“No,” he said.
“It’s not a choice, Damjan.
The bonding is biochemical, it’s—” “No.” “—already in progress.
His scent markers have shifted to match your—” “I said NO.” His voice cracked the room open, loud enough that my shoulders flinched, and he was on his feet with his chair knocked back against the wall, chest heaving, the veins in his forearms standing out.
Dr.
Vos didn’t flinch, didn’t stand, she just looked up at him with steady eyes.
“Sit down.” “You don’t understand what you’re asking.” “I’m not asking anything yet.
I’m telling you what’s happening so we can manage it.” “Manage it?” He laughed and the sound was ugly, slightly broken.
“You want to— you want to manage it?
Fine, send him home, just send him back to England, get him out of this country, get him away from me before I—” “Before you what?” The question landed, and Kessler’s mouth closed, his jaw working.
He looked at me for half a second, his eyes sweeping down to my throat, my chest, lower, then snapping back up, and what I saw in that look was hunger, shame braided so tight together they were the same thing.
I had to look away.
“Before you what, Damjan?” Dr.
Vos said again, quieter.
“You know what my father was.” “Yes.” “Then you know why this can’t happen.” The room went still, and I was sitting between them, not understanding the full weight of it but feeling it, this cold pressure in the air.
Whatever Kessler’s father was, whatever that history meant, it was the thing living behind every stay away, every fisted hand, every no he’d ever given me.
“Your father was a specific man who made specific choices,” Dr.
Vos said.
“You aren’t him.” “You don’t know that.” “I’ve known you for 6 years.
I know exactly that.” “You’ve known me managed, controlled, 14 years of control, Lina, and you’re sitting there telling me my body is bonding to a 22-year-old who’s about to go into his first heat, and I can smell him through walls, across car parks, in my SLEEP…” He stopped, pressed his shaking hand flat against his thigh to kill the tremor.
“If I go near him during a heat, I won’t stop, and I need you to hear me say that, I will not be able to stop.” “That’s not true.” “It IS true.
It was true for my father—” “Your father didn’t want to stop.
There’s a difference.” Kessler went quiet, and I sat there with my skin on fire, the sweet scent pouring off me in waves I couldn’t control, and this man, this huge, terrifying, controlled man was standing across the room shaking ’cause he was scared of what he might do to me.
I should’ve been scared too, honestly.
I kept waiting for the fear but it didn’t come, not of him.
What scared me was how badly I wanted to close the distance between us despite every word he’d just said.
Which was kinda the whole problem, wasn’t it?
My body didn’t care about his father or his 14 years of control, my body just wanted him closer.
“Nico,” Dr.
Vos said, and I jumped ’cause I’d half-forgotten she was there.
“You’ve been quiet.” “I’m, like…
I’m processing, just give me a second.” “Do you have questions?” “About 40.” “Start with one.” I looked at Kessler.
He was still standing against the far wall, chest rising and falling, hands pressed flat against his thighs, his eyes on the floor ’cause he couldn’t look at me anymore.
I understood the cost of every glance now, the understanding didn’t make it easier, it just made it worse.
“The bonding,” I said.
“Can it be broken?” Dr.
Vos hesitated, just a fraction too long.
“Not once it completes.” “How far along is it?” “Early, but accelerating.” “If I leave,” I said.
“If I go back to England, get away from him.
Does it stop?” Kessler flinched.
A full-body twitch he tried to crush but couldn’t, and he still wasn’t looking at me.
“It would slow,” Dr.
Vos said.
“Possibly stall, but incomplete bonds don’t resolve cleanly.
There would be withdrawal for both of you, pain, insomnia, loss of function, and it can last months.” “So I’m…
trapped?” “You have options, they’re just not easy ones.” I laughed and it came out wrong, too high, too tight.
“Brilliant.
So my body’s decided it belongs to a man I’ve known for 4 days, I’m about to go into a heat I can’t manage alone, and the one person my biology says can help is standing across the room telling you he’ll turn into his dad if he touches me.
That about covers it?” “That’s not what I said,” Kessler said, voice raw.
“It’s what you meant.” “You don’t know what I meant.” “Then tell me.” I was on my feet now, didn’t remember standing, the room was too small, his scent everywhere, my body pulling toward him, and I could NOT make it stop.
“Stop talking to her and talk to me.
I’m the one going through this, I’m the one whose body is, I mean…
you owe me that much, Kessler.” He looked at me then.
Full on, no flinching, grey eyes wet and burning, and his mouth opened, then Dr.
Vos’s phone rang.
She glanced at the screen, and her expression shifted.
“I have to take this.
Stay here, both of you.” She stepped into the corridor, the door clicking shut behind her.
The room was just us now; 8 feet of clinical air between us, his scent and mine braiding together in the small space, and his hands were shaking at his sides, my hands were shaking at mine too.
Neither of us moved, and the only sound was breathing, his and mine, and I could feel it happening, my heartbeat slowing, syncing to his, my body tuning itself to his frequency without my permission.
I couldn’t stop it.
I didn’t even know if I wanted to.
“Nico,” he said.
First time.
4 days of Wray, of surname, distance, walls, and he said my name, just my name, and the sound of it in his mouth, in that accent, low, wrecked, tender, and it undid me, right in the chest, something I was NOT gonna be able to put back together.
“Nico,” he said again, softer, and took a step forward.