Page 10 of Heat Unscripted

The axe-throwing range had been my idea, which meant whatever happened was on me.

“Stress relief,” I’d told them in the booth on Thursday. “We get out of our heads, we throw sharp shit at wood until production stops screaming.” Cillian had lifted one pierced eyebrow, the look that meant he was filing it away to use against me later, and said nothing, which from Cillian counted as a yes. Isobel had laughed. That alone was worth the booking fee.

Which was how we found ourselves at Blade & Barrel, a warehouse that somebody had paid a fortune to make look cheap. The place hit me with sawdust first, raw and resinous, then stale beer and the cold tang of metal off the racks. Bodies underneath that, warm, moving, a Saturday crowd of birthday groups and corporate teams pretending they didn’t want to bury an axe in each other. My own scent, cedar and bourbon, settled into the room like it had a right to be there. Alpha in a place built around sharp edges and controlled violence. Fitting.

Cillian had parked himself against the far wall, tablet already out, the silver ring in his ear catching the lights when he tipped his head. He never threw. He just watched, dark eyes goingtarget to thrower and back, running numbers I’d never see. From here his scent was almost nothing, sandalwood and sage wound down tight, like the rest of him.

Isobel stood at lane seven with an axe that looked stupid in her hands, too big, like a kid holding a fire extinguisher. She’d shoved her glasses up into her hair. I’d told her that was a mistake. She’d waved me off. Her bun was already sliding toward collapse, and the gray sweater ate her shoulders the way all of them did, and under it she looked small enough that some dumb part of me wanted to stand between her and the whole room.

Professional respect. That’s what I called it. Years of working together built something, sure, but a work thing. A colleague thing. The fact that I knew exactly what color her eyes went in low light, that I’d noticed how her whole face rearranged itself when she laughed, the way her breathing changed when she locked in on a take, none of that meant anything. I noticed things. It was part of the job.

I came up beside her, kept a clean foot of space.

“First problem,” I said. “You’re holding it like it insulted your mum.”

“It’s an axe, Tuck.” She cut me a look, eyebrow up. “It doesn’t have opinions about my family.”

“It’s got opinions about your grip.” I reached over and moved her fingers on the handle without thinking. “Loose at the bottom, firm up top. You want control through the release, not a death grip the whole way.”

Her hands were smaller than I’d registered. Soft under my calluses, which didn’t square with the voices she pulled out of that throat, the snarling warlords, the queens who could stop a room. I held the contact a beat past anything the adjustment needed. Then a beat more.

Professional. This is professional.

“Stance now.” I stepped back and looked. Her feet were wrong, too close, weight loaded like she expected the axe to throw her instead. “Shoulder width. Lead foot up. You want to feel planted, yeah? Like nothing knocks you over.”

She shifted. Still off. Too careful. Too much head, not enough gut.

I moved without deciding to. Stepped in behind her, put my hands on her hips to walk them into line. My voice dropped into the flat, easy register I used for coaching falls.

“Here. Feel where the weight goes. Low and through the middle?—”

Her scent hit me.

Like a wall. No.Like a wave, breaking over my head, warm and sweet and right, and the back of my skull came awake with a focus I hadn’t felt in years.

Chamomile. Fresh cream. Not the flat chemical version I’d been getting off her for years. The real thing. Living and warm and close, cooked up by heat and effort, and under it, under the notes I knew, something new. Steamed milk and honey and Omega.

I went still.

My hands were still on her hips. My chest was an inch off her back. My nose, fuck, my nose had gone into her hair without asking me, that auburn mess that was always coming loose, and I was breathing her in like the air had run out everywhere else.

Everything went simple. The instinct came up through me like a tide, no argument in it. Mine. Old and stupid and certain, didn’t give a single fuck about professionalism or distance or the fact that none of this made sense. This one. This scent. Mine.

Under my hands she’d stopped breathing.

I couldn’t move. I just stood there with her flooding my system, my head trying to staple two facts together that wouldn’thold. The Beta I’d worked beside for years. The Omega I was currently inhaling like my life rode on it.

A hand landed on my shoulder.

Firm. Not rushed. It turned me off her with a steady pressure that didn’t leave room to argue. Cillian. His scent cut through the fog, sandalwood and sage, and it dragged me back from whatever ledge I’d walked out onto.

“Towel.” He already had one in his other hand, out toward her. “Spray’s in your bag. Front pocket.”

He was between us now. Just there. Made the gap and didn’t make a scene doing it. His eyes found mine, and what was in them wasn’t anger and wasn’t surprise. It was older than both.

It said,Not here.Not yet.

She took the towel. Her hands were shaking, I saw that. She pressed it to the back of her neck, then her wrists, fast, drilled. She’d done this before. A lot. In a lot of rooms where her scent had done something it wasn’t supposed to do.