Each word strips away another layer of protection. All the careful planning, the months of research, the persona crafted specifically to interest a young Alpha collector with a passion for authenticity. All revealed as futile, transparent gambits he saw through from the start.
“If you knew, why play along?” My confusion bounces off the hard surfaces of the bathroom. “Why let me get close? Why let me—” Into your bed. Into your life.
The unfinished questions linger between us, heavy with the memory of skin on skin and secrets murmured into the dark.
“You’re a forgery expert.” Ezra takes another step, close enough now for the heat radiating from his body to reach me. “Iwanted to test your commitment to the role. How far you’d go for what you wanted.”
“Is that what I am to you? Another piece in your collection?” My fingers curl into fists at my sides, nails biting into my palms. “Another forgery to study and catalog and display?”
His pupils expand to swallow his golden-hazel irises. One hand rises, not to touch but to hover near my face, the promise of contact more devastating than actual connection.
“You’re the only original in a world of copies.” The words land soft as embers, burning where they touch. “Every persona you’ve created—Knox, Lorenzo, all of them—they’re just echoes of the real man beneath. The man only I can see.”
“You don’t see me.” Bitterness rises to be found playing the fool. “You see what you want. Some fabrication you invented before we even met.”
Ezra closes the last distance between us, and my back meets cold tile as I retreat. His arm braces beside my head, caging me without touching. His face lowers until our breaths mingle, until his oxygen fills my lungs.
“I saw you in that gallery a year and a half ago, staring at the artwork. Saw your fingers twitching, painting them in your mind.” An Alpha rumble rises from his chest, weakening my defenses. “I saw you shining through your disguise, the broken artist who chased someone else’s dreams.”
Heat spreads from my core outward, the flush having nothing to do with anger and everything to do with the proximity of his body and the sensation of being stripped bare by words alone.
“What do you want from me?” I ask hoarsely, my throat raw from emotion.
His lips curve with satisfaction tinged by hunger, victory shadowed by want. His free hand rises at last to touch my face, fingertips tracing the line of my jaw.
“I want what I’ve always wanted.” The confession burns between us. “Everything. The truth beneath the lies. The man beneath the masks. The forgery and the forger, the ghost and the man who gives it form.”
My pulse hammers in my throat, visible beneath skin too thin to contain the chaos within. His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth, a touch so light it might be imaginary if not for the current it sends racing through me.
“Just give up.” The caress of his fingers belies the steel beneath his words. “Because I’ll never let you go.”
“You can’t own people.” The protest sounds weak, undermined by my body leaning into his touch.
“I don’t want to own you.” His lips hover a breath from mine, not quite touching. “I want you to stop running from yourself. From this. From us.”
Between us, the air shivers with that quiet, fatal recognition shared between predator and prey in the instant before the hunt inevitably ends.
“You’re finally starting to understand,” he whispers a breath away from my lips, the almost-contact sending shivers cascading through me.
And I do understand. The exhibition. The forgeries displayed with reverence rather than scorn. My grandfather’s work, preserved and presented as art in its own right. The invitation to tonight. All of it was designed not to trap me, but to call me home.
To Ezra.
12
“Wait.” I hold up a hand, thoughts scrambling. “Give me a second to process?—”
Before I can complete the request, Ezra’s mouth captures mine with pure, raw possession that demands surrender with each sweep and retreat of his tongue. His hands frame my face, fingers sliding into Knox’s meticulously styled hair, destroying the persona with each touch.
And my body melts into his embrace like wax left too near a flame. I grip his lapels, pulling him closer. A needy sound escapes my throat, full of surrender, and his lips curve in satisfaction.
The taste of him floods my senses, making my head spin faster than any champagne ever could. His pheromones fill my lungs, his body molding to mine, all hard ridges and demand, sweeping away all reason with his desire, devouring me whole.
When he pulls back, his pupils are blown wide, with only a thin ring of gold-flecked hazel visible. He takes off my glasses, folding the stems and tucking them into my pocket.
“There you are,” he murmurs, echoing words from long ago, from another bathroom when he’d stripped away a different one of my masks.
Before I can respond, before I can rebuild the flimsiest of defenses, his hands drop to my waist, and the world tilts as he lifts me in one smooth motion.
