His Omega, His Ruin

Skin Hunger

We left a trail of wet footprints and crushed leaves across the marble foyer, and for the first time since arriving at Blackwood, I didn't flinch at the mess.

The chase had broken something open inside me. Shattered the terrified Omega who spent her life apologizing for existing, and replaced her with someone who understood the wildness of the man walking beside her. Magnus's arm was clamped around my waist—warm and heavy and constant—as we climbed the stairs. Not dragging. Not demanding. Just present, as if releasing me was a concept his body had not yet accepted.

The fever that had driven him to the edge had settled into a simmering heat that radiated from him like a second sun. Not dangerous anymore. Just alive.

Inside the master suite, the air still held the traces of his earlier distress, but now it was layered with the scent of the night garden and the rain on our skin. Magnus guided me to the bathroom without speaking. He turned the taps on the massive soaking tub, and steam rose immediately, soft and heavy, curling around us like a veil being drawn.

He turned to me.

His hands moved to the buttons of his shirt—the one I was still wearing—and his fingers trembled slightly. Not from weakness. From restraint. He peeled the wet fabric from my shoulders with a slowness that made my breath catch, his eyes moving over my skin with an expression that made me feel, for the first time in my life, like something truly worth looking at.

He stripped the ruins of his own torn shirt next and stepped into the water first, the heat rising in visible waves. He sat back against the dark stone and extended his hand to me.

I stepped in.

The water was scalding and perfect. I settled between his legs without hesitating, leaning back against the solid wall of his chest. His arms wrapped around me beneath the surface—skin against skin, warmth against warmth—and I let out a long, shuddering breath as the heat reached my bones.

The silence between us was full. Not empty.

He reached for a soft cloth and a bar of soap that smelled of sandalwood and cream, worked it into a slow lather, and began to wash my shoulders. He didn't rush. He moved in long, deliberate circles, the cloth tracing the line of my collarbone, the slope of my arm, the tender skin of my palms. Every touch erased something. Some small memory of hands that had pushed instead of held, that had taken instead of given.

I closed my eyes and let him.

The sound of the water against the stone. The heat. The unhurried weight of his attention—all of it was overwhelming in the best possible way, like drinking water after a drought.

I turned in his arms.

I needed to touch him back. Needed to feed something that had been hollow in me for too long. I took the cloth from his hand and pressed it to his chest, tracing the history of violence written in his scars with a touch that I hoped communicated what I couldn't say aloud. He groaned quietly, his head falling back against the rim of the tub. His throat worked as he swallowed. The steam had dampened his hair, curling it at his forehead, and his lashes were spiked with moisture. He looked devastatingly undone—a king reduced to nothing but a man who simply wanted to be cared for.

"I have never been touched like this," he admitted. His voice was rough and slow, like the words were being dredged from somewhere deep. "I am used to hands that take. Hands that want power. But your hands..." He stopped my movement, curling his fingers around my wrist. He brought my wet hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the center of my palm, then to the frantic pulse at my wrist, his lips warm and deliberate.

His golden eyes opened against my skin.

Dark with a need that went far beyond the physical—a deep, hollow ache that matched something I had carried my entire life.

"I have been empty for a very long time," he whispered against the inside of my wrist, his teeth grazing the delicate vein there. The sensation rolled through me in a slow, molten wave. "But with you—" His gaze lifted to mine, burning and certain. "I am starving."

I leaned in and closed the distance between our mouths, and the water rose around us as he pulled me into his lap and kissed me like the answer to a question he had been asking for years.