My knot isn’t fully swollen, but it’s thick enough. Still a stretch, still a strain for her smaller body to take. I meet resistance almost immediately. And this isn’t even the part that I’m worried about. It’s what comes next. When I finally come and my knot swells the rest of the way, locking us together—that’s when it will hurt. That’s the part I’m bracing for.
Noa is still writhing from the tail end of her release when her nails bite into my shoulders. Whether she’s trying to push me away or pull me closer, I can’t tell. I don’t stop. I keep pressing forward, easing through the resistance at her pussy’s entrance with slow, cautious thrusts.
“You can take me, baby,” I reassure her, skimming my lips down the side of her face, speaking the words near her ear. “You were built for me, remember? Fated to be mine. Soul, mind, and body.”
Her body yields just enough. She gasps when I finally breach, my half-swollen knot slipping into the space inside her that’sbeen waiting for it—waiting for the moment I can finally find my release and it can swell fully and truly lock us together.
That final push hasn’t happened yet, but it doesn’t matter. Already this has changed things. Being buried in her like this eclipses everything I thought I knew about pleasure. About how deep this connection can go. About what we’ve been missing out on.
I brace myself over her, elbows planted on either side of her head, and start to move again. Not deep, driving thrusts this time, but tight, shallow movements. Movements that allow the bulge of my knot to rub against places inside her that’ve never been stimulated before.
“Oh!” she cries at the new sensation, her thighs tightening around my hips. “Oh, fuck… that feels…” Words fail her, but they don’t need to be spoken. I hear and understand everything she leaves unsaid. Because I feel it too.
“That’s it, sweet one,” I encourage, voice low and rough. “Squeeze my knot.”
She does as she’s asked, her breathing changing once again as another storm begins to brew in her.
I’m close now too, hovering on the edge of that white-hot release I know is waiting for me. I cup her face between my palms and look down at her. Her eyes are squeezed shut, sensation devastating enough that she can’t keep them open, but I need to see her. Need that gaze locked on mine for what happens next.
“Look at me, Noa,” I order softly, but with enough command threaded through it to make her obey. Her eyes snap open, focus hazy for a second before clearing as they meet mine. “There you are…my little mate.”
She whines, the sound purely omega, and calling to my alpha nature and the beast battling beneath my skin, pacing as hewaits patiently for the moment I lock myself into the heaven between our mate’s thighs.
“You’re amazing,” I murmur just above her parted lips, our air mingling, then I drive forward one last time and come with a rough, torn snarl.
My release hits me hard, crashing through me in waves, my cock buried deep, the tip pressed tight to her womb as I fill her with my seed. At the same time, blood surges to my knot. With every rush of cum, it swells further. Claiming space her body doesn’t want to give at first.
My vision blurs, and euphoria like I’ve never known rushes through my veins so intensely it nearly steals my breath, my thoughts. I want to sink fully into it. I want to let it take me under. But I don’t.
I can’t afford to—not now—not when I need to stay present for her.
I know the second my throbbing knot reaches the point where it becomes too much for Noa. Her eyes flare wide, pupils blown so large they nearly swallow the color of her irises, her lip parting into a silentO. And then it swells past that.
Panic seizes her all at once.
My mate cries out, arms falling from my neck only to press against my chest. She shoves, legs scrambling beneath me like she might be able to push me away, to escape the stretch and pressure my knot is causing her.
“It’s too much,” she sobs, alarm clinging to every word, guilt and fear tearing straight through me. “It’s too— No, I can’t take it! Ren, you have to stop…it’s too much.”
“I know, baby, I know. I’m so sorry,” I sooth, still cupping her wildly shaking head between my hands. “I can’t stop. Not now. If I pull out, I’ll only hurt you worse—you could tear.”
But she’s not hearing anything I say.
She’s thrashing beneath me now, movements past the point of reason, past any concern for her own safety. She’s so consumed by the pain of being stretched wide that she isn’t aware of the damage she could do if she keeps fighting it—if she keeps fighting against the intrusion instead of relaxing into it.
Which is the opposite reaction a body is conditioned to do when faced with pain.
And I understand, more than ever, why people wait until they’re in a heat.
Seeing her like this is killing me.
“Noa, baby.Please.” I gather her up in my arms slipping them between her back and the mattress so I can hold her tight against me. I have to pin her with my body, using my weight to still her, to keep her from hurting herself. “I know it feels like too much—like you’re being torn apart—but you’re not. I promise you, sweet one, you’re not. You’re safe. I’m with you. Just breathe for me.Please.”
Her hips keep twisting beneath me, frantic attempts to dislodge herself, but there’s nowhere for me to go. My knot is fully inflated now, locked tight behind her pelvic bone. I won’t be able to pull free until it goes down, and since this is our first time, that could be a while yet.
The only thing keeping me tethered to my sanity for hurting her like this is knowing this pain is only temporary. An unavoidable initial reaction, but it will pass. Her omega instincts will take over and recognize this isn’t a violation or harm, but something her body was made to do. To accept the too-much fullness instead of rejecting it.
“It hurts,” she sobs, chest shuddering against mine.
