"You can." His thumb pressed harder, faster, his hips grinding up into me, the knot hitting that spot over and over, and his voice dropped to something rough and tender at once, a command wrapped in a caress. "Let go. I've got you. I'll always have you. Now let go."
I let go.
The orgasm tore through me, my body locking up around his knot, every muscle seizing, my vision going white and then black and then nothing at all. I was screaming—or trying to, but the sound that came out was barely human, a keening wail that broke into sobs halfway through. My body convulsed around him, clenching and releasing in rhythmic waves that went on and on, each one dragging another pulse of his release from him until I could feel it filling me, overflowing, dripping hot down my thighs and pooling on the blanket beneath us.
"Alpha—" The word ripped from somewhere deep and primal, my body was convulsing, out of my control, my fingers clawing at his shoulders, his neck, anything I could reach. "Alpha, please—I can't—I can't stop—please—" I was babbling, my face wet with tears and sweat, my body clenching around his knot in rhythmic waves that wouldn't stop, each one pulling a broken whimper from my throat.
"I know, sweetheart." His arms wrapped around me, pulling me against his chest, holding me while I fell apart in his lap. His voice had changed—the feral edge gone, replaced by something devastated and awed, like he was watching something sacred. "I know. I've got you. You're so good. So perfect. My brave, beautiful omega."
I was crying. Really crying—ugly, heaving sobs that shook my entire body, tears and sweat and slick making a mess of us both. Not from pain. From the sheer overwhelming enormity of it—the pleasure, the intimacy, the vulnerability of being this completely undone by another person. My fingers twisted in his hair, clutching him like he was the only solid thing in a world that had dissolved.
"There you go," he murmured against my temple, his lips pressing gentle kisses to my damp skin, his hands stroking my back in long, soothing passes even as his knot still pulsed inside me. "That's my girl. That's my omega. You did so good. I've got you. I'm right here."
"Still think you're done?" he whispered against my temple, his lips barely moving, his arms still locked around me like he was afraid I'd dissolve if he let go. There was no smugness in it—just wonder, and tenderness, and something that sounded like a man who'd been brought to his knees by the person in his arms.
"Shut up," I sobbed into his neck, my teeth grazing his bite mark, my body still twitching with aftershocks. I felt his chest shake with a wet, exhausted laugh beneath me, his arms tightening briefly, his nose pressing into my hair.
"Now," he breathed, his hand sliding up to cradle my jaw, tilting my face toward his neck, his pulse hammering beneath the skin. His whole body was trembling—not from exertion anymore, but from emotion, raw and uncontrolled, the mountain stripped to bedrock. "Bite me when I bite you. Has to be together. Has to be?—"
I felt his teeth press against the junction of my neck and shoulder—not gentle, not tentative, the sharp points denting my skin, pressing harder. I turned my head and found the same spot on him, the thick muscle where his neck met his shoulder, his scent so concentrated there it made my head spin. My teeth found purchase, pressing in, feeling the heat of his skin, his pulse hammering wild against my tongue.
We bit down at the same moment.
The world went white.
His heartbeat slammed into me like a second pulse, thundering alongside my own in a syncopated rhythm that made my whole body vibrate. His emotions crashed through me in a flood—raw and unfiltered, bigger than words—and I couldn't separate them from mine, couldn't tell where his wonder ended and my terror began, couldn't find the edges of myself.
I tasted copper on my tongue—his blood, warm and metallic, mixing with my own saliva—and felt the sting at my own throat where his teeth had broken through. The pain was distant, almost irrelevant, drowned out by the tidal wave of everything else. The marks would scar. Would stay forever.
When the white faded, I didn't know where I was. Not at first. My body was still in his lap, still knotted to his, but everything felt different—heavier, fuller, like the air itself had changed composition. His arms were locked around me, his face buried in my hair, and he was making a sound I'd never heard from him before—a low, continuous rumble in his chest that was half-growl, half-purr, something purely Alpha and purely instinctive.
"Fuck,"he managed eventually, the words muffled against my hair, his whole body still quaking. "That was... I didn't know it would be like that."
"Me neither." I pulled back just enough to press my lips to the bite mark I'd left on his throat—already raised and reddening, the edges of it starting to scar—and felt him shudderbeneath me, a full-body tremor that made his knot shift inside me and pulled a weak whimper from us both. "You okay? You haven't stopped shaking."
"I'm good." His hand found my spine, stroking slow and steady, tracing the bumps of each vertebra, his touch gentle now in a way that made my throat ache. His voice was hoarse, scraped down to nothing. "Better than good. Just... a lot."
"Yeah." I let out a breath that was half laugh, half hiccup—my body still trying to sort out whether it wanted to cry or laugh or come again. I pressed my cheek against his chest, feeling the sweat-damp hair tickle my skin, his heartbeat thumping steady and strong beneath my ear. "A lot is right."
His knot pulsed inside me, keeping us sealed, his release still filling me in slow, heavy spurts. Something hummed between us—warm and unfamiliar, a presence in my chest that hadn't been there an hour ago.
"Harper." I lifted my head, propping my chin against his collarbone. His eyes were glassy and wet, his cheeks tracked with tears he didn't seem aware of, his jaw damp. I reached up to brush one away with my thumb, feeling the rough grain of his skin beneath my fingertip. "You're crying."
"So are you," he pointed out, one corner of his mouth lifting in a rueful half-smile. His hand came up to mirror the gesture, his calloused thumb wiping the tear from my cheekbone with a gentleness that didn't match the bruises he'd left on my hips.
"Fair point." I kissed him—soft and quick, tasting salt on his lips, feeling the slight tremble still running through his jaw. "No telling Remy." I tapped his chest with one finger, trying for stern, probably landing somewhere closer to delirious. "He'll never let us live it down."
Harper laughed, a real laugh, the sound rumbling through his chest and into mine, vibrating through where we were stilljoined. "Deal." He sealed it by pressing his lips to my forehead, lingering there, his breath warm against my skin.
We stayed like that as the candles burned low, as his knot slowly softened and slipped free, as the wet rush of everything he'd left inside me spilled between my thighs and soaked into the blanket beneath us.
Tomorrow, I would bond with Remy. The day after, Silas.
Tonight, in this room that smelled of oak and smoke and sex and us, I let myself exist only in this moment. Harper's arms around me, his heartbeat under my cheek, the sting of the bite mark on my throat that would scar into something permanent.
"Stop thinking so loud," Harper mumbled, his voice thick with approaching sleep, his hand heavy and warm where it had stilled on my back. "I can almost hear it."
"That's creepy." I poked his ribs, feeling him twitch, the muscles jumping under my finger.
