I whimpered as the first rush of heat warmed me from the inside.
Kade didn’t stay in the chair. I felt his large, calloused hand wrap around my ankle, pulling my leg tighter around Dane’s waist, his low growl a second heartbeat in the room that pushed me over the edge as Dane claimed my soul.
“Mine,” Dane growled, his teeth nipping at my neck. He held me down by my waist, thrusting up into me. My head lolled onto his chest and he held me close. Darkness closed in, and I was powerless to fight it. I swear I hear the impossible before it takes me.
Mate.
Fall
Weight pinned me to the bed, but it was the heat burning low in my belly that woke me. I couldn’t smell the thick, Alpha musk that surely saturated every inch of this room, but I felt the heavy humidity of his breath against my inner thighs.
A spark at my clit and a tension that threatened to break the spell keeping me under. My nipples were wet and hard. Lewd sounds followed by a growl tightened everything. My breathing spluttered as something hard pressed into my backside. Instead of fear, there was pleasure. I arched my back, straining my neck to look down the length of my body. My vision blurred as I blinked, a large arm across my stomach, holding me down. A head of hair sat between my spread legs, my hips raised.
“Dane,” I moaned.
My voice sounded foreign even to me. Somewhere in the dark corners of my mind, a word echoed from the night before. Mate. I pushed the thought away before it could take root. I was a broken Omega with a nose that didn’t work; there was no way the universe had tied me to a man like him. It was just the cock-haze talking—a beautiful, temporary hallucination.
From my vantage point, I stared as a stubborn strand of hair leaned against pinched brows. My eyes locked on his thick tongue darting into my ass. I opened my mouth, but when it slid inside me again, I jerked; my chest bounced. I ached. I needed.He withdrew, and I whimpered from the loss, only to moan when he replaced his tongue with two fingers.
“Come for me. I want to see your tight little ass squeeze my fingers. Can you do that for me?” he rasped.
Tears welled as I nodded. He rubbed a sinful rhythm on my clit with his thumb. The fingers inside me curled, and I groaned at the fullness. I couldn’t form thoughts when he played me like a fiddle. He bit the inside of my thigh and I cursed as his eyes drank every bit of pleasure he dragged from me.
He hit a spot I didn’t know existed.
“There. Oh, right there,” I rasped.
“I know, baby. Come for me,” he commanded.
My ass obeyed, clenching around him, yielding a first Amos never claimed. His eyes were locked on where his fingers ravaged me. I didn’t know it was possible, but as wave after intense wave radiated through me. Dane had found a way to take what I hadn’t known I had to give.
My thighs shook as desperation flooded me. The sensation was new. As Dane claimed more than I’d ever willingly given before, the truth looked me straight in the eyes: I wanted it all.
He kissed the sensitive flesh where he bit and pulled his fingers from me. I was a mess as he crawled up my body. His tongue slipped out for a taste wherever his lips trailed. His teeth nipped at my exposed breast and I almost came again. Dane was a man of few words, but he’d caught onto my thoughts and found it funny. He peppered kisses along my neck and my selfish heart wanted to be his forever.
But then his movements changed. He pressed the side of his jaw firmly against my sensitive skin of where my pulse throbbed, rubbing back and forth with a slow, possessive friction. He was being needy, his intensity a weight I was happy to carry. He didn’t just kiss me; he dragged the rough skin of his jaw over the curve of my neck and tucked his face into the dip behind my ear,inhaling as if he were trying to pull the very soul out of me. It felt like affection, but there was a hard pressure to it. A physical branding I didn’t have the nose to understand.
My breathing slowed, but my heart rate didn’t. I’d fallen asleep in his arms a second time, and I’d taken a nap during the day. Depressed girls took naps, but with my anxiety, that never happened. Other than the ache between my legs, my guts being rearranged, and the bruises on my hip, I felt like I’d slept for days. I hadn’t felt this good since… before. Before the world became a series of flinches and controlled breathing. Usually, my mind was a hive of bees, stinging with every mistake I’d ever made, every word Amos used to dismantle me piece by piece. But now? The bees were dead.
His heat against my body didn’t just mask my anxiety; it smothered it. It was medicinal. Every minute I spent with him, the tight coil in my chest unraveled another inch. I felt heavy, held down in a way that didn’t feel like a cage. For the first time in years, the ‘flight’ response in my nervous system had gone silent, replaced by a terrifying, beautiful stillness.
Dane’s teeth dragged against my throat, and I forgot how to breathe. His hands slid up my torso, squeezing and wandering. I was on cloud nine. My chest felt light, my fingertips tingled. I could breathe. Knots, I loved this. My fingers shook. I knew from the books I read that this was what they called aftercare. Dane didn’t roll over and go silent, didn’t avoid touching me, didn’t ignore me. In fact, he did the complete opposite. He gave me cuddles and lathered me with attention. He’d done this twice now. Dane was bad for my heart.
“I think I might eat you,” Dane growled. My heart hammered in my chest. Not from fear. Knots, never with him. But from something else. Something darker. Something… dangerous. Hope.
“Why?” I whispered.
“You’re like an aphrodisiac. One taste and everything comes alive,” he murmured. He nipped at my earlobe. “And you taste like honey and vanilla.”
The words hit me in the gut. It was so unfair. He could smell my very essence, could categorize my soul by its scent, note the change in my emotion, while I sat here in a vacuum of nothingness. I wanted to know what he smelled like. Did he smell like he tasted—of wildfire and smores. My nose was a deadend, and a reminder of everything Amos had broken.
My brain instinctively reached for a rebuttal. I wanted to tell him he was wrong—that I tasted like iron and old tears, that I was a ‘fuck up’ who didn’t deserve to be described in such a sweet way. Amos had always told me I tasted like ‘effort’ and ‘desperation’, like a chore he had to get through.
Hearing Dane describe me as something enticing, something he craved, made my skin itch with a strange kind of pain. It was the agony of a limb waking up after being numb for so fucking long. I wanted to push him away just to stop the feeling of being seen so clearly. But his heat was a wall I couldn’t climb, and his praise was a light I was too cowardly to turn off.
“You chose to give yourself to me, and dammit, I want nothing more. You make me weak, sane, belligerent, and crazy all at once. And horny. So fucking horny.”
“And that makes you want to eat me?” I teased.
