I try for clever. What comes out is a wrecked little, "Please."
Hehuffs like he likes that answer better anyway. His mouth finds my breast, lips closing around my nipple, tongue flicking, then tugging a sharp pull that shoots straight between my legs. My back arches on instinct, pushing my chest into his mouth, hips rolling to meet his, my body begging without dignity.
"Ragon," I gasp, hands finally free and immediately clawing at his shoulders, feeling the bunch and release of muscle under my fingertips as he fucks me harder. "God—"
"More?" he asks, and doesn't wait for an answer.
He shifts my thighs up until my knees are hooked over his forearms, folding me open and down, and drives. The angle changes and he finds dead center—the place that makes a broken, high keening sound rip out of me before I can swallow it. The bedframe knocks a steady rhythm against the wall; the house could come apart around us and I don't think I'd notice.
"Such a mouth," he says, breath hot against my skin, thrusts getting sharper. "All day with the barbs. Now what?"
"Now—oh—now it's yours," I babble, shameless, the words ripped out by sensation as his thumb grinds down on my clit in measured circles. "Yours, yours—don't stop, don't—"
"Not stopping," he promises, and his hips piston, the heavy slide of his cock spreading me wide on each drive until I feel split open and perfectly filled. The pressure winds tight, my orgasm coiling low and bright, building fast with the ruthless way he keeps me there, keeps meright there, taut and trembling on that tight edge until my whole body feels like a struck wire.
"Give it to me," he rumbles, and then his hips surge in deep and decisive and I feel the thick swell at the base of him start to press.
My brain blanks. "Ragon—"
"Shh. Take it." His mouth is at my ear, breath hot, voice a low command that lives under my skin. "Open for your alpha."
The pressure builds, stretching, burning just enough to make my nails bite his shoulders. He doesn't let me skitter away from it. He bears me down into the bed and rocks through that stubborn ring of resistance until my body yields with a helpless cry and the knot seats with a deep, obscene pop that punches the air from my lungs.
I shatter.
It tears through me fast and violent, everything seizing around the iron heat of him. My vision goes bright, my back bows, and my cunt clamps so hard around the locked thickness that I can feel every pulse of him like a heartbeat in my own body. Sound rips out of me—high, raw, not words at all.
He groans into my neck like I'm the only altar that matters. The first spurt is hot and heavy; the next floods me deeper and deeper, heat blooming low where we're joined until I can't tell where I end and he begins.
He seals us together fully and the swell at his base locks us, a thick, insistent fullness that makes my whole body sing and seize. I cry out—helpless, high, a sound I couldn't hide if I tried—and he bears me through it, teeth scraping my throat, mouth open against the place wheremy pulse flutters. The world narrows to pressure and rhythm and his weight pinning me safe, the hard, steady pulse of us fused so tight there's no space for fear to slide in.
"Mine," he breathes into my skin between slow, possessive licks, each swipe of his tongue cooling the sting he left. "Good. That's it. Breathe, omega."
I do, in ragged pulls against the ache and the bliss, tightening around him with every little echo that shudders through me. The lock throbs inside me—firm, deep, claiming—and he mouths along my neck like it's a litany, a cadence that matches the gentle pulse.
"Listen to me." His teeth catch soft at my jaw before soothing it with his tongue. "I'm here. I don't leave when it's hard. When it's ugly. When you're sharp and I deserve it. I don't leave." His mouth drags over the shell of my ear, heat and breath and the scrape of stubble. "I'll check your door on nights you ask to be alone. I'll put my hand on this neck and tell you you're safe. I'll make sure you sleep."
My body hums, locked around him. The knot throbs, a steady, low drum. I hate that I melt for this—words and weight and the dark velvet of his voice making places inside me unclench.
"You say that now. Then her scent spikes and you forget."
His hand tightens at my neck, not to restrain, to anchor. "I don't forget you. I will not let this house teach you that again. I will not let anyone make you small here. Not even me."
I turn my face toward him, cheek brushing his stubble. I want him to swear on something I can hold. "Don't putme back on a shelf. Don't make me watch you build a life around me I don't fit in."
"I won't." His mouth finds that tender place beneath my ear and I feel the vow there, pressed into skin.
That night, sharing a bed with him is a strange mix of comfort and loss. I sleep better, enclosed in his heavy warmth, but I dream of my nest down the hall—empty, stale, waiting.
And every time I wake up, I wonder if this shift in routine is healing something or loosening something I can't afford to lose.
Chapter 7
The jealousy creeps in slowly.
At first it's just little things.
One night, as I'm pacing the length of my room because my body won't settle, I crack my door just a sliver and peer into the hallway.
