No. It’s not my imagination. It happened.
This big, strong alpha has been reduced to a shivery mess in my presence. Why?
Another flashback bursts to life, picking up where the last one left off. We’re still on the sofa. I’m sitting astride Branson. His knot is still swollen inside me. I can’t lift myself off him. We’re knotted together.
“Oh fuck,” he panted, eyes heavy, lips curled into a ridiculous, lopsided smile, “I’ll be toast if you lose your voice.” He stroked my face and my neck tenderly. “I don’t think I’ll make it. Seriously, baby, just the thought of fucking you hoarse is almost more than I can take.” His knot thickened when he said it, and for some reason, we both started laughing. “I can’t even imagine what it would do to me to hear you like that, so fucked out that you can’t make a sound.”
“Yes,” he says, here and now.
It takes me a second to remember what we were talking about. “Is that what the pressure on my chest is? Our bond?”
He nods and turns to face me. His eyes are lit up like they were during my heat and his pupils are extremely dilated.
Bonds are known to be more debilitating for alphas than they are for omegas in the first few days after mating. Biologically, alphas are programmed to stay close to their mate after a heat, to protect and take care of them when they’re at their most vulnerable.
“Yes,” he says again.
“What does it feel like for you?” I whisper.
He blinks slowly, eyes drooping slightly. He looks unsure whether he should answer, but he sighs and speaks all the same. “It feels like life when I’m close to you, and like death when I’m not.”
The band of pressure around my heart sparks painfully when he speaks. I don’t answer because I’m not sure how to. Instead, I lie on the sofa, assaulted by flashing images of my heat.
Branson’s body. Ripped muscle pulsing and beating.
Branson’s dick, thick and throbbing, thrusting into me.
Branson’s knot tying the two of us tightly together.
Brain-melting kisses and the sound of his laughter.
Screaming orgasms and soft brown eyes.
His hands on my face.
The taste of his tongue.
The stark, icy shock of waking up alone in my bed.
“But,” I mouth, “if it hurts to be away from me, why did you leave me to wake up all alone?”
“Because,” he says, looking down and then flicking his eyes up at me, hitting me with a look that makes my brain sizzle, “you’re my omega, Lucy. I knew you’d be hurting when you woke up, and I wanted to try to help you. You’re mine to take care of now. I’d rather hurt myself than let you go without something that could make you feel better.”
From there, I drift in and out, spending most of the evening in a flickering, heated haze of disjointed memories.
If the flashbacks are to be believed, Branson knotted me a lot. That’s all I can say. Every time I open my eyes and let them land anywhere in the living room or the kitchen, I see another bone-melting image of Branson and me coupling.
The kitchen counter.
The living room floor.
The sofa.
God, the sofa over and over.
The memories of the fuck on the sofa keep swimming to the surface, hitting me like a cold splash of water to the face. “How long were we stuck together?” I ask when the not-knowing becomes too much to bear.
“Which time?”
