Images flood my mind uninvited as I fuck myself harder. Both of my stepbrothers’ faces come into my fantasy, surrounding me, overwhelming me, and the image is so vivid I can almost smell them, their scents mixing with my own in the air.
Still not enough.My body knows the difference between silicone and surrender, and no amount of physical stimulation will trick it into accepting one for the other.
I don't know how long I struggle. Long enough that my arm cramps and sweat pools in the hollow of my throat and the sheets beneath me are soaked with slick I can't control. Long enough that the desperation starts curdling into something darker, a hopeless, furious grief at being trapped inside my own discipline, my body screaming for something my mind refuses to allow.
I rip the toy out and hurl it across the room with a snarl, and it hits the door with a wet, solid thwack before clattering to the floor. I collapse back against the pillows, hands pressed over my face, every nerve in my body raw and unsatisfied and humming with a need I can't meet alone.
This will pass. The blockers will eventually kick in, the arousal will fade, and by morning I'll be back behind my walls where I belong.
That is… until the door opens.
My scent is so thick in the room that I don't smell him until the leather and smoke registers against the cloyingly sweet backdrop of my own arousal, and by then my eyes are already open and Dominic is standing in the doorway with the slick-shiny dildo at his feet.
His gaze drops to it first, then travels upward in a slow, methodical sweep that takes in the discarded clothes, the tangled sheets, the blocker bottle on the nightstand, and finally me, naked and flushed and sweating and obviously, pathetically aroused, the evidence of my failed night scattered around me like wreckage.
"Well." His voice is a low rumble pitched to resonate somewhere beneath my rational mind, in the part of me that responds to Alpha authority whether I want it to or not. "That explains the sounds."
I scramble backward, reaching for a blanket that's caught beneath the bed frame, and all my flailing accomplishes is amore thorough display of everything I'm trying to hide. Fresh slick pulses between my thighs at the proximity of his scent, my body reacting to his presence with an enthusiasm that makes my face burn.
"Get out. I locked that door."
"The lock's been broken since Father kicked it in this evening." Dominic steps inside and pulls the door shut behind him, leaning against it with his arms folded across his chest. "I heard you and just wanted to make sure you were all right."
"I'm fine." The words come out breathless and thin, unconvincing even to my own ears. "Just couldn't sleep. Please leave."
"You're not fine." He pushes off the door and approaches, closing the distance between us while his scent fills the room in dense, rolling waves that make my thoughts swim. "You've been tearing yourself apart for hours, and whatever methods you've been employing aren't working. Your scent is broadcasting your need to every Alpha in this house, Mattaniah. I promise you I'm the best option for who answers."
The implication cuts through the arousal. Richard. The stepfather who looked at me in the foyer with eyes that promised nothing gentle. Dominic reads the understanding on my face and nods once.
"Let me help you."
"I don't need help. I don't need anything from anyone." I draw my knees up, trying to fold myself small enough to disappear. "I've been managing on my own for years."
"And the managing went so well that you launched a dildo hard enough to dent the doorframe." He reaches the foot of the bed and stops, his dark eyes holding mine with an intensity that pins me in place. "Someone trained you to believe your instincts are dangerous. Whoever it was did you a tremendous disservice."
"My mother..."
"Isn't here." He puts one knee on the mattress, then the other, and suddenly he's kneeling at the foot of the bed, close enough that his scent wraps around me like a second skin and my body responds with an involuntary whimper I can't swallow in time. "It's just you and me, firefly."
The nickname snags on something in my chest, a warm, unexpected tug. "Why do you call me that?"
"Because you keep trying to hide your light." His hand comes up to trace a single finger along my jaw. "All that warmth, all that sweetness you've been suffocating under those blockers and that rigid training. I can see it flickering in you right now, fighting to get out. You glow in the dark whether you want to or not."
A fissure opens somewhere behind my sternum, running through a wall I've maintained for seven years, and my eyes sting with heat I refuse to let spill over.
"Let me give you what you need." He tilts my chin up, his thumb resting against my pulse. "One rule. Stay quiet. Sound carries in this house, and we don't want company."
I should say no. Every lesson my mother drilled into me is lined up behind my teeth, a chorus of warnings about what happens to Omegas who let Alphas touch them without a strategic purpose.This is how you become worthless. This is how you get discarded.
But his scent is turning my mother's voice to static, and my body has been starving for seven years, and I am so bone-deep tired of being hungry. "What do you want in return?" I whisper, because there is always a price.
"Nothing you're not willing to give." His thumb sweeps across my lower lip, and resisting the urge to open my mouth makes my jaw ache. "I want to make you feel good. You tell me to stop, I stop. You tell me to leave, I leave. The choice is entirely yours."
Nobody has ever given me a real choice before. Mom's choices came with predetermined consequences. The Alphas she paraded through our lives never asked what I wanted at all. But Dominic is kneeling on my bed, close enough to take anything, and he's waiting.
"I don't know how to let go," I tell him, my voice scraped raw. "I don't know how to stop fighting it."
"Then don't try to stop all at once." Both hands cup my face, tilting it so I can't hide. "Just stop holding on so tight, and let me do the rest."
