Twenty minutes pass. His breathing is almost deadly silent, his body fully pliant against my chair. I'm fairly certain he's drifting close to sleep when I reach across my desk for a pen and my hand passes near his neck.
He flinches.
His whole body recoils, his head jerking off my thigh, his shoulders tensing all over again. His scent crashes from sweet to sour in an instant, fear flooding the room strong enough to hit the back of my throat and make my own instincts flare. Something in my chest goes hot, the Alpha drive to identify the threat and eliminate it.
"Mattaniah." I keep my voice level. "Look at me."
He doesn't. His head stays bowed, his hands clenched so tight in his lap that the knuckles have gone white. Slowly, I reach toward him and put my hand under his chin, tilting his face up. His eyes are wide, his pupils blown with something that isn't submission. The fear pouring off him makes my jaw clench.
"Something happened to you yesterday in the copy room." I hold his gaze. "Tell me."
His jaw works, his brows furrowing and then straightening out. "You… I didn’t… Amos? Fuck. It was nothing, your father just..."
"Don't lie to me." It comes out harder than I intend, my Alpha bark dropping into the words. His scent wavers between the sour fear and a sweeter note that wants to rise in response to the command.
"He touched my neck." The words spill out as if the command shook them loose. "In the copy room. He said I smelled like you and Amos. He put his hand on my back and told me he waspatient." His breathing fractures. "I just stood there. I just let him because that's what I do."
The heat in my chest catches and my scent sharpens before I can control it. Mattaniah's nostrils flare as he registers the change.
"You're angry," he whispers.
"Not at you." My thumb traces the line of his jaw. The touch is careful but the hand holding his chin leaves no room for him to look away. "Never at you." Those words hold a lot more weight than I want them to but in order for this to work, I need Mattaniah’s trust. All of it.
He nods in a jerky motion, still trembling beneath my touch, his composure gone. The performance he's been wearing all day has been stripped off by a flinch and a command and the simple act of being asked to tell the truth.
"He doesn't get to touch you again. Whatever access he thinks he has to your body, it's over."
I watch the last thread of his composure snap as his face crumples and a sound leaves his throat that isn't quite a sob. His head drops forward, my thumb still resting against his jaw. When his face falls, his mouth brushes the pad of my thumb, his lips parting on instinct.
His lips close around my thumb, the effect on the Omega instantaneous. His breathing, ragged a second ago, smooths out within three heartbeats. The trembling stops. His shoulders release. His scent begins to transform, the chemical flatness of the blockers retreating. What rises underneath is the truest version of his scent I've encountered, rich with a honey sweetness the suppressants have been burying since he arrived.
His lids slowly flutter close, his whole body going heavy against my chair, and the sound he makes around my thumb is a barely audible hum that vibrates through his jaw into my hand.
"This is what you look like without the fear," I purr, the softness of my voice surprising even me.
He presses closer to my leg as his hum deepens. Mattaniah draws my thumb in deeper into his mouth, a small sigh falling from his lips. Had Amos tried some shit like this, I would have killed him but this is the second time this movement has calmed my new stepbrother and it’s only become more fascinating.
My other fingers move to gently cup the edge of his jaw and cheek, Mattaniah’s soft purr growing in volume against my thigh. My cock responds to the sound and the sensation of his tongue on my skin but I ignore it, completely enraptured by how submissive he is.
A ‘ding’ steals my attention as I ease myself back into my work. Forty minutes later, I ease my thumb from his mouth. He blinks up at me, dazed, his eyes unfocused, the awareness slowly returning in stages. Tension creeps back into his shoulders, the walls going up again, though slower than before. Then he looks away, color rising in his cheeks, and pushes himself to standing on unsteady legs. I catch him by the waist when he leans to the side, his eyes going unfocused again.
"Easy." My hand tightens on his hip, steadying him, as his body sways toward me before he catches himself and stiffens.
"Why did you do that?" His voice is hoarse but there's an edge underneath the roughness that tells me his brain is coming back online. "Why would you... what was that?"
"You needed it."
"That's not a reason." He pulls back from my grip, or tries to, but his legs aren't cooperating and he ends up bracing one hand on my desk instead of putting distance between us. "People don't just let someone suck their thumb for… for… however long out of the goodness of their heart. Why did I do that? What do you want from me?"
There he is. The Omega who talks back and throws sex toys at Alphas who walk into his room uninvited. The submission was real, but it didn't erase him.
"I don't like my father touching you." The honesty of it surprises me almost as much as it surprises him. I keep my hand on his hip and let my thumb press into the bone. "Does that happen with him? What just happened between us. Does your body do that around my father?"
The immediate revulsion that crosses his face is visceral. He shakes his head so hard his curls whip against his cheeks. "No. God, no. Nothing like that. I've never... that's never happened to me before. Not with any Alpha, ever."
The greed that moves through me at those words is something I don't bother hiding. Only with me, and if his response to Amos in the kitchen and the garden is any indication, only with us.
"Good." I squeeze his hip once before letting go, watching his pupils dilate at the pressure. "Then we understand each other."
