"Can I ask you something?" His voice drops, some of the fog clearing as wariness creeps back in. "Do you two do this with other people? Is this something you do, find some Omega and..." He gestures vaguely at the bed, the sheets, and the three of us tangled together. "This?"
"No. We've never done this with anyone before."
His breath hitches against my chest. "Then why me? Because I'm convenient? Because I live in your house and I can't exactly say no to you without making things complicated for myself?"
I offer him a small smile, sliding my fingers into his curls. "Because you're you, Niah." It's not the full truth, but it's not a lie either, and right now with him still soft from subspace, it's enough.
The Omega stiffens agains Dominic for a second, then his body overrides the resistance and he melts further into Dominic's grip. My hand stays in his hair, scratching lightly against his scalp, and his eyelids go heavy.
"Don't let me fall back asleep." His body is doing the opposite of the request. "Your father will expect me at my desk by eight."
"It's Saturday," Dominic says against the back of his neck.
"Oh." All the tension he'd been gathering drains away in a rush. "Oh, okay."
Dominic presses his mouth against the top of Mattaniah's spine. Mattaniah arches into it, his lips parting as his scent spikes in response. I’ve rarely seen this version of Dominic, when he loses himself to his Alpha instincts, needing to possess the thing he’s chosen as his. Moments like these, I let him do what he wants to me because I love this version of him.
But for someone like Mattaniah... it might terrify him. Still, I just watch as Dominic trails lower, his mouth following the Omega’s spine, Mattaniah's breathing changing.
"You like that." Dominic states it against Mattaniah's skin while his hand spreads flat across the Omega's stomach, fingers pressing down into his flesh. "Your whole body just went soft for me. I wonder what other sounds I can get out of you when you're not panicking."
"I'm not... I wasn't panicking, I was..." Mattaniah's protest dissolves when Dominic bites down gently on the curve between his neck and shoulder. The sound that escapes him is a mixture between a squeak and a moan, the Omega slapping a hand over his own mouth.
My mouth finds the hinge of his jaw while Dominic works the other side of his neck, Mattaniah's hand coming up to grab the back of my neck, pulling me closer with a grip that tells me the subspace is burning off and something hungrier is replacing it. His fingers thread into my hair and tighten.
"There he is." Dominic's voice is low against Mattaniah's shoulder. "There's our greedy little Omega waking up."
"Fuck you," Mattaniah mutters, but his hips rock forward into the space between us and his scent sweetens so sharply that both Dominic and I catch it.
The morning unfolds from there with an edge the night before didn't have because Mattaniah is more present for this, his braincoming back online even as his body stays responsive. Dominic maps his spine with his mouth and I learn the planes of his chest with my palms, Mattaniah making sounds he tries to bite back while his body arches into every touch.
A whimper catches behind his teeth and Dominic's hand grips his jaw from behind, turning his face toward me. "Don't swallow that. Amos wants to hear you."
My mouth finds his throat. The whimper comes loose and it's needy enough to make my cock twitch against his thigh.
His hips move and then freeze, the habitual shame locking his muscles. Dominic grips his waist and rocks him forward hard enough to grind him against me. "Nobody told you to stop, firefly."
Another moan slips free. His hand flies to cover his mouth and I pull it away, pinning it against the mattress beside his head. "Your mother's rules don't apply in this bed." I hold his wrist and watch his face as the words land. "Nothing you learned about being quiet applies here."
His eyes open fully, the expression in them making me realize that I might be in over my head.
"This doesn't feel like what my mother described," he whispers. "She said submission was a trap, and wanting like this was how you get destroyed."
Dominic's mouth pauses against his shoulder as I meet his gaze. "She was wrong about everything, Niah."
Mattaniah
Mondaymorningstartswiththe alarm and two blockers and ten minutes in front of the bathroom mirror practicing the face I'll need to wear for the next eight hours, pleasant enough to avoid correction but empty enough to avoid interest. The face that says I'm here to work and nothing else.
My body disagrees with the performance before I've even finished getting dressed. There's a tenderness between mythighs that won't let me forget Saturday night, a low residual ache that flares every time I shift my weight. Dominic's knot stretched me in ways I'm still feeling two days later, and every time the soreness reminds me of how it got there, heat crawls up my neck and my scent threatens to sweeten beneath the blocker.
"Get it together," I mutter at my reflection while I button my shirt. "You’ve gone to work on six hours of sleep and a hangover from Romano's Christmas party. You can survive this."
The reflection doesn't look convinced. My eyes are brighter than they should be and my skin has a flush underneath the warm tone that no amount of cold water can eliminate. Even my curls look different, like my body has decided to advertise that someone has been running their hands through my hair for the better part of a weekend.
The car drops me at Hale Industries by seven thirty. Richard is already at his desk when I arrive on the executive floor, and the morning slides into its familiar pattern of corrections and compliance. My posture earns two raps of the ruler before nine o'clock. My filing speed is inadequate. The coffee I bring him is too hot, then too cold when I bring a replacement.
"Better," he says to the third cup without looking up, which is the closest thing to praise I've received from him in six days.
