My body continues to milk the last of his release, Amos pressing soft kisses along my jaw. Dominic lies beside us watching, his patience held in the clench of his jaw even though his scent has gone thick with arousal.
Amos' knot deflates gradually, a gasp tearing from my throat as he pulls out, his release leaking from me onto the sheets.My body is sated from the spike but still raw, the post-knot sensitivity leaving every nerve exposed.
Dominic moves behind me before Amos has fully settled to my side. His hand grips my hip and turns me onto my stomach, rougher than usual, before positioning himself between my legs. I feel his cock press against my entrance, slick with Amos' release.
He drives in with one thrust that fills me completely and punches the air from my lungs. The stretch is different after the knot because my body opens for him easily, but the force behind it makes my fingers scrabble at the sheets.
"Dominic..." My voice comes out thin.
He doesn't answer. His hands grip my hips hard enough that the pressure grinds against bone as his thrusts pick up a punishing pace, each one driving me forward on the mattress. The pleasure is there, tangled up with the residual spike relief, but his rhythm has an edge that feels nothing like the measured control I'm used to from him.
"Dominic, slow d-down..."
His hand moves from my hip to the back of my neck and presses my face into the pillow. There are no words, no command, just the pressure of his palm pinning me flat while his hips snap forward harder. My body produces a rush of slick in response even as my brain starts sending alarm signals.
I try to identify what's changed but Dominic drives into me at an angle that hits the spot inside me and the pleasure whites out my thoughts. My body is still raw from Amos' knot, every nerve ending exposed, and the intensity of Dominic's thrusts against that sensitivity is too much for my brain to process at once.
I'm slipping.
The world goes soft at the edges as my body stops responding to my instructions. The hands gripping my hips feel very far away, and the sounds I was making taper off into silence as mymuscles go slack against the mattress. My breathing slows into something deeper than consciousness, a warm heaviness that pulls me down until I can't find the surface.
"Tell me how it feels." Dominic's voice reaches me from somewhere above, his hand tightening on my neck. "Mattaniah. Tell me how it feels."
My mouth opens but nothing comes out. The words are somewhere in my chest but the connection between my brain and my tongue has been severed. I can hear his command but I can't respond.
"Answer me when I speak to you." His voice sharpens, his Alpha bark pouring into the words. My body should snap to attention the way it always does when an Alpha uses that frequency, but nothing happens. I float somewhere above the mattress, detached from my own limbs, unable to find my way back to my mouth.
"Dom." Amos' voice cuts through the fog from my left, hard and stripped of every trace of warmth. "Stop. Right now."
Dominic's hips stutter.
"Look at his eyes, Dom." Amos is beside me now, turning my face toward him. I can see his expression through the haze even though I can't make my mouth work to tell him I'm okay. "He's gone. He can't hear you. He can't respond. You need to pull out right now."
The hands release my hips. Dominic withdraws and the emptiness registers somewhere in the floating distance of my awareness. The mattress shifts as Amos' hands cup my face, his thumbs stroking my cheekbones.
"Niah. I need you to come back to me." His voice softens. "You're safe. You're in your room. Can you hear me?"
I can hear him. I just can't find the way back up. The place I've fallen into is warm and vast, and the part of me that's beenholding everything together for weeks wants to stay here where nothing requires effort.
"Squeeze my hand if you can hear me." His fingers thread through mine and I try to close my grip. My fingers respond sluggishly, a weak pressure that makes Amos exhale. "There you go." He lies down beside me and pulls me against his chest, his scent filling my nose and his heartbeat pulsing against my ear. "Just follow my voice. No rush, Niah."
Minutes pass. Maybe ten, maybe twenty. The warm place releases its hold in increments, awareness seeping back as sensation returns. Amos' chest against my cheek first. Then the soreness in my hips where Dominic's hands gripped too hard. Then the sound of breathing that isn't mine, two sets of it, one against my hair and one from across the room.
I open my eyes. Amos is wrapped around me. Dominic is sitting on the far side of the bed with his back against the headboard and his hands clenched on his knees, staring at me with a look I've never seen from him.
He looks horrified.
"There you are." Amos' voice is warm against my temple. "Welcome back."
My mouth works. "What happened to me?"
"You dropped." Amos strokes my hair. "Your body decided it was safe enough to let go completely, and your conscious mind went somewhere deep. Some Omegas do that with dominant Alphas they trust, especially after being knotted when the nervous system is already wide open."
"Dropped." That word doesn't come close to what I just experienced. "That felt like disappearing."
"The clinical term is subspace." Amos' thumb traces circles against my scalp. "Your motor functions go offline. Speech, voluntary movement, sometimes your ability to track what's happening around you. Your body stays responsive but the partof you that makes decisions goes somewhere your conscious mind can't reach."
I swallow. My throat is dry. "I could hear Dominic telling me to answer him. I wanted to respond and I couldn't. My brain and my mouth weren't connected anymore."
