His breath catches. Behind him, Amos' breathing changes to something lighter, making me very aware that he’s no longer sleeping.
"Take care of it." The words come out thick with sleep. "Please."
I roll him onto his side, his back against my chest, and slide his sleep pants down over his hips. The slick has gathered between his thighs, warm and wet, and when I press my cock between them he gasps and presses back into me. I reach around and palm his cock, already hard and leaking, and he makes a sound that's barely louder than a breath.
"I'm going to fuck you." I say it against his ear, low enough that the words are more vibration than sound. "Slowly. You're going to feel every inch of me and you're going to stay exactly like this, half asleep, letting me use your body. Can you do that?"
"Yes." His voice cracks.
I push inside him through the gathered slick, his body opening around me with a yielding softness that makes my eyes close. The stretch wrings a moan from him that he muffles against the pillow, and I bottom out and hold myself there, buried to the hilt, my knot pressing against his rim.
"There." I wrap my arm around his chest and hold him against me. "Feel that?"
"Yes." He shifts his hips and the motion sends sparks through both of us. "Dominic, please move."
I move. The pace is glacial, long strokes that pull almost all the way out before sliding back in, each one drawing a sound from him that gets softer and more broken as the pleasure builds. His body clenches around me in sleepy pulses, his muscles responding on instinct rather than conscious effort, and fucking him while he floats between sleep and arousal feels different from anything I've experienced before.
Amos shifts behind me as his hand reaches across and finds Mattaniah's face, his thumb tracing the Omega's lower lip. Mattaniah takes it in immediately, his jaw closing around the familiar comfort, and the sound he makes around Amos' thumb while I thrust into him from behind goes straight through me.
"You feel so good, firefly." I keep the pace slow, each stroke deliberate, my cock dragging against the spot that makes his thighs tremble. "So warm and tight and wet for me even in your sleep."
He whimpers around Amos' thumb. His hips rock back to meet my thrusts in a lazy rhythm, his body chasing the pleasure without urgency. His sounds and his scent and the tight clenchof him around my cock build the pressure in my gut one slow stroke at a time.
"Is this okay?" I ask it against his neck.
"Don't stop." He says it around Amos' thumb, the words barely intelligible. "Dominic, please don't stop."
I fuck him at the same glacial pace, my hand moving on his cock in lazy strokes that match my thrusts. His orgasm builds so slowly that when it finally crests there's no sound at all. His body just tightens around me and a long, shuddering exhale escapes him as he spills over my hand, his eyes closing, his muscles going slack in waves. The clench of him pulls me over the edge and I come inside him with my face pressed against his neck, my knot swelling just enough to stretch his rim without fully locking.
"Stay inside me," he mumbles, already sliding back toward sleep. "Don't pull out."
"I'm not going anywhere." I bury my face in his hair, holding him against my chest, the last word said silently.Ever.
Mattaniah
Momcatchesmeinthe hallway outside my room at seven in the morning, which means she's been waiting because my mother doesn't wake up at seven unless she's hunting.
I smell her before I see her, that sharp rose scent that used to mean home and now just means trouble. She's leaning against the wall in a silk robe with her arms crossed and her makeup already done, which is another tell because my mother doesn'tput on a full face before ambushing someone unless she wants to look composed while they fall apart.
"Good morning, Mattaniah." She says it the way she says everything, pleasant on the surface with teeth underneath. Her eyes travel over me as I close my bedroom door, cataloguing details the way she trained me to catalogue marks. My hair is loose instead of pulled back. My shirt collar is open one button lower than usual. My scent, even through the blocker, carries a warmth that wasn't there two weeks ago.
"Morning, Mom." I keep my voice neutral. "You're up early."
"I'm up because we need to talk, and you've been impossible to pin down." She pushes off the wall and falls into step beside me as I head toward the stairs. "You've been busy. Spending your evenings somewhere other than your room. Coming to breakfast smelling like you slept in someone else's bed."
My stomach drops but I keep walking. "I've been working late. Amos has me helping with the financial analysis for the Southeast division."
"Amos." She repeats the name like she's tasting something sour. "You're on a first-name basis with your stepbrother."
I’m not sure what else she would have wanted me to call him. Alpha? Older brother? "He asked me to call him that."
"Since when do you do what Alphas ask?" She catches my arm at the top of the stairs and turns me to face her. Her grip is firm enough to leave marks and her eyes are doing the thing I've feared since childhood, the cold inventory of a tool that isn't performing as expected. "Sit down."
I sit on the top step because standing requires more defiance than I have at seven in the morning with her hand on my arm. She sits beside me, close enough that her scent floods my nose and triggers the involuntary response that years of conditioning built into my nervous system. My spine straightens and my faceempties and my hands fold in my lap before I've decided to do any of it.
"Your blocker dose." She says it without preamble. "You've lowered it."
"The triple dose was causing a lot of shakiness. Dominic noticed the tremor and told me to drop to two."
