I hissed through my teeth and gripped myself harder, trying to relieve the throbbing, and this time I didn’t pretend I was doing anything other than what I was doing. I told myself this was pragmatic, this was just managing a physical problem, this meant nothing. I had jerked off plenty of times in tents and in woods surrounded by soldiers when need arose. I could keep it simple, a physical release.
From inside the room, she made a sound that stripped the last of that argument bare.
I worked my hand against myself and breathed shallowly. I kept my eyes on the wall and tried to make it enough. It wasn’t enough. It was the pale outline of the thing I actually wanted, the shadow of it, and my body knew the infuriating difference. She was feet away. She was in heat and she was making sounds that called to the alpha in me, and Thane was the one with his hands on her. I was out here jerking off against a corridor wall like an untried youth and it was not enough.
A cry.
Her cry. High and broken and unmistakably real, pleasure cresting, and I heard it move through the room in waves.
And then, wrecked and breathless, my name.
“Malric.”
I hit the door with my shoulder before I’d made a decision.
It swung wide.
She was lying in the nest, flushed and sweat-damp, her hair spread loose across the furs. Thane was beside her, propped on one arm, his breathing labored in a way I rarely heard from him. He looked at me with an expression that was equal parts relief and something darker—something that said he’d been waiting for me to stop being an idiot.
Aveline looked at me.
Her eyes were glazed, unfocused, heat-drunk, and her full breasts, tipped with rosy, swollen peaks, were heaving with the effort of coming down from something that still wracked her body. The scent in the room was overwhelming. It pressed against the inside of my skull and my body answered it with a full-body response that I had no interest in managing anymore.
Her hand stretched toward me, pleading for me to come closer.
I stood in the doorway with my hands fisted at my sides, every muscle locked, and looked at her outstretched hand and the open want on her face and made myself ask.
“Are you sure?”
I had to be sure. It would break me if she rejected me, but I would prefer that to her only asking for me because she was desperate, then regretted it later.
“Please.” Her voice was wrecked. “Malric, please.”
I dropped to my knees at the edge of the nest. Her hand found my jaw and I turned my face into it without thinking. I covered her mouth with mine and she made a sound, achoking moan, against my lips. She tasted of heat and honey and something uniquely her. I pulled her closer with a hand at her waist and kissed her until she stopped trembling and started clawing at me instead.
I lifted my head. Her eyes were dark, fever-bright, fixed on me.
“Down,” I said, and guided her back into the furs.
Thane shifted behind her, moving to her side, his hand settling at her shoulder, and she turned her head to look at him before she looked back at me. He pushed the hair off her neck and pressed his mouth to the junction between her neck and shoulder, where someday I would place my binding mark, if she let me. His other hand cupped her breast, slow and deliberate, and I watched her exhale in a rush and arch into it.
He held her breast out to me, offering it to me, and I obliged, sucking a taut peak into my mouth and biting down gently. Aveline screamed and fresh scent flooded the room. I stroked a thick finger between her thighs, swirling in the slick that gathered there, soaking the furs beneath her and spreading across the tops of her thighs.
“You’re so wet, Omega. Making a mess for your alphas. Do you like having two alphas taking care of you?”
She moaned, her head falling against Thane’s chest. “Yes.”
I skated a finger over her clit, circling it a few times, her hips arching into my touch. “You will not have any more alphas, Omega. Only us.”
I knew I was going against everything I had been fighting since coming into this tower, but at this moment, she was my omega and I wasn’t sharing. Aveline didn’t even hesitate. “Yes, please, Malric.”
“It’s alpha, Omega. When we’re in your nest, we’re your alphas.” I sucked a mark on the side of her breast, marking her as mine.
She sucked in a breath. “Yes, Alpha.”
“Good girl.” I pressed a finger inside her tight channel, feeling the muscle squeeze me too tightly. Damn, she would strangle my cock when I got it inside.
I pressed my mouth to her collarbone. Her sternum. The soft skin below her ribs. I took my time on the way down. She smelled extraordinary this close—the heat of her skin, the sweetness underneath, a scent so hers that it pressed against something behind my sternum I’d spent three days refusing to name. My mouth traced her hip. The inside of her thigh, where her skin was softer, and she made a sharp sound and her hips lifted.
