“Mmmm, a little. What does that mean, by the way?” she purrs, rubbing her cheek against my chest hair like a cat scenting its favorite toy.
“Cereus?”
She nods.
“Oh.” I blush a little. I hadn’t really thought I’d ever call her that out loud. No point in closing the barn door after the horse has already escaped. “It’s technically the genus name for a cactus that onlyblooms at night. A beautiful and rare thing to behold. And… it’s always seemed fitting in my head for you and us.”
She lifts her head again, and I’m distressed to find her bottom lip quivering and her eyes welling up with tears. My pulse speeds up. What did I do wrong? “Baby, what? Did I say something upsetting?” I ask quickly.
“No. I’m just still really hormonal, and that’s incredibly sweet,” she says with a sniff.
I genuinely have no idea how to act with a soft and gentle Ava that cries over pet names. It makes my chest ache in the best ways to see the side of her that no one else gets to.
I kiss her forehead, splaying my hands across her ass to adjust her further so I can cuddle her better. I consider telling her I love her then, but I can’t quite make the words come out. The first time wasn’t particularly well-received, and I don’t feel ready to take that step again. Not yet, at least.
“How are you feeling, by the way?” I ask gently, feeling like that is a safer conversation path at the moment. Which really says a lot about how much we still have to work out. “Did you really have a seizure?”
“My mom seems to think so. And I guess it makes sense. I…” She trails off. “I think there was a moment where I genuinely thought I might be dying. Thank God Tony called Jack, who had a functioning brain cell for a moment and called Mom.”
The shot of fear that goes through me feels like ice shooting through my veins. I could have lost her tonight, and I would have never known any of it. Her being an omega, us being mates.
It spurs my alpha side, and I growl—a genuinely primal sound—as I roll her over, pinning her beneath me as I grip her wrists and hold them firmly over her head. I grind my cock into her until I feel my knot completely firm back up. “You don’t get to leave me. Not ever, do you fucking hear me?” I ask her roughly.
“Oh, god,” she gasps.
“Say it, Ava. Tell me you aren’t going anywhere.” I roll my hips as much as I can while still locked inside her, and she makes the most adorable little squeak. If I wasn’t half out of my mind at how close I came to never having her in my life, it would have made me smile.
“I’m—oh,” she moans, “—not going anywhere.”
“Ever,” I demand.
“Ever,” she agrees.
Rut. Claim. Bite, my alpha demands.
So I do.
My teeth sink into the top of her left breast, right over her heart. A sizable portion of it will show in the types of revealing clothing Ava tends to wear, but she can cover it easily enough if she needs to in court.
There’s the briefest moment of panic where I wonder if she’ll reject the bond. Worry that I should have asked first. Except she’d brought a fucking prenup pre-bond contract for me to sign. Surely that shows intent on her part?
She doesn’t reject it, and suddenly my senses are filled with… Ava.
It’s impossible to describe. I can’t hear her thoughts so much as I can feel what she’s feeling, and right now, it’s awe and love. All of my earlier possessive anger at the idea of losing her dissipates like fog under a sunny morning.
“I love you,” she moans against my lips.
“I love you, too,” I answer, pressing my forehead to hers.
I’m aware that I’m far too jealous to genuinely consider pack life. However, after thirty-six straight hours of Ava’s heat, I’m beginning to wonder if one man can truly keep up. She’s generally lucid for about twenty to thirty minutes after I knot her, but then if she doesn’t fall asleep, the cramps and brain fog returns.
We’ve been resting for a few hours, spooning with the lightest, softest sheet I own tossed over our bodies. Anything else has been deemed too hot and too scratchy. I don’t know if all omegas are this high-maintenance during their heat, but I suppose that’s really not much of a shock considering how high-maintenance she always is.
I float back to consciousness to find her grinding her ass against my cock. Even with exhaustion starting to weigh on me, it’s not a bad way to wake up.
“Alphaaaaa,” she whines. “Please…”
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of hearing her call me that. I had always found it kind of tacky when alphas and omegas referred to each other by their designations, but something about the way it slips from her luscious lips gets me every time.
