Brody pulled back an inch. His breath brushed against Ren’s lips.
“Can I touch you?”
Ren’s pulse was pounding in his neck.
“Yes.”
Brody’s hand slid down from his cheek to his neck, the curve of his shoulder, his bare arm beneath the T-shirt sleeve, and every inch it traveled left a trail of fire that seared beneath Ren’s skin down to his bones. Brody’s fingers found the hem of the T-shirt at his thigh and stopped there, on the fabric, without crossing over.
“Can I touch…?”
“If you ask my permission for one more thing, I’m getting up and leaving this room.”
The silence lasted half a second.
Brody moved.
The mattress sank as Brody positioned himself on top of him, and Ren stopped thinking. Brody’s hands pulled his t-shirt up over his thighs, his waist, his ribs, with an urgency that no longer asked, but took, demanded. Brody’s lips found his neck, and Ren arched his back, and the sound that came from his throat was unlike anything he’d ever made before: something broken, something animal, something that came from a place so deep it had no name.
Brody’s fingers traced his chest, and Ren clung to his shoulders as if the world were sinking beneath him. The alpha’s skin burned beneath his palms. The muscles in his back tensed and relaxed with every movement, and Ren felt them shift beneath his fingers like steel cables wrapped in silk.
Brody pulled his t-shirt over his head, and the cold air kissed his skin a second before Brody’s body replaced it, chest to chest, and Ren moaned against his mouth because the contact was toomuch, it was everything; it was what his body had been begging for days while his mind denied it.
The bond pulsed between them like a third heart.
Ren felt it at every point where his skin touched Brody’s: an undercurrent that liquefied his thoughts and turned his bones to jelly. Brody kissed his collarbone, the hollow between his ribs, his hipbone, and every kiss was an invisible mark that burned long after his lips moved on to the next spot.
Ren tangled his fingers in Brody’s black hair and pulled. Brody growled against his stomach, and the vibration ran down his entire spine. The scent of raisins and walnuts was so thick that Ren breathed it in as if it were solid, something that filled his lungs and weighed on his chest like warm water.
When Brody entered him, Ren buried his face in his neck and breathed. The scent. The skin. The heat. The pressure. All at once, all too much, all necessary. Brody moved slowly at first, with a deliberateness that made his arms tremble, his biceps tense on either side of Ren’s head, his hair falling over his forehead, his gray eyes fixed on Ren’s with an intensity that burned his retinas.
Ren wrapped his legs around Brody’s waist, and Brody lost what remained of his restraint. The rhythm changed. It became deep, urgent, and inevitable. Ren felt every thrust reverberate at the base of his skull and in the tips of his fingers, and in that spot behind his sternum where the bond pulsed like an open wound that someone was finally suturing. Brody whispered things against Ren’s neck that he couldn’t process, words that blended with the sounds he himself was making: gasps, ragged breaths, his name on Brody’s lips like a prayer or a curse.
The first orgasm caught him off guard, and Ren screamed into Brody’s shoulder, his teeth digging into his skin, his whole bodycontracting around him. Brody didn’t stop. He didn’t slow down. He lifted Ren’s hips and changed the angle, and Ren saw stars behind his tightly shut eyelids. The second came hot on the heels of the first, a wave that didn’t end before the next one began. Ren no longer controlled his own hands, which were scratching Brody’s back, leaving red lines on the pale skin; nor his own voice, which was saying things he didn’t hear; nor his own body, which was opening and tensing and surrendering in a cycle that had no end.
Brody knotted him. The pressure was immediate, a fullness that stole his breath and made him shut his eyes tight. Brody’s knot expanded inside him, and every nerve in his body ignited at once. Ren pressed his thighs against Brody’s hips, and his back arched off the bed, and the third orgasm split him in two.
“Look at me.”
Brody’s voice. Hoarse. Broken.
Ren opened his eyes. Brody’s gray irises were almost black, his pupils dilated, the red rim more visible than ever. His mouth was slightly open, his lips swollen, and sweat was gluing his hair to his forehead. It was the most beautiful thing Ren had ever seen, and it hurt to look at him.
The knot throbbed. Ren came again with a sound that was no longer a moan but a dry sob, without tears, a spasm that shook his entire body while his mind emptied like an overturned glass. Brody pressed his forehead against Ren’s, and they breathed the same air.
The fifth orgasm—or the sixth, Ren had lost count—came like a slow wave that washed over his body from head to toe. His muscles stopped responding. His arms fell limply at his sides, without strength. His eyelids felt heavy as if someone had placed lead weights on them.
Brody brushed the hair from his forehead with a trembling hand.
Ren felt the knot throb again and a new wave of pleasure surged up his spine, hot and thick, but his eyes were already closing and his mind was already sinking, and the last thing he registered was Brody’s mouth against his temple and the scent of raisins and nuts and the darkness swallowing it all as his body continued to contract in an orgasm that wouldn’t end, that stretched on, that merged with sleep until Ren no longer knew where the pleasure ended and unconsciousness began.
Sunlight filtered through the half-closed curtains and cast golden lines across the rumpled sheets. Ren blinked. Once. Twice. The ceiling wasn’t his own. The pillow smelled of raisins and walnuts and something darker, denser, which made him close his eyes again and sink a little deeper into the mattress.
Brody’s legs were tangled with his own. Skin against skin, heat against heat. The alpha’s thigh rested between his with a weight that should have felt intrusive but anchored him to the bed like a warm anchor. Ren could feel Brody’s chest rise and fall against his back, the slow, deep breath of sleep, the arm wrapped around his waist with an open hand resting on his abdomen.
Ren didn’t move.
He lay there, still, eyes closed, mouth curved into something that wasn’t exactly a smile but looked a lot like one. The bond hummed between them like a low-voltage electric current; constant, gentle, neither painful nor urgent. Just present. It was like the beating of a heart that wasn’t his own but somehow belonged to him.
