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I cringed.

“Casey,” he said.

“Well, she’s my best friend,” I said. And she was, now that I was able to admit it. After Opal, the whole idea of a best friend had seemed tainted, but somehow, I was able to let things in now, let good things in again. “It’s her job. If it had been negative, you know…”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m not at all threatened by that. I don’t need you to be something for me, you know?”

“I do,” I said. “It’s why you’re my alpha.” I squared my shoulders. “Call him. Call Damian.”

“He won’t pick up.”

“Leave him a voicemail that he’s going to be an uncle. Dare him not to be happy for you.”

Vincent squared his shoulders. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I said. “But first, we should get naked, I think. Calls later, first your very pretty cock.”

He kissed me hard.

The sex that night was soft but very elevated. I felt incredibly sensitive, like every part of me was alive and electric, little currents of bright power feeding through all of my nerve endings. He made me come again and again. He licked me—because he always wanted to put his mouth there, not that I would complain about that—and he teased me to a climax that was like a bolt of lightning, igniting me from head to toe, lighting me up.

And when he wanted to lick me again, because he was all about making me come twice before he fucked me, seemed to really enjoy it, and I could not find a single thing to complain about that, I reminded him he was going to need that tongue to tend.

He pushed himself up on both of his hands over me, looking down into my eyes, and his expression was stricken, as if it had just really sunk in what we were doing.

I reached up and ran a hand over his perfect chest. “Alpha,” I breathed.

“Omega,” he said, his voice hoarse. “My omega.”

I shut my eyes, sighing.

He kissed his way over my forehead and down my temple and over my chin. He kissed my neck. “We need to talk about where,” he said in my ear.

“Obviously, somewhere very, very obvious,” I said. “I want everyone to know.”

He rested his forehead against mine. He panted.

I rubbed his bare shoulder. “Vincent?”

“I’m just… a little overwhelmed,” he managed. “I never thought this would actually happen with us, and it’s…” His lips met mine. “I’m lucky to have you, Leo. I want to do this right.”

“You are,” I assured him. “You are doing it exactly right.”

He bit me while he was inside me, but after both of us had come, in the aftermath of our orgasms ebbing out. He bit me just below my clavicle, and he didn’t warn me he was going to do it. We were both gasping and clutching each other and his cock was still pulsing in me as he finished coming, and then his teeth broke the skin.

I was surprised at how much it hurt. I might have yelped. It never felt quite like that when Damian bit down on me, and I noticed that we were both pointedly not talking about the array of bite scars already on my skin. I liked it that way. I did not want to acknowledge them, not in this moment. This moment was for Vincent and me, no one else.

He released, letting out a sharp breath. “You all right?”

And then it didn’t hurt. Then it felt like, wow, I don’t know, like a rush of a multi-colored river all through my body, like being surrounded in the warmest, sweetest pool of perfect love, like Vincent, like a concentrated Vincent, as if someone had bottled him up and doused me with him, as if I was bathing in Vincent. I let out a little sobbing noise and reached up to pull his face down to his bite.

He went without urging though, letting out a soft groan as he began to tend.

When his tongue made contact with my sore little bite mark, time stretched out and compressed and I lost all sense of it. I don’t know how long we were wrapped together in our wonderful little bubble of goodness. It felt, in some ways, like only ten minutes before we were drifting off to sleep, waking as his sleepy tongue made contact yet again, and every time his tongue dragged itself over me, I felt ripples of sheer goodness working their way through me. But I know it was hours, and in some ways, it felt even longer, like years and years passed there, because there was this current of understanding that was going through the bond.

With every stroke of his tongue, the connection between us deepened. I could feel him. Sometimes, it felt like I was in his body, like I was Vincent, and I could feel everything about his body, feel him from the inside out. Sometimes, I was still in my own body, but I could feel his emotions, flitting in and out of my own. I felt the way he loved me, felt it like it was a color, deep ochre, and I was humbled by it and lit up by it and it only made me love him more. But he was feeling me, feeling my love, and I felt his reaction to it strengthen his love, and his love changed color, turning brighter, pinker, hopeful and grateful, and we twined up, him and me, we twined into something strong. We became one while he tended.

Later, we would separate again, be two, but this was here, and we could always come back to the bond and twine up again, find our strength in the union of the two of us.