Chapter Six – Matteo #2
My eyes close as I lower my face to the crook of her neck.
My nose grazes the sensitive skin over her scent gland, causing her to shiver against me.
I inhale. I inhale everything she is, everything she will be.
I breathe her in so deeply, filling my lungs with her delicious apply scent.
Laced with cinnamon, her mere scent alone is enough to drive me out of my mind.
My cock hardens instantly as her scent washes over me, taking hold of every particle of me, and the word slips out of me before I can stop it: “Mine.” It comes out in a rumble, a sound very much like a growl, only I feel it deep in my core.
Mine. My omega. My scent match. My mate. My everything.
Noelle shivers against me, but she doesn’t say a word. If she’s feeling anything similar to what I am, she can’t speak. I run my lips over her scent gland before I kiss that tender skin, nuzzling into her like I’ve got nowhere else to be.
And I don’t. The rest of the world could fade away, cease to exist entirely, and I wouldn’t care.
I have all I need in my arms right now. The girl that’s haunted my thoughts and dreams for years.
The omega who’s kept my eyes and my heart firmly focused on her without even trying.
My forever mate who just so happens to be best friends with my little sister.
Small world, isn’t it?
My head turns, and my lips travel to her jaw. A short journey from there, and my mouth meets hers. I kiss her for the first time, tasting those sweet, supple lips on mine. If her scent wasn’t enough to drive me crazy, the way her lips feel on mine would.
It’s slow, at first, a kind of tentative kiss, as if neither of us quite know what we’re doing, whether we should progress this.
That cautiousness fades fast, though, and it turns into something more.
Something greedy. A desperate, hungry embrace.
Her lips part, and my tongue pushes through, colliding with hers.
Fuck it all to hell. She tastes spectacular.
I don’t know how long we kiss, but I do know that, after a while, her scent deepens in the air—the telltale sign she’s turned on, that this is real, that she wants me just as badly as I want her.
I’m dying, absolutely dying, to taste her slick, to run my tongue between her legs and taste her from the source, but if I start, if we do… there will be no stopping us.
Besides, I suppose I should speak with my brothers. Apologize for growling and tell them what happened here. There are no secrets in a pack.
So, even though it’s perhaps the most difficult thing I’ve ever done, I labor to pull my mouth off hers.
We’re both breathing hard, both of us panting like we can’t get enough air in our lungs.
She gazes at me with her pupils dilated, and it’s almost like she can’t quite focus on me, too lost in the passion to see clearly.
“I suppose,” I start, my voice haggard and rough, “I should drink that hot chocolate. Apologize to the others.”
“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to—”
“You made it for me. I’m drinking it.” It might be not so hot by now, but that’s okay. I don’t need the liquid to warm my body up. Holding onto Noelle, kissing her, had warmed me up enough, set fire to me from the inside. It’s a flame that may never be put out.
I’m slow in setting her down. Letting her go is even harder thanks to the erection pressing against my jeans, but thankfully she doesn’t comment on it—probably because she’s too busy trying to hide the fact that her panties are surely damp under there, damp with some slick.
Oh, I can foresee the issue now: once I have her, I’ll never want either of us to leave the bed.
“I should, um, go clean up, anyways,” she says as she tucks some of her hair behind her ear.
Noelle clearly doesn’t want to stroll downstairs smelling of slick.
I can’t blame her. It’s so strong, even Miranda is likely to smell it.
“Should we… I mean, should we tell the others?” Her cheeks flush. “Unless that didn’t mean anything.”
I grab her hand and pull her close. I wrap an arm around her shoulders and hug her into my chest as I tell her, “I don’t know about you, but that sure as hell meant something to me. I meant it when I said you’re mine, and you know it, too.”
She’s quiet. I don’t know if she’s trying to come up with another way to shrug what just happened off, or if it’s finally dawning on her—we can’t keep going like we have. The first cracks have started to spread. Truly, it was only a matter of time until one of us broke and gave in.
“You clean up,” I tell her, measured in letting her go. Strange how quickly things turn; my arms feel so empty once she’s no longer in them. “I’ll talk to my brothers.”
Noelle gives me a short nod. “Okay.” She bites her bottom lip as she goes, and she makes it to the doorway before she tosses a glance back at me.
She gets this adorable, bashful expression on her face before she disappears into the hall, and believe it or not, that look of hers makes me beam a goofy grin of my own.
Me and goofy grins do not go hand-in-hand, obviously.
That grin of mine fades when I go toward my bed.
I grab the mug and take a sip. By now, whatever marshmallows she put in there for me have melted, now an off-white mess on the top of the liquid.
It’s only warm now, not hot, but that’s all right.
I find my phone and message my brothers to get their asses up here, and then I message our parents for the newest update.
Looks like they’re still getting pelted with snow.
At this rate they’ll be lucky to get here before Christmas day.
Hmm. As much as it’ll suck not to have the family together on Christmas, I’m okay with it. It’ll mean more time with Noelle.
I hear Nico and Felix’s voices in the hall a minute later, and they barge into my room together, stopping in their tracks instantly as they both lift their noses and smell the air. Noelle must linger, even though she’s long gone.
“That’s…” Felix trails off, but Nico finishes for him, “Noelle.” Then both of my brothers realize I’m sporting a hard-on, and they try to act tough, folding their arms over their chests and puffing themselves out like they’re the law around here.
“What the hell, Matteo?” Felix demands.
“Shut the door,” I say, and it’s only after Felix and Nico trade looks that the latter goes and shuts it. “She came up with hot chocolate and things escalated.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Felix says. “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine.”
“What exactly happened up here?”
No point in hedging. I tell my brothers exactly what happened, sparing no details. The kiss. The whole mine bit. The way she tried to give me an out and how I told her I meant it. The remnants of her slick in the air goes without saying.
Felix sits on the edge of my bed, while Nico sits cross-legged a few feet away on the floor. “So,” the former says, “what now?”
“I don’t know,” I say with a shrug. “But I do know it’s too damn hard to stay away from her.
I need her. I’m… sorry for growling earlier.
It was uncalled for.” Someone needs to mark the occasion; über alphas typically don’t apologize, ever.
It’s not in our DNA. We are unrepentant in our alpha-ness, or so we’re told.
“It’s all right,” Felix says. “It was all in good fun. You’re just, uh, wound up a little more than we are.”
“Speak for yourself,” Nico deadpans. “My feelings are hurt. Like, I felt that in here, bro.” He places a hand over his heart, and I have to roll my eyes at his ridiculousness.
“It’s going to take a lot more than an apology to make it right.
I need to see action on your part. I need a written plan with bullets and numbers and maybe even some three-tone graphs—”
“Are you done?” I cut in.
“I wasn’t, no, but since you interrupted me so rudely, yeah, yeah, I’m done.” He grins. “Seriously, though, what now? If she was okay with it, does that mean…”
The three of us look at one another. None of us have ever been in this position before, because there was never anyone else for us.
It was always Noelle. Always. We had no interest in getting to know other omegas while we were growing up, I think because we always knew.
Everything just came to a head here. Maybe it’s the circumstances, the fact that neither of our parents are around, or maybe it’s that holiday magic the people in the movies are always talking about.
Hah. Listen to me. I sound lovestruck.
Hmm. I suppose I am.
We’ll do the only thing we can from here on out. We’ll move at Noelle’s pace. We won’t push her. We won’t corner her. It’s a strangely delicate thing, still so new. I don’t want any of us to mess it up.
Fuck. The three of us are never going to hear the end of the I told you so’s from Miranda.