Chapter 20
Lucy
When I drifted back to consciousness, my teeth were chattering. I whimpered, confused and disoriented, when arms tightened around me.
“You awake, baby girl?”
King.
My lips parted with a shuddering breath, and I blinked my eyes open to take in an expanse of tan skin.
I was draped over the alpha’s chest, and when I shifted, I realized we were still locked together.
My ass was tender, my muscles sore, my pussy practically split open on his knot, and I was confident I’d never felt pleasure that even remotely compared to what we’d just done.
His fingers ran through my messy hair, and I leaned in to his touch. “How are you?” His voice was low and soothing.
“Good.”
Or at least, I should be good. Having sex with King one time had opened my eyes to a world I never believed existed.
His dominance, his growls, the pleasure he gave me…
I felt transformed. It had been the type of sex I’d dreamed of, that I’d read about in romance books, that I’d craved but never experienced.
Sex with my exes had been lackluster, and I’d eventually just resigned myself to believing that’s all there was to it.
Thank god King had proved me wrong. He had been stern and dominant…while also being gentle and attentive. Everything had been perfect, so why did I feel like I was about to crawl out of my skin?
He wrapped a soft blanket around me before slowly sitting up, keeping me firmly on his lap. He peered at me. “Are you feeling a little out of sorts, princess?”
My omega preened at the term of endearment, but the unsettled feeling in my chest persisted.
“I don’t know why.” My voice was hoarse, and King immediately grabbed a bottle of water from the nightstand. He held it to my lips and I didn’t protest as I gulped it down—my arms were limp noodles.
“Have you ever done a scene like that before?”
Scene. I recognized the word from the BDSM romance books I’d read.
I shook my head.
He set the water bottle aside and drew me closer until my head rested against his chest. “That was probably too intense for a beginner,” he murmured. “I’m sorry.”
I frowned. I didn’t want him to apologize. “But I wanted it. I liked it.” Let’s do it again.
I didn’t say that part out loud. King hadn’t promised me anything, and he was only in Starlight Grove temporarily. But my clingy omega was already dreaming of repeating our scene, this time in my nest so his scent would saturate everything.
“Sometimes after a scene, you can have what’s called a sub drop. It can leave you feeling a bit shaky and vulnerable.” He rubbed his cheek against the top of my head, scent-marking me. “Which is why I’m going to take care of you until you feel steady. Starting with a bath.”
You need to take care of yourself, Lucy. Being an omega is no excuse for being dependent on us.
My exes’ voices floated through my head, but I batted them aside.
Fuck them. If I only had King for tonight, I wasn’t going to refuse his care.
I tightened my arms and legs around him as he stood, crying out as the movement shifted his knot inside me.
Sparks of pleasure mixed with the stinging pain of my heated butt, and I was already on the verge of coming again.
He palmed my sore ass as he carried me into the bathroom.
“Ouch.” I scowled and jutted out my lip, but he just chuckled.
“You earned that heated ass, baby. But don’t worry, I’ll rub some cream on it. In fact”—his nose skimmed my cheek—“you don’t need to worry about anything right now. I’ve got you.”
And I knew he did.
He turned on the bathroom light and I squinted against the brightness, but he immediately dimmed it.
He carried me around effortlessly as he readied the bath.
Once the tub was half full, he surprised me by getting in with me.
His knot had loosened enough to move me off of him, but as he settled me in his lap, facing him, he seemed to be in no rush.
The heated water stung my spanked skin, but the pain quickly faded. I settled against him, staying in a sleepy fog as he massaged shampoo into my hair and ran body wash over my skin with firm hands.
“I could stay inside you forever.” He sighed loudly. “But I guess I can’t do that.”
My lips quirked at how put out he sounded.
He slid out of me in a rush of cum. My omega snarled with displeasure, but King’s movements were steady as he got me out of the bath, dried me off, and wrapped a soft robe around me.
He led me back to bed. “Lie on your stomach.”
My pussy clenched and another burst of cum leaked out of me. I was tired and sore and still seconds away from bending over and begging him to take me again.
I stuck with lying down on the bed. The click of a bottle cap preceded cool lotion against my skin. I groaned as he gently rubbed it in, soothing the pain.
When he was done, he stretched out beside me. “How’re you doing now?”
I smiled softly. “Better.”
He drew me to his side, and the heat of his bare skin lulled me into a sleepy haze.
At least, until I jolted with awareness and rolled away from King.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up and looking around the room.
“Did I…” I trailed off, my cheeks on fire. “Oh my god. Did I call you Daddy?” My endorphin-induced haze had conveniently made me forget that small detail, but my conscious brain definitely remembered.
King’s lips twitched. “Yes, you did.”
I pressed my face to the mattress. “Let’s forget this ever happened. Sound good? Okay, great.” I could only imagine the horror on my exes’ faces if I ever made a slip like that.
King’s deep, rich laugh filled the room, and he manhandled me back to his chest.
“I fucking liked it, baby girl. Now, be a good girl for Daddy and tell me what you want from room service.”
“No amount of joint compound will hide that shitty drywall work. Whoever hung it must have been on their first day on the job. Or a kindergartener.”
I snorted at King’s track of scathing commentary. Who knew that the trick to getting the grumpy alpha talking was to put on a home improvement show?
“I thought your company did investment…things. Do you build the homes, too?”
“I should have you write our website copy.” He chuckled. “We occasionally do some real estate investment, but it’s mostly other investment things. I spent three summers framing new homes when I was younger, though.”
I traced my fingers down his bare, muscular chest. He’d put his boxers on to get the room service, but he couldn’t get more dressed than that when all he had with him was his tux.
Which suited me just fine. Getting to take in his body with my greedy eyes made it easy to imagine him on a construction site, droplets of sweat dripping off his skin.
My mind flashed to another hard-working, muscular alpha, and I swallowed hard.
I’d done my best to push Wilder from my mind.
I hadn’t heard anything from him after I dropped off the cookies.
It was fine. Totally fine. He’d already given me so much, it wasn’t like he owed me any sort of thank-you or acknowledgment.
I just wished I could make my chest stop aching every time I thought of him.
“When was that?” I leaned over King and stole a fry from his almost-empty plate. He’d ordered way too much food, including my own side of fries, but food always tasted better when it was stolen off someone else’s plate.
“That was after college.”
“You didn’t start working at your parents’ company right away?” I’d asked him about his childhood and family during our drive down here, but he’d clearly been reticent to answer so I’d backed off. I wanted to know more about this alpha, to make sense of him.
He twirled a strand of my hair around his finger and tugged, sending a slight spark of pain through me.
“After college, I got a job advocating for ocean conservation. The pay was shit, so I took on part-time work with a building crew to keep myself afloat. I’d never done anything like that before, but they hired me on the spot since I’m an alpha.
I spent that first year just carrying heavy boards for the guys until I proved myself and they taught me how to frame out a house. ”
“You did ocean conversation? That’s so cool. I went through a marine biologist phase as a girl.”
“I can see it now, sweet little omega standing on a boat as she charms all the animals in the entire fucking ocean.”
I shook my head. “Not sure about that. That’s more my friend Olive. She’s the lighthouse keeper, and she grew up lobster fishing with her parents.”
Shoot. Thinking of Olive reminded me that I should probably send my friends a sign of life, but I had no idea where my phone was and was way too comfortable to get up and find it. So I just cuddled into King, enjoying the weight of his arm around me as he complained about substandard tiling jobs.
“Do you miss ocean conservation?” I asked at the commercial break.
A little crease appeared between his eyebrows. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever asked me that.”
It was my turn to frown. “Why not?”
He shrugged. “I guess everyone assumed that I would work at the family company. The part they didn’t understand was why I wasted my time doing nonprofit work instead of starting at the company right away.”
“Doing what you’re passionate about isn’t a waste.”
He kissed the top of my head.
“What made you leave your conservation job?”
Even though we barely knew each other, I caught the subtle tick in his jaw and tense set of his shoulders.
“My parents—mom and two dads, all alphas—started having health issues and couldn’t run the company anymore.” I hated the lost, far-off look in his eyes. “My brother was supposed to take over for them.”
I wrapped my arms around his torso, my face pressed in the crook of his neck. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“I don’t.”
My throat tightened.
“He died on his tenth birthday. He spent most of my life in the hospital for cancer treatments while I was left at home with nannies.”
Lars might have been annoying growing up, but the thought of losing him wrecked me. “I’m so sorry.” My hoarse words were wholly inadequate.
His fingers ran through my hair. “I can’t really miss him when I never knew him, but I miss the idea of having a brother. My parents were left with me, a four-year-old they didn’t want.”
I breathed in sharply. “What?”
“I was an accident, and they resented me for pulling their attention away from Saint—the son they actually wanted. Even worse, I had the audacity to not die from cancer. Unsurprisingly, I was never close with my parents, but when they had to step down from the company, I thought becoming CEO might be what finally made them proud of me.”
He shrugged like it didn’t matter.
We both knew how much it did.
“They’re all gone now, anyway. Died within a few days of each other.”
I moved slowly, like I was approaching a wounded animal, straddling his lap and curling myself around him as if my arms were strong enough to take his pain.
“They’re the ones who missed out,” I said. “They were too lost in their grief to see you. They should have done better. You deserve better.”
His eyes squeezed shut and I worried I’d upset him until his arms tightened around me.
I wanted to say more—how sorry I was that he gave up his passion to win the approval of parents who didn’t deserve him—but I wouldn’t be able to hide the rage I felt toward them, so I just pressed my lips to his throat.
We stayed like that until our slow breaths synched. His muscles eased. My eyelids grew heavy. As I drifted off, the huge alpha wrapped around me, I wondered what it would be like for all of us to live the lives we wanted, not the one we thought we should have.