7. Bee #4
He makes a low sound against me, and the vibration sends heat spearing up my spine. His fingers hook the waistband and draw the panties down with maddening patience. They disappear into his pocket.
“Those are mine.”
“Yes.”
I should argue. Instead, his mouth closes over me, and argument becomes a hobby for women with less talented aliens between their legs.
He licks like he has all day and no mercy.
Slow at first, a warm stroke of tongue that delivers enough aphrodisiac to make my skin loosen around my bones.
Then deeper, harder, his lips closing over my clit while his fingers press into my thighs to hold me open.
The desk edge bites the backs of my legs.
My skirt bunches around my hips. My blouse is still buttoned, my heels still on, my office still mine, and he is making a ruin of me in the center of it.
I slide one hand to his ear.
He groans against my cunt.
The vibration tips me forward. I stroke the ridge again, more deliberately this time, and his fingers tighten.
Pleasure pours through him, through me, through the bond until neither body seems to know who started it.
He pushes two fingers inside me, curling exactly where he learned to find the spot that makes my thighs shake.
“That,” I gasp. “There.”
He does not answer. He works me harder, tongue and fingers and that wicked, generous mouth, until the orgasm hits so fast I cannot brace for it.
My hips buck. My hand clenches on his ear.
He growls like the pain makes him hungry and sucks me through every pulse until I am shaking on my own desk, panting at the ceiling like it owes me an explanation.
He rises with my slick on his mouth and satisfaction in every sharp line of his face.
“Inside me,” I say.
His hands go still.
My body tightens at the pause. His gaze holds mine, bright and savage. “Say the rest.”
I know what he means. The knot. The claim. The future we keep choosing even while standing in the wreckage of what almost broke us.
“I want all of you,” I say. “Your cock. Your knot. Your claim. Not because you demand it. Because I do.”
The sound that leaves him barely qualifies as language.
His trousers open fast. Mine are never making it back to HR-approved condition.
He drags me to the edge of the desk, grips my hips, and lines himself up.
The first press of him against me steals the last of my cleverness.
He is thick, ridged, already changing for me, the velvet texture rising along his shaft as my body welcomes him.
He enters slowly.
Thank God, because alien-human compatibility remains an optimistic design choice.
Even wet, even prepared by his mouth, my body has to stretch around him.
I grip his shoulders, nails digging through the suit jacket.
He watches my face with brutal focus, jaw locked, every instinct in him screaming to take and every promise holding him still.
“Breathe, Bee.”
“I am trying not to bite you.”
“Bite me.”
I do.
His control snaps.
He thrusts the rest of the way in, and my cry hits the closed shutters.
Full. Too full. Perfect. His hands anchor my hips, not dragging me behind him now, holding me exactly where I chose to be.
He moves once, slow and deep, and the ridges of him stroke every place his mouth woke.
My head drops back. He catches my hair in one hand, not pulling, simply holding, giving me that sharp little edge of restraint I want because I trust him to know the difference.
“There,” he growls. “My editor-in-chief.”
A laugh breaks through my moan despite everything.
He thrusts again, harder. The desk creaks.
“This desk is new,” I gasp.
“I will buy you another.”
“I like this one.”
“Then hold on to it.”
He fucks me like an Alpha who has learned the door opens from my side and still plans to make a cathedral out of the room once invited.
Deep, hard strokes. Mouth at my throat. Hands sure on my hips.
Every movement says mine. Every pause waits for yes.
The combination devastates me. It is exactly what I wanted and did not know how to ask for: not less of him, not a smaller male, not a tamed prince.
Just the full force of him with my choice at the center.
His knot swells at the base, pressing, promising.
He slows with a snarl.
I wrap my legs around him. “Do not stop.”
“Say it.”
“I want the knot.”
His forehead drops to mine. “Again.”
“I want you locked inside me. I want the claim renewed. I want to go home to your bed tonight and argue about my dresser space tomorrow.” The words come easier now, because each one is mine before I hand it over.
“And when I call you my husband, it will not be because your law got there before my heart. It will be because I mean it.”
His eyes blaze. “Bee.”
“There is your wife,” I whisper.
The knot pushes against me, thick and demanding. My body resists for one stretched, breathless second. His thumb finds my clit. His mouth closes over the mark at my throat. Pleasure breaks me open, and he seats fully with a slow, relentless thrust that leaves me sobbing into his shoulder.
Locked.
Claimed.
Chosen.
He bites.
Pain flashes bright, then dissolves into a pleasure so deep it almost scares me.
My orgasm tears through me, clenching around every inch of him, around the knot, around the impossible alien certainty of our bodies becoming one locked thing.
He groans my name like prayer dragged through teeth and comes inside me, heat spilling deep, his hands shaking against my hips.
For a while, neither of us moves. We cannot, technically, which saves me the trouble of pretending dignity is available. My forehead rests against his shoulder. His breath saws near my ear. Papers litter the floor. One pen rolls slowly across the carpet, then stops like even it needs a minute.
“Tonight,” he says, voice low against my hair, “you come home with me.”
My spine stiffens on principle.
He lifts his head and meets my eyes. “Not because I command it. Because my bed is empty, yours is too small, and both of us are finished pretending separate rooms prove independence.”
“That sounded dangerously close to reasonable.”
“I am capable of occasional terror.”
I study his face. The gold still burns in his eyes, but behind it waits something steadier than hunger. Not certainty. Not perfection. A willingness to keep learning even when every instinct in him wants to seize the answer and call it solved.
“My place on weekends,” I say.
His brows draw down. “Your bed is too small.”
“Alpha long legs. Very tragic. We will persevere.”
“My legs hang off the end.”
“Partnership.”
His jaw flexes. “I will discuss buying you a larger mattress.”
“And I will probably say yes because your legs are ridiculous and I enjoy sleeping without knees in my ribs.”
“This process is inefficient.”
“Yes.”
“I hate it.”
“I know.”
His mouth brushes mine, softer than expected. “I will learn.”
“I know that too.”
The words surprise me with their truth.
His expression changes, hope breaking through the last hard line of his face. I touch his ear, gentle now, not to make him shudder, though he does. To remind myself this powerful, impossible male has vulnerable places and trusted me with one before either of us knew how to trust the rest.
“Forever is going to be work,” I say.
“I do not fear work.”
“You fear waiting.”
“Yes.”
“You fear not being in control.”
“Deeply.”
“You fear losing me if you don’t act fast enough.”
His mouth tightens.
There. Truth.
I kiss him before that fear can become another wall. “Then we practice.”
“Together?”
“By my side, remember?”
His hand spreads over my lower back, holding me to him while his knot keeps us joined. “By your side.”
“Even when your Alpha long legs get impatient.”
“I will shorten my stride.”
“Don’t. I like your legs.”
His smile turns wicked for half a second, but it fades into something quieter when I do not look away.
“Fortunately,” I whisper.
His breath catches. “What?”
“It is fortunate,” I say, giving him the word before he can demand it, because this one is mine to give. “That you are mine too.”
His kiss tastes like victory, surrender, coffee, and me.
Outside the shutters, Athena keeps humming.
The magazine waits with its restored budget, impossible deadlines, and a story that just got bigger than my original ambition.
Tomorrow, Athena can have my brain, Layn can have its crisis, MacArthur can have her revised interview terms, and Loora can have whatever dramatic reaction she has been rehearsing since the first time Skylor called me Ms. Watson with murder in his posture.
Tonight, when the knot releases, I will gather my files, my laptop, and whatever dignity survived the desk.
Then I will go to his bed because I choose to.
Tomorrow we will argue about drawer space, mattress ethics, and whether privacy shutters count as a workplace benefit.
Next week, we may fight over the MacArthur wording.
Next month, something neither of us can see yet.
But he will not walk ahead and call it protection.
I will not stand still and call it independence.
We will learn the pace together.
Skylor kisses the mark he renewed, his mouth soft over the bite. “My mate.”
“My Alpha,” I whisper back.
His whole body stills.
I let him hear the rest.
“My partner.”
His breath catches.
Then, because the word does not feel like a trap this time, I give him the one that scares us both.
“My husband.”
The bond settles at last, not as a chain, not as a verdict, but as a road opening beneath our feet. For the first time since he walked into Athena and rearranged my life with one impossible look, I am not afraid of where it leads.
Complete at last.
Not because the bond decided.
Because I did.