Chapter 7 The Fever #2
It almost drove me insane, pushing me to the limit, making my already oversensitive skin flare with renewed need. “Damon,” I screamed between ragged breaths as another orgasm threatened to tear through me. “I can’t…”
“You will,” he snarled. “You’re going to come on my knot and thank me for it.”
The swelling at his base was pressing against me with each stroke. Pleasure and primal terror mixed together. My Omega wanted it, demanded it, clamping down on him.
He drove into me one final time and his knot swelled fully, stretching me impossibly wide until I was locked around him, unable to move or escape.
My orgasm detonated at the same moment, violent and consuming.
There was no self, no name, no past. Just his body in mine, his fire flooding me, and the terrifying relief of no longer having to hold anything back.
“That’s it.” His groan vibrated against my skin as he spilled inside me, hot and endless. “Mine. Completely mine.”
The world narrowed to sensation, to the pulse of his knot, the flood of his seed, the vines twisting around us as my magic answered the storm. He drove through my orgasm, prolonging it until I couldn’t tell where one wave ended and the next began. “Give me everything.”
My throat was raw from screaming his name. The thick heat of his release filled me, mingling with the slickness between my thighs.
The air vibrated with a hum of magic and shadow energy. The very room seemed to tremble. Vines erupted from every surface, twining themselves around us both in a verdant cocoon that both restrained and cradled us together.
As our breathing slowed to ragged gasps, we remained joined. Neither of us willing or able to break the connection. Sweat cooled on our fevered skin.
And through the haze of my afterglow, my rational side finally returned.
It was like surfacing from drowning, that first desperate gulp of air before plunging into freezing water. The weight of what had happened crushed down on me.
I lay beneath Damon’s weight, my body still humming with satisfaction that made me sick to acknowledge. The desperate heat was gone, replaced by bone-deep contentment that felt wrong. Every nerve ending still sang with his touch. Every muscle was relaxed in a way that felt like surrender.
The air tasted of sex and shame. Evidence marked my skin, his scent everywhere, phantom sensations that reminded me how thoroughly he’d possessed me. The burning emptiness was gone, filled with something that made my throat close even as my body celebrated.
I had spent years building suppressants specifically to avoid this. To maintain autonomy over my own body. To never be reduced to this mindless, begging thing I’d become.
It had all been for nothing. In one night, I’d thrown it all away.
Biology had stripped away years of education and independence and revealed something underneath that was pure instinct. And that thing had wanted him. It had ached for him so much it had almost driven me mad.
“What have we done?” I forced the words out, my throat raw.
“Saved you from your own heat.” His arms tightened around me, protective even as he spoke the blunt, unbearable truth. “That’s what we’ve done.”
I tried to push away from him, but my limbs felt heavy, disconnected. His warmth bled into me where our skin touched, and my body responded with a sick eagerness that made my stomach turn. Even now, even after everything, some traitorous part of me wanted to lean into him.
“D-Don’t touch me,” I stammered. It came out weak and feeble, like all my recent efforts had been.
“You’re shaking.” He pulled me closer instead, ignoring my protest entirely. “You need this whether you want to admit it or not.”
Need. That word again. As if instinct justified everything. As if my body’s demands were the only truth that mattered.
I couldn’t look at him. Couldn’t bear to see satisfaction or possession or worse, tenderness, in his eyes. Because tenderness would suggest this was something other than what it was, a biological emergency that had turned me into something I didn’t recognize.
A crisp, disembodied woman’s voice cut through the suffocating aftermath, seeming to come from the air itself. “Damon. Helena Winters of House Hera is here. She insists it’s urgent regarding the Omega’s wellbeing.”
House Hera. My heart leaped. Everyone knew of their authority over marriage bonds. They were the protectors of Omega rights, one of the most powerful political forces in the supernatural world. If Helena Winters was here about my wellbeing, maybe she could get me out of this place.
I felt Damon tense against me, every muscle coiling. “Tell her to wait, Elara,” he said without moving.
“She says she won’t leave until she speaks with both of you. Now.”
The woman, Elara, spoke with urgency that made my pulse quicken with possibility.
“She can see us later,” Damon insisted. “Cora needs to rest.”
Rest? How could I rest here, when I constantly lived in fear of my own biology? This might very well be my last chance, and by the gods, I’d take it.
I pushed against his chest with renewed strength. “I want to meet her. Now.”
His eyes darkened, but I didn’t care. Helena Winters represented everything I needed. She had the authority that could challenge his, the power that could free me, and the protection from responses that grew stronger with every moment I spent in his arms.
“Damon,” Elara said again. It was a simple, single word, a reminder more than a challenge.
Damon’s jaw clenched, and tendrils of black ink slithered over the edges of the room. He hated this. He wanted to keep me here, in this gilded cage he’d built.
But just like I’d hoped, he couldn’t refuse a House Hera representative. The Olympian Houses might spit in the face of normal human justice, but they had to respect each other.
“Fine,” he said at last. Not to Elara, but to me. “Have it your way, Cora. But just so you know, Helena’s presence doesn’t change anything. I only gave you what you craved.”
I didn’t bother denying that. He was right. My Omega biology had betrayed me, at the worst possible time, and I had needed him. But that didn’t mean this had to be forever.
Helena might know how to break whatever hold he had over me, how to stop the desperate craving that was already building again. Right now, that was my only hope.