Chapter 18 – Bells #2
I open the tin and pull out a biscuit, which is…
kind of a weird shape, but I don't think anything of it until I catch Jamie's nervous grin growing decidedly wider and more nervous, his eyes flicking between me and the biscuit in my hands like he just realized he'd forgotten something's wrong with it.
I glance at it.
It's… dick-shaped?
But I take a bite and it's good. From the workshop, I hear Orion's low voice followed by an even lower growl from Rex. Subwoofer low.
"Oh boy!" Jamie says without missing a beat.
Rex is at my side before Jamie can even take a breath after speaking. "We're leaving," he says in an even flatter tone than usual.
"Jamie, can I have a few minutes alone with him?"
Jamie's bouncing stalls mid-bounce. His warm brown eyes flick between me and Orion, who's standing where Rex left him, still holding the new mask and watching us with unmistakable sympathy in those soft green eyes.
Rex is already turning toward the spiral staircase like he's about to bolt down it and straight into his car.
"Of course." Jamie squeezes my arm once. "Take the back room. Past the beaded curtain, second door on the left. It's quiet."
"Thanks."
Rex is three steps down the staircase before the chain snaps taut.
"Rex."
"We're leaving."
"We're not."
He turns. That single blue eye is flat. Dead. The same blank void I saw at the cemetery, at the penthouse, at the studio with Carmine, all day and night yesterday. The lights are on but nobody's fucking home.
"Five minutes," I say. "Give me five minutes and then we can go. I promise."
"I don't want five minutes. I want to leave."
"I know." I hold up our connected wrists. "But you're still attached to me, and I'm not moving until you give me five minutes in that back room."
His jaw works beneath the mask. I watch the battle play out in real time. The urge to rip the chain off his wrist versus the knowledge that he'd hurt me if he did.
"Fine."
I lead him through the beaded curtain. The beads click and rattle behind us, a soft wooden percussion that fades as we move down a narrow stone hallway lit by more of Jamie's LED torches. Second door on the left opens into a small windowless room with bookshelves crammed along the stone walls.
I close the door.
And then I actually look at him.
Oh, shit.
Rex is pale. Not just tired-pale, not just hasn't-eaten-enough pale. Gray. The color of old concrete. His hands—those elegant musician's hands—are shaking. Not a lot. Just enough that I can see the fine tremor running through his fingers where they hang at his sides.
The masks did this to him.
Having to take off his own in front of Orion, even though Orion is scarred too and understands… it didn't matter. The act of unmasking broke something in him that was already cracked.
"Rex."
Nothing.
I cross the distance between us and wrap my arms around him.
His whole body goes rigid. Every muscle locks down, his spine straightening like I just electrocuted him.
He doesn't push me away, but he doesn't respond either.
His arms dangle at his sides like he's forgotten they're attached to his body.
The handcuff chain presses cold against my wrist where it's caught between us.
I don't let go.
My hands find his back. It's already hard with lean muscle, but the tension is coiled so tight beneath his shirt that it feels like pressing against stone. I spread my fingers wide and squeeze, digging into the knotted muscle along his spine, and a shudder ripples through him.
He still doesn't move his arms.
I hold him anyway.
His chest expands against mine with a breath that shakes on the way in.
Then another. His heartbeat hammers against my cheek where it's pressed to his sternum.
Too fast, too hard, the kind of pulse that means his body is screaming danger danger danger even though the only threat in this room is an omega in a rabbit hoodie.
Seconds pass. Maybe a full minute. I keep my grip steady, my hands sliding up and down and across his back, pressing warmth into this broken and breaking alpha.
Then his arms come up.
Slowly. So slowly it's almost imperceptible, like his body is moving against his will. His hands settle on my shoulder blades—tentative, barely there, the pressure so light I might be imagining it.
His head drops.
His face buries itself in the curve of my neck with an exhale so exhausted it sounds like his soul is leaving his body. The mask presses cool and smooth against my skin, his forehead finding the hollow above my collarbone, and the rest of him just... folds.
Not dramatically. Rex doesn't collapse or break down or make a sound. He just sags, all that rigid tension draining out of him in one long, silent surrender, his weight shifting forward into me until I'm bearing some of it.
I hold him.
My fingers card through the hair at his nape. He shivers.
I want to tell him.
Right now, right here, with his face pressed against my neck and his walls in ruins around him.
There's another secret you don't know.
I'm not just a girl.
I'm an omega.
You're my scent match.
That's why this feels the way it does.
That's how I found you at the cemetery. That's why being close to you makes the noise in my head go quiet too, even when we're driving each other fucking insane. Maybe even especially then.
But this isn't the right time.
He's in too much pain right now. Telling him now would feel like taking advantage, like using biology to explain away something that would stand on its own anyway.
And if I’m being honest with myself, I think he already knows.
Somewhere deep down, beneath the denial and the rage and the fucking fortress he's built around himself, some part of Rex recognizes what I really am to him. He just can't name it yet. Can't let himself name it.
So I won't name it for him.
Not today.
But I can do something else.
I pull back just enough to see his face, to reach up and cover the side that isn't masked with my palm, my thumb brushing along his cheekbone.
His lashes—so light they're almost white, unlike the pitch black of his dyed hair, which is starting to show platinum at the roots—flutter shut at my touch and he turns his face against my palm, his full lips parting, his breath tickling my skin.
Just for a second, he lets himself have this.
And I kiss him.
Rex goes completely still.
Full system shutdown. Every muscle, every nerve, every thought in his head slamming to a halt like someone yanked the emergency brake on his entire existence.
I feel his lips part slightly in pure shock before he pulls away.
I pull back an inch too.
His one visible eye is blown wide, the pupil swallowing the ice blue.
"What…" His voice comes out wrecked. Barely a whisper, but there's still a growl there. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Shh." I brush my thumb across his jaw, feeling the hard line of it beneath the mask's edge. "Let me calm you down."
I kiss him again.
This time, after a beat that stretches into eternity, his mouth moves against mine.
Tentative. Uncertain. Like he's never done this before and is working from theory alone. His lips press back with a pressure that's almost questioning—is this right? Am I doing this right?—and his hand tightens on my shoulder blade.
I angle my head, deepen the kiss just slightly. His breath hitches. The chain clinks as my cuffed hand slides up his chest, finding the collar of his shirt, curling into it.
He makes a sound. Low, involuntary, trapped behind his teeth. Something between a groan and a growl that vibrates through his chest and into mine.
Then I'm sinking.
Down his body. My hands trail from his chest to his toned stomach to his belt, and I feel every muscle jump and tighten under my palms. He's watching me with that single eye so wide I can see white all around the blue now, his chest heaving, his hands hanging in the air like he doesn't know where to put them.
"Bells—"
"Shhhh."
My fingers find his belt buckle.
His hand lands on my shoulder, but he doesn't stop me.
I free the buckle. Pop the button. Pull the zipper down and feel his cock twitch against the back of my knuckles, already hard, already straining against the fabric.
"You don't have to—"
"I know."
I take him in my hand and his head falls back with a sharp exhale, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables. His fingers dig into my shoulder hard enough to bruise. I stroke him once, just testing, and his hips jerk forward.
I take him in my mouth.
"Fuck—"
The sound he makes isn't human. It's raw and desperate and torn from somewhere so deep inside him I don't think he knew it existed. His hand flies from my shoulder to the bookshelf beside him, grabbing it for support, and books tumble off the shelf as his grip sends them scattering.
His cock is fucking huge, which is no surprise, and his knot is already half-swollen. The scars aren't a surprise, either. The worst of them is a silvered raised ridge that starts at the base in a starburst shape and spirals around and down his knot and shaft like a serpent.
When I gently trace the scar with my fingertips and Rex's knot swells a fraction, he winces and his breath hisses through his teeth. He goes soft in my hand.
Fuck, no wonder he's so aggressive.
He's an alpha. The scar must hurt when he gets hard. Never mind the obvious self-loathing that has its claws buried deep inside him. Alphas that can't burn off sexual energy go insane. Even feral, sometimes.
If he struggles to get hard…
Everything's adding up together in my head, and it's happening fast. The isolation. The borderline ferality. The level at which he despises himself, how he acts like he doesn't deserve even the slightest hint of affection or kindness.
How he kissed me like it was his first time.
Because it was. He really, genuinely did not know what to do.
And I am going to be so, so careful with him.