Chapter 55
Chapter Fifty-Five
Daphne
The next wave of my heat didn't creep. It detonated.
One moment I was drifting in the warm aftermath of Levi's claiming, his sunshine bond humming contentedly alongside Oliver's gold and Garrett's bedrock. The next, I was jackknifing upright in the nest, a scream tearing from my throat as the heat slammed into me with the force of a freight train.
This was different. This was worse. Every nerve ending in my body had been stripped raw and set on fire, every inch of skin hypersensitive to the point of agony.
The sheets beneath me felt like sandpaper, the air in the room too thick to breathe.
My core clenched around nothing, empty and aching, and the pain of that emptiness was so acute I thought I might die from it.
"Micah," I sobbed, though I wasn't sure if the word actually made it past my lips. "Micah, please—"
The door didn't open. It exploded inward.
Micah stood in the doorway, and I barely recognized him.
Gone was the composed, controlled man who analyzed every situation with clinical precision.
In his place was something feral, something barely leashed, his dark eyes blazing with an intensity that made my breath catch even through the haze of heat.
His usually immaculate hair was wrecked, standing up in wild spikes like he'd been tearing at it.
His shirt was untucked, half the buttons missing, revealing glimpses of lean muscle and pale skin beneath.
His hands were clenched at his sides, tendons standing out in sharp relief, trembling with the effort of restraint.
And his scent—God, his scent… pure alpha musk so thick it coated my tongue and made my head spin.
He looked like a man who had been holding himself together by sheer force of will, and that will had finally, catastrophically failed.
"Daphne." My name came out broken, shattered, nothing like his usual precise diction.
His chest heaved with each breath, nostrils flaring as he drank in the scent of the room—of me, of heat, of three alphas' releases still leaking from my thoroughly claimed body.
A sound escaped him, low and guttural, more animal than human.
"I can't—I tried to wait—I tried to be patient—"
"Don't be patient," I begged, reaching for him with trembling hands.
"Micah, please, I need you—it hurts so much—" He crossed the room in three strides, and then he was in the nest, his weight bearing me down into the mattress, his mouth crashing against mine with none of the careful precision I'd come to expect from him.
This kiss was desperate, uncoordinated, teeth clashing, tongues tangling, both of us too far gone for finesse.
He tasted like the tea he always drank, something herbal and slightly bitter, and underneath it the taste of his own need, sharp and electric.
His hands were everywhere, not the methodical exploration of before but frantic, grasping, like he was trying to touch every inch of me at once.
He palmed my breasts roughly, fingers digging into the soft flesh, then dragged his hands down my sides, over my hips, between my thighs.
When his fingers found my center, already slick and swollen and desperate, we both groaned.
"So wet," he breathed against my mouth, his fingers sliding through my folds, gathering the evidence of my arousal—and the releases of his pack mates still seeping from me. "You're dripping. Soaked. Three knots and you still need more."
"Need you," I gasped as his fingers circled my clit, the pressure just right, his touch precise even now. "Only you left. Please, Micah—"
He pulled back just enough to look at me, and what I saw in his eyes made my heart stutter. Hunger, yes—raw and overwhelming—but also something softer. Vulnerability. Fear, even. Like he was terrified of what he might do if he let go completely.
"I've been holding back," he said, his voice strained. "For months. Years, maybe. Wanted you so much it felt like dying. But I was afraid—" His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "I was afraid I'd hurt you. That I'd lose control and—"
"Lose control," I interrupted, grabbing his face in my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes. "I want you to lose control. I want everything you've been holding back. Give it to me, Micah. All of it."
Something cracked behind his eyes. The last fragment of his carefully constructed composure, shattering into a thousand pieces.
"You have no idea what you're asking for," he growled, and then his mouth was on my throat, teeth scraping against the sensitive skin, not biting but promising.
His hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise, lifting me, positioning me, and suddenly I was on my stomach, face pressed into the pillows, ass in the air.
"Micah—" I started, but then his mouth was on me, and I lost the ability to form words.
He didn't tease. Didn't build slowly. He buried his face between my thighs from behind and devoured me like a man possessed, his tongue plunging inside me, lapping at the combined releases of his pack mates before focusing on my own arousal.
The angle was different like this—deeper, more intense—and I screamed into the pillow as his tongue found spots I didn't know existed.
His hands gripped my ass, spreading me open, holding me in place as he feasted.
I could feel his nose pressing against my perineum, his chin slick with my arousal, his breath hot and ragged against my most sensitive flesh.
He ate me with a single-minded focus that left me breathless, every stroke of his tongue precise and deliberate, calculated to drive me higher.
"Micah—" I sobbed, my hands fisting in the sheets, my thighs trembling. "Oh God, oh fuck—"
He didn't respond with words. He responded by sucking my clit into his mouth with devastating precision, his tongue flicking against the sensitive nub in a rhythm that seemed designed to unravel me at the molecular level.
Two fingers slid inside me, crooking immediately to find that spot, and I came with a wail, my whole body convulsing, my inner walls clamping down on his fingers.
He worked me through it, gentling only slightly, his mouth never leaving my flesh. Before the aftershocks had even faded, he was building me up again, his tongue tracing patterns that seemed almost mathematical in their precision, each stroke calculated to maximize pleasure.
"Again," he commanded, his voice rough against my flesh. "You can give me another."
It wasn't dirty talk—it was a statement of fact.
He knew my body, had probably been analyzing my responses from the moment he walked in, cataloging every gasp and moan and storing them away for future reference.
And now he was using that knowledge against me, playing me like an instrument he'd spent years learning to master.
I came again, harder than before, tears streaming down my face, my voice breaking on sounds that weren't quite words.
My arms gave out and I collapsed forward, face buried in the pillow, ass still raised, trembling and oversensitive and completely at his mercy.
He pressed a kiss to my spine, surprisingly tender, and I felt him shift behind me. The rustle of fabric, the hiss of a zipper, and then the blunt head of his cock was pressing against my entrance.
"Look at me," he said, and his voice had dropped to something low and dangerous.
I turned my head, peering over my shoulder, and my breath caught at what I saw.
Micah was kneeling behind me, his shirt gone entirely now, his chest rising and falling with rapid breaths.
His cock jutted out from his body, flushed dark and straining, longer than Levi's though not quite as thick as Garrett's, with a slight upward curve that I knew would hit all the right spots.
But it was his face that made me shiver. The mask was completely gone now, stripped away to reveal something raw and hungry and utterly uncontrolled. His dark eyes burned into mine, pupils blown so wide only a thin ring of brown remained.
"I'm going to take you now," he said, and there was no question in it, no hesitation. Just certainty. "I'm going to fuck you until you can't think, can't speak, can't do anything but feel. And then I'm going to knot you, and mark you, and you're going to be mine. Do you understand?"
"Yes," I breathed, pushing back against him, desperate to feel him inside me. "Yes, Micah…Alpha, please—"
He thrust into me in one brutal stroke. The breath punched out of my lungs.
He was big—not as thick as Garrett but longer, and the angle from behind let him sink impossibly deep, deeper than any of the others had reached.
I felt him everywhere, filling me so completely that I couldn't tell where I ended and he began.
He didn't give me time to adjust. He couldn't—I could feel the tremors running through his body, the desperate need that had finally broken free of its chains. He pulled back and slammed home again, setting a punishing pace that drove the air from my lungs with every thrust.
"So good," he gritted out, his fingers digging into my hips hard enough to leave bruises. "You feel so good. I have been hearing and smelling you with the others and it has been driving me crazy.”
His hips snapped forward, driving a cry from my throat.
The sound of our bodies meeting was obscene—wet, slapping impacts punctuated by his harsh breaths and my keening moans.
He fucked like he did everything else, with intense focus and devastating precision, each thrust angled to hit that spot inside me that made stars burst behind my eyes.
"Wanted this," he panted, his pace increasing. "Wanted you. Tried to stay in the background. Tried to be patient. But you were everywhere. Your scent, your smile, the way you looked at me like you could actually see me—"