Twenty-Six
TWENTY-SIX
Mia
I HADN’T BEEN SURE what to expect after I’d given in to temptation and pressed my lips to Zalen’s. The truth was, I hadn’t been thinking at all . Zalen was upset. Zalen was apologizing for something that didn’t need an apology. Again . And I’d just... acted .
Was this selfish of me? Was kissing Zalen yet another way for me to push my own problems into the background for a little while?
But Zalen was different.
He wasn’t emotionally unavailable like Byron, or psychologically wounded like Luca and Emiel. He had tragedy in his past, it was true—but Zalen had been somebody’s mate once. He’d been in love, simple and uncomplicated—a family man contemplating a future with commitment and pups.
Intimacy with him—outside of the heat nest, at least—felt like crossing a bridge I might not be able to uncross. But somehow, giving that realization the attention it was due became incredibly difficult when his hand was in my hair, tilting my head back to expose the column of my throat to his teeth.
I whimpered, weak-willed and needy, as a pulse of hot slick soaked my panties.
Zalen growled, a low, possessive rumble that vibrated along tender skin. A moment later, big hands grasped the meat of my thighs. He rose from the barstool, supporting me as though I weighed nothing. I squeaked and threw my arms around his neck for balance, the kitchen whirling around me in a dizzying blur as he pivoted, depositing my ass on the edge of the breakfast counter.
“ Mia ,” he said, as though it was the only word left to him.
I braced myself on shaky arms, hitching my hips up as he curled his fingers into the waistband of my leggings, tugging them and my soaked underwear down with a single, sharp pull. Immediately, slick dribbled down my inner thighs, smearing on the expensive granite countertop.
So many health code violations , I thought, a bit hysterically. All the violations.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” Zalen said, and then he was kneeling on the shiny kitchen floor tile, his head between my thighs... eating me out as though he thought he might find a slice of Emiel’s bergamot chocolate lava cake hiding up there if he could only get his tongue deep enough inside me.
I gasped, shaking like a leaf in a storm at the sudden, overwhelming tsunami of sensation. Praying he wouldn’t let me topple off my precarious perch at the edge of the counter, I grabbed a handful of thick locs, digging my fingers in and holding tight.
Zalen groaned, rubbing his face against me—wallowing in my scent. Fuck... fuck ! I was going to come like this, squirting my release all over his chin and cheeks.
“Zalen!” His name emerged in an unsteady quaver. “Oh, god ...”
His grip on my hips tightened. I wanted him to leave bruises in the shape of handprints, proof that this had happened. I thought about letting Byron see them afterward; imagined him snarling with jealousy and placing his own marks over his pack leader’s. I pictured my body becoming a layered tapestry of alpha possession. Zalen’s tongue curled inside me, and I shuddered through a rough climax, choking on a cry as ecstasy flooded my veins like a drug.
Zalen gentled me through it, lapping up at least some of my mess before biting a mark into my inner thigh with sweetly unexpected brutality. I sobbed, my pussy clenching again. More slick puddled on the polished granite, and I knew it would be dripping over the edge, onto the floor as well.
“P-please,” I stammered. “Please, Zalen, I need—”
I was so empty inside. Emptier than I’d been since my heat. Zalen made a low noise in the back of his throat, and then he was scooping me up, cradling me in strong arms. My body lolled in his embrace, too weak from coming for me to control it properly. I let myself be carried out of the kitchen, down the hallway and up to the second floor.
To my surprise, Zalen hip-checked Byron’s door rather than taking me directly to his own neat and practical bedroom suite. The rich leather and wood paneling brought back its own host of memories, none of which were doing a damned thing to reduce my growing need for a thick knot.
Zalen lowered me carefully down on the sofa, pressing a filthy, slick-flavored kiss to my mouth before straightening and looking around.
“Condom... condom...” he muttered, rummaging in the nearest drawers. “C’mon, Byron, you can’t tell me you don’t have them stashed fucking everywhere .”
I wriggled in excitement, knowing that at some point tonight, Byron was going to come home and find Zalen’s raging pheromones lingering in his room, coupled with my own. I wasn’t sure why the idea sent a fresh bolt of lust slamming through me.
Zalen made a noise of triumph, coming up with a small foil square. He grasped it between his teeth and scooped me up again. This time, I had enough muscle control to rub my upper body against his, moaning shamelessly in his arms. He stumbled a bit, cursing through teeth still closed around the stolen condom packet.
Somehow, we made it to his room. I thought he might put me down on the couch where I’d once fallen asleep and awoken hours later, tucked in with a fuzzy blanket. But he walked straight to his bed and tossed me onto it, the mattress bouncing beneath me as I landed. I lay on my back, lips parted and eyes wide, watching avidly as Zalen attempted to set a new land speed record for stripping.
And... Christ .
I’d had a muddled impression from my heat of him being, erm... well-endowed . Suffice to say, my memory had not been playing me false.
“I want that,” I slurred, feeling like I’d downed a fifth of gin rather than the single, small glass of wine I’d had with lunch, in a doomed attempt to take the edge off my agitation. I had a feeling Zalen’s giant horse-cock was going to be a lot more effective than the fermented grapes had been.
He made a punched-out noise and fumbled with the condom packet, somehow getting it open and successfully stretching the latex over the massive erection jutting out from between his legs. Then he was looming over me, hooking an elbow under my left knee and spreading me wide.
“God,” he choked out, his blunt tip pressing into my folds—spreading me open and pushing inside until I felt like I might split in two.
“Yes,” I panted. “Yes, yes, yes!”
For that perfect, agonizing moment, nothing else existed in the world except the point where our bodies joined. Restaurant? What restaurant? Dangerous street gang? What dangerous street gang?
I was no longer Chef Mia Dimitriadis, struggling restaurant owner with a failing marriage and debt up to my eyeballs. Instead, I was a horny omega getting split open by the largest cock I’d ever seen. Tingles and electric jolts sizzled along my skin. My scalp buzzed. I half-expected my stomach to bulge out with every slow thrust of Zalen’s hips, like the heroine in bad hentai porn.
It was just on the edge of too much, and that meant I could ride the crest of the wave for what felt like ages . I knew, in a vague sort of way, that I was alternately babbling nonsense and begging for more, deeper, harder . Zalen’s lips and teeth nipped marks into my skin wherever he could reach. I probably should have cared that there would be no hiding them without full stage makeup paired with a turtleneck.
I didn’t.
When my orgasm came, it took me by surprise like a two-by-four to the back of the head. I shrieked, clawing at Zalen’s back, and was rewarded with two more sloppy strokes followed by a guttural groan as the alpha spilled inside me, his knot swelling.
I whimpered, the fresh stretch filling the last needy, grasping space inside me, until I was full to overflowing. The bite marks peppering my body ached deliciously, throbbing in time with my slowing heartbeat.
“I’ve got you,” Zalen murmured, rolling us so I was draped on top of him like a limp dishrag. “That’s it, beautiful. I’ve got you.”
“Got you back,” I mumbled, as my body clamped around his like a jealous dragon guarding its hoard.
Zalen chuckled tiredly, the sound tailing off to a rough alpha purr. I let it vibrate through my chest, soothing my troubled heart. The welcome, trancelike peace of being knotted untangled all the messy tangles in my brain, and I hummed, nestling closer against Zalen’s relaxed body.
I wasn’t entirely sure how long we stayed like that before my muscles began to flutter, releasing the cock resting inside of me. A noise of disappointment escaped my throat, as the distant, circling worries in my head began to close in again—vultures sensing an injured rodent.
Zalen’s broad hand rubbed slow circles over the bare skin of my back, reassurance in the face of my returning troubles. A new troublesome thought intruded— what would it be like to have Zalen’s comfort whenever I asked for it? It was akin to my desire to wake up tangled with Luca and Emiel every morning.
Dangerous.
Impractical.
Unrealistic.
I tried to remind myself of what I’d told the others. This can mean whatever we want it to mean . It didn’t help, mostly because I was starting to realize that I wanted it to mean things that weren’t within reach for any of us. In the absence of good sense, I pressed my face harder into the crook of Zalen’s shoulder... a place it seemed to fit all too well.
“All right?” Zalen asked, sounding cautious.
I nodded against his neck, not lifting my head.
“Good.” His hand moved from stroking my back to combing through my hair soothingly. “I’m not sorry we did this, but I’m sorry we didn’t talk first.”
“What do you mean?” I asked in a small voice, still not lifting my head to look at him.
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his chest lifting and lowering me as he sighed.
“I feel like you’ve been living in limbo, Mia,” he said. “And I don’t think you’re happy being stuck in that place. I think maybe it’s time for all of us to start looking to the future.”