Seventy-One
SEVENTY-ONE
Mia
HAVING BYRON NOT ONLY inside my body, but also inside my head , was the strangest sensation I’d ever felt.
His mental and emotional essence was both exactly like the rest of him, and so different that it took a moment for my mushy heat-brain to make the connection. The mating bond wasn’t like a mind meld on Star Trek. I couldn’t hear Byron talking to me psychically or see the world through his eyes.
Instead, there was simply another presence inside me. Sharp and acidic; bright and piercing. Byron felt the same way metal tasted when you licked it. But beneath that cold tang, I could see the darkness inside him directly. I’d already known it was there. I’d even been able to make out the shape of it sometimes. Now, it was part of me.
In the space of a heartbeat, I learned what it felt like to understand how every single thing in your life could be ripped away in an instant. I knew the feeling of a body being torn and sewn back together, forever different than it had been before. I knew someone else’s experience of never being enough, no matter what you did or how hard you tried.
My breath caught on the familiarity of that last part. Without thinking about it consciously, I thrust the feeling back through the bond... working and working and succeeding to levels no one ever expected were possible, but still being only an omega.
‘How inspiring to see an omega succeed in the restaurant industry!’
‘So unexpected for an omega to achieve a Michelin star!’
And at the same time, never being omega enough .
‘You can tell she was raised by beta parents.’
‘Why on earth would an omega choose to go so long without a natural heat? Career isn’t everything, you know!’
Byron gave a little gasp, pulling back from the bloody bite wound he’d been licking. We were on the floor. I didn’t remember getting there. His knot stretched me in all the best ways, tendrils of pleasure radiating out from the place that joined us physically. ‘ You are enough’ echoed through the deepening bond like cathedral bells, traveling in both directions... ricocheting back and forth until it was impossible to say where it had originated.
Not words, just a feeling.
You are enough. We are enough .
Byron’s arms clamped around me, holding me tight. His forehead rested against the nape of my neck. I felt the loosening of his control before his chest convulsed, his tears of emotional release dampening the fine hair at the base of my skull.
“Hey... hey .” Nat was there, his hands on both of us, stroking and soothing. “Are you okay? Is everything all right?”
“Yeah,” I said softly, a beatific smile stretching the muscles of my cheeks. Already, the warm darkness of the knotting fugue was tugging at me. I let that peace and contentment flow outward to Byron. To my mate . “Everything’s just fine now.”
I awoke with Byron’s soft cock still nestled inside me, and a clever tongue lapping at the place we were joined. Graceful fingers held my left leg lifted out of the way. The smell of honeysuckle in grassy fields floated around me, sweet with sexual need.
Reluctant amusement tickled my thoughts, and I realized with a jolt that it wasn’t mine. It was Byron’s. We were mated . And— oh, god —Luca’s tongue was alternately rasping across my clit and curling inside me, sharing space with an alpha cock that was getting less soft by the second.
“Luca...” Byron’s voice was a growl. Alpha lust surged in my mind, joining with my own heat-fueled horniness until I was whimpering with need. “You’d better not be starting something you’re not prepared to finish .”
I felt the sharp, secondhand jolt as Luca bit Byron’s inner thigh hard enough to leave a mark. Shuddering, I rolled my hips against Byron’s returning erection, desperate for friction. But before I could try to roll on top of him and get better leverage, huge hands closed around my hips and tugged me away.
I had a confused glimpse of Luca practically pouncing on Byron’s now-unoccupied dick. Then I was too distracted by the snarling alpha tossing me down in a pile of pillows and climbing on top of me to keep track of what else was happening.
Raw lust exploded in my gut as Emiel pinned me down with his bulk and bit the top of my breast. His huge cock prodded and slid between my thighs, searching for my opening with unpracticed movements even though the angle was all wrong. I arched and shrieked as teeth closed around my breast again, this time an inch from my tender nipple. Slick gushed from my passage, my own scent mixed with the faint aniseed spice of Byron’s spend.
Emiel was in full rut, and my inner omega rose up to meet the feral assault with delicious violence of its own. I squirmed my upper body sideways until I could get my teeth around skin, biting down until blood burst across my tongue.
“All right?” came a distant voice, that I hazily identified as belonging to Zalen. I knew, on some level, that he was my pack leader and that meant I needed to listen... but Emiel had dragged my head back by the hair and was sucking marks down the length of my throat.
Other voices were talking, so I figured it was nothing to do with me.
Besides, I was busy .
“Yeah,” I heard Byron pant out the word, on the heels of a fresh burst of lust originating through the bond. “Yeah, we’re... good .”
My mate was fucking Luca. Maybe he’d bite him. And that was okay, because I was going to fuck Luca’s mate just as soon as I could get his thick alpha cock pointed in the right goddamned direction.
I snarled and bit Emiel’s ear, using the distraction to wriggle free of his restraint and dart away on unsteady legs. Just as I’d expected, I was grabbed from behind and thrown down again—this time on my front. Instinct rose, and I scrambled onto my knees, my upper body lowered flat to the floor in submission.
Emiel roared and slid in behind me, his fingers leaving bruises on my hips as he slammed his cock into me to the hilt. I screamed at the brutal perfection of it and bucked wildly, matching the alpha’s desperate rhythm. Over and over, Emiel pounded into my soaked passage with bruising force.
Finally , something inside me said, with the sort of relief that came from getting exactly what you needed at last. I screamed and fought and clawed at the pillows, intent on making the beast above me prove that he could force me to take it. I wanted his bruises and marks covering every inch of my body. I wanted to feel the ache of his assault every single time another alpha took me. I wanted—
A callused hand closed around the back of my neck and pinned me hard to the floor. I groaned and bit the pillow beneath me violently enough to rend the fabric.
This.
I wanted this .
My muscles went lax, the fight draining out of me. Emiel’s cock slammed into me, splitting me open with every wild thrust, and I never wanted it to end. The orgasm building inside me was too big to fit inside my body. When it hit, it would burst me open, and I would die a happy omega.
Through the bond, Byron lost the fight to Luca’s ravenous hunger. His climax rocked through me, and I was done for. My banshee wail was half-muffled by the pillow I was biting. My muscles locked solid, waves of pleasure coming and coming as Emiel continued to fuck me like he would never stop.
I was bleeding sluggishly from several bites, but the only one that mattered came when Emiel dragged me up by the hair and clamped down on my aching mating gland, still tender and swollen from Byron’s bite.
I moaned, coming again as a new presence exploded inside me, wild and strong.
Take, claim, protect , that presence said. Never, ever let go. Never, ever let harm draw near .
Then Emiel convulsed, jerking his release into me, and I blacked out like a snuffed candle.
This time, I was only out for minutes, not hours. I could tell because Emiel’s knot was still clamped firmly inside me. We were curled on our sides, and a contented alpha purr rumbled soothingly against my back.
There were three other people inside my head, and all of them were happy. Or, at least, all of them were sex-drunk, just like I was. Byron was knotting Luca, but somehow the pair had managed to shuffle close enough that Byron could crane up and lick the bite wounds on my breast, while Luca pressed sleepy kisses against my hip and stomach.
Shivers of sensation pinged back and forth between Byron’s rasping tongue and the knot stretching me wide. Alpha saliva had healing properties, but I could feel Byron’s smugness as that talented tongue accidentally wandered over my nipple every few seconds.
I hummed, settling into the shivery waves of pleasure as I prodded at the new additions to my growing mate-bond. Far from being jealous, Emiel was reveling in this peaceful moment with both of his omega mates sated and drowsy while another alpha—Zalen—guarded the nest.
I didn’t think Byron had bitten Luca yet. At least, Luca felt more distant than the two alphas. Even so, he was a beautiful quicksilver presence inside me—mercurial and slippery, but as sweet as Emiel’s decadent lava cake. He nipped lightly at my stomach, maybe in response to my tentative mental poking. I was so relaxed I didn’t even flinch.
Curiosity had me lifting my head a few inches to better see the rest of the room. It was all too easy to fall into the fascinating newness of the bond, but there were two other people in my pack that I needed to check on.
A hint of self-consciousness crept past my sated exhaustion at the thought of Zalen and Nat sitting across the room, silent observers with twin cases of blue balls. Then my gaze fell on them, and a breathless laugh escaped.
Nat was silent, all right—but only because Zalen had borrowed the ball gag that Emiel had insisted on bringing to the nest and used it to shut him up. I was willing to bet he’d also appropriated the handcuffs, because my husband was lying on his back with his arms folded underneath him in a way that suggested they’d been bound there.
Nat’s eyes were wide open and fixed on me—or on the pile of bodies in which I was currently tangled, anyway. His muscular chest rose and fell rapidly, quite possibly because of the slow and devastatingly thorough handjob Zalen seemed to be giving him.
Reassured that our pack leader and our pack beta were enjoyably occupied, I settled in to watch Nat being tortured, while Byron teased my breast and Emiel purred me through the remainder of our knotting.