Eighteen
EIGHTEEN
Luca
“ HEY .” MIA’S SOFT VOICE cut through my spiraling panic, at least enough for me to focus on her battered face as she reached a tentative hand between us to cup my cheek. The delicate scent of elderflower and sumac wrapped around me like Zalen’s fleecy blanket.
I blinked, trying not to stare at her black eye. The black eye that my screwed-up past had reached forward through time to give her. Fuck , I couldn’t think about what had happened at the old factory. If I did, I’d come apart at the seams.
Blaze and his lieutenants could not still be after me, all these years later. My old life wasn’t allowed to break through the fragile walls surrounding my new life.
“Hey,” Mia said again, stroking a callused thumb over the tender skin beneath my eye. I shivered; I couldn’t help it. The gentle touch, intended only to comfort, tore through my remaining defenses like they were made of wet toilet paper.
“Sorry, I’m all right,” I whispered, sounding anything but.
“What happened wasn’t your fault.” Her voice was quiet and sleep-raspy. “You were worried about Emiel, and I think you were right to be. He looked like he was sleepwalking through the first part of that fight. Is he always like that?”
“No,” I said, looking down so I wouldn’t have to see the livid bruising on her face. “No, he’s not.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d gone to watch Emiel fight. I’d gotten Byron to go with me once, but seeing the gray, queasy cast to his complexion as the fighters pummeled each other had convinced me not to repeat the request.
The underground fighting ring used to be a lot smaller and a lot less focused on high-stakes gambling. It hadn’t felt like a big deal to pull on shapeless, concealing clothing and avoid making eye contact with anyone. I’d never felt particularly unsafe on my own... no more so than any other time an unclaimed omega went out in public alone, anyway.
But the fights had changed since the last time I’d gone. The gangs had moved in, just like they moved in on every goddamned thing that they thought could make them money.
“I used to enjoy watching him fight,” I murmured, still unable to look at Mia directly. “I mean, it was scary, even then. But he’s a good fighter and I guess...”
I trailed off.
“There’s something about alphas doing, well, alpha things ,” she finished awkwardly.
“Yeah,” I agreed on a sigh.
Alpha things .
Unbidden, the memory of Blaze’s goons cornering us, putting their hands on us, blotted out the safe, familiar surroundings of my nest. I could still smell Zalen’s secondhand pheromones and Mia’s summery floral perfume, but now it was somehow tangled up in the memory of my old life.
Of what had been done to me, over and over, without my consent.
The idea that Mia might have been dragged away to suffer that same fate felt like insects crawling beneath my skin. It was all I could do not to start tearing into my forearms with my own fingernails in hopes of rooting out that terrible itch.
“They almost got you,” I grated, not recognizing my own voice. “They almost—”
“Stop,” Mia begged.
I didn’t want to look at her injured face to gauge her expression, but something in her tone told me that I wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding my thrumming panic. Fuck , I was making everything worse—
The hand that had been cradling my cheek slid around to the nape of my neck, and Mia’s other arm came around my shoulders. Instinct had me curling into her, just as I’d done in the backseat of the car—an omega seeking the comfort of pack.
Even though I didn’t have a pack.
Didn’t want a pack.
Packs were for omegas who still knew how to trust.
“Just breathe for me, all right?” Mia’s voice was worried, but her embrace was sure.
Christ, was that awful, uneven gasping noise coming from me ?
I dragged in a ragged breath, held it for a count of four. Let it out, held it for another count of four. Lather, rinse, repeat. Again and again, until the band around my lungs eased.
Familiar as... well... breathing .
“Okay.” Mia sounded less freaked out now, thank goodness. “Like I said, we’re okay. Everything’s okay. Just a couple of bruises and a bad scare.”
She loosened her grip on me and pulled back, but only far enough that we could see each other’s faces. The swelling around her eye had gone down a bit since last night, I was pretty sure. Zalen probably made her ice it while I was out of things.
She gave me a tremulous smile and leaned in. She must have been aiming for a kiss to the cheek—but I turned my head, startled, and her lips touched the corner of my mouth instead.
We both froze. The brush of her lips felt like a butterfly landing. Gentle... gentle. Nonthreatening. Her light perfume and Zalen’s heavier pheromones filled my nose, sweet and tart and rich against the back of my throat. Promising safety, or at least the illusion of it.
I groaned roughly and turned my head another inch, returning the innocent kiss with... whatever the opposite of innocent was. Ruined , like a heroine in a Regency novel? Sullied ? Defiled ?
In my heart of hearts, I expected her to jerk away in distaste. She’d seen the real me now, not the polished marble omega who never let anything touch him—nothing penetrating more than skin deep.
Instead, she gasped against my mouth, her hand tightening around my nape. Tingles raced down my spine in reaction—and then we were kissing wildly, devouring each other like a pair of starving waifs. With a flood of desperate relief, I stopped thinking and started feeling .
All the reasons why I’d decided this was a bad idea—too complicated, too emotionally fraught—disappeared in a flurry of frantic hands tugging at clothing. Suddenly, I couldn’t wait another second to feel her soft skin against mine.
We were omegas, high on secondhand alpha pheromones from a borrowed blanket. I might not be able to get her off... she might not be able to get me off. But I was harder right now than I’d been since my last natural heat, and as I finally dragged her underwear over her ankles and settled between her spread thighs, sinking into her, getting off didn’t feel like the point.
Wet heat enclosed my cock like clenching, slippery silk. Our skin, sweat damp in the warmth of the nest, slid together in a dance as old as the stars. Sparks zipped along my nerves.
“We’re safe,” Mia said, sounding almost defiant about it—as though some ghostly presence inside her mind had whispered otherwise. She clutched my body tight to hers, wriggling her back and shoulders restlessly against the blanket beneath us. A fresh wave of vanilla and lime rose around us, heady and forbidden.
I couldn’t quite bring myself to echo the words. I wasn’t safe. Right now, it felt like I might never truly be safe again. But at least while Mia and I were fucking, I didn’t have to face that bleak future.
My empty passage clenched, silently begging to be filled. I ignored it, because my body was an idiot. This was what I needed—rocking into Mia’s welcoming warmth in a slow rhythm that might not lead us anywhere, but that still felt goddamned amazing .
“Wanted this,” Mia gasped, her hips rolling to meet my slow thrusts. “Wanted you.”
I remembered that long-ago awkward conversation on the couch in the TV room, with Red, White, and Royal Blue paused on the screen. It felt like centuries ago.
Out of curiosity... if I had been a singles bar pick-up, and I was here because I wanted to have sex—what would that look like, exactly?
It wouldn’t have looked like this, that was for sure. She’d been talking about a threesome with Byron, not a post-traumatic desperation fuck with another omega. But she had wanted me. She did want this. She’d said so.
The part of my brain that wasn’t doused in sex endorphins distantly registered the sound of the front door opening and closing, of footsteps moving through the huge house. Muffled voices exchanged unintelligible words, growing louder as the conversation continued.
One set of footsteps broke away, approaching up the stairs to the second floor. Byron , my instincts assured me. Finally getting home at whatever godforsaken hour it currently was. His room was down the hall from mine. No threat... no need to stop what we were doing.
I buried my face against Mia’s rich brown hair, stifling a moan as her inner muscles milked and massaged my dick. So good .
The footsteps halted at my door, and an angry rap pounded against the wood. Mia and I both froze in place as though turned to stone.
Byron’s voice called out, equal parts fear and frustration. “God damn it, Luca—what Zalen just told me had better not be fucking true!”
An instant later, the door swung sharply open, silhouetting Byron against the brighter lights of the hallway. He was breathing heavily; I could see his shoulders rising and falling. Our eyes met and locked across the distance separating us, even as Mia drew in a sharp, shocked breath beneath me and came hard around my aching cock.