Chapter 6 Liam #2
She’s swearing again, broken and needy: “Liam—fuck—don’t—don’t you dare stop—”
I stop anyway.
I pull my mouth off her clit and ease my fingers out just as she starts to flutter.
She growls, a low, frustrated sound that goes straight to my cock.
I do it again. And again. Using only my tongue and fingers, I bring her to the edge three times, backing off each time she gets close, until her thighs are trembling uncontrollably and her slick is soaking the sheets under her ass.
I flip her onto her stomach with one hand, pulling her hips up so she’s on her knees, chest pressed to the nest. Before she can fight me, I spread her cheeks and press my mouth to the left one—slow, open, claiming.
I kiss the curve of it, then drag my lips across to the right cheek and do the same, open-mouthed, deliberate.
I nip just hard enough to leave the faintest mark.
“Every fucking inch,” I growl against her skin. “The parts that hate me. The parts that ran. The parts that try to pretend they don’t need this. All mine now.”
She whimpers into the blankets. I keep kissing, sucking, biting softly at the full swell of each cheek while my fingers slide back inside her from behind—two, then three—working her open again.
I curl them, rubbing that spot relentlessly while my thumb circles her clit from underneath.
She’s pushing back against me now, hips rolling, chasing it.
I let her get right to the edge, her voice cracking on my name, then pull my fingers free once more.
She’s shaking. Furious. Soaked.
I flip her back onto her back and notch the head of my cock against her dripping entrance. Her eyes are glassy, hate and need warring in them.
“Don’t,” she whispers, even as her hips lift.
I push in.
She’s so tight after days without me that the first few inches feel like breaking through something sacred.
I sink deeper, slow, watching every flicker on her face, every flutter of her lashes.
Her nails score my forearms. When I bottom out, I grind, rolling my hips so my knot presses against her entrance without pushing in yet.
“Whose?” I demand.
She shakes her head. I pull almost all the way out and slide back in, deliberate and punishing.
“Whose is this, Star?”
“Yours,” she finally gasps, and the word sounds like it costs her everything. “Fuck you, it’s yours.”
I fold her in half, lifting her knees over my forearms, pinning her wrists above her head with one hand.
I fuck her like I’ve been dying to—deep, hard, relentless strokes that drag a broken sound out of her with every thrust. The nest shreds beneath us.
Her voice is wrecked, half-sobs, half-moans, my name repeated like a curse and a prayer.
The knot starts to swell properly. She feels it, eyes going wide.
“Liam—your knot—”
“I’m going to breed you,” I snarl, voice guttural. “I’m going to lock inside this tight little body and fill you so full you’ll feel me for days. You’re going to take every drop, omega. I want you marked from the inside out. My come. My scent. My mark. My child.”
I drive the knot in. It catches, swells, locks us together.
The second it seals, she shatters—back bowing, thighs clamping around me as she comes with a broken sob that sounds like surrender and grief at once.
Her teeth find my shoulder, and she bites down—marking me.
I roar, hips jerking as I start to come.
The pulses are violent. I flood her, thick and heavy, pumping rope after rope straight into her womb while the knot pulses and holds us locked.
I keep grinding, pushing my seed deeper, determined to breed her, to give her every possible tie—my knot, my come, my scent, the bite she’s leaving on me.
Her body milks me greedily, fluttering around the knot, pulling more out of me until I’m shaking and half-delirious.
When the worst of it passes, I collapse over her, still locked deep. My hand finds the bond mark, and I press my palm over it. She’s panting beneath me, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. My shoulder throbs where she marked me. The bond sings now—complete, both ways, raw and new.
I don’t pull out. I can’t. I wouldn’t if I could.
“Mine,” I rasp against her throat, the word half-growl, half-prayer. “Every part. Inside and out. No more running. You’re staying right here with my knot in you until you believe it.”
She doesn’t answer with words. She just turns her face into my neck and kisses her bite mark, claiming me right back.
The knot keeps us tied. I stay buried and full of purpose, planning the next time I’ll fill her, how many more ties I can give her, how many ways I can prove she’ll never be free of me again.
When I can breathe again, I roll us. Carefully. The lock holds. She ends up curled on my side. I don't move her off. Her breathing is uneven. Mine is worse.
"Star." She doesn't answer. "Star, tell me about Robert."
A long silence. Then a laugh. Small. Wet. The kind of laugh that's the last thing before something else. "Robert Campbell," she says, "was my grandfather."
I go still. "He's been dead three years. This was his cabin. There has never been another alpha, Liam. There has never been anyone."
The relief should feel like relief. It doesn't. I'd driven four hours planning a man's death. I'd put my hands on her body before I'd let her tell me. I'd asked her, mouth between her thighs, if another alpha had been there.
"Star—"
"Don't." Her hand braces against my chest. Pushes up enough that she can look at me, the lock between us still holding, my come still inside her. "Don't make a speech. I can't take a speech right now."
"Okay."
"You came in here, and you didn't let me talk." She glares at me. "You took your fix."
That one I deserve. I take it without flinching. "Yes."
She closes her eyes. Tears slip out of the corners. She doesn't bother wiping them. "I'm so tired, Liam."
"I know."
"You don't know."
She's right. I don't. She lifts off my chest as much as the lock allows, her hands flat on my stomach. The angle makes her wince. I put my hands on her hips to hold her steady, and she lets me, but her face has changed.
Whatever broke open during the sex is bleeding now in earnest.
"I built that nest on the floor," she says, "because I couldn't be in the bed without you.
" Her voice is whisper-soft. "Do you know what it's like to find out the person you dreamed of doesn't want you?
To smell yourself going sweet because some part of you is still waiting for him?
To wake up in the corner on a floor with a towel pressed to your face because your body won't let you part with the last little bit of his scent? "
"Star, I came back. I ended it. Bethany. The merger. The contract. I flew to Singapore—"
"I know. Paula told me."
"You knew?"
"I knew before you got here. I knew the whole time you were yelling about Robert."
That should change things. It doesn't. Her eyes are very far away.
"I was looking for you night and day," I say. "Do you know what that's like? How it feels to have hurt your mate, but you can't find them to fix it?"
"What if it's too late to fix it?"
"It's not—"
"Liam." Her hand comes up. Touches the bond mark on my shoulder where her teeth went in. Not tender. Not claiming. Just acknowledging it. "You're my alpha. The bond says so. My body says so. There is no version of this where that isn't true."
"Star—"
"But, I don't want to be your omega anymore."
The bond stutters. Actually stutters. "What?"
She doesn't repeat it. She doesn't have to. "I went to a clinic," she says. "Two days ago. I asked what the process was. For breaking it." The room goes white at the edges. "There's a protocol. It's not pretty. It takes months. But it can be done."
"Star."
"I just wanted you to know that's what I was doing while you were on a plane to Singapore."
I can't speak.
The lock between us is loosening. I can feel it. The body slipping away, while the rest of me is still trying to process the words breaking it.
"You'd—"
"I don't know if I will. I asked. That's all."
"You asked how to cut me out of you."
"Yes. I'm not telling you this to hurt you." Her voice cracks. "I'm telling you so you understand. You're my alpha. There won't be another one. There can't be. But the omega in me is done, Liam. She is done being the one who waits for you to choose her."
I move. The lock isn't fully gone, but I don't care.
I sit up under her, careful of the body she's still attached to, and I get my arms around her ribs, and press my face into her collarbone, and I do not cry because I haven't cried in twenty years, but my eyes water even if the tears don't fall.
"Don't," I say. Into her skin. "Don't break it. "
"Liam."
"Don't break it. Don't—Star. I am begging you."
"Alphas don't beg."
"This one does. If it means I get to keep you, I will."
She goes still against me.
I press my mouth to the bond mark. Not to claim. To plead. "Anything. Anything you want. The shop, the city, the company, all of it. I'll move here. I'll sell the penthouse. I'll—"
"Stop."
"—do whatever you need me to do for as long as it takes for the omega in you to want to stay."
"Stop, Liam."
I stop and lift my head. Her face is wet, and she is looking at me like she has never quite seen me before. "You'd do that?"
"Yes."
"You'd really—"
"Star, you went to a clinic."
She closes her eyes. The tears come faster. "I just wanted somewhere to put it," she whispers. "All of it. The pain. I had to put it somewhere that wasn't the bond, because the bond was the only thing keeping me alive and it was also the thing killing me, and I—I had to do something."
"I know."
"I'm not saying I will. I haven't started anything. I just, I needed you to know I'm not yours by default anymore."
"I know."
She finally lets herself fall against me. I hold her.