Chapter 45 #2
He groaned, his head dropping forward, his forehead pressing against mine as his hands explored with that same careful attention he gave everything — every patient, every wound, every frightened animal in his care.
His thumbs brushed over my nipples, circling, teasing, drawing soft gasps from my lips.
He learned me like he was studying for an exam — cataloging every reaction, noting every spot that made me shiver, adjusting his touch with precise, intentional movements.
"Here?" He pinched lightly, rolling the sensitive peak between his fingers, watching my face with rapt attention, his eyes dark with desire but soft with love. "You like that?"
"Yes." The word came out breathless, my back arching into his touch, my nails digging into his shoulders. "Yes, Nolan, please..."
He guided me backward, easing me down onto the nest of blankets, following me down until he was hovering over me, his body a warm weight pressing me into the softness beneath.
But then he rolled, pulling me with him, settling me on top of him so I was straddling his hips, looking down at him in the fading golden light.
"I want to see you." His voice was rough, his hands settling on my thighs, his hazel eyes drinking me in like I was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, his chest rising and falling with quickened breaths. "Want to watch you."
I reached down to unfasten his jeans, feeling him hard and straining against the denim, his hips jerking up involuntarily as my fingers brushed against him.
He helped me work the fabric down, kicking free of his boots and jeans until he was bare beneath me, his cock standing proud against his stomach, flushed and wanting, a bead of moisture already gathering at the tip.
I'd seen him before — during Reid's rut, when everything had become a blur of bodies and sensation.
But this was different. This was just us, just Nolan, and I took my time looking, appreciating.
He was beautiful — long and thick, curved slightly upward, veins standing out along the shaft.
I watched him twitch under my gaze, watched his hands clench in the blankets.
"Aster." His voice was strained, his hands tightening on my thighs, his hips shifting restlessly beneath me. "You're staring."
"I'm admiring." I corrected, wrapping my hand around him, feeling him pulse against my palm, hot and silky and hard. "You're gorgeous."
He groaned, his head falling back against the blankets, his hips rolling up into my grip, his eyes squeezing shut. "If you keep touching me like that, this is going to be embarrassingly short."
I laughed softly, releasing him with one final stroke, moving to shimmy out of my own remaining clothes — jeans, underwear, until I was as bare as he was, straddling his thighs with nothing between us but air and want and the electric current of our desire.
His hands found my hips immediately, pulling me forward until my center pressed against his length, both of us gasping at the contact.
I was already wet — had been since he first kissed me — and I could feel myself coating him as I rocked against him, sliding along his shaft without taking him inside, coating him in my slick heat.
"Fuck." The curse was almost reverent, his fingers digging into my hips, his hazel eyes nearly black with desire, his jaw clenched tight. "You feel incredible. So wet. Is that all for me?"
"All for you." I rolled my hips again, watching his face contort with pleasure, feeling powerful and wanted and beautiful. "Only for you, right now. Just us."
"Just us." He echoed, his hands sliding up my sides, cupping my breasts again, his thumbs finding my nipples and circling, pinching, making me gasp and grind down harder against him. "God, I've dreamed about this. About you. About being inside you."
"Then take me." I lifted up, reaching between us to position him at my entrance, feeling the blunt head of him pressing against my opening, hot and insistent. "I want you inside me, Nolan. I want to feel all of you."
"Wait." He sat up suddenly, gathering me in his arms, adjusting our position so I was in his lap, my legs wrapped around his waist, our chests pressed together, heartbeat to heartbeat. "Like this. I want to hold you. Want to see your face."
I nodded, my arms wrapping around his neck, my forehead pressing against his, breathing the same air. "Like this."
He reached between us, guiding himself to my entrance, and then slowly, so slowly, he began to press inside.
I gasped at the stretch — he was bigger than I'd expected, filling me inch by inch, his hands on my hips controlling the pace, keeping it slow and steady even as his body shook with the effort.
"Breathe." His voice was strained but gentle, his lips brushing against mine, his hands stroking soothing patterns on my skin. "Just breathe, sweetheart. Let me in."
I forced myself to relax, to breathe through the stretch, feeling my body open for him, accept him, welcome him home.
The burn faded into fullness, into rightness, and then he was fully seated, his hips pressed flush against mine, and we both stilled, breathing together, adjusting to the feeling of being joined.
"You're so tight." The words were barely a whisper, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding still, his forehead pressed against mine, his eyes squeezed shut, sweat beading on his brow. "So warm. So perfect. God, you feel like you were made for me."
I clenched around him experimentally, watching his face twist with pleasure, feeling him pulse inside me in response, his fingers digging into my hips hard enough to bruise. "You feel so good. I can feel all of you. Every inch."
"Move with me." He gripped my hips, guiding me into a slow roll, teaching me the rhythm he wanted, his voice rough and desperate.
"Just like that. God, just like that." We found our pace together, a slow, deep rhythm that was nothing like the frantic coupling of Reid's rut or the raw intensity with Sawyer.
This was something else entirely — tender and intimate, our bodies rocking together, our breath mingling, our eyes locked.
Every stroke was deliberate, every movement intentional, building pleasure like layers of paint on canvas.
He kissed me as we moved, deep, searching kisses that matched the roll of our hips.
His hands roamed my body — my back, my breasts, my ass, the curve of my waist — touching everywhere like he was trying to memorize me by feel alone.
I touched him too, ran my fingers through his hair, traced the muscles of his shoulders, dug my nails into his back when the pleasure spiked.
"I love you." The words tumbled from his lips between kisses, fervent and unguarded, his hazel eyes shimmering with emotion.
"I've loved you since I first saw you in this stable.
Since you growled at me like a feral cat and then stood there trembling, trying so hard to be brave.
Since you stayed up all night with Bella and cried when Hope took her first steps. "
"Nolan." Tears were streaming down my face now, pleasure and emotion building together, threatening to overwhelm me, my walls clenching around him with every word.
"I love how brave you are." He rolled his hips up, hitting something deep inside me that made stars burst behind my eyes, his hands gripping my hips, angling me to take him deeper. "How strong. How you fight for what you want even when you're scared."
"I love you too." The words burst out of me, raw and real and right, pulled from somewhere deep in my chest. "I love you, Nolan. I love how gentle you are, how patient. How you always see the best in me when I can't see it in myself."
He groaned, his rhythm faltering, his hands gripping my hips harder, his thrusts growing more urgent. "I'm close. God, I'm so close."
"Then let go." I rolled my hips faster, chasing my own release, feeling it building at the base of my spine, in the flutter of my walls around him, in the heat pooling low in my stomach. "I want to feel you. Want to feel you come inside me."
He buried his face in my neck, his breath hot against my skin, his thrusts growing harder, deeper, more erratic. I could feel his knot starting to swell, catching at my entrance with every stroke, stretching me wider, building the pressure to something almost unbearable.
"Going to knot you." His voice was muffled, desperate, his teeth grazing my shoulder. "Can I — do you want —"
"Yes." I pulled his face up, made him meet my eyes, made him see the truth in mine.
"I want your knot, Nolan. I want to be tied to you.
" He kissed me then, hard and desperate, his hips snapping up one final time as his knot swelled fully, locking us together with a stretch that bordered on pain before blooming into something transcendent.
The sensation — the stretch, the fullness, the feeling of being so completely claimed — pushed me over the edge.
I came with a cry muffled against his lips, my walls clenching around him, pulling him deeper, milking him.
He followed a heartbeat later, his whole body shuddering, his cock pulsing inside me as he spilled himself in hot waves.
The sound he made was somewhere between a groan and a sob, broken and beautiful, his arms crushing me against his chest like he was afraid I might disappear.
We stayed like that for a long moment, wrapped around each other, still joined, both of us trembling with aftershocks.
His knot pulsed inside me with every beat of his heart, and I could feel the warm flood of his release filling me, claiming me in a way that felt ancient and primal and right.
"I can feel your heartbeat." I whispered against his neck, pressing a kiss to his pulse point, feeling it flutter against my lips like wings. "Inside me. I can feel it."
"That's the knot." His voice was wrecked, hoarse with emotion, his hand stroking up and down my spine in soothing patterns, his purr starting up low in his chest. "It's meant to keep us connected.
Physically. Emotionally." He pressed a kiss to my temple, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth.
"Everything I'm feeling right now — all this love, all this devotion — it's being pressed right into you. That's what knotting is for."
A fresh wave of tears spilled down my cheeks, but they were good tears, happy tears. I'd never felt so close to another person in my life. So seen. So cherished.
"How long?" I asked, shifting slightly and feeling him twitch inside me in response, his hands tightening on my hips with a soft groan.
"Twenty minutes, maybe?" He was already softening around the edges, his body relaxing into the blankets, pulling me down with him until we were lying on our sides, still connected, legs tangled together, his hand tracing lazy patterns on my hip.
"It varies. For you? I could probably stay like this forever. "
I laughed, watery but real, nuzzling into his chest, breathing in his pine scent now mixed with something muskier, something that was us. "That might make things complicated."
"Worth it." He pressed a kiss to the top of my head, his purr deepening — that low, rumbling sound that always made my Omega settle into contentment, my whole body going soft and pliant against him. "Everything with you is worth it."
We lay there as the light faded outside, the stable growing dim around us, the only sounds our breathing and his purr and the occasional shuffle of horses in their stalls.
Hope nickered softly from nearby, as if checking on us, and I felt a surge of affection for the mare who had been born in this very stable — the filly I'd named after something I'd thought I'd never feel again.
"Do you remember what you said to me?" Nolan's voice was soft, drowsy, his hand still stroking my spine. "That first day in the stable. After I told you my name."
I thought back, trying to remember through the haze of fear and hunger that had clouded those early days. "I said my name. And that I'd just started."
"You growled first." His arms tightened around me, his voice rough with remembered emotion, his purr stuttering for a moment before resuming.
"This rough, defensive growl, like you were warning me off.
And then you forced yourself to speak, and your voice was shaking, but you held my gaze anyway.
" He pressed a kiss to my hair. "I knew right then that you were something special. Someone worth waiting for."
"You waited a long time." I traced my fingers along his jaw, feeling the slight stubble there, the warmth of his skin, the strong line of bone beneath.
"I'd have waited longer." He caught my hand, pressed a kiss to my palm, then each fingertip, his lips soft and reverent. "I'd have waited forever if that's what you needed."
His knot had finally deflated enough for him to slip free, and I mourned the loss of connection even as he gathered me closer, tucking me against his chest, pulling a blanket over both of us.
He reached for the towels he'd set out earlier, cleaning us both with gentle, efficient movements — ever the healer, ever the caretaker.
The stable had gone fully dark now, only the soft glow of stars through the high windows illuminating us, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow. Somewhere outside, a night bird called. Inside, there was only warmth and safety and love.
"Sleep." His voice was a rumble against my hair, his purr still going, vibrating through both of us like a lullaby. "I've got you."
"Don't leave." The words slipped out before I could stop them, small and vulnerable in the darkness, born from years of waking up alone.
"Never." His arms tightened, his purr deepening, his lips pressing against my hair. "I'm not going anywhere, Aster. Not tonight. Not ever."
I believed him. For the first time in my life, I believed someone when they promised to stay.
My eyes grew heavy, my body warm and sated, wrapped in the arms of an Alpha who had loved me before I knew how to love myself. In the stable where it had all begun. Where a fierce, half-starved Omega had first glimpsed what gentleness could look like.
Full circle.
Hope nickered again, soft and content, and I smiled against Nolan's chest as sleep pulled me under.
Safe.
Cherished.
Home.