Chapter 21 Sai
Sai
The evening finds me alone in my apartment, waiting for Mavi’s shoots to finish.
My phone has been buzzing for the last hour.
Elias sent messages about the missed dinner.
My mother is pissed. She had arranged the evening with both sets of parents, a formal introduction that carried the weight of contracts and expectations.
I argued with her on the phone earlier, one of the few times I’ve ever spoken out against anything she planned.
I told her I wasn’t going. The words felt foreign on my tongue, but they were true.
Now, I keep checking the time. The dinner is happening in ten minutes and I’m not there.
I’ve never done this before. I’ve never intentionally missed anything.
I’ve never disobeyed unless the spiral took me so deep that I couldn’t function.
Tonight, I’m choosing not to go, and the choice sits heavy in my chest.
The phone rings. It’s my mother.
I answer because ignoring her only makes things worse.
“Where are you?” she asks, voice tight with controlled anger. “Lyric has been talking. Your assistant mentioned you might already have an Omega. Sai, this is not a game. We already printed the announcement in the magazines. We need this alliance. Don’t embarrass us.”
I listen as her frustration builds. Every word she says stacks another input on the pile. The dinner, the family name, the expectations, the magazines, the future they’ve already written for me. My hand tightens around the phone until my knuckles ache.
“I’m not going,” I say quietly, reiterating what I told her earlier. “I’m not marrying Elias.”
Silence stretches on the other end. Then her voice drops, colder now. “We have obligations, Sai. The family has obligations. You do not get to decide this on your own.”
I feel the vibration against my palm as another notification comes in. I pull the phone away from my ear just enough to see the screen. New upload from Mavi.
I hang up on my mother without another word. Panic surges through my chest as I twist toward my studio. I can’t ride this out on the bathroom floor again. I can’t wait for someone to find me. For the first time I do something I’ve never done before.
I go to Mavi, hoping he’s back.
I don’t text or call. I just cross the hallway in bare feet and a wrinkled shirt before banging on his door.
My fist hits the wood hard and loud, disruptive enough that the sound echoes down the hall.
Someone two doors down opens their door, peers out, sees a six-foot-two Alpha pounding desperately on his neighbor’s door, and quickly closes it again.
I keep banging. My fist strikes the wood again and again. The spiral pushes me forward, the need for his voice, his hands, his certainty louder than any shame. I need him to cut through the noise. I need him to tell me what to do. I need him to make the world small enough to survive.
The door finally opens, Mavi standing there, eyes widening at the sight of me. Without waiting for permission, I step inside, chest heaving, hands still trembling. The door closes behind me, his scent flooding my senses and some of the pressure in my chest eases.
Mavi reaches for me. His hands find my face first, then my shoulders, pulling me closer.
I lean into him, pressing my face into his neck, breathing him in like he’s oxygen.
My arms wrap around his waist and I hold on tight, the frantic energy from the hallway slowly bleeding out as his scent fills my lungs.
I bury my face deeper into his neck and whisper against his skin, voice rough from the words I finally said to my mother.
“I… I didn’t go,” I manage, the words catching and stumbling out.
“I told her… I’m not marrying Elias. I can’t…
I can’t do the dinner, the contracts, the alliance…
it’s all too much and I… I’m scared I’m going to lose this, lose you, Doll, but I’m also scared of keeping it because what if the family…
what if they find out and everything falls apart and I…
I don’t know how to choose, Mavi, I don’t know how to choose anything anymore…
” I gulp in air. “I need you, Doll. Mavi, I need you. Please, Doll.”
Mavi doesn’t waste time on ceremony. He yanks my shirt open, and shoves my pants down my thighs in one rough motion.
Before I can catch my breath, he pushes me back onto the bed and climbs on top of me.
He peels off his robe and sinks down onto my cock in one smooth, desperate slide that punches the air out of both of us.
He rides me fast at first, matching the panic still hammering in my chest and giving my body something to do with the energy my mind cannot process.
My hands grip his hips hard, fingers digging into soft skin as I pull him down onto me again and again.
I bury my face in his chest and breathe him in like a man who has been running for hours.
Mavi comes first, his body clenching tight around me as he spills across my stomach in hot streaks but he doesn’t stop moving.
He reaches down and spreads his cum into my chest with slow, deliberate strokes, painting my skin with his release.
The feeling of being claimed, of being marked and owned exactly the way I need, starts to quiet the spiral.
My mind begins to settle even as my body keeps chasing release.
I follow soon after but I don’t let him slam down on my knot. I pull him into a frantic kiss, murmuring against his lips, “Keep going. Please keep going.” Just before I come, I reach up and take his hands, guiding them to wrap around my throat.
Mavi chuckles against my lips, his scent sweetening until it’s like syrup at the back of my throat, his rhythm gradually shifting to something slower.
His hips decelerate until every roll is deeper than before.
His voice comes in low and steady, cutting through the noise the way it always does.
“I’m here. Breathe. Feel me, Alpha. Just this. Nothing else. Just this.”
His fingers squeeze around my neck gently, a soft gasp pulling from my lips as he plays the part of my collar.
My breathing starts to even out. The desperate grip on his hips loosens into something more intentional.
The spiral in my head blurs at the edges as Mavi’s voice continues to fill the spaces.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, leaning down so his lips brush my ear while he continues the slow, rolling grind. “Stay with me. You don’t have to think about anything except how I feel. Can you do that?”
He keeps the pace torturously slow now. His walls clench around my cock with every downward roll, slick and hot and perfect.
My knot throbs at his rim, swollen and desperate to lock, but he controls it completely.
He rises until only the head remains inside him, then sinks back down inch by inch, letting me feel every ridge and flutter of his body.
His hands stay wrapped around my throat, resting there with steady pressure that grounds me more than any collar ever could.
A long, low groan pulls from me as pleasure builds in a different way, like a deep, rolling wave that starts in my spine and spreads outward.
My hands slide up his thighs and over his hips, caressing instead of gripping.
I feel the softness of his skin, the way his muscles shift beneath my palms as he rides me.
I trace the curve of his waist, then up to his chest, thumbs brushing over his nipples until they harden.
Mavi moans softly above me. He leans forward and kisses me, while his hips keep that unhurried rhythm.
His cock rests heavy and leaking against my stomach, sliding through the mess he already left there.
Every time he rolls down, the head of his cock drags against my skin and leaves another wet streak.
“You feel so good inside me,” he whispers against my mouth. “So thick. So deep. Your knot is right there, baby. I can feel it swelling, wanting to lock. But not yet. Just feel me. Let me take care of you.”
The words sink into me and push the last remnants of the spiral away.
There is only Mavi. Only the tight, slick heat of his hole around my cock.
Only the slow, deliberate way he rides me like he has all the time in the world.
Only the gentle pressure of his hands around my throat and the steady sound of his voice telling me I am safe.
I come like a sigh, like a full-body exhale.
My knot finally locks inside him, thick pulses of cum spilling deep into his body.
Mavi takes every drop, his walls fluttering around my knot as he milks me through it.
His own cock pulses between us and he comes again, painting my chest with fresh streaks while he moans my name softly against my lips.
My knot pulses gently inside him with every small shift of his hips.
Slick and cum leak slowly around the swell, coating my thighs and his, but the mess feels right.
It feels like proof that I am here and he wanted me here.
I bury my face in the curve of his neck and breathe him in deeper, letting the scent settle into my lungs like medicine.
Then the words slip out. “I’m sorry.”
Mavi’s hand strokes slowly up and down my chest. “For what?”
“For showing up like that. For needing—”
“Do not ever apologize for needing me.” His voice softens, cutting through the shame before it can take root. “You came to me. That’s what you are supposed to do. That’s what I am here for.”
I press one more kiss to his neck and breathe him in again. Honey and citrus. The fixed point. The only thing I have ever run toward instead of away from.
And I know, with a certainty that settles deep in my bones, that I will do it again.
Every single time the noise gets too loud, I will come to him.
Because he opens the door.
Because he takes the chaos.
Because he makes me quiet.
And because, for the first time in my life, I believe I am allowed to be kept.