Chapter 10 Dom
His mouth is hard against mine and his teeth catch my lip and the sting of it sends a bolt of heat straight down my spine. His hands are on my chest, fingers spread, pressing me flat against the mattress.
He's straddling me, his thighs tight against my hips, and the weight of him is slight, too slight. I can feel his bones through his skin. I can also feel the heat pouring off him, his body radiating it like a furnace, and the scent. Christ, the scent.
It’s almost narcotic. He fills my lungs and my brain whites out for a second and my hips jerk up against him before I can stop them.
He makes a sound against my mouth. Not quite a moan. Sharper than that. He bites my lip again, harder, and I taste copper.
He makes a sound when his back hits the mattress, surprise and something else, and then my weight is on him and his legs fall open around my hips and the noise he makes this time is different.
Relief. His arms go around my neck and he pulls me down, closer, tighter, burying his face in my throat. Breathing me in.
"Took you long enough," I say.
"We don’t have to talk."
I smirk. I press my mouth to his ear. "Five nights on my sofa. I could smell you wanting me through the walls."
His fingers dig into my shoulders. "Shut up."
"Make me."
He bites my neck. The pain is sharp and bright and my cock jerks against his thigh and I laugh, low, against his ear. He's furious and shaking and he's clinging to me so hard his nails are leaving marks and I have never wanted anything more than I want this.
I shift my weight onto one forearm and reach down between us with the other hand. When I wrap my fingers around him, he arches off the mattress, his breath punching out of him. He's hard and hot and already so wet with slick that my hand slides easily.
His thighs are slick, the sheets underneath him already damp, and the scent of him in full heat is staggering. Sweet and sharp and deep. I could drown in it.
I pull back enough to strip him. He lets me. He lifts his hips when I pull his pants down. He doesn't help but he doesn't resist and his eyes are fixed on my face the whole time, dark and glassy, tracking me.
I strip off my own pants and settle back over him.
Skin on skin. The full length of me pressed against the full length of him and he shudders, his whole body, a tremor that runs from his chest to his hips.
His legs wrap around me and his heels press into the backs of my thighs, pulling me closer, pulling my weight down onto him.
He wants this. Not me on my back. Not distance, not control.
He wants to be covered. He wants the size and the weight and the scent of me surrounding him and I can feel it in the way his body curves into mine, the way his face presses into my neck, the way his breathing slows for the first time in hours when I'm over him like this.
I reach between us. I find where he's open and slick and ready and I push into him slowly, watching his face.
His eyes close. His lips part. His head tips back and the sound he makes is low and broken and his hands grip my shoulders like I'm the only solid thing in the room.
I stop. Buried in him. Waiting. Not because I'm being gentle. Because I want to watch him feel it.
"Move," he whispers.
I do. Slowly at first. Long, rolling thrusts that press him into the mattress, that keep my chest against his and my scent in his lungs.
His arms tighten around me. He's clinging, his face pressed into the crook of my neck, and the sounds he's making are small and helpless and continuous against my skin.
I find an angle and his whole body jerks. His back arches and his mouth opens on a gasp.
"There?" I say. Smug. Certain.
"Don't stop." It's not a command. It's a plea. His voice is wrecked.
I don't stop. I keep the angle and drive harder and he cries out and his nails rake down my back and his legs lock around me. His hips are moving now, rising to meet each thrust, and the slick makes everything smooth and obscene.
His face presses harder against my neck.
He's breathing me in with every thrust, filling his lungs with it.
I can feel his pulse against my chest, racing, and underneath the heat and the desperation there's something else in the way he holds onto me.
Like a man gripping a ledge terrified he is going to fall.
His fingers twist in my hair and pull and the pain is perfect.
His mouth finds my throat. "Don't you dare bite me," he says. His teeth graze the spot where a mating bite would go, the threat and the warning tangled together.
"I won't." I press my tongue against his pulse instead and his whole body shudders.
I feel him getting close. The tension building everywhere, his thighs trembling against my hips, the rhythmic clenching around me. I reach between us and wrap my hand around him and stroke and his whole body bows off the mattress.
He comes first. His whole body locks up, every muscle rigid, and he makes a sound like something breaking, high and sharp.
I feel him pulse against my stomach, feel the clench of him around me, and I follow.
The orgasm crashes through me and I bury my face in his hair and breathe him in and the world narrows to nothing but this.
We stay like that. His forehead against my shoulder, my arms around him. The heat hums between us, temporarily sated but already rebuilding. This is the first wave. There will be more.
After a minute, maybe two, he pulls back. His face is flushed and damp.
He climbs off me. He sits on the edge of the bed with his back to me, breathing hard, and that's when I see them.
His back is lean, the shoulder blades prominent, the knobs of his spine visible beneath his skin.
And across the span of it, from his shoulders to the small of his back, scars.
Thin and white, long healed. Some are lines, the kind a belt leaves when the buckle catches.
Some are wider, rougher, like something was dragged across the skin.
On his left side, just below the ribs, two small circles. Round and precise. The exact size and shape of a cigarette pressed against skin and held there.
I don't move. I don't touch the scars. I don't say a word.
He must feel me looking because his shoulders tighten. He reaches for the sheet and pulls it around himself.
"Don't," he says, quietly. He’s not angry. He sounds tired.
"I'm not."
"You are. I can feel you doing it. The protective alpha thing. Don't."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"Good."
He lies down. He pulls the sheet up to his chin and turns on his side, facing away from me. The line of his body is tense, braced, the way he looked in the security room. He’s waiting for something bad to happen.
I lie down behind him. I stare at the shape of his back under the sheet and I think about the round marks. Something hard and furious rises up into my chest.
His breathing evens out but he’s not sleeping. Just resting between waves. The heat will come back. It always does.
I get up quietly, picking up my phone. I walk to the bathroom and close the door.
Viktor picks up on the first ring.
"I'm unavailable," I say. "Starting now. Five days minimum. Possibly a week."
Silence. Three seconds. Four.
"I’m guessing your omega has gone into heat," Viktor says.
"You have operational authority until I'm back. Full decision-making. Anything that can wait, let it wait. Anything that can't, use your judgement."
"Understood," he says. "I'll send a briefing to your phone each morning. Read it."
"I will."
The line goes dead. I set the phone on the bathroom counter and look at my reflection. My lip is swollen where Theo bit it.
I fill a glass of water and go back to the bedroom.
Theo is awake. He's sitting up against the headboard with the sheet pooled at his waist and the flush is building again across his chest and throat. His eyes are glassy and his breathing has changed, gone shallow and fast.
"Water," I say, holding out the glass.
He takes it and drinks. His hand is trembling. He sets the glass down. "It's coming back."
"I know."
He looks at me standing beside him and I watch the fight happen behind his eyes.
"Come here," he says.
This time is different. The urgency has dulled into something deeper, a rolling ache instead of a sharp spike, and the pace slows to match. It’s going to spike again, but for now, we’re just scratching the itch.
I lay him down and he lets me, his back against the mattress, and I'm above him with my weight on my forearms and his thighs open around my hips.
I'm careful with his back. I keep my hands where I can feel smooth skin, not scar tissue. I don't know if the scars are sensitive. I don't know if touch there brings back the man who made them. I don't ask. I just avoid them, and if he notices, he doesn't say anything.
He's watching my face. His eyes are dark and liquid.
I push into him slowly. His eyes flutter closed and his lips part and the breath that escapes him is soft.
I find a slow, rolling rhythm. He hooks his ankles behind my back and his hands grip my arms and we move together. I shift the angle and he makes a low sound and his fingers dig into my biceps. I do it again and the sound climbs.
"Right there," he says. Barely a whisper.
"Here?"
"Yes. Don't stop."
I don't stop. I keep the angle and the rhythm and I watch his face.
His head is tipped back against the pillow, the long line of his throat exposed.
I want to put my teeth there. The instinct to bite is so strong my jaw aches.
I press my mouth to his collarbone instead and his hand comes up to the back of my head and holds me there.
His breathing breaks. I can feel him getting close, the tension building in his thighs, the rhythmic clenching around me. I reach between us and wrap my hand around him and stroke and his whole body bows off the mattress.
He comes with his face turned into the pillow and his body trembling and the sound he makes is quiet this time, almost private, and I follow him over the edge with my mouth against his throat and his pulse beating fast against my lips.
Afterward, I don't pull away immediately. I stay where I am, my weight on my forearms, my forehead resting against his shoulder. His fingers are still in my hair. His breathing slows. His heart rate comes down by degrees, each beat a little further apart.
"You need to eat," I say.
His brow furrows. “I just did.”
"And your body needs fuel. Your body is burning through calories faster than you can replace them. You'll crash.”
“Don’t pretend to care.”
“You’re mine. I look after my things.”
He turns his head and looks at me. This close, I can see the ring of gold around his pupils, the dark fan of his lashes. There’s fury behind his eyes. “I’m not a thing.”
I ignore him. That’s not what I said and he knows it. But he is still mine. And he’s going to eat.
I get up and go to the kitchen and make what's available: bread, cheese, fruit, water.
I bring it back on a plate and sit on the edge of the bed and watch him eat. He eats the way he does everything: methodically, without waste. He eats every piece of cheese and every slice of apple and drinks the entire glass of water and I refill it and he drinks that too.
"Satisfied?" he says.
He shrugs.
He puts the plate on the nightstand and lies back down and pulls the sheet up. His eyes are heavy.
"It'll come back soon," I say.
"I know how heat works."
"Get some sleep."
"Stop telling me what to do."
"Stop needing to be told."
He gives me a look that should strip paint. Then his eyes close and within minutes his breathing evens out and he's asleep.
I sit on the edge of the bed and watch him sleep and look at the marks on his back.
The days blur.
Heat doesn't follow a schedule. It follows its own logic: surging and receding, demanding and relenting.
By the second day, I've stopped checking my phone except for Viktor's briefings, which I read while Theo sleeps.
Day two: the Castellanos have gone quiet. Viktor reports no movement, no contact. This is either very good or very bad. The quarterly numbers have been sent to my father. Viktor handled it. My father has not called. This is definitely bad.
Day three: Theo's heat intensifies. The waves come closer together, the need sharper, the recovery periods shorter. He's insatiable and furious about it.
He begins arguing with me between rounds about everything: the temperature of the room, the food I bring him, whether the window should be open. The arguments feel necessary, as if they're the scaffolding that keeps the rest of it from collapsing.
He hasn’t asked me if I’m going to let him leave. I don’t think he wants to hear the answer.
"You're insufferable," he tells me on the morning of day four, eating toast in my bed with crumbs on the sheets and his hair sticking up in six directions. He looks ridiculously cute.
"Only because you argue with me."
He takes another bite of toast and chews and looks at me with those sharp eyes that miss nothing. "Are you going to the casino today?"
"No."
"Tomorrow?"
"No."
"You've been away for three days. Doesn't your empire need you?"
"Viktor's handling it."
He's quiet for a moment. "That's a lot of trust."
"Viktor's earned it."
The next wave hits and the conversation ends the way all our conversations end: with his hands on me and his mouth on mine and the sharp, bright anger that lives in the space between us catching fire.