Chapter 13 Nolan #2
It’s different this time. Slower, deeper, radiating out from my core in waves that seem to go on forever. I’m crying—actual tears streaming down my face—and I don’t know why but I can’t stop. He follows me over the edge, and I feel it, feel him pulsing inside me, and that just makes me come harder.
Afterwards, he holds me while I shake. Doesn’t ask about the tears. Just wraps himself around me and strokes my hair and presses kisses to my forehead, my temples, the wet tracks on my cheeks.
I should say something. Explain. But I don’t have words for what just happened.
I’m not sure I want to find them.
We rest sometimes. Brief windows where the fever recedes enough to breathe, to eat the food Erik brings me, to shower together under water that’s never quite cold enough.
The shower becomes its own kind of torture.
He washes my hair, gentle despite everything, and I lean against his chest and let him take care of me.
It’s such a strange thing—being cared for.
I’ve been taking care of myself and Ellie for so long I’ve forgotten what it feels like to have someone else’s hands on me with no agenda except tenderness.
“How long?” I ask at some point. My voice is hoarse from sounds I don’t entirely remember making.
“Four days.” His lips brush my temple. “Maybe longer. I stopped counting.”
“Is there food left?”
“Some. I can order more.”
I turn in his arms, press my face against his neck, breathe him in. He smells like me now. Like us. Like something I could get dangerously used to.
His hands slide down my back, cup my ass, pull me closer. I can feel him hardening against my hip.
“Already?” I ask, lips moving against his throat.
“With you? Always.”
It should be a line. Should sound practiced and hollow. Instead it sounds helpless. Like he doesn’t understand it any better than I do.
I reach down between us, wrap my fingers around him. He hisses, head falling back against the tile.
“Nolan—”
“Shh.” I stroke him slowly, watching his face. “Let me.”
He braces one hand against the wall, the other gripping my hip. Water streams down over us, warm and endless. I work him with my hand, finding the rhythm he likes, twisting on the upstroke, running my thumb over the head.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Your hands—”
“What about them?”
“Wanted them on me since—since the Bureau meeting.” His voice is fracturing, losing coherence. “Watched you sign the papers and thought about—thought about this—”
“Tell me.”
“Thought about you on your knees.” His hips are moving now, thrusting into my grip. “Thought about your mouth. Thought about bending you over my desk and—Nolan—”
He comes with a groan that echoes off the tile, spilling hot over my fingers, his whole body shuddering. I keep stroking him through it, gentling my touch as he comes down.
“Your turn,” he says when he’s caught his breath.
He presses me back against the cold tile—I gasp at the contrast with the hot water—and drops to his knees.
“Erik, you don’t have to—”
“I want to.”
He looks up at me through the spray, water spiking his lashes, and the sight of him on his knees for me makes something twist in my chest. This powerful, controlled alpha, kneeling on the shower floor with his hands on my thighs and hunger in his eyes.
Then his mouth is on me and I stop thinking entirely.
The eighth time—or nineth, or tenth, I’ve completely lost count—we don’t even make it out of the kitchen.
I’d stumbled out of the bedroom in search of water. Found him at the counter, wearing only boxers, eating leftover pad thai straight from the container. He looked up when I entered and his eyes went dark.
“You’re insatiable,” I said, but I was already crossing the room.
“Says the omega in heat.”
“The omega in heat just needs hydration.”
“Is that all you need?”
I reached past him for a glass, deliberately brushing my body against his. “Maybe not all.”
The glass didn’t get filled. I ended up on the counter with my legs wrapped around his waist, his mouth on my neck, both of us too desperate to make it back to the bedroom. He took me right there, my back against the cabinets, the pad thai container knocked to the floor and forgotten.
Fast this time. Urgent. Both of us chasing release with single-minded focus. I came with my nails raking down his back, biting his shoulder to muffle my scream. He followed moments later, face buried in my neck, my name spilling from his lips.
“We should clean that up,” I said afterwards, looking at the spilled noodles.
“Later.”
He carried me back to bed. We left the mess for morning.
The sixth day, perhaps, I wake to something different.
My body feels... quiet. The constant thrumming need that’s been driving me has faded to something manageable. My skin doesn’t feel like it’s on fire anymore. My thoughts are my own again, clear and sharp-edged instead of fog-soft and desperate.
The heat is breaking.
I lie there for a moment, taking stock. I’m sore in places I didn’t know could be sore. There are bruises on my hips, my thighs, my neck—purple and finger-shaped, evidence of how thoroughly I’ve been claimed. My lips feel swollen. My throat aches from overuse.
I feel amazing.
Erik is beside me, one arm thrown over my waist, breathing slow and deep. Even in sleep, he’s wrapped around me, protective, possessive. His face is softer in sleep, younger somehow. The sharp edges smoothed away.
I should feel trapped. Should feel alarmed by how good this felt, how much I wanted it, how completely I lost myself in him. This man who might have stolen my research. This man I’m supposed to hate.
Instead I just feel... peaceful.
I shift slightly, testing. His arm tightens around me, pulling me closer. His nose nuzzles into the back of my neck, breath warm against my skin.
“Hey,” I murmur.
“Mm.” A sleepy, satisfied sound. “You’re awake.”
“Heat’s breaking.”
He goes still. Then his hand slides up my chest, over my heart, feeling my pulse. It’s steady now. Normal. Not the frantic racing of the past few days.
“How do you feel?”
“Sore.” I cover his hand with mine. “Good. Really good, actually.”
He exhales against my neck—relief, I think. Maybe something else too.
“I was worried I hurt you.” His voice is rough with sleep and something that sounds like vulnerability. “Some of it was... intense.”
“You didn’t.” I turn in his arms so we’re facing each other. His eyes are soft in the morning light, blue and warm and looking at me like I’m something precious. “You were perfect.”
He kisses me. Not desperate like before—gentle. Sweet. The kind of kiss that means something beyond pheromones and chemistry. The kind of kiss that could break my heart if I let it.
When he pulls back, there’s something uncertain in his expression. Something that looks almost like fear.
“Nolan—”
“Not yet.” I press my fingers to his lips. “Whatever you’re about to say, whatever we need to talk about—not yet. Can we just... have this? For a little while longer?”
He’s quiet for a moment. I watch the conflict play across his face—the need to define things, to understand, to maintain control. Then something in him softens.
“Okay,” he says. “For a little while longer.”
He pulls me closer, tucks my head under his chin, wraps both arms around me. I let myself sink into it. Into him. Into this impossible, temporary, terrifying thing that’s somehow become the most real thing in my life.
We’ll have to deal with reality eventually and the fact that this was only supposed to be pretending.
It doesn’t feel like pretending anymore.
But for now, here in the grey morning light with his heartbeat steady under my cheek, I let myself pretend that this is real.
That this could be ours.
That maybe, somehow, we could find our way to something that doesn’t end in a year.
The thought should scare me. It does scare me, a little. But Erik’s arms are warm around me and his scent is wrapped around me like a blanket and for the first time in longer than I can remember, I feel safe.
That might be the most dangerous thing of all.