Chapter 31
Noa
Isurface from sleep already warm, already pliant, my body lingering in that drowsy afterglow where everything feels good.
Consciousness comes back in fragments, unhurried, while I float in the simple fact that I feel good.
No pain. Just pleasure. It’s the slow, deliberate lick through my pussy that has whatever fog remains in my head burning away at once.
Gasping, my hips jerk before I can stop myself, and the need to see him has my head lifting from the nest. There’s just enough morning light coming through the cracked closet door that I can see properly.
Rennick lies between my thighs, completely at ease, as if this is exactly where he belongs. One corded arm rests over my stomach, his wide palm pressing firmly on my chest while his broad shoulders brace my legs open so nothing can keep him from accessing all of me.
Any chance I imagined that earlier lick disappears the moment his mouth moves against my wet cunt again, his tongue teasing my clit in that lazy, unhurried fashion that drives me fucking crazy.
He started this—devouring me like a man starved—while I was fast asleep.
This understanding settles with a jolt, hitting heavier than his touch, my blood heating as arousal rises alongside any hesitation. I know there’s a line here, one that many wouldn’t crave to ever cross, but my body skips over it before I can fully decide how I feel
I press into his mouth, greedy for whatever he’s willing to give me. A broken sound tears free that I don’t even try to swallow back. Any plan I had to stay quiet, to see how far he’ll take this before realizing he’s dragged me from sleep, going out the window instantly.
His breath stutters against me before he hums appreciatively, the sound low and vibrating against my already too sensitive flesh. My core clenches around nothing, aching, almost weeping for the fullness that isn’t there.
“Good morning, sweet Noa,” he murmurs, satisfaction vibrating through his voice that’s still rough with sleep.
“G-good morn—” I try to greet back, but the ability to speak is momentarily stolen from me when he sucks hard on my clit and his other hand joins the party.
One thick finger sinks into me and curls up, pressing against that spot on my front wall.
I suck in a sharp inhale, jerking as my body works through the flash of discomfort that comes with the stretch.
I’m still tender from last night, from taking his thick cock for the first time, but asking him to stop touching me now isn’t something that even crosses my mind.
If anything, I’m pretty sure I’d start screaming like a fucking banshee if he did.
“Fuck, baby,” he groans, releasing that throbbing bundle of nerves so he can speak.
“This is how I want to start every day. With my head between your thighs and my face buried in this pretty little pussy of yours.” He licks through the mess he’s making of me again, his tongue swiping up the slick that drips from me. “You taste like you’re fucking mine.”
The effect of his words is instant. My omega nature surges, delighted by his deviousness and gluttonous for more, and the heat spike rises sharp and sudden. With it comes an aching need that hurts. It spreads faster than I can control.
“I am yours,” I pant instantly. No hesitation. No lies. “But I need more. Please, alpha.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice. He returns to sucking on where I crave his attention most, the rough pad of his fingertip dragging inside me.
Squeezing my eyes closed as stars burst behind them, I send a wordless thank-you to the Goddess for gifting me this man.
Somewhere between one breath and the next, as he works my body with quiet, devastating skill, I find myself once again marveling at just how much things have changed between us.
It’s almost absurdly unfathomable that this is the same man whose words once hollowed me out, whose rejection left me wondering if there was a point to continuing life.
And now his words unravel me again—differently but just as thoroughly.
“Goddess, Ren,” I choke out, body jerking when he slips in another finger, my walls tightening and stretching around them both. It’s exactly what my body needs right now. “If I knew you ever spoke to another woman the way you speak to me, I’m pretty sure I’d end up on a warpath.”
No. I won’t share his fervent and worshiping words.
Possessiveness, born from this heat spike and the omega instincts I’m still learning to navigate, flares hot and fast at that thought.
These hands are mine. These touches that stoke flames and draw heat through my veins belong to me alone—never practiced elsewhere, learned right here on my body.
His whispered praise is mine. I’m the only one who gets to hear his brain-melting devotion.
And I’m the only one who gets the pleasure of being woken up by his mouth eating my pussy like it’s the last thing he’ll ever be allowed to have.
And if I thought—or even suspected—that he shared just a sliver of this with Talis, I wouldn’t hesitate. I’d cross the border to Canada and drag that beta female back here by her shiny copper hair so I could kill her myself.
The sudden desire to commit murder rises from some deep, primal place inside me, and I find myself blinking up at the shadowy closet ceiling like it might help reboot my brain.
Okay. Holy shit. Where did that come from?
I’m a healer. I mend what’s broken. I soothe what hurts. And yet, here I am calmly fantasizing about someone’s execution over a purely fiction scenario my jealous mind conjured. However, my wolf is delighted at the prospect of spilling blood, unapologetically smug over these feral ideations.
If this is what admitting he’s mine does to me, I’m not sure whether to be terrified…or lean into it.
I don’t get the chance to decide.
Rennick curls his fingers at the same moment his mouth does something wicked enough to rip me straight out of my head and slam me back into my body. Into pure sensation. My cunt pulses and lungs emptying completely as pleasure spikes fast and unforgiving.
The world narrows, and the warm euphoric rush engulfs me. I tumble helplessly before I disappear completely into it.
He doesn’t rush me through it. His fingers and tongue don’t retreat, they stay with me through every tremor until my lungs remember how to work again.
Until I can remember myself. The heat spike that’d been burning my nerve endings retracts its claws from me, the need for my mate settling into something soft and sated. For now.
I’m still panting when my fingers loosen from the bedding of the nest and slide down my body to thread through his hair. He turns his head and rests his cheek against my thigh, gentle and affectionate, and he nuzzles there. It’s a glaring contrast to the devious way he woke me.
“You’re really warm, baby,” he speaks against my skin, concern etched into the words.
I nod automatically, then remember he can’t see it. A soft hum slips out before I admit, “Your wake-up call kind of sent me into a heat spike.”
I regret saying it the second his body goes rigid.
The change in him is instant. His head lifts fast, eyes snapping to mine, fear and tension rolling off him so thick I can almost taste it.
“You’re having heat spikes?” His voice is rough, strained.
I nod again, teeth worrying my bottom lip. “Yeah. I think so. Only really small ones so far. Your touch usually sets them off.”
Like that morning I woke up to a man in my bed instead of wolf, I silently add.
Even in the limited light, he looks pale.
Which answers the question I hadn’t realized I’d been asking. Despite how great our morning started or the way we’d both been ripped from sleep by the dream about the clearing and that shadowed wolf and then left restless afterward, he hasn’t forgotten what I told him. Not for a second.
“You know what this means, right?” he asks, his concern seeping through the question.
I roll my eyes with the goal of easing the tension that is now clogging my nest. “Ren, I might be new to being an omega myself, but I promise I’m very familiar with omega biology. It’s literally my whole job. So don’t even think about mansplaining what a heat is to me.”
It doesn’t work. At all.
He isn’t in a teasing mood, and apparently, neither is his wolf. The low, warning growl that vibrates through him makes that very evident.
Tough crowd.
The small, playful smile I’d been offering him barely has time to fade before his chin dips and he bites the crease of my thigh. Not hard enough to break skin. Just enough to make me yelp in surprise.
The sting blooms into heat that pools low in my belly almost instantly.
“Rennick!” I cry, fingers digging tighter into his hair as he licks over the spot he just marked. If I keep this up, the poor guy might go bald.
“Let me bite you, sweet one,” he half pleads, the desperation bleeding into his own growing aroused. “Let me make you mine.”
My chest flutters painfully with butterflies and something else, but I shake my head. “Not yet.”
Even dazed, still floating in the aftermath of the orgasm he’s just wrung out of me, the decision I made last night still stands.
He didn’t like it much then, either.
After Rennick finally learned the full truth about my approaching heat, we’d fallen into a disagreement.
He’d gone rigid the moment he understood what was at stake, his eyes darkening with that fierce, protective glare I’m becoming all too familiar with.
And, if I’m honest, totally obsessed with.
Yeah, I don’t know what that’s about, and I’m still trying to work out which base instinct ignites that particular brand of appreciation, but what I do know is my wolf’s a big fan.
Last night, he’d been prepared to bite me right then. Ready to mark me as his, to anchor me to him so I can’t slip away and leave him behind.