Chapter 38 #2
Noa’s hips lift to meet mine as I continue to drive into her, my knot swelling and catching at her entrance with every thrust. Each time it slips free with a wet pop, her breath hitches in that way that recks me.
“I’m here, sweet girl,” I pant, releasing her wrist to reach down and cup her too warm, clammy cheek. She nestles into the gentle touch instantly. “I’m so fucking sorry I left your side. It won’t happen again, I swear it, Noa.”
I’m still not sure she’s hearing a damn thing I’m saying, but either way, I selfishly need to get those words out.
She hums, in acknowledgment or understanding, I have no idea, before her face scrunches up. “Hurts,” she gasps through a choked sob. “It won’t stop. I need… you, alpha.”
My hand finds her hip for leverage and I increase my pace, driving into her harder than I should.
Harder than her poor body looks like it can take.
But it can and she eagerly and enthusiastically takes everything I offer her, desperate sounds of need escaping her parted lips with each deep slice of my cock into her.
Slick is already everywhere, coating my thighs and soaking through the top blanket beneath us.
If she didn’t need my cock inside of her like her next breath, I’d be between her legs, tongue catching every gush. The taste I got from her fingers only dampened my hunger.
I’m subconsciously aware of something dark brewing at the back of my mind. I know it’s not something I’ll be able fight off much longer before it drags me into that hazy place where nothing exists but sensation and need.
Rut.
Noa’s heat is triggering it.
My first one.
One hand stays on her hip while the other slides to her throat, my palm and fingers forming a collar.
Noa’s head tips back instinctively, granting me more access, and she moans, long and a little wild, when I apply pressure.
Not enough to steal her breath, just enough for her omega and wolf to understand that their alpha is here. And he’s in charge.
“Your pussy takes my fat cock so well, sweet Noa,” I murmur, fingers flexing at her neck so she doesn’t just hear the praise, she feels it. “You were built for me, weren’t you? Made to stretch wide and take every thick inch.”
Her body answers before her mind can—her innermost muscles fluttering, then clamping down hard enough to wrench a grunt from my chest and throw off my pace. She’s climbing again, teetering on that gilded edge of euphoria. And I am too.
Just a little longer.
A few more moments of restraint.
Then I’ll strike.
Hold on her throat softening, but not enough to abandon her, my fingers drift over the sensitive stretch of pale skin where my mark will soon reside. Permanently.
“I’m going to make you mine, Noa,” I tell her, promise and warning braided together.
“I’m going to put my claiming mark on your pretty throat and bind us together.
I’ll carve myself so deep into your soul that you’ll never again question how much I want you.
How much I fucking need you, sweet girl. ”
Through sheer force of will, Noa fights her way back through the haze, my words finding her in the fog she’s been drowning in. Her eyes clear again, and her hands loosen their grip on the blanket she’s been clutching.
Her fingertips burn as they trace the lines of my face.
“I’ll never not pick you, Rennick Fallamhain. In every lifetime, I’d chose you to be mine.”
That familiar swell of gratitude I’ve been carrying with me so often lately floods my chest, the kind that makes me want to drop to my knees and pray to a Goddess I’ve never known if I really believe in.
Emotion crowds my throat, as the words I’ve kept buried for far too long—longer than it would have been right to say them after everything I put her through—take shape on my tongue.
I hold them in. For now.
The next time I slam my hips forward, fucking into Noa, my swelling knot catches and it takes effort to push it past her tight entrance.
But it doesn’t hurt her. Instead, her breath hitches, and her head falls back as her half-lidded eyes roll backward so hard, I fear they’ll tumble right out of her head.
I only manage three more shallow thrusts, my knot keeping me locked inside her tight, wet heat, before Noa lets out a keening sound and her body breaks apart beneath me.
She comes violently, her entire body shaking and thrashing as the orgasm tears through her.
I grit my teeth against my own release and slide my hands behind her back, pulling her carefully up against me as I sit back on my heels.
I hold her tight to my chest, hips shifting just enough to have my knot rubbing against those newly awakened, sensitive spots hidden inside her.
Her inner muscles tighten and flutter around me, and the sensation tips me over after her.
Snarling as I come, my knot swells to its full size and lodges itself into that space behind her pubic bone, well and truly locking us together as I fill her.
That now familiar fierce and possessive sense of pleasure I get in knowing how intimately I’ve marked her rises.
We ride that final knife’s edge together, my movements gentling as I ease us down. My plan is to sink my teeth into her throat, to mark her as mine in the fragile afterglow of our shared climaxes.
My lips are skimming along her cheek, licking away the salt of the tears she shed when she came so violently it scared me, and my hands are spread wide and steady over her spine when Noa slumps bonelessly against me.
At first, I don’t understand what’s happening.
My arms tighten automatically, instinctively, adjusting to her weight as it goes slack in my hold.
I tell myself this is exhaustion. That her body collapsed into the relief of being temporarily sated.
Heats are a marathon, not a sprint, after all.
They take everything an omega has to give and then keep asking for more until they’re wrung dry.
“Noa,” I murmur, my voice low and coaxing as my thumb traces a slow line along her vertebra. “Hey. Sweetheart?”
I expect a hum, a lazy sound, something.
She gives me nothing.
I shift her slightly, jostling her with more urgency this time, my chest tightening as something sharp begins to press in from the edges of my awareness.
“Noa,” I try again, firmer now. “Look at me.”
Her head lolls backward.
Not slowly. Not with resistance. It gives out completely, uncontrolled and wrong, her neck going slack in a way that makes my stomach drop through the fucking floor.
Panic slices through me like a thousand paper cuts, but I try to smother it before it can take me under.
I can’t afford that. Not now. My entire focus narrows to the woman in my arms, to the way she’s too still, too heavy, as my wolf detonates inside my skull.
He slams against the walls of my restraint with a ferocity I’ve never felt from him before, pure terror and fury tangled together, and I have to fight him down with everything I have just to stay human.
I pull her back just enough to see her face and slide one hand up, brushing the damp strands of dark hair away from her skin. My fingers are shaking. I tell myself it’s nothing. I tell myself she’s only passed out, that her body has simply given out from the strain of the initial waves of her heat.
The lie shatters into shards of glass the second I look at her. Really look at her.
This isn’t slumber or unconsciousness.
The color is draining from her before my eyes.
Her skin pales, turning a sickly shade of gray, her plump, parted lips lose their usual hue of pink.
I thought I understood fear where Noa was concerned, thought I experienced the worst of it when I was racing toward her without knowing if I’d get there in time to save her.
This is different.
Terror. In its purest form. That’s what this is.
I shake her again, harder now, my composure cracking. “Noa!” Her name tears out of me, stripped bare. There’s no point pretending at calm anymore. There’s no one here to protect us from it. “Wake up, baby!”
She doesn’t respond.
“No, no, no. No!” My whole body begins to shake as denial and panic war behind my ribs. Leaning her back against my arm, I press my ear to her bare chest and listen with a focus that borders on madness.
There’s nothing.
No heartbeat. No breath. No feeble sign of life.
Just stillness.
Too much stillness.
Death.
Noa is dead.
The word tries to settle in my mind, tries to become real, and I reject it violently.
I refuse it. I’m not losing her. Not now.
Not after everything it took to get her back.
Not after she fought for so long to stay strong—strong enough to give me time to right my wrongs.
She could have given up, many in her position probably would have, but not Noa.
“Noa, baby, wake up,” I plead, my voice breaking wide open. “Please. I’m right here.”
The sheer, visceral terror ripping through me makes my body release her, my knot deflating unnaturally fast. I lift her off my lap and it slips free without struggle, the sensation barely registering beneath the roar building in my ears.
I lay her flat on the nest and scramble to my knees beside her, my stomach roiling at the way her head rolls toward me. Heavy and lifeless.
Her eyes stay closed. Her chest stays still.
“Noa, open your fucking eyes,” I command, forcing every shred of authority I have into it, as if an alpha bark alone might be strong enough to bring her back to me.
It fails. Of course it does.
I put my hands on her chest and start compressions, counting under my breath even as my throat grows nearly too tight to truly speak.
I tilt her chin back, seal my mouth over hers, and push air into her lungs.
I breathe for her because she isn’t breathing for herself.
Because if she won’t do it on her own, then I will. As long as it takes.
“Wake up, baby,” I beg between breaths. “Come on. Let me see those eyes.”
I don’t stop.