Chapter 7
Knox
Benji stands first, because of course he does.
"I should go," he says.
The softness from the bench vanishes. He brushes off his jeans, shoves his hands in his pockets, and starts walking. The easy conversation we just had is gone.
I should let him walk. That’s the smart move. The Knox Rivera move. Watch the hot omega leave, think about him later, never follow. But my legs are already moving.
"Back to hating me already?" I catch up in a few strides. "The bench was nice. You were almost pleasant. I was starting to think you were a real person under all that eyeliner."
"The bench was a lapse in judgment," he says, not looking at me. "I was bored and you were there."
"You laughed at my jokes."
"Your jokes aren't that good. It was pity."
"I've gotten pity laughs. That wasn't one."
He shoots me a look that's trying to be murderous but doesn't quite land.
We're walking side by side on the sidewalk as the park falls behind us.
His scent is stronger in the evening air.
My body tracks it, a constant, heavy pull in my gut.
I tell myself I'm just walking the same direction. My body calls bullshit.
"You're following me," Benji says.
"We're walking the same way. Coincidence."
"That's following."
"That's parallel navigation."
He almost laughs, then kills it. We keep walking.
The banter is sharper now, both of us overcorrecting.
His building comes into view. He unlocks the door, goes in, and doesn't look back.
Doesn't invite me. Just leaves it open. An open door is Benji's version of an engraved invitation, and we both know it.
I follow him up the stairs.
His apartment door closes behind me. The scent hits. Not new—I've been in this hallway before—but heavier now, layered with memory and the bond. Benji stands in the dim light, looking like everything I've been trying not to want.
Somebody grabs somebody. His mouth is on mine, teeth and tongue and the cold press of his nose ring against my lip. He tastes like coffee and his own mean mouth. I bite his bottom lip because he's already biting mine.
"You're a terrible person," he says, fists in my shirt, dragging me closer.
"You left the door open."
"That's not an invitation."
"Sure it isn't." I get my hands under his shirt. His skin is hot. He shivers when my thumbs find his hip bones. His cock is hard against my thigh through his jeans. His scent spikes—sweet, slick. "You're wet."
"Fuck you."
"Give me a few minutes."
Shirts go first. Yanked off, tossed somewhere we'll deal with later. We stumble toward the bedroom, bouncing off the hallway wall and the bathroom doorframe. His hand fists in my belt loop. His mouth runs a steady inventory of everything wrong with me.
His room is dark and smells like him. The bed is unmade.
I push him down onto it, and he pulls me with him.
We're a tangle of limbs fighting to get each other's jeans off without stopping the kiss.
He shoves at my chest, tries to flip me.
I let him think he's winning for a second before I pin him back with my hips.
He hooks a leg around my waist and digs his heel into my back. Try me.
I grin. Fighting with him in bed is better than anything I've done with anyone else.
"That all you got, Rivera?" He rolls his hips up. The friction of his cock against mine through the denim makes my thoughts go sideways.
"Haven't started yet." I work his jeans and underwear off. Mine go too. Skin on skin. His cock is hard, leaking slick against his stomach. I wrap my hand around it. His whole body jerks.
"Don't look smug about it," he snaps, but his voice is already going.
I get my fingers between his legs. He's soaked.
Slick and hot. My first finger slides in with no resistance.
The sound he makes is a man losing an argument he was sure he was winning.
I add a second finger. Take my time. His face is worth every insult he's throwing at me.
He tells me I'm slow. Terrible. He's had better.
But his hips are grinding down on my hand.
"You were saying?" I push a third finger in. His head drops back. His mouth falls open. Silence. Best sound I've heard all week.
"Just fuck me already," he manages. His body clenches around my fingers. My cock aches. The bond is screaming.
I push in. We both stop breathing.
The fit is so perfect it scares the shit out of me. Then Benji digs his heel into my back. "Are you going to move or just take up space?"
We fall into it. Hard and driving. The headboard hits the wall.
His legs lock around my waist. I'm deep with every thrust, angled exactly how I remember because my body kept the map of him even when I was pretending to forget.
His nails are in my back. His face is fighting a losing battle between anger and pleasure.
"You were so sweet on that bench," I say, knowing I'm being a dick. "All that laughing. Where'd that guy go?"
"He died."
I nail his prostate. The insult dissolves into a moan that fills the room. I grin and do it again.
"Keep talking. I love when you run your mouth while I'm making you fall apart."
"I'm not—fuck—that's biology, that's not you—oh god right there, don't stop—"
"Biology. Sure. That's why you're pulling me closer."
"I'm not pulling you—okay, I'm pulling you closer, but that's—you're the WORST—"
"You feel incredible," I say. It’s supposed to be cocky, but it comes out sounding like honesty. I roll my hips at the angle that makes him gasp to cover it up. "So tight around me, and you're so wet I can hear it, and you want to tell me this doesn't mean anything?"
"It doesn't mean—FUCK—it means you're good at sex, congratulations. So is every other alpha who's had enough practice—"
"How many other alphas are making you sound like that?"
"You'd better make this count"—his voice gets its knife-edge back—"since we both know you won't be here in the morning."
My rhythm falters for half a stroke. Something tightens behind my ribs.
He sees it, his eyes going sharp with satisfaction.
I slam my hips forward to cover the stumble.
He found the wound and stuck his thumb right in it.
I earned that. His legs tighten around me, pulling me deeper. Daring me to prove him wrong.
I don't let up. I watch him come apart under me. Insults dropping to fragments. Fragments dropping to sounds. His body is doing the opposite of his mouth—getting wetter, tighter, clawing my shoulders. Saying more and closer and stay.
A flash of the park cuts through—Benji's face in the golden light. I shove it away and fuck harder. I'm not doing this right now. I don't do feelings. Sex is what I'm good at. I don't need it to be anything else.
Except my hand goes gentle on his hip. My thumb traces the bone instead of gripping it. Benji's eyes flick to mine. Something passes between us. I yank my hand back to rough and pretend it didn't happen.
Benji feels it before I do. The stretch, the pressure building at the base where my knot is thickening. His eyes go wide. His mouth opens on a sound that isn't a word. I feel his body tighten around the swell of it. A beat of panic. Locked together.
His hands grab my hips and haul me forward. "Don't you dare pull out." It’s not a request.
The knot pops past his rim. We lock. The world goes quiet.
The banter, the insults, the headboard—cut like a power line.
We're sealed together. My knot is swollen inside him.
Every small movement sends sensation through both of us so intense my vision swims. I can't thrust, just grind in slow, deep rolls.
The intimacy is unbearable. Face to face.
No rhythm to hide behind. No performance.
Just his eyes and mine and heavy breathing.
There's no casual exit from this. No pulling on my jeans while he's half-asleep. We're locked. I can feel his heartbeat, his breath. The part of me that always has one foot out the door realizes there is no door anymore.
Benji tries to say something sharp. It comes out as a shaky exhale. I try to grin. My mouth won't cooperate. His hand finds his cock, starts stroking. Our foreheads drift together. I didn't decide to do that. I open my mouth to say something cocky.
What comes out is his name. "Benji." Cracked and quiet.
He opens his mouth to fire back, but it's just a sound. His hand speeds up. His body tightens around my knot in waves. I'm close too.
Benji comes first. His back arches. He spills over his hand and across his stomach. His body clamps around my knot so hard my vision whites out. His face—armor gone, sarcasm gone, freckles standing out against the flush. He looks like the most honest thing I've ever seen.
I come. Blind, overwhelming. Bigger than any orgasm I've had in my life. My mouth finds the curve of his neck where it meets his shoulder. My teeth sink in deep enough to break skin.
I taste blood. His scent floods my mouth. Something locks into place inside me like a key turning.
Mate.
It settles into my bones. Permanent. Irreversible. A door slamming shut on every version of my life that doesn't include him. It terrifies me.
My teeth are still in his skin. My hands are shaking. The swagger is gone. Wiped clean. What's left is a guy with blood on his lips who just put something permanent on the one person he was trying to keep things casual with.
I lift my mouth slow. I can see it. My mark, teeth-shaped, red, blood beading in the crescents. It's going to scar. It's going to be on his skin for the rest of his life because my body did the one thing my brain spent twenty-six years avoiding.
Benji's hand goes to the mark. His fingers touch the broken skin. He flinches. His eyes are wide, wet. Overloaded. He touches the mark like he's checking if it's real. Tracing the shape of my teeth. His face cycles through fury, shock, awe.
I try to speak. Find a joke, a deflection. "I didn't—" I start. It dies. Didn't mean to? My body meant every second. Didn't plan it? That's worse.
Benji grabs me by the hair. Yanks my face down to the bite. Not to kiss me. To press my mouth against the wound. He holds me there with his fingers tight in my hair.
"Too late," he says. His voice is thin and wrecked. "You already did it."
It sounds like an accusation and a life sentence. I don't have a single thing to say back because he's right.
We lie there, knotted. My face pressed to the claiming mark, his fingers in my hair.
My arms are around him. I don't remember deciding to put them there.
His heartbeat is fast under the mark, steady against my lips.
Mine is matching it without my permission.
The knot holds us together in the quiet.
I'm lying here with my mouth on the wound I made, arms around the person my whole life was designed to run from.
His pulse against my lips is the only sound in the room. I am his and he is mine, and nothing I've ever been has prepared me for that.