Chapter Thirteen #2
But as soon as I’m home for several days with nothing to do, the walls start closing in.
I get restless first, pacing the apartment with the dogs trailing me, rearranging the books on the shelf in my room and then rearranging them again.
Then I get irritable, snapping at Hyunwoo over nothing, picking fights about what to watch on TV, complaining about the food even when it’s good.
Then I get genuinely stir-crazy, the kind of crawling-out-of-my-skin energy that used to drive me to the gym for a two-hour session and now has nowhere to go because my body can barely manage a flight of stairs without needing to sit down afterward.
I play video games until my eyes burn and my thumbs cramp.
I take the dogs on increasingly long walks until Hyunwoo notices the step count on my phone and vetoes that too, saying I’m putting too much strain on my hips and my swollen ankles.
I try to cook elaborate meals to pass the time and burn two of them because I keep getting distracted by the baby kicking and losing track of what’s on the stove.
I reorganize my closet by color, then by season, then by fabric weight, and then I stand in the middle of the closet surrounded by piles of maternity clothes and realize I’ve lost my mind.
Hyunwoo catches me heading for the front door one afternoon, gym bag slung over my shoulder, sneakers on, my belly leading the way like the prow of a ship. He steps into the hallway from the kitchen, blocking the path to the entryway, and his eyes drop to the bag on my shoulder.
“Where exactly do you think you’re going?”
“To the gym,” I say, already bracing for the argument. “Just light stuff. Some stretching, maybe some time on the stationary bike. I need to move, Hyunwoo, or I’m going to start chewing on the furniture like your dogs.”
“You absolutely cannot work out in your condition.” His voice is flat and final, the tone he uses when he thinks a discussion is over before it’s started. He crosses his arms over his chest and plants himself more firmly in front of the door. “You’re seven months pregnant, Yugyeom.”
“I’m aware of how pregnant I am, thanks, I’m the one carrying it.” I hitch the gym bag higher on my shoulder and take a step forward. “I’m fine. I’m a personal trainer. I know my body’s limits better than you do.”
“Your body’s limits have changed significantly in the last seven months.”
“People work out right up to nine months,” I shoot back, my annoyance flaring hot and fast the way it does about everything lately.
“Staying sedentary is actually worse for the pregnancy, there are studies about this, and you of all people should know that since you’ve apparently read every medical paper ever published on the subject. ”
“Light walking and gentle stretching at home is different from going to a gym and—”
“I’m not going to bench press, Hyunwoo, I’m going to sit on a stationary bike and pedal slowly while watching TV on the little screen. That’s it. Move.”
He doesn’t move. His jaw sets and his arms stay crossed and he gives me that look, the one where his brown eyes go sharp and his chin tips down slightly, the look that makes business partners and waiters and basically everyone who isn’t me fold immediately.
I don’t fold. I’ve been immune to that look since we were six years old and he tried to use it to convince me to give him my juice box.
“Hyunwoo, get out of my way.”
“No.”
I try to push past him, shouldering toward the door with my gym bag, angling my body sideways to fit through the gap between him and the wall.
He sidesteps to block me again and I make a frustrated sound and shove at his chest with my free hand, which accomplishes nothing because he’s six-four and built like a wall and I’m seven months pregnant and my center of gravity is somewhere around my knees.
“Hyunwoo, I swear to god—”
His pheromones flood out.
Unlike a gradual release, not the controlled trickle he uses during sex or the ambient trace that lingers on his clothes and his furniture.
A sudden, overwhelming torrent that fills the hallway, slamming into me with the weight of a crashing wave.
Rich and heavy and commanding, pouring off him in a concentration I’ve only experienced once before, during his rut, and the effect on my body is devastating.
My legs go weak. My muscles go slack. The gym bag slides off my shoulder and hits the floor with a dull thump that I barely notice because my head is swimming, my vision going soft at the edges, my hole clenching hard and then releasing a rush of slick that soaks through my underwear and starts to seep down my inner thighs.
The bond between us lights up, humming with a frequency that resonates through my bones, and every cell in my body responds to the command embedded in those pheromones: submit. Be still. Obey.
I can’t fight it. I’m too far along in pregnancy for my body to mount any kind of resistance, my hormones already tilted so far toward omega submission that even a moderate dose of alpha pheromones would make me compliant.
This isn’t moderate. This is the full, unrestrained force of a bonded alpha’s will directed at his omega, amplified by the bond mark that pulses hot at the base of my throat, and my body doesn’t just submit.
It melts. My anger dissolves like sugar in hot water, replaced by a warm, heavy compliance that settles over me like a weighted blanket, pressing me down, smoothing out every sharp edge of resistance until I’m standing in the hallway with my arms hanging loose at my sides and my eyes half-lidded, swaying slightly on my feet.
Hyunwoo’s hand settles on my lower back, warm and firm, and guides me.
My legs move obediently without my conscious consent, carrying me away from the door and back down the hallway toward the bedroom.
I’m aware of what’s happening. Some distant, still-functioning corner of my brain is screaming that this is exactly what Ye-eun warned me about, that he’s overriding my will with biological force, weaponizing his pheromones in a way he’s never done before.
But that corner is very small and very far away, muffled beneath layers of hormonal fog.
My body wants to go wherever the alpha’s hand is guiding it.
He lays me out on the bed with careful hands, easing me down onto my side first and then rolling me gently onto my back, arranging pillows behind me to support my spine and beneath my belly to take the weight off.
His movements are unhurried and attentive, the pheromones keep coming in steady waves that wash over me and keep me pinned and pliant against the mattress.
He pulls my sweatpants down my legs and off, then my soaked underwear, the fabric peeling away from my skin with a wet sound that makes my face burn even through the fog. He pushes my thighs apart and settles between them, and I feel his breath ghost hot over my hole before his mouth descends.
His tongue works me open with devastating patience, broad flat strokes over my rim that make my toes curl and my fingers twist in the sheets, then pointed flicks against the sensitive nerve endings that have me gasping and arching as much as my belly allows.
He laps up the slick that’s flowing freely, groaning against me like the taste of it is something he needs, and then his tongue pushes inside and I make a high, keening sound, completely helpless.
He pulls back and his fingers replace his tongue, two of them sliding into my loosened hole with no resistance at all, crooking upward to find my prostate without trouble.
He presses against the swollen gland and rubs, firm circles that build pressure behind my cock, and I come with a sharp cry, my cock twitching and spurting a thin stream onto my belly, my hole clenching around his fingers in waves.
He doesn’t stop. His fingers keep working, pressing and circling, milking another orgasm out of me before the first one has fully faded, and I’m still shaking through it when his mouth seals over one of my swollen nipples and sucks.
The sensation is so intense it almost hurts, the engorged tissue hypersensitive.
I cry out and grab at his hair but can’t muster the strength to pull him away.
His tongue flicks across the hardened bud, his teeth graze it gently, and then he sucks again, harder, and something releases.
A warm trickle of fluid leaks from the nipple into his mouth and we both freeze.
Hyunwoo pulls back, his lips wet, and looks down at my chest with wide eyes. I look down too, and see the faint bead of pale liquid gathered at the tip of my nipple, another drop forming as I watch.
“Is that—” he starts.
“Don’t,” I say, my voice wrecked and thin. “Don’t say it. Don’t you dare say it.”
Hyunwoo’s mouth twitches. He looks at me, looks at my chest, and I can see the exact moment the fascination overtakes whatever restraint he has left.
He dips his head back down and latches onto the nipple again, his tongue pressing flat against it, and sucks hard.
More fluid releases, a thin but steady trickle, and Hyunwoo makes a low, satisfied sound against my skin.
I’m horrified somewhere underneath the pheromone haze and the pleasure and the bone-deep exhaustion of being seven months pregnant and at the mercy of my bonded alpha’s mouth.
But my body arches into it, pressing my chest closer to his face, and the relief of the pressure easing in my swollen breast as he draws the fluid out is so good that I groan and let my head fall back against the pillow.