38. Sterling #2
JP snarls, hips snapping forward so hard it knocks the breath from my lungs.
“Oh fuck,” I gasp, realizing what’s happening. “You’re rutting.”
His breath comes out in a low, guttural growl that vibrates down my spine.
“Can I knot you?” he grits out, voice ragged with need. “Please, Omega.”
“Yes,” I gasp, my Omega and body rising and answering with another intense orgasm.
His cock swells, thickening as he grinds harder into me, trying to force the knot that’s already forming at his base inside.
“I’m gonna knot you,” he groans, voice hoarse and ruined. My core pulses at the words, still spasming from the last orgasm as I spiral straight into another.
“Yes,” I cry, pressing back against him with everything I’ve got. “I want it—want you. Please, JP.”
“Say it again,” he demands, chest heaving. “Say my name when I knot you.”
“Yes,” I sob. “Please, JP. I want it.”
He thrusts harder, until his knot catches at my entrance.
Just once, just enough to make my breath hitch, and then he pulls back and drives in again, harder. I feel it swell—stretching me wider, pressing against the sensitive walls of my pussy like a promise—and my body quakes in anticipation.
“Fuck, you’re taking me so good,” he grits out behind me. “So tight, baby. Just a little more…”
The burn becomes a sting and then a stretch so deep it borders on pain—but I want it. I want him so deep I can’t think straight, want to feel him anchored inside me like the missing piece I didn’t know I’d been aching for.
And then his knot fully seats inside me, locking him in me with a powerful, aching swell. My orgasm washes over me and my vision blanks, my walls milking him, pulling him deeper, even as my legs threaten to collapse.
“Sterling,” JP groans, and it’s the kind of sound that makes me want to come all over again.
His cock jerks inside me, and then I feel it—hot, thick ropes of cum spilling deep into my core, flooding me, filling me. My pussy clenches again and again, like I’m trying to keep every drop inside. Like I’m not ready to let him go. Not now. Not ever.
We stay like that—joined, breathless, overwhelmed—for a long moment. My face is pressed to the bark of the oak and my forearm, trying to catch my breath. With his chest against my back, he presses his mouth to my shoulder as he pants raggedly, teeth lightly biting down.
“You okay?” he whispers, and I hear the fear behind the question.
I nod, too dazed to speak, and then finally find my voice.
“I’m perfect.”
He exhales hard, arms wrapping around my waist like he needs to hold me there or he’ll fall apart. “I didn’t mean to be so rough. I just…I couldn’t stop. I went into a rut. Did I hurt you?”
The fear I hear in his voice sends a sharp wave of tenderness through me.
“You weren’t, and you didn’t,” I whisper. “I wanted it. I wanted you.”
JP lets out a sound that’s a half growl, half groan as he gathers me to his chest. His warmth is heavenly against me as my skin rapidly cools in the night air.
His knot is still locked inside me, shifting around as he moves to whisper in my ear.
“I was holding back not because I didn’t want you,” he says against my skin.
“I was holding back because I knew once I had you…I’d never stop wanting you.
And I didn’t know who I’d be on the other side of it. ”
I turn my head, meeting his eyes over my shoulder. I look into that ruggedly handsome face and come undone by the vulnerability I see in his eyes.
“I’m not afraid of you.”
Something cracks in him at that. His arms tighten. His scent deepens—rich, licorice, rain-soaked earth—and he buries his face in my neck, scent-marking again like it’s the only way he knows how to tell me how he feels.
We stand like that, knotted together under the stars, surrounded by the smell of trees and bark and fresh autumn air.
My hands grip the rough bark of the oak, breath still catching on every pulse of his knot inside me.
I’m sore, drenched, and tethered to an Alpha who I realize I never want to be away from.
I can’t imagine a version of myself that will ever want to be away from any of them.
JP’s big hands move gently now, sliding up the backs of my thighs, around my waist, cradling me like I’m something he can’t bear to let go of. His knot is still swollen inside me, keeping us connected, but he shifts with careful strength, maneuvering us slowly.
“Hold on to me,” he rasps, his voice low and rough against my ear.
I do as he says—because how could I not?
He lifts me off the tree and slowly spins me carefully, all the while his knot still buried deep.
His body is all heat and muscle as he gently shifts me to wrap my legs around him, supporting my weight with ease.
My back presses into the rough bark now as he holds me there, caged in by his body, his arms, his scent.
Our foreheads touch.
The breath leaves me in a shaky sigh as my arms wind around his neck, my fingers sliding into his hair. He looks at me like I’ve just cracked him open—and maybe I have. Because the rawness in his gaze matches the trembling in my chest.
My legs wrap tighter and instinctively around his waist, locking him closer. Every movement makes me feel the knot, makes me whimper softly, my body still so sensitive and tender from everything he just wrung out of me.
But I love it.
JP leans in, nuzzles his nose along my cheek, and murmurs, “Look at me, Omega.”
I do. Our eyes meet.
The world narrows to nothing but the two of us. The wind moves through the trees like a hush, and my heart pounds: it’s trying to remember what it’s like to belong to someone.
His hands stroke up and down my back, slow and reverent.
“You ruined me,” he whispers, brushing his lips against mine. “And I don’t want to be whole again.”
My throat tightens, and I feel the sting of tears, but I don’t cry. Not yet.
I just hold him tighter, unsure how to find the words to describe the feeling that is threatening to overwhelm me. Is it love?
Eventually, the swelling of his knot starts to ease. He slides out slowly, carefully, holding me up with both hands as I wobble.
“Shit—here, let me…”
“I’m fine,” I whisper, even though my knees are jelly. He laughs softly and lifts me anyway, bridal style, cradling me against his chest like I weigh nothing at all.
“I can walk?—”
“No, you can’t.” The dominance in his tone makes me melt instead of raising my hackles.
I let myself go limp, resting my head against his chest as he carries me through the trees. I can hear his heart beat a mile a minute and I’m wondering why when he speaks.
“I want to sink my teeth into you…so fucking bad,” he murmurs. “Bond you to me. I’d bite you right here where you couldn’t hide it, so every fucker who ever looks at you again knows they lost their chance.”
I don’t know what to say…We’ve never talked about bonding.
It almost feels like too much to hope for.
The thought makes me nervous—and like he can tell, JP leans in and nuzzles my neck and kisses a spot right below where my ear and jaw meet.
He sucks, causing a pinch of pain and it’s hard enough that I know I’ll have a mark there.
When he pulls back and looks at the spot, a grin splits across his face—goofy and unexpected. And I forget how to form words.
JP has dimples.
Then he presses a kiss to the crown of my head. “Someday…when you’re ready.”
I don’t answer—not even sure what I’d say if I could. Instead, I just snuggle in closer, tucked safely in his arms, while his long legs eat up the distance back to my car.
I feel him swallow hard, his throat bobbing beneath my cheek.
And he just keeps walking, holding me tighter. Closer.
My body shivers against the cool night air, and he growls low in his chest, pulling me in even closer, burying his face in my neck like he could shield me from everything.
When we reach the sidewalk, he doesn’t let me go.
He just adjusts me gently, like I weigh nothing, and walks us toward my car, parked crooked near the end of the block. My keys are somewhere in my purse, probably buried under the lip gloss and receipts and a half-melted chocolate bar—but it doesn’t matter.
JP grabs my purse, digs around for my keys, and unlocks the door with a quiet grunt—somehow managing it all while still holding me.
Then he sets me in the passenger seat like precious cargo and simply leans over me to latch my seatbelt.
I don’t even think about arguing when he climbs in, adjusts the driver’s seat way back and starts the engine. I’m suddenly so exhausted and content I feel like jelly. When the heater kicks on, I close my eyes.
Sleep tugs at me as his scent works its magic, and the soft sound of his purring floats to my ears. My head leans against the window, JP’s scent thick and warm in the car—clinging to my skin, buried between my thighs, curling in my lungs, full of comfort and want.
I sneak a glance at him through my drowsy haze.
His tattoos peek out from under his jacket, trailing up the side of his neck and standing in stark contrast to the skin of his hands and fingers.
His hazel eyes glint bright and unguarded, and as if he feels me looking, he glances over.
The warmth in his gaze has me blushing and quickly looking away.
I close my eyes again and hum quietly in pleasure when his large hand rests on my knee, then slides up my thigh—warm, grounding, strong.
When we pull up to my house, I don’t move. I’m so tired. My body’s boneless, like the aftermath of a storm I never want to recover from.
He’s out of the car before I can blink.
Then he’s at my door again, pulling me into his arms, a satisfied sound escaping him. JP may never let me walk anywhere under the power of my own legs again judging by how pleased he looks.
I protest half-heartedly. “JP, really, we had sex. I didn’t lose my legs.”
“Maybe I just like holding you,” he says.
He marches up my porch, unlocks my front door, and carries me across the threshold like we’re newly married.
The house is dark except for the low glow spilling from the kitchen. It smells like warmth and my nest—God, my nest. I want to curl up in it for days.
JP kicks the door shut gently behind him and heads straight for it.
I feel myself melt the second I catch sight of the blankets, the pillows, the tangle of softness that still smells like all of them. Like us.
He lowers me gently into the center of it all, kneeling next to me. Then he proceeds to take off my boots, and then my socks—his big hands dwarfing my feet as he runs his thumbs slowly up my arches.
Then back up my legs.
He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my skirt and eases it off, then helps me out of my blouse.
“You’re just so small, warpath,” he murmurs, eyes lingering on my nakedness. I shiver as goosebumps alight across my skin.
Before I can think too hard on the new nickname, he pulls a t-shirt from somewhere in my nest and tugs it over me—which I realize, with a flutter in my chest, is Cass’s.
I’m still underwear-less and definitely in need of a shower, but I’m too distracted by the experience of having a grown man dress me. And the feeling of having JP all to myself.
He stands and, after slipping out of his boots, shirt, and jeans, JP crawls in beside me—broad and warm and mine.
I’m struck dumb by how much muscle he hides beneath his clothes and how much ink he truly has.
Nearly all of his skin is covered in a tapestry of tattoos, a map of a life lived hard and fast—and not necessarily on the straight and narrow.
But I don’t care.
Not when he curls around me like a shield, one hand resting on the swell of my stomach, the other tucked beneath my head. His chest at my back, his legs tangled with mine.
I feel the way his body softens against mine. The way his breathing slows until it matches mine, syncing with me like it always should’ve been this way. In this moment, I’m not thinking about tomorrow, or the questions I still don’t have answers to.
I’m not worried about whether I’m enough or what the future will bring. Because tonight, he’s here.
Wrapped around me.
Holding me like I’m the one thing that makes his world a better place. And I realize what a special thing it is to be the center of his world.
Just before sleep takes me, I feel it—his lips at the back of my neck, a whisper of a kiss pressed to the place where I want him to bite someday.
“Goodnight, warpath,” he murmurs, voice hoarse with something like awe.
And I fall asleep smiling, wrapped in his scent, his arms, and his unspoken promise of home.