Chapter 5 Beckham
Beckham
The knot releases, and he tries to pull away from me. I don’t let him.
I don’t even think about it. My arms just clamp down around his chest and he lets out this tiny, broken sound, then goes still.
He’s shaking all over, not from cold, just pure exhaustion.
His skin is hot as hell under my hands, his breathing is quick and shallow, and he smells so fucking good I keep losing my train of thought.
I have to keep dragging myself back to reality every few seconds.
I pull out slow and he shudders, and it hits me right in the chest. There’s slick and come running down his thighs, dripping onto the platform, but he’s too out of it to care.
I haul him up against me, one arm under his chest, the other around his waist, and sit back so he ends up in my lap, his back pressed to my chest. He just lets me move him.
No fight, no tension, just completely spent.
I need to get him water.
That’s what finally cuts through the rut-fog: he needs water.
He’s dehydrated, been in heat for at least an hour, probably more, sweating it all out.
I know what that feels like under my hands—the dry heat of his skin, the shallow breaths, his pulse racing even though he’s not moving.
I’ve sat with people in worse shape at three in the morning under hospital lights, when I was the on-duty nurse in the ER that night.
The only difference is that I never wanted to bury my face in any of their necks and breathe them in until I couldn’t smell anything else.
I wave down a beta. She shows up like she was just waiting for me to ask, totally calm, hands me a water bottle without even looking at us. That’s good staff. Places like this only work if you’ve got people like her.
“Hey.” I press the bottle to his lips. “Drink.”
He drinks, messy as hell, water running down his chin, but at least he’s swallowing.
I wipe his chin with my thumb and he leans back against my shoulder.
I can see his eyes through the mask—glassy, not really focused.
He’s still out of it, stuck somewhere between heat and coming back to himself.
I know that feeling. My rut’s finally calmed down from screaming to just a low roar, and I can actually think again.
That’s a nice change from the last hour, when all I could think was this omega, this scent, more, mine.
Mine. That word keeps showing up, and I keep letting it.
The whole room’s changed while I wasn’t looking.
There’s a new pair on the platform a couple alcoves down.
The bass is still pounding, but the music’s slower now, and the lights have gone from blue to this deep purple that makes everything look kind of bruised.
I can smell other omegas, other alphas, all that pheromone soup that makes this place what it is.
None of it matters. The only thing I care about is the scent soaking into my skin right now.
He shifts in my lap. His breathing changes, not so shallow now, and his body tenses up under my hands. He’s coming back to himself. I can feel the exact second his brain catches up to where he is and who’s holding him—his shoulders go stiff and his hands ball up into fists on his thighs.
I don’t let go. My arms stay put—loose enough he could get away if he really wanted, but solid enough he knows I’m not leaving.
“You good?” I ask. My voice sounds rough, more wrecked than I meant it to.
He doesn’t answer right away. I can see his jaw working behind the mask, see him swallow, trying to get his voice back. When he finally speaks, his throat is raw.
“You—” He stops. Swallows again. “I wasn’t here for you.”
“I know.”
It goes quiet for a second, just the bass filling the space. Someone on the floor moans, long and loud, echoing off the concrete. The omega in my lap doesn’t even flinch. He’s heard worse tonight. Hell, he’s made worse tonight.
“The other alpha,” he says. “The one I was with.”
“I know.”
“He’s still here.”
I look up and scan the floor. Takes me a second, but I spot him—leather mask, standing by a support column maybe fifteen feet away, arms crossed, just watching.
He’s been there the whole time. Through the fucking, the knotting, me holding this omega while he shook and cried.
I look at him and I don’t feel guilty, but I’m not gloating either.
It’s just... acknowledgment. He was here first. Doesn’t change a damn thing.
“Yeah,” I say. “He is.”
The omega lets out a rough, frustrated breath. His body language says he’s pissed, but his body keeps giving him away. He’s still leaning into me, still breathing me in, his hips shifting against my lap in these tiny, needy movements. His heat’s starting up again.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says.
“No.”
“I had a plan.”
“I know.” I press my mouth to his hair, right above the mask strap. He smells like heat and sex and underneath all that, just him—warm and sharp, the same scent that caught me from across the floor and dragged me over here like I didn’t have a choice. “I wasn’t looking for this either.”
He laughs. Short, bitter. “Yeah, well. You seem to be handling it better than I am.”
“I’m not,” I say, and I mean it. I just know how to fake it.
Twelve-hour shifts in chaos will do that to you.
You learn to keep your hands steady even when your brain is screaming.
That’s been me since I walked in here and caught his scent—my rut went from manageable to a fucking disaster in two seconds flat.
He goes quiet for a while. The bass fills up the silence. I just hold him, breathing him in, trying not to think about how in a few hours he’ll walk out and all I’ll have left is his scent stuck in my head for weeks.
He tips his head back against my shoulder, looking up at me through the mask.
I can see his eyes now—dark, sharp, even with the heat still in them.
He’s thinking, sizing me up the same way I’ve been doing to him.
Even with the mask, I can tell he’s trying to make sense of what just happened and how it fits with whatever plan he had.
“Your hands,” he says. “They’re steady.”
“Yeah.”
“Why are your hands steady?”
I think about how to answer. Not the whole truth—we don’t do names here, no backstories. But he deserves something after what I took from him tonight.
“I’m used to people shaking,” I say. “It’s what I do.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then: “That’s either really comforting or really creepy.”
I smile behind my mask. “Probably both.”
He shifts in my lap, turns a little, and brings his hand up to touch my jaw through the mask.
It’s light, careful, like he’s trying to figure out what I look like under there.
His fingers trace the edge of the mask where it meets my skin, and he’s so gentle it actually makes me catch my breath.
He notices. His fingers pause on my jaw, and his eyes meet mine.
“Huh,” he says.
Something changes in him. The anger pauses—not gone, not forgiven, just a crack in the wall where something else could maybe get in.
I pull him closer. He lets me.
We just sit there for a while, his back against my chest, my arms around him, both of us breathing.
The floor keeps moving around us. The other alpha by the column hasn’t budged.
My rut is simmering, steady, waiting. His heat’s doing the same.
I can smell it building in his scent, getting sweeter, slick starting up again.
His body’s warm against mine and getting hotter, his hips shifting in my lap, slow and not quite on purpose yet, but close.
“It’s coming back,” he says. Quiet. Almost resigned.
“I know.” I can feel it. His body’s tightening up, clenching around nothing, and his scent is getting thicker by the second. My cock’s already hard again, pressed up against his ass, and we’re both pretending not to notice, but it’s obvious.
“Is it—” He swallows. “Is it going to be like last time?”
“Worse,” I say, not sugarcoating it. “Deeper. Your body’s already had my knot. It just ramps up from here.”
He shudders, the tremor running from his shoulders all the way down to his hips. My arms tighten around him. His hands grab my forearms, nails digging in, and I just let him.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
“Yeah.”
His heat crests. I feel the second it hits—his whole body arches in my lap, his scent goes nuclear, and the sound he makes is desperate as hell, the kind of noise that sticks with you.
My rut surges up to meet him and for a few seconds we’re both just gone, nothing but bodies and need, his heat calling, my rut answering, and my brain shutting off.
I pull him tighter into my lap, his back pressed to my chest, my cock hard against him.
I reach down between his legs and he’s so wet my hand is soaked right away, slick everywhere.
He bucks into my hand and moans, his cock rock hard and leaking.
I wrap my hand around him and stroke, and he almost comes right off my lap.
“Stay,” I tell him. My other hand is flat on his stomach, holding him down against me. “I’ve got you. Stay.”
I lift him. He helps, his knees finding the platform on either side of my thighs, and I line up and pull him down onto my cock, and the sound he makes hits the ceiling and comes back to us. I hear someone on the floor stop what they’re doing to listen.
He’s facing the floor. The gallery. Everyone.
I know I’m making a choice here. I could turn him around, make it private, take him to a room.
But I don’t. I keep him in my lap, facing out, legs spread over my thighs, my cock buried in him, and everyone on this floor and in the gallery can see exactly what’s happening.
His cock is hard and dripping, his stomach tight, his head tipped back against my shoulder, mouth open behind the mask. All of it on display.