18. Bo
Bo
Three scents drenched the cabin now. Hers. Calder's. Shepherd's.
All of them mixing in the air like nothing I'd smelled before. Like nothing I’d let myself smell in a long, long time.
The cabin had always smelled of us. Coffee.
Woodsmoke. Cedar. Pine sap on Calder's hands from chopping.
Old paper from Shepherd's books. The mountain dirt I tracked in no matter how careful I was. Familiar. Safe.
Now her scent was woven through all of it. Cardamom. Heat. Slick. Something underneath that hooked into the back of my skull and would not let go.
I had been at the window for two hours. Maybe three. Pacing some of that. Sitting some of it. But smelling all of it. Knowing what was coming. Knowing what was being asked.
I’d heard them both with her. Not the words.
Not the specifics. Just the sounds. Calder had been quiet.
Calder was always quiet. The sounds I had heard had mostly been Noa, her breath catching, the small lost noises she made when something inside her shifted.
Shepherd had been different. More verbal.
I had heard the cadence of his sentences even when I couldn't hear the words.
Quiet murmuring questions. Long pauses. The whole shape of him in there with her, doing things slow.
I stayed at the window through both. Not because I couldn't bear to look.
Because I could. Because part of me, the old animal part, wanted to watch and would not have stopped at watching.
So I kept my back to the room and counted my breaths the way Shepherd had taught me to count, and clung to the last strand of restraint I possessed.
At some point during Shepherd's wave I moved from the window to the door. I didn’t remember the decision. The animal part of me had known to be closer before the thinking part had caught up.
Now the third wave was coming. Her scent had changed again.
The cardamom-sweet of the first wave had been filled with want.
The second wave had carried something tighter underneath, something more urgent.
This was different. This had the edge of too much.
This was the wave that would unmake her if she went into it alone.
But she wouldn’t be going into it alone.
I crossed the few feet to where she was lying. Shepherd had already stepped back. Calder was in the chair, eyes on the fire now, giving us what privacy he could without going too far.
As I knelt down beside her, she looked so small, so trusting and my hands shook as I tried to hold back and be everything she needed me to be.
She looked up at me. Tired. Wet-cheeked. Mouth pink and swollen. The flannel that had been Calder's was rucked up high enough that I could see everything if I let my eyes wander. I did not let them wander. I held her face instead.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.”
“You sure.”
“Bo. Yes.”
“Last chance to say no.”
“I'm not going to.”
“OK.”
I had been ready for words. Ready in my head.
I had been thinking about what I needed to say to her before any of this started.
About Ellis. About the way I went into things now.
About the warning she deserved before I touched her.
I‘d rehearsed it three times standing by the window as I stared out at the snow.
But the words wouldn't come.
She watched my face. Then she said, “Tell me what you need.”
“Need to see you,” I said. “When it happens. Need to see your face.”
“OK.”
“Last omega I was with. She used the bond against me. I went into it not seeing her clearly. Don't want that again.”
“OK, Bo.”
“Might need to turn you. Even if you don't want me to. Even if you're settled. Might just need to.”
“Then turn me.”
“Just like that.”
“Just like that.”
I closed my eyes for a second. When I opened them, she was still watching, calm and present and entirely with me.
“OK,” I said again. “OK.” I hadn’t expected the nerves, the shame, but underneath it all there was so much want that I knew there was no going back.
The heat crested again and I saw the flicker of pain in her eyes. She was riding it so close this time. It was building so much faster than it had before.
She held her arms up. I leaned in. My body moving before my mind caught up because my omega was hurting, wanting, and I’d give anything to make it stop.
Then I kissed her.
Different than Calder, I assumed. Different than Shepherd.
I had not watched them. I had stayed at the window.
But I knew myself well enough to know what came out of me when I let it.
Hungry. Slow. Not careful, exactly. Honest. I kissed her like I had been waiting three weeks to stop pretending I didn't want to.
She made a small sound against me, surprised.
“Oh,” she breathed when I pulled back. Then she pushed at my shoulder. Light. A question.
“I need you now, Bo. I need… I need you inside me. But I want to try something,” she said. “If you'll let me.”
“What?”
“I want to be on my hands and knees. I want you behind me. I think it's what my body wants.”
I felt my pulse trip. She had no idea what she was asking of me.
“You sure.”
“Yes. But.” She caught my chin. “If you need to turn me, you turn me. I'll come back. You can put me back. But you turn me whenever you need.”
“Yeah.” I could hear my own voice going rough. “Yeah, OK.”
I helped her up. She was unsteady, her ankle still tender. I supported her weight while she got herself onto her knees. The blanket nest Calder had built was forgiving, deep enough that she could brace her hands and lean forward and keep her weight off the bad ankle.
I took off my shirt. Then my pants. I knelt behind her.
The sight of her almost ended me right there.
Her back curved. Her hair fell over one shoulder. The flannel had ridden up over her hips. She was slick down the inside of her thighs from the two of them, from herself, glistening in the firelight. She was waiting for me. She had said yes.
I had not had anything say yes to me in a long time.
I put a hand on her hip. Felt her steady.
“Breathing,” I said. “Stay with me.”
“With you.”
I pushed inside her.
My vision went briefly. The shock of it. The slick give. The pulse of her around me, still tender from Shepherd, still snug. I had to set my jaw and hold still inside her for a long moment before I trusted myself to move.
“Bo.”
“Yeah.”
“You can move.”
“Give me a second.”
“OK.”
I gave myself a second. Two. Three. Then I pulled back, slow, and pushed in again, and she made a sound that broke something loose inside me. It hooked into the alpha part of my brain and shattered every chain I’d wrapped around it.
I started to move.
It was different from anything I had let myself remember.
Different from Ellis, different from the few before her.
Cleaner. Wanted. I gripped her hips and I moved in her and she pushed back to meet me.
Her sounds were low and unguarded and the cabin air was thick with the layered smell of all of us.
Her hair had fallen forward over her face.
I could see the back of her neck. The slope of her shoulder.
The shadow of the bruises Calder's hands had left at her hips, blooming dark in the firelight.
I could see the place where the bonding spot was, that soft hollow where shoulder met neck, and I had to look away from it before my teeth started thinking on their own.
I went faster.
I went harder.
Her elbows were giving out. She had her face pressed into the blanket. Her hands had fisted in the bedding hard enough that her knuckles were white. The sounds she was making were muffled and broken. The slick wet rhythm of us was the loudest thing in the cabin besides the fire.
I gripped her hips and held her steady as I drove into her at an angle that made her arch and cry out. Somewhere in the back of my head a quiet old voice that sounded like Ellis whispered good, just like this, she likes it, she will never know how to leave you and I went cold.
I stopped.
“Bo.” Her voice was muffled in the blanket. “Don't stop. Why are you...”
“Need to turn you.”
“OK.”
I pulled out. Carefully. Both of us made a sound. I helped her over onto her back, her legs trembling, her hair stuck to her flushed cheek. She was beautiful. She was real. I needed her face. I needed her face like I needed air.
“There you are,” I said. They were the same words Calder had used at the start. Same words she had said back to Shepherd. I had not known I’d heard them, but my mouth had kept them.
“There you are,” she said back. Smiling. Tired.
I pushed back inside her.
Face to face. I could see her now. Her pupils blown. Her hands coming up to my shoulders. The pulse hammering in her throat. The way she was looking at me like I was something rather than nothing. The way her mouth opened to take in air when I started to move again.
“Bo,” she said. “Bo, Bo, Bo.”
I moved in her. Slower than from behind. Different angle. Different connection. She wrapped her legs around me and her ankles crossed at my back as she pulled me deeper into her with surprising strength for someone in her state.
“There,” she whispered. “There. Bo. Right there.”
I hadn’t held anyone like this in fifteen years.
Not face-to-face. Not with eye contact. Not where I had to be present, where I had to let myself be seen and to see in return.
Ellis had liked positions where I couldn’t see her face.
I hadn’t understood why at the time. But I understood it now.
She didn’t want to be seen because she didn’t want me to know what she was doing.
Noa wanted to be seen. Noa was watching me back. Noa had her hand on my jaw and her thumb at the corner of my mouth. Her eyes were on mine, and she was using my name like a tether.
I kissed her.
I kissed her with my whole being, with breath, with the kind of intent I hadn’t let myself feel in seven years. And my heart left because she kissed me back. Soft. Welcoming.
“Bo.” Her hand was in my hair. “Bo, look at me.”