Jordy #3
“I…” He stopped, as always, like whatever his first instinct urged him to say would always be the wrong thing.
I wanted to push him on his back and make him lay there while I recited every single thing he’d ever said and done to make me so pathetically obsessed with him.
“Don’t you worry that I might lose my temper with you? ”
“I never worry that you’ll actually hurt me. Not ever.”
“I already have!” He insisted, and the second I felt his hand leave me, I popped up onto my knees, forcing myself into his lap so our faces were aligned.
“Kieran,” I started, hooking my hands behind his neck to anchor myself in place. “I want you to really consider the stuff I’m about to say, and let it sink in, not just float on the surface of the impenetrable wall of your brain.”
“My brain is penetrable,” he argued, giving me a wry look when I snorted.
“I’ve yet to see it,” I said, before leaning in and briefly pressing my lips to his jaw in a barely-there butterfly kiss.
“My mom died when I was 10.” I pressed another kiss to the area just under the lobe of his ear.
“I have a chronic illness that could kill me if I screw up managing it, even just a little.” When I kissed his neck, I could feel his pulse rampaging under my lips for a moment before lifting away.
“And I’ve spent the last few years of my life in love with a guy who was incredibly determined to push me away and break my heart.
For my own good, I’ll add,” I said dryly, when he groaned lightly.
“Is any of this supposed to make me feel better?” He griped, but his whole body tensed up when I moved to another spot on his neck, lightly sucking for a second. He shifted under me, maneuvering my thighs so I was straddling his lap.
“No,” I said honestly. “It’s supposed to remind you of who I am, and that I’m not whatever fragile, delicate thing you worry about breaking all the time.
” When he opened his mouth to argue, I placed my palm over it to shut him up.
“I need you to understand that whatever flaws you have and whatever mistakes you make, nothing you ever do will be too much for me to handle. Because I was made for you, Kieran. Every part of me, every cell in my body, was created to belong to you and to be everything you need.”
His eyes widened, somehow looking both lovesick and devoted and terrified all at the same time.
“And every part of you, even the parts that you think are ugly and unlovable, all of that was made to belong to me and to be everything I will ever need for the rest of my life.” With the hand I didn’t have clamped over his mouth, I stroked my fingertips over the back of his neck, hoping it felt soothing to him.
“There’s a reason you can scent me through my suppressants and no one else can.
There’s a reason you always knot when we’re together, even though I’m not in heat.
” When he made a noise behind my palm, trying to speak, I only squeezed harder.
“And there’s a reason you can’t stand anyone else to look at me or touch me.
You know what that reason is, Kieran. Stop running away from it. ”
When I finally peeled my hand off his mouth, he only stared at me, unblinking, for the span of several heartbeats.
“I love you,” he finally said, but his voice was soft and rough, like he’d only just finished screaming his lungs out.
“I love you, too.”
“I’m so fucking scared, Jordy.”
Shocked by the sudden urgency and vulnerability in his words, I was aware that he only let things like that slip out once in a billion years and that hearing him sound like that was like witnessing a comet falling into our planet’s orbit.
“Why?”
He swallowed hard, tilting his head back again so it was resting on the glass as he stared up into the sky. His breath came out sharp and ragged and pained, like he was breathing out broken glass.
“What if I’m not?” The words were so quiet, I almost couldn’t hear them.
“Not what?”
“What if I’m not your mate? What if I bite you, and it doesn’t take?”
And here I’d felt so stupidly proud of my intelligence, like I’d finally cracked the code to understanding Kieran James and his many, many insecurities and all that ugly, poisonous self-loathing. I supposed I wasn’t nearly as clever as I’d built myself up to be.
“That’s not going to happen,” I promised, drawing my eyebrows together as I clung to his neck. He was so close I could see a barely-there glimmer of moisture in his dark, haunted eyes. “I know you are. You know it too, you’re just afraid to admit it.”
“No,” he insisted, and the agony in his voice was impossible to ignore or not take seriously. “You can’t know for sure.”
“I do,” I said again.
“Will you promise me something?” He asked.
“Anything,” I said sincerely. I would have promised him anything in the entire universe if he’d just stop hurting himself by believing the lies his brain forced onto him.
“If it doesn’t work… Promise me you won’t go looking for him.”
“Who?” I asked, confused.
“Your… Your mate. Whoever that person is that’s better for you than I am. I know it’s horrible and I’m the most selfish person in the world, but if you just promise me that you won’t leave me if it doesn’t work, then I’ll try.”
I wanted to argue with him, to tell him again that there wasn’t even the shadow of a doubt in my mind that he was my mate, but I knew it wouldn’t help.
“I promise,” I breathed out. “Whatever happens, I won’t want anyone but you, Kieran. I swear. I want to stay with you forever. Only you.”
He pulled me into a crushing embrace, his ragged breaths shuddering out over my neck, my omega gland tingling under the warmth.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” I murmured. “Whatever happens, we’ll still be together, okay?”
“Okay.”
“But you do feel it, right? That pull that makes you want to bite me?” I whispered, and gasped when he pressed his open mouth against my gland, groaning as he lightly scraped his teeth over it like a threat.
Poor baby. He was so afraid of being happy and feeling complete that he couldn’t even bring himself to believe what I knew to be true.
“Do it,” I urged him, feeling like I was losing my mind as I tightened my hands in his hair to hold him in place.
I felt lightheaded and dizzy, my body instantly alert and throbbing the moment he’d made contact with my omega gland. It was the same for him, I knew. I’d felt his cock start to perk up and swell against the curve of my ass.
“If I bite you right now, I’m going to come in my pants,” he said, and it was the most pitiful and pathetic I’d ever heard him sound in my entire life.
A laugh burst out of my throat before I could stop it, and I dropped my head onto his shoulder. And then we were just two guys in the back of a truck in a public park again.
As ridiculous as it sounded, it was probably true.
It was supposed to be this insanely erotic, intimate thing, so celestial and earth shattering that it would permanently change us.
I’d read that it triggered an instant orgasm in omegas, and that male alphas would always pop a knot during the process, if they didn’t already have one.
So maybe, as desperate and needy to prove our bond to him as I felt, the public park wasn’t the most opportune location.
“But you will… try?” I asked, leaning back a bit so I could stare into his face as he nodded.
“I’ll try,” he confirmed. “But I want to do one thing right with you. I already screwed up taking your virginity, and I don’t even know how many other things I’m going to screw up for the rest of our lives.
But this one thing… In case… In case it actually works, I want it to be right.
Special,” he added, the emotion in his voice intense and beautiful, squeezing my heart.
“What do you mean by special?” I wondered. I was pretty sure biting through my omega gland and marking me as his eternal mate would be special enough, regardless of the setting, but clearly he had other plans I hadn’t been aware of.
“Fuck, I don’t know, Jordy,” he said, sounding so helplessly frustrated already that I couldn’t help but grin. “Let me buy you flowers and take you to a nice hotel or something. Somewhere I won’t have to stifle my moans because our parents could wake up and catch us fucking.”
“They’ll be gone most of the day tomorrow,” I offered. “For work.”
“Somewhere nice,” he repeated firmly and flatly, so there was absolutely no room for interpretation.
“Okay,” I finally relented, sighing. “But when? I don’t want to wait anymore. I’ve been waiting forever already.”
He let out a deep breath, and I felt his fingers tighten on my waist, one quick twitch like it’d been involuntary. “I can look up hotels when we get home. Maybe we can stay somewhere tomorrow night. I… I need it to be just you and me, in a bubble, like it was when we stayed on the beach.”
I wasn’t exactly sure how we’d explain it to our parents, or if we even would attempt to explain it to them until it was all said and done and his mark was on me. But tomorrow was the best answer I could have hoped for.
“I love you,” I said. “I can’t wait.”
“Yeah, me neither,” he answered back, but I could tell by the doubt and fear swirling in his eyes alongside the love for me, he wasn’t quite as prepared and at ease as I was. It didn’t matter. I would keep reassuring him up until the very last second, whatever I needed to do.
Because I was through waiting, ready for everyone in the world to catch up to what I already knew. Kieran was mine, and I was his. And there was nothing anyone could ever do or say to ruin that.