Chapter 6 Jude
Jude
I've rearranged my bed again and it's still wrong.
The pillows are wrong. The blanket is wrong.
The sheets are clean and I hate them because clean means they don't smell like anything useful.
I've got Rhys's button-down balled up against my pillow, the one from his office that still carries his scent.
My omega latches onto it like a life raft every time I lie down.
But one shirt in an apartment that smells like five omegas and Benji's incense and whatever lavender thing Soren plugged into the outlet last week is not cutting it.
My body wants something I can't build here.
It's making me insane. I catch myself fluffing the same pillow for the third time and throw it across the room.
"You good in there?" Shay calls from the kitchen.
"Great. Fantastic. Living my best life."
"You just threw a pillow at the wall."
"It deserved it."
Shay appears in my doorway, mug in hand, eyebrows raised. He takes in the state of my room: the stripped-and-remade bed, the pile of discarded blankets in the corner, the shirt clutched against my chest that I'm definitely not hugging.
"You're nesting," he says.
"I'm redecorating."
"Jude. You pulled every blanket out of the hall closet at seven a.m. Soren had to wrap himself in a towel."
"Soren should mind his own business."
"You're nesting and you can't get it right because this apartment isn't where your omega wants to be." He says it flat, like he's reading the weather. That's Shay. No softness, no pity. Just the truth, handed over like a receipt.
I don't answer because he's right and I'd rather eat my own shoe than admit it.
He takes a sip of his coffee. "Text your alpha."
"He's not my alpha."
"He literally bit you."
"That's not— it's complicated."
"It's biology. Text him. Tell him you need a space that smells like both of you or you're going to lose your mind. It's not weakness, it's just how claiming works."
He walks away. I hear him tell Milo something in the kitchen and Milo makes a soft sound that might be concern.
I love my friends. I also want to be alone in a room that smells like the specific combination of laundry detergent and skin that is Rhys Calder, and this apartment, much as I love it, is never going to be that.
My phone buzzes.
Can you meet me at the coffee place on Elm? The one with the bad mural.
I know the one. Off campus, quiet, nobody from the department goes there because the espresso tastes like dirt.
We've met there twice now for actual conversations where we sit across from each other and try to act like normal people who aren't bonded mates hiding from university policy.
It's almost harder than the sex. Looking at him in public and not touching him.
Watching his hands wrap around a coffee cup and remembering where those hands have been.
When?
Now?
I pull on jeans and a jacket, stuff my feet into sneakers, and grab my keys. I don't look in the mirror because I know what I look like: tired, a little wild.
The walk takes ten minutes. He's already there, sitting at the corner table with two cups.
He's in a grey henley with the sleeves pushed up, ink visible on his forearm, glasses slightly crooked.
He looks up when I walk in and his face does this thing.
This quiet, helpless thing where his whole expression goes soft like he forgot how to be guarded.
I drop into the chair across from him. "Your espresso order better not be for me. This place tastes like hot brown sadness."
"It's tea. I remembered you like tea when you're tired."
Shit. "I'm not tired."
"You look tired."
"Thanks, that's very sexy of you to say."
He smiles. Small, private, just for me. My omega purrs and I tell it to shut up. "I wanted to give you something," he says.
"If it's your response paper notes I'll walk out of here."
He reaches into his jacket pocket and puts something on the table between us. A key. Silver, new-cut, on a plain ring. Nothing fancy. Just a key.
I stare at it.
"My apartment," he says. "It's yours. Come whenever you want. Stay whenever you want. I know your place isn't—" He pauses. Chooses his words. "I know you need somewhere quiet sometimes. For whatever you need. And I want it to be with me."
My throat does something tight and inconvenient. I pick up the key. It's warm from his pocket. Small and heavy in my palm.
"This is a big deal," I say. My voice comes out quieter than I want it to.
"I know."
"Like, this isn't a hookup thing. This is a key-to-your-apartment thing."
"I know what it is."
"You're giving your student a key to your apartment."
"I'm giving my mate a key to our home."
I close my fingers around the metal and hold it tight enough that the teeth press into my skin.
He's watching me with those hazel eyes behind his stupid glasses and he's so steady, so sure, and I want to make a joke.
I want to deflect. I want to say something sharp and funny that puts distance between us and the weight of what he just said.
"Okay," I say instead.
He blinks. "Okay?"
"Okay. Yeah." I put the key in my jacket pocket. "But if your apartment is messy I'm judging you."
"It's not messy."
"Your office was a paper explosion."
"That's my office. My apartment is different."
"We'll see."
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. Just holds it. His thumb rubs across my knuckles and I let him because nobody in this coffee shop knows us and his hand is warm and my omega is purring so loud I'm surprised the barista can't hear it.
I go to his apartment alone that afternoon.
He has a meeting with his advisor that he can't skip, and honestly I'm glad because I need to do this part by myself.
I don't know how to explain that. The nest has to be mine first before it can be ours.
My omega is very specific about this and for once I'm not arguing with it.
His apartment is a one-bedroom on the second floor of a walk-up about fifteen minutes from campus.
Clean, like he promised. Not sterile, just organized.
Books everywhere, on shelves and stacked on the nightstand and piled by the couch.
A few plants on the windowsill, one of them slightly droopy.
His bed is made with a dark blue comforter and it smells like him.
The second I walk into the bedroom my knees go soft.
There's that dark undertone I can't name, the one that makes my brain go quiet and my body go liquid. It's everywhere. In the sheets, the pillows, the worn t-shirt draped over the desk chair. His scent, undiluted, private, completely his, and my omega drops into it like a warm bath.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Press my face into his pillow and breathe.
For a long minute I don't do anything else. I just sit there, breathing him in, and something inside me that's been clenched tight since the hotel finally loosens. Not all the way. But enough that I can feel the difference. Like taking off a shoe that's been pinching all day.
Then my omega takes over and I stop thinking.
I pull every pillow and blanket out of his closet.
I strip the bed and remake it with the softest sheets I can find, layering blankets, building walls on three sides with pillows.
I take his worn t-shirt off the chair and tuck it in.
I pull off my own hoodie, the one that smells like both of us from his office, and work it into the corner where my head will go.
I find a flannel in his closet that smells strongly of him and add that.
Then I rearrange everything twice until the shape is right, the weight is right, the scent is balanced between his and mine.
When it's done I crawl into the middle and curl up and close my eyes.
It's right. The buzzing in my chest goes quiet.
The restless, itchy feeling that's been eating me alive settles into something calm and steady.
I'm in a nest that smells like my alpha and me and nobody else and my omega is so happy it's embarrassing.
I'm purring. I can feel it in my chest. It's involuntary and animal and I should be mortified but I'm too comfortable to care.
I fall asleep.
I wake up to the sound of a key in the lock. The front door opens and closes. Footsteps. Then silence, the specific silence of someone standing in a doorway and trying not to make a sound.
I open my eyes. Rhys is in the bedroom doorway. He's still in his henley from the coffee shop, his bag slung over one shoulder, and he's looking at the nest like he's never seen anything so important in his life. His lips are parted. His chest is rising and falling too fast. His eyes are glassy.
"Hi," I say. My voice is sleep-rough and soft and I don't bother fixing it.
"You built a nest." His voice isn't much better.
"Don't make it a thing."
"Jude." He drops his bag on the floor. Takes a step closer. "You built a nest in my bed."
"Our bed. You gave me a key. That makes it our bed. Those are the rules."
He makes a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and something broken. He toes off his shoes and kneels at the edge of the bed, outside the nest walls, waiting. Not pushing in. Waiting for me to let him in.
I reach for him. Grab the front of his shirt and pull him into the nest. His weight settles against me and his face is in my neck. He inhales deep and shaky against my skin and the sound he makes is wrecked. Completely wrecked.
"You smell like home," he says against my pulse point.
"That's the point, genius."
He pulls back enough to look at me. Pushes the hair off my forehead. His thumb traces the line of my jaw and he's looking at me like I hung every star, like I'm something precious. I want to make a joke but nothing comes out because my chest is too full.
He kisses me. Slow and soft and nothing like the office, nothing like the hotel. His mouth moves against mine like we have all night and we do. We actually do. There's no unlocked door, no thin walls, no time limit. Just his apartment and our nest and the whole evening stretching out ahead of us.
I pull his shirt over his head. Run my hands over the tattoos on his chest, his ribs, trace the geometric sleeve down his arm. He shivers under my touch and I feel it through the bond, this warm pulse of want that's mine to hold.
He undresses me slowly. Kisses each piece of skin as it's uncovered. My collarbone, the center of my chest, my stomach. He mouths at my hip bone and I arch up into it and he pins me down gently, one hand flat on my belly, not restraining. Steadying.
"Let me," he says. "Let me take my time."
"You and your time."
"I told you in that first message. I keep my promises."
He settles between my thighs and puts his mouth on me.
Licks up the shaft of my cock, slow, tasting, his eyes on mine the whole time.
Takes me in and sucks, soft and deep, his hand wrapped around the base, his thumb stroking.
It's not urgent. It's devotional. Like he's memorizing this.
I thread my fingers through his hair and let my head fall back into the pillow that smells like both of us.
He pulls off my cock and moves lower. Pushes my thighs apart, presses a kiss to the inside of each one.
I'm already wet, slick gathering between my legs, and when his mouth finds me there I moan so loud it echoes off the walls.
He licks me open, tongue pressing inside, lapping at the slick like he's starving for it, and I grab fistfuls of the nest blankets and hold on.
"Rhys. God. Please."
He works me open with his fingers while he licks and sucks and I'm shaking, soaking the sheets under me, my cock hard and aching against my stomach. He slides two fingers inside me and crooks them and I almost come right there, my hips jerking, a sob catching in my throat.
"You're beautiful," he says against my thigh, and he sounds ruined by it. "You're so beautiful. I can't believe you're here. I can't believe you stayed."
"I'm not going anywhere." It comes out before I can filter it. Honest and raw and I mean it. I mean it in a way I've never meant anything.
He moves up my body, settling between my legs, and I feel his cock press against me, thick and hard and hot. He pushes in slow and I take him, my body opening around him like this is what it was always supposed to do, and we both exhale at the same time.
He doesn't move right away. Just stays buried inside me, his forehead pressed against mine, breathing with me. I can feel him everywhere. His cock filling me up, his chest against mine, his heartbeat matching the rhythm of the bond.
"Move," I whisper. "I want to feel you."
He moves. Long, slow strokes that reach deep, his hips rolling into mine, his mouth on my neck, my jaw, the corner of my lips.
I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him in deeper with every thrust. He groans into my mouth and I swallow it.
Give it back to him. We trade sounds and breath and heat in the quiet of our nest and nothing has ever felt like this.
Nothing has ever been this unhurried, this safe, this deliberately good.
His knot starts to build. I feel it catching with each thrust, swelling, stretching me wider, and instead of the desperate frenzy from the hotel this feels like settling in.
Like coming home. He pushes deeper and his knot presses past the rim and locks us together and the fullness of it, the completeness, rolls through me like a wave.
I come with his name on my lips. My cock pulses between us, untouched, and he follows me over, groaning my name back, his knot pulsing inside me as he fills me up. He buries his face in my neck, mouth pressed against the claiming bite, and breathes and breathes and breathes.
We stay like that. Knotted together in the nest I built in his apartment with his key in my jacket on the floor. His arms around me, my face against his chest, the bond humming between us like a song in a language I'm still learning.
I should say something funny. I should crack a joke about his throw pillow situation or the droopy plant or the fact that his bookshelf is organized by color, which is objectively wrong.
I don't. I just lie there, warm and full and held, and think, very quietly, that I could stay here forever. And for once, that thought doesn't scare me.
It just feels true.