Swipe My Alpha

Chapter 8 Jude

Jude

Islept on Benji's floor.

Not my bed, which is a few feet away and perfectly functional.

Benji's floor, wrapped in a blanket that smells like his incense and not like mahogany and not like the nest and not like anything that's going to make my chest ache worse than it already does.

Benji didn't ask why. He just threw a pillow at me and said "shoes off, no talking until I've had coffee" and went back to sleep.

I didn't sleep much. My phone has one unread message from Rhys that says I'll fix it.

Tomorrow morning. I promise. and I've read it a million times and I still don't know what it means.

Fix what. Fix how. Show up with flowers and a speech about how he's sorry and he'll do better and then what, we go back to sneaking around until the semester ends and he can acknowledge me in public?

I've heard that speech before. Different alpha, different excuse, same ending.

The apartment is quiet in the early morning way that means everyone is either asleep or pretending to be.

I'm on my back on Benji's floor staring at his ceiling, which has glow-in-the-dark stars on it from when Soren decorated everyone's rooms last year, and I'm wearing Rhys's flannel because I couldn't leave it at the apartment last night.

I grabbed it on my way out like a reflex, shoved it on in the elevator, and hated myself the entire walk home because it smells like him and my omega purrs every time I breathe in and I want to scream.

Benji's door creaks open. Milo is standing there in pajama pants and an oversized sweater, holding two mugs of tea. He hands one to me without a word, sits down cross-legged on the floor next to me, and waits.

"I'm fine," I say.

"You slept on Benji's floor."

"It's a comfortable floor."

"It's hardwood."

"I like hardwood."

Milo just looks at me with those big brown eyes that make you want to confess every bad thing you've ever done. I last about ten seconds.

"He asked me to be invisible," I say. "His department head made a comment and he panicked and asked me to hide. For six weeks. No coming over during the week, no being seen together. He filed a transfer without telling me first. He just— he made the decision and told me about it after."

Milo's face does something soft and angry at the same time. "That's not okay."

"I know it's not okay."

"Did you tell him that?"

"I told him to get out of the apartment."

"Good."

Benji rolls over in his bed. He's been awake the whole time, obviously. "Want me to key his car?"

"He doesn't deserve to have his car keyed."

"Everyone deserves to have their car keyed when they fuck up. It's motivational."

From the living room, Shay's voice: "Who are we keying?"

"Nobody," I say. "Go back to sleep."

"Can't sleep. Soren is making French press in the kitchen and narrating the process like a cooking show."

"It's an art form," Soren calls from the kitchen. "The grind matters."

This. This is what I have. This apartment full of people who will key a car for me and make me tea and pretend they're not worried while being deeply, obviously worried.

I pull the flannel tighter around myself and drink Milo's tea and try not to think about the nest sitting empty in an apartment across town.

Someone knocks on the front door.

Everyone goes quiet. It's early. We don't get visitors before nine unless it's a delivery driver or someone's walk of shame going to the wrong apartment.

Shay gets up from the couch. Opens the door. And goes very still.

"Hey," Rhys says.

I can hear him from Benji's room. I can smell him from Benji's room. Like someone opened a window to a different season. My omega lurches toward it so hard my whole body tenses.

"Hey," Shay says, flat. He doesn't move out of the doorway.

"Is Jude here?"

"Maybe. Why?"

"I need to talk to him."

"He needed to talk to you last night too and you asked him to disappear for six weeks, so."

I should get up. I should go to the door and handle this myself. But I can hear Benji sitting up in bed behind me and Milo's hand is on my shoulder and I can't move because part of me wants to see what Rhys does when the door doesn't open.

"You're right," Rhys says. "I fucked up. I know I fucked up. I'm not here to make excuses. I'm here because I did something last night and he needs to see it."

"You can tell me and I'll pass it along."

Rhys's voice drops. Quieter now, something raw underneath the steadiness. "Please. I just need five minutes."

Shay watches him for a long moment. Then he steps aside, not welcoming, just making room.

I get up. Walk to the hallway. Rhys is standing just inside the front door, still in the clothes from last night, his hair uncombed, his eyes red like he didn't sleep either.

He looks like he drove an hour to get here and didn't stop for coffee and he's holding his phone in his hand like it's the only thing keeping him upright.

"I'm not ready to hear a speech," I say.

"I didn't bring one." He holds the phone out to me. "Read this."

I take it. The screen is open to his sent emails. An email to Dr. Albright, timestamped 11:47 PM last night. I read it.

Dr. Albright,

I'm writing to formally disclose that Jude Park, a student currently enrolled in my Gen Ed section, is my fated mate.

We were matched before the semester began, and the bond was confirmed through scent recognition.

I should have disclosed this immediately and I take full responsibility for the delay.

I have already submitted a transfer request to move him to another TA's section. I am prepared to accept whatever professional consequences you deem appropriate, but I will not conceal this bond or ask my mate to hide it.

Respectfully, Rhys Calder

I read it twice. The apartment is completely silent behind me. I can feel four pairs of eyes on my back.

"You sent this last night," I say.

"Before I left the parking lot."

"You emailed your department head. At midnight. Telling her everything."

"Yes."

"You could lose your position."

"Maybe. Probably not, with the transfer already filed. But maybe."

"And you sent it anyway."

"I sat in my car and I thought about what you said.

About being someone's secret. And I thought about what I was actually protecting by hiding, and it wasn't us.

It was just me being scared." He swallows.

"You're not my secret, Jude. You're my mate.

And if Albright has a problem with that, then Albright has a problem with me, and I'll deal with it.

But I'm not asking you to be invisible. Not for six weeks. Not for one day. Never again."

My throat is tight. The phone screen is blurring and I blink and hand it back to him before I do something embarrassing in front of my entire friend group.

Behind me, Milo sniffles. Benji says, very quietly, "Okay, he can keep his car."

I look at Rhys. He's standing there, exhausted and rumpled and completely exposed, and he's not reaching for me. He's waiting. Letting me decide. The same way he waited at the edge of the nest that first time, not pushing in until I pulled him.

"You look terrible," I say.

"I drove from my parents' house. I didn't stop."

"You drove to your parents' house?"

"I didn't deserve to sleep in the nest."

I cross the space between us and his arms come around me and I press my face into his neck and breathe him in and the bond goes quiet for the first time since last night.

"I'm still mad at you," I say against his throat.

"I know."

"You don't get to make decisions about us without me. Ever. That's the rule now."

"That's the rule."

"And you're buying me breakfast because I slept on Benji's hardwood floor and my back is killing me."

His arms tighten around me. His face is in my hair and he's breathing in deep, shaky pulls, his whole body pressed against mine like he's trying to memorize the shape of me. "I'll buy you breakfast every day for the rest of your life."

"Don't be dramatic."

"I'm being completely serious."

"You sound like a Hallmark card."

"I don't care."

Shay clears his throat. "This is very touching but you're in our living room and some of us haven't had coffee yet."

I pull back. Look at Rhys. His eyes are wet, which is going to make me lose it if I stare too long, so I grab his hand and pull him toward the door.

"We're going home," I tell the room.

"Home home or his home?" Benji asks.

"Same thing."

The walk to Rhys's apartment takes fifteen minutes and neither of us says much.

He holds my hand the entire way, his thumb moving across my knuckles in that slow stroke that's become a habit, and when we pass two girls from his department on the sidewalk he doesn't let go. Doesn't flinch. Doesn't even hesitate.

I notice. I don't say anything. But I notice.

The apartment smells like us when we walk in. The nest is the way I left it, rumpled and messy from the night before, the sheets still carrying my scent from when I was lying in them alone. I stand in the bedroom doorway and look at it and something aches.

Rhys comes up behind me. His hands settle on my hips. His mouth presses against the back of my neck, right above the bite, and he just stays there. Breathing me in.

"Get in the nest," I say.

He doesn't hesitate. He pulls off his shoes, his jacket, his shirt. Climbs in and lies on his back, looking up at me, and waits.

I pull the flannel over my head. His flannel. Strip down to nothing and crawl into the nest and straddle his hips and his breath stutters under me, his hands coming up to my thighs, his eyes wide and dark and a little desperate.

"Jude—"

"Don't talk. Not yet."

I lean down and kiss him. Slow, deep, my hands braced on his chest. He kisses me back like he's drowning and I'm air and his hips press up against me and I can feel him already hard through his jeans. I grind down against him and he groans into my mouth, his fingers digging into my hips.

I undo his belt. Pull his jeans and briefs down and he lifts his hips to help and then he's bare underneath me, his cock hard and flushed against his stomach, and I wrap my hand around him and stroke slow and watch his face break apart.

"I want to— let me—" He reaches for me and I catch his wrists. Press them down against the pillow on either side of his head.

"Like this," I say. "I set the pace. You follow."

His pupils blow wide. His whole body goes slack under my hands, his wrists still where I pinned them even when I let go. He nods once, his throat working, and I've never seen him like this. Completely given over. No rules, no control, no composure. Just mine.

I rise up on my knees. I'm already slick, have been since I smelled him at the front door of the apartment, and when I reach back and guide him to my entrance I'm so wet he slides against me without resistance.

I sink down on his cock in one slow, deliberate drop and we both groan at the same time, his head falling back against the pillow, his hands fisting the sheets because I told him not to reach for me and he's listening.

"Oh fuck," he breathes. "Jude. God."

I don't move right away. I sit there, full of him, his cock buried deep, and I look down at his face and let him feel what he almost lost. The nest around us. Me, above him. The bond thrumming between us like a live wire, steady and whole and answered.

Then I move.

I keep it slow at first. Rolling my hips, lifting up and sinking back down, finding the angle that makes my eyes roll and his breath catch. His hands hover at my thighs like he's fighting not to grab me and I take them and put them on my hips. "Hold on," I tell him. "But I lead."

His fingers curl around my hip bones and he holds on.

I ride him, setting the rhythm, speeding up when I want it harder, slowing down when the pressure builds too fast. His cock drags against the spot inside me that makes my vision blur and I chase it, grinding down, taking him deep, my thighs burning and my slick dripping down his shaft and pooling on his stomach.

"You feel so good," he says, and his voice is wrecked. "You're so beautiful like this. Riding me, taking what you want. I'm yours. I'm completely yours."

"Say that again."

"I'm yours. Everything I have is yours. The apartment, my career, all of it. You come first. Always."

I brace my hands on his chest and ride him harder.

His knot is starting to swell and I can feel it catching at my rim with every stroke, thick and hot, stretching me wider each time I sink down.

I could pull off. I could make him wait.

I could punish him the way I punished him last night, deny him the thing his body needs most.

I don't want to. I want him locked inside me, knotted and mine and going nowhere. I want to feel the exact moment his body says I'm not leaving.

I press down. Take the knot slow, letting it stretch me open inch by inch while Rhys makes a sound like he's dying.

His hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise and I don't care.

I want the marks. I sink all the way down and his knot catches, locking us together, and the fullness pushes me over the edge.

I come with my hands on his chest and his name in my throat.

My cock pulses between us, untouched, streaking his stomach, and the clench of my body around his knot drags him over too.

He comes inside me with a broken sound, his hips jerking up, his knot pulsing hot and thick, and I feel every wave of it through the bond like a heartbeat that belongs to both of us.

I collapse forward onto his chest. His arms wrap around me immediately, pulling me in tight, his mouth finding my hair, my temple, the top of the bite mark. He's shaking. Or I'm shaking. I can't tell where I stop and he starts.

"I love you," he says. Quiet. Into my hair. Like it's been sitting in his chest since last night and he can't hold it anymore. "I should have said it before. Not in a text, not buried in something else. I love you, Jude. I'm in love with you and I'm not hiding it."

I press my face into his neck.

"I love you too," I say. "Obviously. I've been wearing your clothes like a psychopath. It was implied."

He laughs. A real one, shaky and wet and warm, and his arms tighten around me and his knot pulses inside me and we lie there, tangled together in the nest that smells right again, and I'm not running. I'm not hiding. I'm exactly where I belong.