Chapter 12 Amos
Amos
Mattaniah talks in his sleep, small half-formed words murmured into the pillow with his brow furrowed and his lips shaping sounds that might be names or might be pleas.
His curls have dried into a wild halo against the white sheets.
The blanket has slipped to his waist, exposing the long line of his back and the fading marks where Dominic's hands gripped his hips.
Dominic is awake on Mattaniah's other side, propped on one elbow, watching the Omega with an expression he'd deny under oath.
His hand rests on Mattaniah's lower back, his thumb tracing the same absent circles he draws on my hip when he thinks I'm sleeping.
He hasn't looked at me yet, and I don't force it because I'm not ready for the conversation that eye contact would start.
Mattaniah's scent fills the space around us, richer than I've ever smelled it because the blockers have worn off entirely during the night. What's coming through is the unfiltered version of him, and it's sweet enough to make me press my nose closer to his hair without meaning to.
Dominic catches the movement. His eyes meet mine across the pillow, and whatever he sees on my face makes him look away first.
Mattaniah stirs, the transition from sleep to waking almost violent.
His body goes rigid in a single heartbeat, his eyes flying open, his breath catching in a sharp inhale.
His scent spikes with that sour edge of someone surfacing into consciousness without knowing where they are or whose hands are on them.
He starts to sit up. Then his nostrils flare.
The fear scent wavers as he pulls in the air around him. The rigid line of his spine softens and he sinks back down between us with a shaky exhale, his body processing the scent information faster than his brain can catch up.
"Morning," I say.
He turns his head toward me. His eyes are dark and still clouded with sleep, and it takes him a few seconds to focus on my face. When he does, his gaze drifts down to where his fingers are tangled in my shirt. He stares at them like they belong to someone else and lets go slowly.
"Morning." He swallows. "That was the best I've slept in a long time."
He's still under. Not fully, but the softness in his voice and the way his pupils are blown wide and the fact that he just volunteered something vulnerable without flinching tells me he hasn't completely surfaced from whatever headspace Dominic put him in last night.
I file that away because an Omega who drops that deep and stays down that long has been starved for this in ways that go beyond what the blockers have been suppressing.
"How do you feel?"
His lips part, close, and part again. "Different." His brow furrows like the word isn't quite right but he can't find a better one. "Like something reset."
"Something did." Dominic's voice is rough with sleep behind him, his hand still on Mattaniah's back. The Omega twitches at the sound but doesn't pull away. "You stopped fighting your own body for a few hours."
Mattaniah's gaze moves between my face and Dominic's arm and the tangled sheets. I can see him trying to engage the part of his brain that assesses what happened, but it keeps sliding out of focus. The subspace has a hold on him that his usual defenses can't quite punch through yet.
My hand moves toward his face, my fingers tracing the line of his jaw. His eyes flutter closed as his chin tilts toward my touch, and I watch the moment his brain catches up with what his body is doing. His eyes snap open and he pulls back an inch.
"Sorry, I don't know why I..." He blinks hard, like he's trying to clear fog. "I'm not usually like this. I don't know what's wrong with me this morning."
"Nothing is wrong with you." I keep my hand where it is, close to his face but not touching. "You went deep last night. It takes time to come all the way back."
"Went deep." He repeats it flatly, testing the words. "Is that what you call what happened?"
Dominic shifts closer behind him, his chest pressing against Mattaniah's back, the Omega's breath stuttering as a low hum starts in his ribcage. His eyes go wide at the sound.
"Am I... is that me?" He presses a hand to his own chest. "What is that?"
"You're purring, Niah."
"I don't purr." But the vibration gets stronger when Dominic's arm settles across his waist, melting with Dominic’s purr and Mattaniah's face flushes. "Fuck, that sound…It’s so humiliating."
I won’t explain that Omegas only purr when they feel safe or that it’s usually only for their mates. That would have Mattaniah pulling from this completely and it wouldn’t serve our purposes.
"Can I ask you something?" His voice drops, some of the fog clearing as wariness creeps back in. "Do you two do this with other people? Is this something you do, find some Omega and..." He gestures vaguely at the bed, the sheets, and the three of us tangled together. "This?"
"No. We've never done this with anyone before."
His breath hitches against my chest. "Then why me? Because I'm convenient? Because I live in your house and I can't exactly say no to you without making things complicated for myself?"
I offer him a small smile, sliding my fingers into his curls. "Because you're you, Niah." It's not the full truth, but it's not a lie either, and right now with him still soft from subspace, it's enough.
The Omega stiffens agains Dominic for a second, then his body overrides the resistance and he melts further into Dominic's grip. My hand stays in his hair, scratching lightly against his scalp, and his eyelids go heavy.
"Don't let me fall back asleep." His body is doing the opposite of the request. "Your father will expect me at my desk by eight."
"It's Saturday," Dominic says against the back of his neck.
"Oh." All the tension he'd been gathering drains away in a rush. "Oh, okay."
Dominic presses his mouth against the top of Mattaniah's spine. Mattaniah arches into it, his lips parting as his scent spikes in response. I’ve rarely seen this version of Dominic, when he loses himself to his Alpha instincts, needing to possess the thing he’s chosen as his.
Moments like these, I let him do what he wants to me because I love this version of him.
But for someone like Mattaniah... it might terrify him. Still, I just watch as Dominic trails lower, his mouth following the Omega’s spine, Mattaniah's breathing changing.
"You like that." Dominic states it against Mattaniah's skin while his hand spreads flat across the Omega's stomach, fingers pressing down into his flesh. "Your whole body just went soft for me. I wonder what other sounds I can get out of you when you're not panicking."
"I'm not... I wasn't panicking, I was..." Mattaniah's protest dissolves when Dominic bites down gently on the curve between his neck and shoulder. The sound that escapes him is a mixture between a squeak and a moan, the Omega slapping a hand over his own mouth.
My mouth finds the hinge of his jaw while Dominic works the other side of his neck, Mattaniah's hand coming up to grab the back of my neck, pulling me closer with a grip that tells me the subspace is burning off and something hungrier is replacing it. His fingers thread into my hair and tighten.
"There he is." Dominic's voice is low against Mattaniah's shoulder. "There's our greedy little Omega waking up."
"Fuck you," Mattaniah mutters, but his hips rock forward into the space between us and his scent sweetens so sharply that both Dominic and I catch it.
The morning unfolds from there with an edge the night before didn't have because Mattaniah is more present for this, his brain coming back online even as his body stays responsive.
Dominic maps his spine with his mouth and I learn the planes of his chest with my palms, Mattaniah making sounds he tries to bite back while his body arches into every touch.
A whimper catches behind his teeth and Dominic's hand grips his jaw from behind, turning his face toward me. "Don't swallow that. Amos wants to hear you."
My mouth finds his throat. The whimper comes loose and it's needy enough to make my cock twitch against his thigh.
His hips move and then freeze, the habitual shame locking his muscles. Dominic grips his waist and rocks him forward hard enough to grind him against me. "Nobody told you to stop, firefly."
Another moan slips free. His hand flies to cover his mouth and I pull it away, pinning it against the mattress beside his head. "Your mother's rules don't apply in this bed." I hold his wrist and watch his face as the words land. "Nothing you learned about being quiet applies here."
His eyes open fully, the expression in them making me realize that I might be in over my head.
"This doesn't feel like what my mother described," he whispers. "She said submission was a trap, and wanting like this was how you get destroyed."
Dominic's mouth pauses against his shoulder as I meet his gaze. "She was wrong about everything, Niah."