Chapter 27 Mattaniah
Mattaniah
The spike hits at eleven forty-seven in the middle of a Tuesday while I'm cross-referencing shell company registrations at the window seat in Dominic's office.
A cramp tears through my abdomen so violently that my laptop slides off my knees and hits the carpet.
My hands grip the edges of the window seat and my teeth clamp together so hard my jaw aches.
Slick floods my panties in a rush, soaking through the fabric and into my work pants within seconds.
The warmth spreading beneath my thighs tells me the panties have hit their limit.
The executive floor is empty, which means Dominic and Amos are most likely in the boardroom meeting that started at nine, along with Richard.
As much as I don’t want to see that Alpha, I need my Alphas.
I head for Dominic’s office anyway on shaking legs, gripping furniture as I go, the cramps rolling through me in waves that buckle my knees every few seconds.
I call both Dominic and then Amos, getting their voicemail both times.
I text both of them: spike, bad, need you, office.
The phone sits on the desk and doesn't buzz. The boardroom has a no-phones policy that Richard enforces with the rigidity of a man who considers interruptions a personal insult, and both of their devices are probably face-down on the table or silenced in their jacket pockets.
Another wave hits and I double over against the desk with a sound that would embarrass me if anyone were here to hear it.
Slick is running down the inside of my thigh now, past the panties, past my pants, and I can smell myself filling the office with a sweetness so thick it's going to seep into the hallway.
Every Alpha on this floor is going to know what's happening behind this door within minutes.
"Just breathe," I mutter through my teeth, gripping the desk edge. "Just breathe through it and wait for them to check their phones."
Five minutes pass. The cramps don't ease.
They build, each wave cresting higher than the last, my body demanding something my hands can't provide.
I've ridden out spikes before but this one is different.
This one has teeth. My nervous system has been running hotter every week as the blockers lose their grip, and whatever dam was holding the worst of it back just broke.
I text again: please. now. can't wait.
No response. The boardroom is sealed and my Alphas are trapped inside it with their father and a dozen board members and a no-phones policy and I am going to die at this desk if someone doesn't touch me in the next ten minutes.
The decision makes itself. My body is already moving toward the door before my brain has finished weighing the risks, and by the time I reach the hallway I've stopped caring.
Every second it takes for the elevator to arrive is another second I'm just barely holding on, about to pass out.
The woman from accounting who steps in on the twelfth floor takes one breath of my scent and steps right back out without a word.
The fourteenth floor hallway stretches ahead of me and I keep one hand on the wall because walking upright requires more coordination than my body can spare. My other hand presses against my stomach where the cramps are centered.
The boardroom doors are closed. Through the frosted glass I can see figures seated around the long table, the blurred shapes of suits and laptops and presentation screens. Richard’s silhouette is at the head. Dominic's is halfway down the right side. Amos is across from him on the left.
I push the doors open.
Every head in the room turns. Twelve board members, two department heads, Richard at the head of the table with a glass of water halfway to his mouth, Dominic mid-sentence with a financial chart projected behind him, Amos with his pen frozen above his notepad.
The scent of distressed Omega hits the room like a wave and I watch every Alpha at the table register it in their nostrils at the same time, their postures shifting, their attention redirecting from the presentation to the Omega standing in the doorway with slick on his pants and desperation on his face.
Dominic's expression shifts from surprise to cold fury in under a second, his focus redirecting from the presentation to the room full of Alphas currently breathing in his Omega's scent.
"Everyone out."
The command carries Alpha authority that fills the room and rattles the water glasses on the table.
Three board members are on their feet before the second word has finished landing.
Chairs scrape back and folders close as the department heads exchange a look and head for the door, giving me a wide berth as they pass.
Richard doesn't move. He stays seated at the head of the table with his water glass in his hand, his eyes fixed on me. His gaze travels from my face to my damp pants, cataloguing everything.
"Everyone." Dominic's voice drops lower. "Out."
The remaining board members file past me through the door, most of them avoiding eye contact.
One pauses long enough that Amos' hand finds his shoulder and steers him firmly into the hallway.
The room empties until only four people remain.
Dominic standing at the presentation screen.
Amos beside the door. Richard seated at the head of the table.
Me, gripping the doorframe with white knuckles.
He has been dismissed twice in front of his board of directors by his own son, and the look on his face tells me he's already calculating the cost.
He stands slowly and buttons his jacket with unhurried fingers, then walks the length of the boardroom table toward the door where I'm standing, and as he passes me his shoulder brushes mine hard enough that I stumble against the doorframe.
His scent hits my nose, hardened with anger that burns through his usual composure.
The door closes behind him. Amos locks it and crosses to the windows, pulling the blinds shut one by one while Dominic closes the distance between us.
"How bad?" His hand finds the back of my neck and the contact sends a shudder through my entire body that makes my knees buckle. He catches me against his chest.
"Bad." My voice comes out strained. "I called. Both of you. It went to voicemail and I couldn't wait, Dominic, I tried to wait and I couldn't."
"You don't need to wait." His mouth presses against my temple. "You come find us. That's what you do."
"I just walked into a board meeting smelling like a heat-struck Omega with slick on my pants." A laugh that's closer to a sob escapes me. "Every Alpha in this company is going to know by lunch."
"Good." Dominic's hand tightens on my neck. "Let them know."
I grab the front of his shirt and pull. The movement isn't graceful or strategic.
My fingers tear at his belt while his hands find my hips and lift me onto the boardroom table, scattering the presentation folders and knocking his laptop to the side.
My pants come off in a wet tangle that Dominic drops on the floor without looking, the slick panties following.
"I need you inside me right now." The words come out stripped of every filter I own. "I don't care about prep or patience. I need you now or I'm going to scream."
"You're going to scream anyway." Dominic finishes unbuckling his belt and frees his cock while I wrap my legs around his waist and pull him forward.
The slick has made me so wet that when he lines himself up and pushes in there's no resistance at all, just the thick stretch of him filling the aching emptiness.
The moan that tears from my throat makes Amos pause at the last window blind.
"Blinds first, Niah." Amos' voice carries amusement despite the tension. "Then you can scream."
Dominic doesn't give me time to respond.
He grips the edge of the table on either side of my hips and thrusts into me hard enough to rattle the water glasses.
My back arches off the table and my hands grab his shoulders and my legs lock around his waist while he fucks me on the boardroom table with a focus that tells me the spike isn't the only thing driving this.
"Harder." I pull him closer by the tie he hasn't taken off and the fabric goes taut against his throat. "Dominic, harder, I need..."
He gives me harder. The table rocks with each thrust and one of the water glasses tips and spills across the polished surface and neither of us cares.
His cock hits the spot inside me that makes my vision blur.
The cry that escapes me is loud enough that Amos crosses the room and presses his hand over my mouth from behind.
"There are people in the hallway, Niah." Amos' mouth is against my ear, his voice warm and steady while Dominic rails me against the table. "Every sound you make right now is going to carry through that door."
I moan against his palm. Dominic's pace picks up and his grip on the table edge tightens until his knuckles go white. Amos' free hand finds my cock and strokes me in counterpoint to Dominic's thrusts, his grip firm enough to push me toward the edge while his palm muffles the sounds I can't control.
"That's it, firefly." Dominic's voice is strained, his thrusts going deeper. "Take it. Take all of it."
The orgasm hits like a freight train. My body locks around Dominic and I come across my own stomach and Amos' hand, the sound barely contained by his palm.
Dominic follows three thrusts later, his knot swelling inside me as he empties with a groan he buries in my neck.
The stretch of the knot triggers another wave of the orgasm that makes my body jerk against the table, Amos tightening his hand on my mouth.
The boardroom goes quiet except for our breathing. Dominic is knotted inside me, his forehead pressed against my collarbone, his hands still gripping the table edge. Amos removes his hand from my mouth and replaces it with his lips, kissing me softly while my body shakes through the aftershocks.
"You did so well, firefly." Dominic lifts his head enough to look at me. "Coming to us like that. No prop, no excuse, no apology. You just came to us."
"I ruined the quarterly presentation." My voice is wrecked and my body is still trembling. "And there's slick on the financial projections."
"I'll print new ones." Amos shrugs as he picks up a scattered folder from the floor and examines it. "Although the Q3 revenue summary might actually be improved by the addition."
The adrenaline crash hits me as a laugh that turns into a hiccup that turns into tears, because I just burst into a boardroom full of executives and rode the CEO's son on a conference table.
"Hey." Dominic's hand cups my face and tilts it up. "Stay with me. The door is locked and nobody is coming in."
"Your father is going to..."
"My father is going to deal with it." Dominic's thumb traces my cheekbone. "And so are we. But not right now. Right now you're going to breathe and let the knot do its job and stop worrying about a room full of executives who will forget what they smelled by the time they reach the parking garage."
"They're not going to forget."
"They're going to pretend to forget, which in corporate culture amounts to the same thing." Amos sits beside us on the table and his hand rests on my bare thigh. "Dominic's right. Breathe."
I breathe. The knot pulses inside me and the spike's vicious edge dulls with each throb. Dominic stays lodged inside me on the boardroom table with presentation folders scattered around us, and I press my face into his chest and let the cramps fade while his hand cards through my hair.
When the knot deflates Dominic pulls out carefully, Amos retrieving a blanket from the back of the couch.
He wraps me in it while Dominic fixes his pants.
Amos bundles my ruined pants and saturated panties into a bag he produces from somewhere and hands me a pair of sweatpants I recognize from Dominic's gym bag.
"You keep spare clothes in the boardroom?" My voice is still shaky but the sarcasm is surfacing, which means the worst is past.
"I keep spare clothes everywhere." Dominic adjusts his tie in the reflection of the blank presentation screen. "Preparation isn't paranoia."
Amos wraps his arm around my shoulders and walks me out of the boardroom, the throw blanket still around me, the sweatpants too long and pooling around my ankles.
The hallway is empty because Amos texted his assistant to clear the floor before he unlocked the door, and the elevator ride down passes without anyone seeing me shuffle through the building in gym clothes and a blanket.
Back in the office Amos guides me to the nest in the corner. I curl into the chair and pull the blanket tighter. My breathing steadies within minutes.
Dominic crouches beside the chair. His hand rests on my knee and his thumb traces a circle against the fabric.
"No more solo days at the office," he says. "From now on, one of us is always within reach."
"You can't babysit me forever."
"Watch me." He stands and presses his mouth against my forehead. "Rest. I need to go put the boardroom back together before Father uses the mess as ammunition." He presses his mouth against my forehead.
Amos settles into the chair beside the nest with his laptop. "I'll be right here," Amos says without looking up. I curl deeper into the nest and close my eyes.