Chapter 31 Amos
Amos
Time stops making sense around hour fourteen.
The waves come in cycles that I've been tracking on my phone because someone needs to maintain data even when the world has narrowed to a bedroom and a nest and an Omega who can't remember his own name between rounds.
The first twelve hours averaged forty-five minutes between waves.
By hour fourteen the gap has shortened to thirty minutes, and Mattaniah's body barely finishes one orgasm before it starts demanding the next.
Dominic is asleep. He passed out twenty minutes ago with his face in the pillow and his hand still resting on Mattaniah's ankle. He'll wake when the next wave hits, but for now his breathing has slowed and his grip on Mattaniah's ankle has loosened.
Mattaniah is in the space between waves, curled on his side in the ruins of the nest with his knees drawn up and his eyes half-closed.
The nest doesn't look like a nest anymore.
The carefully arranged layers have been fucked into a tangle of damp fabric, the cardigan twisted around a pillow, the scarf knotted through the sheets.
Everything smells like sex and slick and the three of us.
His skin is burning when I press the damp cloth against his forehead. The fever has been running between 101 and 103 since this morning. The electrolyte packets are keeping him hydrated but his body is spending calories faster than I can replace them.
"You need to drink." I press the water bottle against his lips and he takes three sips without opening his eyes, his throat working, his hand finding my wrist and holding on.
"Amos." He says my name like it's the only word he has left. "Stay."
"I'm right here." I set the water down and pull him against my chest, his back fitting against me, his body so hot that the contact makes my own skin prickle.
His hair is damp with sweat and his curls have lost their shape, plastered against his forehead and the back of his neck.
I brush them off his face and press my mouth against his temple.
His hand reaches behind him and finds my hip, pulling me closer.
His body is still producing slick between waves, a constant low-level readiness that soaks through whatever fabric he's lying on.
The biological machinery of a seven-year suppression backlog is running at full capacity and showing no signs of slowing down.
"How long was I out?" His voice is hoarse from the sounds he's been making.
"Twelve minutes."
"It felt longer." His fingers tighten on my hip. "How long has it been since it started?"
"About fourteen hours."
He makes a sound that's too tired to be a laugh. "Only fourteen? It feels like days."
"You're doing well, Niah." I run the damp cloth down the back of his neck and he shivers despite the fever. "Your body is handling it."
"My body is running the show. I'm just along for the ride." He turns his face into the pillow and his breathing stutters, a micro-cramp rippling through his abdomen. Not a wave yet. A warning shot. "Amos?"
"Hm?"
"Why are you doing this?" His voice is small against the pillow, stripped raw by the hours of screaming with need. "The washing and the water and the... all of it. Both of you fuck me through the waves but you put me back together between them."
"Because I love you, Niah." I press my mouth against the back of his head. "I've loved you since you caught the financial fabrication in the Southeast accounts in under thirty seconds. You looked at me like you couldn't figure out why nobody else had seen it."
His body goes still against mine and his breathing changes from the shallow panting of the heat into a slow inhale. His hand tightens on my hip.
"You..." He starts to turn toward me and a cramp cuts through his abdomen that makes him double forward. The next wave is building faster than the last one.
"Don't try to answer right now." I pull him closer and press my mouth against the back of his head. "It's not going anywhere. Neither am I."
"Amos, I want to..." Another cramp hits harder this time, his scent shifting from the warm baseline into the sharp sweetness that signals the next wave. His hips push back against me as his fingers curl into the sheet.
Dominic wakes suddenly, registering the change in Mattaniah's scent as he reads the room. He moves up the bed, positioning himself in front of Mattaniah while I situate myself beside them, my hip by the Omega's face.
"I've got you." Dominic cups Mattaniah's face and the Omega's eyes are glassy, the lucid window already closing. "Look at me, firefly. Right here."
This wave is different from the others. Mattaniah doesn't demand or beg.
He goes quiet, his body softening between us instead of tensing.
His scent deepens into something I haven't detected during any of the previous cycles.
The sweetness is still there but underneath it runs something older than the heat.
His head tilts back. His neck extends, the long line of his throat offered to the room, and my breath catches.
His body is doing this on its own, offering us his complete submission.
Dominic's eyes lock on the exposed throat and his nostrils flare. The predator surfaces in his expression, and the effort it takes him to hold back is visible in the tendons of his forearms.
"Not yet." I say it quietly against Mattaniah's ear. "Not during heat, Niah. You need to be able to think."
"I don't want to think." His voice is barely a whisper, his neck still extended, his body trembling between us. "I want to be yours. Both of yours. I want you to bite me and make it permanent. I don't care if I can't think because my body knows what it wants."
"Your body is in heat." Dominic's thumb traces the line of Mattaniah's throat without pressing down, a restraint that costs him something I can see in the tightness of his jaw. "When the heat breaks, if you still want this, we'll talk about it."
"Promise me." Mattaniah's hand finds Dominic's wrist and holds his thumb against his throat. "Promise me you won't pretend I didn't ask."
"I promise." Dominic leans forward and presses his mouth against the spot where a bond mark would go. Mattaniah's whole body shudders at the contact. "Now let me take care of you."
He pushes inside Mattaniah while I settle on my side beside them, and this time the pace is something neither of us has given him before. Each thrust is slow and measured, Dominic's forehead resting against Mattaniah's. The wave is here but Dominic is refusing to let it dictate the pace.
My hand slides down Mattaniah's stomach and wraps around his cock, stroking him in the same unhurried rhythm Dominic has set. Between us the Omega makes sounds I haven't heard from him before, soft keening notes that vibrate through his chest into mine.
I shift down further beside them, settling on my side with my ribs level with Mattaniah's face. His head turns against the mattress, his lips brushing across my skin, searching, and moving lower, and I realize what he's looking for half a second before he finds it.
His mouth closes over my bond mark.
The sensation that rips through me is unlike anything I've experienced. Mattaniah's tongue traces the scar and the pleasure that shoots through the bond makes Dominic's rhythm stutter.
"I felt that." Dominic's voice is wrecked, his hips stalling mid-thrust. "I felt that through him. I felt your mouth on his mark."
Mattaniah hums against the scar and sucks harder. The sensation doubles through the bond, making my vision blur. Dominic groans as his hips snap forward with a force that drives Mattaniah harder against my side, pressing his mouth tighter against the mark.
"Niah." The word barely makes it out. "Do you know what you're doing right now?"
He answers by sucking the mark into his mouth and running his tongue across the crescent in a deliberate stroke that makes both Dominic and me gasp at the same time.
His hand comes up and presses flat against Dominic's chest, over the matching mark above his nipple, and the contact completes a circuit.
Pleasure cascades through all three of us in a loop that builds with each of Dominic's thrusts and each stroke of Mattaniah's tongue on my scar.
The orgasm that hits me isn't localized.
It rolls through the bond first, hitting Dominic before it reaches my own body.
His shout of release triggers Mattaniah's, the Omega's body clenching around Dominic's cock while his mouth stays sealed over my mark.
Dominic's knot swells and locks inside Mattaniah, the three of us collapsing into the nest.
Mattaniah's mouth releases my mark. His breathing is ragged against my ribs, his body shaking, his hand still pressed flat against Dominic's chest over the other mark.
"I can feel both of you." He says it quietly, his eyes closing. "When I touch both marks, I can feel what you feel for each other."
His eyes meet mine over Mattaniah's head.
"Go to sleep, firefly." Dominic's voice is rough against the Omega's hair. "The next wave will wake you."
"Amos said he loves me." Mattaniah mumbles it into my ribs, already sliding toward sleep. "I want him to know I heard him."
"He knows, firefly. Tell him properly when the heat breaks. Just him. When it's just you.”
"What if I forget?"
"You won't forget."
His breathing evens out within a minute, his body going heavy between us.
Dominic's knot deflates and he pulls out with care, his release adding to the mess that the nest has become.
Neither of us moves to clean up. The effort isn't worth the risk of waking him when the next wave is probably twenty minutes away.
Dominic is quiet for a long moment, his thumb keeping its circle on Mattaniah's hip. "When the heat breaks, if he asks again." Dominic states, the muscles in his jaw pulling tight before releasing. “I need him, Amos. We need him.”
"Then we talk about it." I meet his eyes over our Omega's head. At some point, during this heat, Mattaniah has become truly ours in my head because I want for nothing else than to claim him as well. "All three of us with clear heads and full sentences."
"And if the answer is yes?" Dominic looks up at me, hopeful for my answers. It’s one of the first times he’s truly asking for my opinion in order to make his decision.
"Then the answer is yes, Dom.”