Chapter 32 Mattaniah
Mattaniah
The waves have been spacing out for the past six hours.
The gap between the last two was almost ninety minutes, long enough that I slept through most of it without waking up screaming or grinding against whoever was closest. My body still burns but the fire has banked into something manageable, a constant low simmer instead of the inferno that's been consuming me for three days.
Dominic notices the change before I've fully registered it. He sits up in the destroyed nest and presses his hand against my forehead, then my neck, then my chest over my heart.
"Your fever dropped." His voice is rough from three days of minimal sleep.
"I'm starving." The last thing I ate was half a protein bar that Amos pushed into my mouth between waves sometime yesterday. Or the day before.
Dominic lifts me off the bed. His arms scoop under my knees and behind my back as he transports me to the bathroom, the Alpha carefully setting me on the counter.
The granite is freezing against my bare thighs and I hiss at the contact. Dominic pulls a dish towel from the drawer and folds it under me without comment, then opens the fridge and starts pulling things out. Bread. Peanut butter. A banana that's seen better days.
"He needs high-calorie food that's easy to digest." Amos appears in the doorway, shirtless, his hair wrecked, his glasses crooked on his face. He looks as destroyed as I feel. "Start with the banana. Your stomach needs something gentle before we introduce protein."
He peels the banana and hands it to me, and I eat it in four bites while Dominic makes peanut butter toast with the focus of a man performing surgery.
The food hits my empty stomach and the rush of energy is so immediate my hands stop shaking for the first time in days. I reach for the toast before Dominic has finished cutting it and he lets me take it from the knife, his mouth twitching.
"Chew. You're going to make yourself sick."
"I've been sick for three days. Being sick from toast would be an upgrade." Amos' eyebrows rise and Dominic's mouth twitches further into what might be a smile on someone less committed to looking intimidating.
"There he is." Amos leans against the counter beside me and his hand rests on my bare knee. "Welcome back, Niah."
I eat the toast and Dominic hands me water and for a few minutes the kitchen is just a kitchen, three people eating in silence with the fluorescent light buzzing overhead and the refrigerator humming.
My brain is the clearest it's been since I woke up on fire.
The heat is still there, simmering beneath my skin, but the fog has lifted enough that I can form complete thoughts and look at both of them without my vision going glassy.
"I need to talk to both of you while I can still think." My voice comes out steadier than I expected.
Dominic sets the knife down and turns to face me while Amos straightens beside me.
"I asked you to bond me during the heat." I hold Dominic's gaze because this conversation requires eye contact even though his eyes make my pulse stutter. "You said no. You said wait until I could think."
"I remember."
"I can think right now. And I'm asking again."
The silence that follows is deafening. Dominic's gaze moves to Amos, who meets it with an expression I can't fully read.
"Mattaniah." Amos says my full name. "We're not perfect, Niah."
"Neither am I." The words come out smaller than I want them to.
"I was raised by a woman who trained me to be a honey trap.
Every skill I have for reading people and making myself useful came from ten years of learning how to manipulate Alphas for profit.
" I set the crust down on the counter. "I'm not innocent in this.
Whatever you've done, I walked into this house already shaped into a tool. "
"You're not a tool." Dominic says it with a finality that leaves no room for argument.
"I was built to be one. That's not the same as being one, but the parts are still there.
" I look at both of them and the clarity in my head is sharp enough to cut.
"I know who you are and I know you're not perfect.
I'm asking you to bond me anyway. The alternative is going back to that house unbonded, and the thought of Richard getting to me before you've marked me as yours makes me want to crawl out of my skin. "
"Is that what this is about?" Dominic's eyes narrow. "Fear of our father?"
"No." I grab the front of his shirt and pull him closer, my fist tight in the fabric.
"The fear is real but it's not why I'm asking.
I'm asking because I love you. Both of you.
I'm asking because you're mine. You've been mine since the first night you put your hand on the back of my neck and something in my body recognized you.
I want the bite because I want you, not because I'm afraid of him. "
"We're going to earn this every day." He says it against my mouth. "We're going to earn being your Alphas every fucking day for the rest of our lives."
"You already have." I kiss him. The kiss is slow and tastes like peanut butter. His hand on my neck is steady and the heat beneath my skin responds with a gentle pulse instead of the violent surge of the past three days.
Dominic deepens the kiss and his hips press between my thighs on the counter.
His cock is hard against my inner thigh through the thin boxers he's been wearing.
My body produces slick in response, the familiar warmth spreading beneath me onto the dish towel.
His hand slides down from my neck to my hip and he pulls me forward on the counter until my legs wrap around his waist.
"We're not going to knot you." He says it against my mouth.
I make a sound of protest against his lips.
"You need a break, even a small one." His hand pushes the boxers down my thighs. "But we're still going to bond you."
He eases in an inch at a time while my body opens around him. Three days of heat have made me so sensitive that even the careful pace sends sparks racing up my spine. My hands grip his shoulders and my face presses against his neck. The sound I make is quiet and wrecked.
Dominic seats himself fully and leans back against the opposite counter, pulling me with him. My weight settles in his lap while he stands. My legs lock around his waist and his cock shifts inside me at the new angle, pressing deep, and a moan escapes me that bounces off the kitchen tile.
Amos' hands find my shoulders from behind. His chest presses against my back and his mouth traces the curve of my spine between my shoulder blades. His cock is hard against the small of my back, his body tense with restraint.
"I want both of you." My voice comes out wrecked. "Please. I want both of you when it happens."
Amos' fingers slide down between my body and Dominic's, gathering the slick that's dripping from where Dominic and I are connected.
He works me open alongside Dominic's cock, his fingers stretching me by increments while Dominic holds still inside me.
The patience of it makes me whimper against Dominic's throat.
"Breathe, Niah." Amos' voice is close to my ear. "Relax and let me in."
His fingers withdraw and the head of his cock presses against my rim beside Dominic's shaft.
The pressure is enormous and my body resists for a second before Amos pushes past it.
The thrust bows my spine forward. The stretch of both of them inside me steals the breath from my lungs, my mouth opening in a silent cry against Dominic's collarbone.
"There you go." Dominic's hand grips the back of my neck while Amos slides deeper. "You're taking both of us, firefly. Feel that."
I can feel every inch of both of them, stretching me wider than I thought possible. The fullness is so complete that my body can't decide whether it's pain or pleasure, my eyes watering.
Amos bottoms out and the three of us go still. My body is trembling between them, adjusting to the impossible fullness, every nerve ending screaming. Dominic's forehead rests against mine. Amos' mouth presses against the back of my neck. For a moment none of us breathes.
"I need you to move." The words come through clenched teeth. "Please."
They find a rhythm. When Dominic rocks forward Amos pulls back, and when Amos pushes in Dominic holds still.
The alternating fullness strips my brain of everything except the physical reality of being held between them.
The pleasure builds in slow, cresting waves that match the gentle pulse of the heat beneath my skin.
I turn my head and expose the left side of my neck to Dominic. "Now. Do it now."
His teeth graze the skin, hesitating for one final second, his breath hot against my throat.
"Say it again." His voice vibrates against my neck. "Say it so I know."
"I want both of your marks on me for the rest of my life. Do it now."
Dominic's teeth sink into my neck.
The pain explodes through me, lasting for exactly one second before it transforms into something else entirely. The bond snaps into place through the bite and Dominic floods into me, his presence, his heartbeat, and his emotions surging through me. The intensity of it whites out my vision.
"Amos." I'm gasping, my body clenching around both of them, the pleasure from the bite and the penetration fusing into a single overwhelming sensation. "Amos, please, your turn, I need..."
Amos' teeth find the opposite side of my neck, his bite softer than Dominic's but no less permanent.
When his teeth break the skin the second bond locks into place alongside the first. The world tilts as my chest fills with both of them at once, Dominic on one side and Amos on the other, the two presences locking together through me.
Both of their mouths stay sealed on my neck, their tongues working the wounds, nursing the new bonds.
Dominic's hips start to move inside me again and Amos follows, their thrusts synchronized for the first time.
Through the bonds I can feel their pleasure feeding into each other, a loop that builds with every thrust.
"I can feel you." The words come out broken between their thrusts, tears streaming down my face. "Not just your hands but you, like you're inside my chest."
Dominic's mouth tightens on the bite and he thrusts deep, his cock pulsing as he comes inside me without knotting.
The orgasm rolls through the bond and hits Amos a second later, his hips snapping forward as he empties into me from behind, his teeth still sealed on the mark.
The combined release and the dual bond pushes me over the edge without anyone touching my cock.
I come between their bodies with a sound that tears from somewhere deeper than my lungs, my body clenching around both of them in waves that seem to go on forever.
The heat surges.
The final wave crashes through me with a violence that makes the past three days feel like a prelude, the bonding hormones and the heat hormones colliding in my system. My body goes rigid between them and a cry rips from my throat that has nothing to do with the orgasm still rolling through me.
"Get him to the nest." Amos pulls out first, his teeth releasing the bite on my neck. "Dom, get him to the bed. This is the breakthrough wave."
Dominic pulls out, my body convulsing, every muscle locked, tears and slick and come running down my thighs as he carries me down the hall.
The bond marks on both sides of my neck are bleeding and the sensation of the open wounds mixing with the heat surge makes my head spin so badly I bury my face in Dominic's chest and hold on.
The nest receives me. Dominic lowers me into the center of the ruined fabrics and Amos is already there, positioning himself beside me, his hand pressing a clean cloth against the bite mark on the right side of my neck.
Dominic mirrors him on the left, his palm warm against the wound, stemming the blood while my body thrashes through the wave.
"Stay with us, firefly." Dominic's voice reaches me through the haze. "The heat is breaking. This is the last one. Stay with us."
Through the bond I can feel them. Not just their hands on my neck and their bodies beside mine but their actual presence, twin currents of emotion flowing into me from opposite sides.
Dominic's is fierce and sharp, a blade of protective fury wrapped around something terrified.
Amos' is steady and deep, holding me to the surface while the wave tries to pull me under.
The wave crests. My body arches off the nest and every muscle fires at once and then the tension breaks, shattering outward from the bond marks in both directions, and the heat releases its grip on my body with a finality that feels like a bone resetting after a break.
I collapse into the nest.
The heat is gone. Not receding, not simmering, gone.
The constant fire that's been burning in my gut for three days extinguishes between one breath and the next and what replaces it is a clarity so sharp it almost hurts.
My body is wrung out and trembling, my neck bleeding from both sides, my thighs wet, my muscles so spent that even breathing takes conscious effort.
But through the bond I can feel them. Both of them. The twin presences in my chest that pulse with every beat of their hearts.
"Niah." Amos' voice is careful. "Can you hear me?"
"MMMM." My voice comes out as a rasp, barely audible. "You’re really here, inside my chest."
"That's the bond, Niah." Amos presses the cloth gently against the bite on my neck. "It's permanent now."
"The marks hurt but the bond itself doesn't." Tears leak from the corners of my eyes but they're not pain tears. "It feels like the first deep breath I've taken in my entire life." I reach for both of their hands and find them, one on each side, and thread my fingers through theirs.
Through the bond I can feel something Dominic will never put into words.
"You're ours, firefly. Forever." He says it the way he says everything that matters, like it's already been decided.
"I know." I squeeze back. "I can feel it."
Amos presses his mouth against the edge of the bite mark on my neck, gentle enough not to disturb the wound, firm enough that I feel his lips through the new bond and the sensation makes my toes curl.
"I love you, too, Amos. I heard you. I didn't forget."
He smirks against my new mark. "I told you that you wouldn't."