Chapter 39 Mattaniah
Mattaniah
Three days since the board voted Richard out and the victory sits in the apartment with nowhere to go.
Amos has been on the phone with lawyers and PR consultants since Thursday while Dominic reviews transition documents at the kitchen table.
The apartment smells like takeout containers and stale coffee.
My bond marks haven’t stopped aching.
The spiral starts around ten in the morning while I'm pretending to read on the couch.
The word firefly triggers it. Dominic said it this morning when he handed me coffee, casual and automatic.
My brain latches onto the word and pulls the thread.
When did he start calling me that? Before or after the scheme was in motion?
Was the nickname strategy or instinct? Did he workshop it with Amos, the two of them sitting in their shared bed discussing the best way to make the Omega feel special enough to serve their purposes?
The thread keeps pulling. Every tender moment from the past month looks different with the scheme behind it. The first time he put his hand on my neck in the kitchen. Was that protection or positioning? The night Amos brought me to Dominic's room during the spike. Was that care or calculation?
Was any of it real before they decided it was real? The timing matters because I gave them everything I had, and some of it was given to a performance I didn't know I was watching.
My hands are shaking. The book has slipped to the floor and my breathing has gone shallow and rapid. My scent is shifting, the coconut curdling into something sour and bitter that I can smell on my own skin.
Dominic looks up from the kitchen table. Through the bond I feel his attention shift, the tactical focus giving way to something sharper.
I need out of my head. I need to stop thinking. The only thing that has ever reliably shut my brain down is being fucked so thoroughly that there's no room left for thoughts.
"Dominic." My voice comes out rougher than I expect. He's already standing and reading my face, his body moving toward me before I've finished forming the request. "I need you to help me get out of my head."
He stops three feet from the couch. His eyes search my face.
"Are you sure?" His voice is careful. "You've been spiraling all morning."
"I'm sure." I stand from the couch and close the distance between us. "Please. I need to not think."
Amos appears in the hallway with his phone still in his hand. He takes one look and sets the phone on the counter.
"Bedroom?" Amos asks Dominic.
"Bedroom." Dominic's hand finds the back of my neck and the pressure makes my knees soften. "Come on."
The bedroom still has the nest, rebuilt after the heat, the fabrics laundered but carrying ghost scent that my nose fills in from memory. Dominic walks me to the bed and turns me to face him, his hands on my hips, his eyes locked on mine.
"What do you need?" His voice drops into the register that makes my spine straighten. "Tell me."
"I need you to take over. Make it rough and loud enough that I can't hear the voice in my head telling me I was a pawn." My fingers find his shirt and grip. "I need you to be the Alpha right now, not the mate who's been sitting in chairs and not touching me."
Something shifts in his expression. The careful restraint drops away and the predator surfaces. His scent sharpens, the leather thickening with smoke until the air around him tastes like a warning.
He strips my shirt over my head with one pull. His mouth finds my throat and his teeth scrape the skin beside my bond mark. The sensation sparks through the connection and makes Amos inhale sharply from behind me.
"On your knees. Hands behind your back."
I drop. The carpet is rough against my knees and my hands clasp behind my back. Dominic stands over me unbuckling his belt. Amos moves behind me, his hands resting on my shoulders. His pine scent is close and grounding, steady where Dominic's runs hot.
Dominic feeds his cock past my lips and my brain goes quiet. My jaw opens wide, my tongue working the underside. His hand fists in my hair and pulls my head back at the angle he wants.
"That's it." His hips rock forward, pushing deeper. "Take all of it."
I take it. His cock hits the back of my throat and I gag, his hand tightening in my hair. The gag reflex triggers tears that blur my vision. Behind me Amos' hands strip my pants down my thighs and his fingers slide through the slick that's already gathered.
Dominic pulls out of my mouth and hauls me to my feet. He spins me and bends me over the edge of the bed, my chest flat against the mattress, my feet still on the floor. His hand presses between my shoulder blades and holds me down.
"Don't move." His other hand works his cock between my thighs, sliding through the slick, teasing my entrance without pushing in. "You wanted the Alpha. You're getting the Alpha."
He pushes inside me with a force that drives the air from my lungs. The stretch burns and the burn is exactly what I needed. His pace is fast from the first stroke, his hips snapping forward with a controlled violence that rocks me against the mattress with each thrust.
For the first two minutes it works. The spiral retreats under the pressure of him inside me and his voice in my ear telling me to take it, to let him use me.
Then the word use lands differently.
My body was made to be used. My mother's voice finishes the sentence for him. An Omega who gives away control gives away everything.
Every commanding word from Dominic's mouth sounds like her. Be useful. Be compliant. Let the Alpha take what he wants.
Dominic's hand presses harder between my shoulder blades and the pressure feels wrong. His cock drives into me and the pleasure is still there but every thrust confirms what my mother said.
I can't breathe. My chest locks and my vision narrows. Behind me Amos' fingers tighten on my hip, his pine scent spiking sharp and medicinal the way it does when he's worried.
"Mango." The word comes out quiet but clear in the space between thrusts.
Dominic's rhythm stutters. His hips slow and his hand lifts off my shoulder blades, his weight shifting backward. "Mattaniah?"
"No." I squeeze my eyes shut. "No, I'm okay. I don't know why I said it. I'm okay."
Dominic doesn't move. He stays still inside me and looks over my shoulder at Amos. The silence between them lasts two seconds, but I can feel it through the bond, the question and the memory of the time he didn't stop, the time it took too long.
Amos' fingers trace down my side, slow and careful over my ribs where my skin is trembling. "You don't have to push yourself, Niah." His voice is soft near my ear. "It's okay."
"I need this." My hands grip the sheets. "I'm okay. I promise."
Amos' hand comes up and turns my face toward him.
His mouth finds mine, the kiss slow and unhurried, his lips moving against mine while Dominic stays still inside me, waiting.
Amos tastes like the coffee he's been drinking all morning, his hand cupping my jaw and holding me steady, the tenderness of it making my chest ache in a way the roughness didn't.
He pulls back as his thumb brushes my cheekbone. "Okay." He says it to me, but the permission is for Dominic.
His hips find a gentler rhythm, and his mouth drops to my shoulder and presses a kiss there, the tenderness now worse than the roughness because it makes me feel cared for and I can't tell if that's real either.
Amos' hand stays on my hip. His grip hasn't loosened. His fingers press into the bone with a steadiness that says he's watching, he's paying attention, he's ready.
My mother's voice comes back louder. He's being gentle now because you flinched. That's not love, that's management. That's handling.
My scent goes fully sour, burnt wood and something rotten underneath the coconut, and I know they can smell it too because Amos makes a low sound behind me and Dominic's mouth lifts from my shoulder.
"MANGO." It rips out of me, half-scream, half-sob, loud enough that there is no possibility of it being missed. "Mango, mango, I can't, I can't do this."
Dominic is out of me before the last word lands. His hands go gentle on my body immediately, his palms light against my sides as he eases me upright from the mattress.
"I'm out." His voice has changed completely. "I'm out, firefly. I'm right here."
My legs won't hold me. I slide off the edge of the bed and onto the carpet and Dominic follows me down, his knees hitting the floor beside mine. Amos is there in the same second, wrapping around me from behind, his chest against my back, his arms circling my waist.
Tears prick at the edge of my eyes, the sob coming from somewhere below my lungs, a sound that rips through my body and shakes all three of us through the bond.
Dominic's arms come around me from the front so I'm held between them, my face pressed into his chest, Amos' forehead against the back of my neck. They hold me while I cry and the only sounds are my gasping breaths and the creak of the bed frame where Dominic's knee presses against it.
The sobs slow in stages. The sharp, tearing ones give way to shuddering breaths, then to hiccups, then to the dull, wrung-out quiet that comes after. Dominic's hand moves slowly through my hair. Amos' thumb traces circles on my hip.
Dominic tips my chin up. His eyes are red-rimmed, the muscles in his jaw pulled tight and he presses his mouth to mine so gently that I barely feel it, a kiss that asks for nothing.
"I trusted you." It comes out between hitching breaths, muffled against his mouth. "I gave you everything I had and you... you started it as a game."
"I know." Dominic's voice is wrecked. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
"I wanted you so badly and you were using me." My hands fist in his shirt. "I wanted you before I even understood what wanting felt like because my mother made sure I never learned. The first time I let myself want something, it was a scheme."
"I know." His hands hover near my face without touching.
"Every time I think I'm past it, something reminds me." My voice cracks. "A word or a touch or the looks you give each other when you think I'm not paying attention. And I go right back to wondering which parts were real."
"All of it was real by the end. Every part." Amos speaks from behind me, his arms still around my waist, his mouth close to my ear. "The beginning was wrong and we own that. But every moment after we fell for you was real."
"The beginning matters." I press my palms against my eyes. "The beginning is where I was vulnerable and you were calculating."
The bedroom is quiet except for my breathing.
Dominic is kneeling in front of me on the carpet with his hands at his sides, his belt still unbuckled. His face shows every crack that his boardroom composure would never allow.
His hands come up slowly and cup my face. The gentleness makes me flinch because five minutes ago these same hands were holding me down.
"I love you." He says it looking directly into my eyes, his hands on my face.
"I should have said it before we bonded you.
I should have said it before I ever touched you.
I love you, Mattaniah. That was never part of any scheme.
That was never strategic. That was just me falling for you and being too much of a coward to say it. "
The words don't fix anything.
"I love you too." Amos says it against the back of my neck, his lips brushing the bond mark he left there. "I've loved you since the garden. Since the night you sat in the dark and cried because you thought nobody could see you. I sat on the other side of the wall and knew I was done pretending."
"I don't know if I can trust that yet." My voice comes out small and honest. "The love might be real but something in me is broken and I don't know how long it takes to fix."
"Then let us prove it every day, as long as it takes." Dominic's thumbs trace the tracks of my tears.
"You keep saying that."
"Because it keeps being true." His forehead drops against mine. "I will say it every day until you believe it. And then I'll keep saying it."
My hands come up and cover his on my face. The contact sends warmth flooding through the bond marks on both sides of my neck.
"No more sex tonight. Just hold me."
"We've got you." Amos' arms tighten around my waist.
They clean me up without being asked. Amos retrieves a warm washcloth from the bathroom while Dominic lifts me onto the bed and pulls the blankets up. The nest fabrics are there, surrounding me. Amos climbs in on my left. Dominic takes the right.
Dominic's thumb traces my lower lip. My mouth opens around it on instinct and my jaw closes on the familiar pressure.
"You used the safe word." Dominic says it against my hair, his thumb still in my mouth. "I didn't hear it the first time."
I pull his thumb out long enough to answer. "The second time was louder."
"The first time should have been enough." He's quiet for a moment. "I should have been paying closer attention."
"You stopped the second you heard it. You stopped the first time too, you checked." I guide his thumb back to my mouth. "That's what matters."
"Niah is right." Amos' hand rests on my stomach. "The safe word worked. You stopped. That's the system functioning."
Dominic's face is against my hair, his thumb remaining in my mouth. The bond pulses between us, his anger at himself running alongside Amos' reassurance.
My eyes are closing. The crying wrung out everything I had left.
"Dominic." I say his name around his thumb, the word barely intelligible.
"Hm?"
"Say it again."
"I love you." He says it against my hair, his voice rough. "Go to sleep, Mattaniah."