Chapter 10
Ten
LIANA
Iwake up, feeling like I’m on fire.
My throat feels like sandpaper. My skin is literally burning.
Every inch of me is hypersensitive—the sheets against my legs feel so rough, my nipples ache against the cotton of my bra, and between my thighs my pussy is throbbing so hard I can feel my pulse in it.
I am most definitely in heat.
I’ve never been in heat before, and I wasn’t prepared to feel this full-blown, raging, fuck-me-now heat. Oh my god.
I kick the sheets off. They’re soaked.
My hair is a wet mess on the pillow, and my underwear is drenched. Slick has soaked through the cotton, pooling beneath me on the sheets, warm and thick. My scent of roses is thick, and the room feels humid.
If any alpha were in the room with me right now, it would send him into a rut and make him lose his mind.
I press my hand between my legs without thinking.
The cotton of my underwear is soaked. My pussy is so wet the fabric clings to my folds, and when my fingers find my clit through the damp material, the sensation is electric.
My clit is swollen, hard, and aching under my touch. I gasp into the empty room, my back arching off the mattress as my fingers brush my nub.
“Oh,” I whimper.
I rub it. I need to rub my clit.
My fingers work my clit through the wet cotton, circling faster and faster, my hips bucking against my own hand, chasing relief that feels just out of reach.
The pleasure builds fast, too fast, a tsunami gathering force at the base of my spine, and my thighs shake, my toes curl, my free hand gripping the sheets.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god. Ahh!”
The orgasm hits me like a truck.
My back bows sharply. A cry tears out of me, raw and desperate, echoing off the walls of my bedroom. My pussy clenches hard, pulsing, and slick gushes out of me. It’s so much slick that it soaks through my underwear and onto the sheets beneath me in a warm rush.
I’m squirting, my body convulsing, my fingers never stopping, grinding my clit through wave after wave until the sensation borders on pain and I have to force my hand away.
I collapse. Panting. Sweating. My heart hammering against my ribs.
The relief lasts exactly eight seconds.
Then the cramping starts again. Deeper this time. Lower. A hollow, aching emptiness in my womb that no amount of rubbing my clit is going to fix. My pussy throbs, clenching on nothing, hungry and desperate and so fucking empty it hurts.
I need a knot.
The thought comes unbidden, primal, animal. I need an alpha’s cock inside me, thick and hard and stretching me open, his knot swelling at the base until he’s locked inside me, filling me, pumping me full of cum while I come around him.
I need to be fucked. I need to be claimed. I need… I need to be bred.
I press my palms against my eyes as tears start to fall.
My breath comes in short, ragged bursts. The heat is getting worse, the cramping deeper, my pussy dripping slick onto the ruined sheets beneath me, and I am alone in my apartment.
Am I going to die here?
I need to move.
Getting out of bed is agony. Every muscle burns.
My legs shake so badly I have to brace myself against the nightstand, and the cold air against my sweat-soaked skin makes me gasp.
My underwear is ruined, slick running down my inner thighs, and I peel them off with trembling fingers and let them drop into the hamper.
I stumble into the bathroom naked and burning.
The tiles are cold under my feet. I fumble with the shower knob, turning it all the way to cold, and step under the spray without waiting for it to warm up.
The water is fucking freezing.
It hits my overheated skin, and I gasp, bracing both hands against the shower wall, my head bowed, water streaming down my back, my ass, between my thighs where my pussy is still throbbing, still hungry, still empty.
It doesn’t help. The cold water does nothing for the heat burning under my skin, and my pussy aches so badly I can’t stand it.
One hand slides between my legs.
My fingers find my swollen, dripping pussy easily.
Desperately, I push one finger inside, and the sensation is so intense I cry out loud.
My entrance is hot, tight, clenching around my finger, slick gushing around my knuckles.
With my other hand, I grip my breast. My fingers find my nipple, and I pinch it hard, and the dual sensation of my finger inside my pussy and my hand on my nipple sends a shock through my body that makes my knees buckle.
“Fuck,” I sob. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
I finger myself faster.
Two fingers now, pumping in and out of my slick hole, my thumb finding my clit, rubbing in rough, frantic circles.
My hips buck against my hand, chasing relief that doesn’t come, the orgasm building and building but never breaking, my pussy clenching around my fingers, slick running down my wrist, my inner thighs, pooling on the shower floor beneath me.
It’s not enough. It will never be enough. I need more. I need thicker. I need harder. I need a cock, a knot, something to stretch me open and fill me completely and lock inside me while I come.
Tears mix with the shower spray on my face.
Frustration, fear, desperation all come crashing down, and I sink to the floor of the shower, knees pulled to my chest, cold water pounding down on my back, my hand still between my legs but slower now, gentler, just trying to take the edge off the ache.
It doesn’t work.
After a few minutes, I reach up and shut off the water. The sudden silence is deafening. Water drips from my hair, my nose, my chin. My pussy is still throbbing. My body is still burning.
I wrap myself in a towel. The terry cloth is rough against my hypersensitive skin, and I hiss through my teeth as I cinch it around my chest.
My legs are shaking. My vision is blurry.
I make my way back to my bedroom on unsteady feet, leaving wet footprints on the hardwood, and collapse onto the bed.
The sheets are still damp from earlier. I don’t care. I pull the blanket up over my towel-clad body and curl onto my side, knees to my chest, and press my hand between my legs one more time, just to feel the heat there, the slick, the hungry empty ache.
My muscles feel like they’ve been put through a meat grinder. Every movement sends pain radiating through my lower back, my hips, my thighs. My pussy is still throbbing, slick seeping between my folds, soaking the towel between my legs.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Mira
you alive? shop’s dark. coffee?
I fumble for the phone, my fingers shaking. The screen blurs. I have to blink three times to focus.
sick. Not opening today.
Three dots. Then:
Mira
on my way.
Mira arrives fifteen minutes later with a paper bag from her bakery and a thermos of something that smells like ginger and honey. She lets herself in with the key I gave her last winter after she got locked out during a snowstorm and had to bang on my window at two in the morning.
She takes one look at me and stops dead in the doorway.
“Oh my god,” she says softly.
“I’m fine,” I lie. My voice is hoarse. My hair is plastered to my forehead. The towel is slipping, and I clutch it tighter with trembling fingers.
Mira sets the bag and thermos on my nightstand and sits on the edge of the bed. Her warm vanilla scent cuts through the rose heat filling the room, and for a second I can breathe.
“You’re in heat,” she says. Not a question.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.” My voice cracks. “Really bad, Mira. I can’t…I can’t function. I tried. In the shower. It didn’t help. I need…” I stop. I can’t say it out loud.
“You need an alpha.”
Terror lances through me. “No. Not that. Never that.”
“The Frostwoods—”
“Hell no.” I sit up too fast, my face burning. “I can’t, Mira. Not them. Not anyone. I’d rather die here.”
Mira is quiet for a long moment. Then she says, carefully, “There are services. For omegas in heat. Discreet. Professional. Alphas who can help. They don’t claim or mark. They just... help.”
I stare at her. “What?”
“Heat alphas. It’s a thing. Expensive, but—”
“Since when?”
“Since always. You’ve been off-grid, Lia. There are apps. Services. Alphas who do this as a job. They come, they help you through it, they leave. No strings.”
I have never heard of this. Not once in six years. The idea is simultaneously horrifying and the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.
“I can call. Right now.”
I bite my lip. My pussy clenches, hard, another wave of cramping rolling through my lower belly.
“Do it,” I whisper. “Please.”
Mira pulls out her phone. Her thumbs move over the screen. I close my eyes, listening to the soft tap-tap-tap, feeling the heat build under my skin again, my nipples aching against the terry cloth, slick pooling between my thighs.
My phone buzzes.
I reach for it blindly. The screen lights up.
Ezra
Would you like to join me for a film tonight? There’s a theater in the Village that shows classics. Thought you might enjoy.
My heart stops. Then starts again, hard and wild, beating against my ribs like it’s trying to escape. Ezra Frostwood. Ice-alpha but warm and soft towards me.
My thumbs move before my brain catches up.
Oh, are you asking me out on a date?
Three dots. My breath catches.
Ezra
If you want to call it that.
Warmth floods my chest.
Ezra Frostwood asked me out. On a date. A real date. With movies and probably dinner and his gray eyes watching me across a table and his voice saying my name in that low, steady way that makes my pussy clench.
I set the phone down. I don’t text back. I’m scared if I do, I’ll say something stupid and desperate.
I don’t want to give away the fact that I’m lying in bed in a damp towel with slick running down my thighs and an appointment with a stranger alpha in my very near future.
Mira is watching me. Her eyebrows are up. “Why are you smiling?”
“Ezra asked me out,” I say. The words feel absurd coming out of my mouth. “To the movies. Tonight.”
Mira’s mouth drops open. Then she laughs. “A date?!”
“It’s not a date-date. He said ‘if you want to call it that.’”
“Lia. Honey. That’s a date.” She shakes her head. “If he knew you were about to get railed by three professional knot-dispensers, he’d probably take it back.”
“Three?”
“The service sends a team. Usually three. For... coverage.”
My face is on fire. “Mira. I don’t think this is a good idea. Total strangers?!”
A knock on the door. Heavy. Three sharp raps.
Mira’s phone buzzes. She checks her texts. “That’s them. They’re early.” She stands, smooths her apron, and heads for the door. “Stay put. I’ll bring them in, and they can go to town on you.”
“Alright,” I sigh as she rushes out of my apartment.
I hear her footsteps creak down the stairs at rapid speed. Then the main store door opens.
Low voices. A deep, rumbling laugh that makes the hair on my arms stand up. Then Mira’s voice, bright and fake-cheerful: “She’s just through here. The bedroom.”
Footsteps in the hallway. Heavy. Boots on hardwood.
Mira appears in the doorway. Her eyes are wide.
“They’re here,” she says. Her voice is thin. “I’ll, uh. Give you privacy. Have fun.” She winks. Then she’s gone, the apartment door closing behind her with a soft click.
Three alphas walk into my bedroom.
The scent hits me first. Musky. Like wet fur and old blood and something chemical underneath, artificial, trying to mask something worse. It’s nothing like the Frostwoods—nothing like bergamot or lemon or black tea or honey. This is the scent of something predatory. Something that hunts.
I look up, and my heart slams against my ribs. My skin goes cold.
They’re not total strangers at all.
I stare at them.
The one in front is tall. Broad-shouldered. Pale blond hair swept back from a forehead I know. Cold eyes. Calculating. A smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
Silus.
Magnus’s son. The alpha who took over the pack when his father died.
Behind him, his two packmates follow. One with a scar through his eyebrow. One with a tattoo on his neck I’ve seen a hundred times, in a hundred nightmares, looming over me while I counted cracks in the ceiling.
My former packmates. My captors. The men who held me down while Magnus tried to claim me, over and over, until my body rejected him and the scars never healed.
Silus’s eyes move over me. The towel. The damp hair. The flushed skin. The smell of heat filling the room, thick and unmistakable.
His smile widens. Slow. Predatory.
“So,” he says. His voice is smooth. The voice of a man who has all the time in the world. “This is where you’ve been hiding.”
I am frozen. Every muscle locked. My breath caught in my throat. My hand still between my legs, clutching the towel, slick soaking through the terry cloth onto my fingers.
Three alphas from my worst nightmares stand between me and the door.
My body is on fire, and I cannot move.