CHAPTER THIRTY
M y skin has been itchy since Archie sent me that picture of Cady’s desk. What the hell has she gotten herself into? What’s worse is she’s not even here, so I can’t see with my own two eyes that she’s alright. My instincts are raging at me to hunt her down and protect her.
Make sure nothing can get to her.
Rut. Knot. Bite.
Fucking hell. I’ve always struggled with my alpha instincts more than the others, and ever since I scented her for the first time, nearly two months ago now, it’s like my alpha is waiting just under the surface, feeding his thoughts into my subconscious.
I’ve tried to keep my distance. If I come on too strong, I’ll only push her away, and I’ll ruin everything for everyone. If I keep doing what I'm doing, I push her away, and the result is the same. Visions of my brother, broken and depressed haunt my memory.
I can't do anything right.
I felt like shit yesterday, making her cry. I wasn't trying to. I just...her scent was so damn potent in the dining room, I'm pretty sure Simon had been fingering her against the wall.I'm already walking around half hard all the time with all the sex always happening. Did they really expect me to try to eat brunch with a tent in my jeans?
I’m pacing the living room, waiting for Archie to get home with Cady. I’ve been here since I got the text from Arch saying that they are working from home until after her heat. Thank fuck. I can smell how ripe her scent is getting without any actual arousal and it takes everything in me not to follow her everywhere she goes, growling at anyone who gets too close.
I even liked the guy that came over the other night with her friend, and I nearly ripped his damn head off.
Between her impending heat, the investigation into who broke into apartment, making her cry, and now the vandalization of her desk, I am on the fucking edge.
Matteo is right. I need to fix it.
I hear her before I see her. The sound of her sweet laughter outside the house has my heart pounding. How do I get her to make that sound? The only sounds I ever seem to get her to make are sounds of anger and annoyance.
The front door opens, and Cady and Archie walk in, laughing about something I don’t care about.
“Cady,” my voice comes out gruff, “do you have a second?”
Her laugh cuts off at the sound of my voice, and she suddenly looks apprehensive. “Um, sure. Yeah.” I hate that I’m the one causing that look on her face. Why do I always make things so difficult?
I lead her to the couch, and she sits down stiffly, putting a good amount of distance between us. “So,” I start, taking a deep breath, “in light of all everything that’s happened in the last few weeks, I have a new assignment.”
She looks at me quizzically. “A new assignment?”
“You.” Her brows shoot up at my words and she lets out a nervous laugh.
“That’s not where I thought you were going with that. At all. But…what do you mean?”
“I’m your new bodyguard,” I tell her, “anywhere you go, I go.”
Her mouth opens slightly, and she lets out a scoffing sound. “I don’t need someone shadowing me all the time, Titus. Besides, I’m working from home until my heat hits.” There’s barely restrained anger in her voice.
“What, so you’re just never going to leave the house? You and I both know you’d never go for that.” I raise a brow at her, daring her to contradict me. “I need you to be safe, Cady. This is how we do that.”
She stands abruptly, pacing back and forth as tension radiates off her in waves. “Dammit, Titus. Fine. I’ll take a bodyguard, but get me someone else. Not you.”
It would have hurt less if she stuck a knife straight through my heart. She doesn’t want me to keep her safe? It’s my most basic function as her alpha. Unless…unless she doesn’t want me to be her alpha.
Before I can stop myself, I’m standing in front of her. “Why?”
She throws her hands up in the air, exasperation lining her voice. “Because, Titus! I don’t want the only time you care about me to be when I’m your ‘assignment’! I don’t want a taste of what it feels like to be your priority only to have it ripped away the second the threat is resolved!”
"What the hell are you talking about? Of course I care about you! Why do you think I’m so damn quiet all the time, I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing, fucking this up and making you leave us!” Shit. I’ve said more than I meant to say. This is where she tells me that she doesn’t have time for an alpha with so many hang ups and calls it quits. My head hangs down, realizing that I just fucked this up for everyone.
Imagine my surprise when I feel a hand on my cheek instead, guiding me to look into bottomless pools of blue. “Titus,” she says quietly, “what makes you think I would leave?”
“I…” Defeated. That’s what I am. Pathetic and weak and defeated. “I’ve only ever seen one other true scent match in my life. And she left them.”
Cady’s eyes shine with empathy as she continues to hold my cheek. “What happened?”
Taking a shuddering breath, I close my eyes. “My brother is fifteen years older than me. I looked up to him so much. When I was ten, him and his pack…they found their scent match. The four of them were together for a few months, but then she walked away. He wouldn't tell me why, only that she said she couldn’t do it anymore. It destroyed them. Their pack bonds dissolved, and my brother is still miserable and alone to this day.”
“That’s…that’s why you’ve been so withdrawn?” She looks up at me, something like hope staring back at me. “You’ve been afraid? Afraid that you would do something and I would leave?”
I can’t say anything, only look down in shame. She lets out a sad laugh. “I thought…I thought you didn’t want me, Titus. I thought you didn’t want to be my alpha. I thought you saw me as a burden, or a—”
Her words are unacceptable. Wrong.
Because I do want her. So damn much. But now I realize I've made her believe a lie in my atttempts to protect myself. To protect us from the hole she could leave in our lives, when really I should have been protecting her from us.
Before I can stop myself, I’m taking her face in my hands and stealing her breath in a kiss. A kiss that I hope conveys just how wrong she was about everything. I pour every ounce of longing, desire, and desperation into the kiss. Just as quickly, I’m pulling back, pressing my forehead against hers. “You are everything. You will never be a burden. You are a damn honor to treasure and to cherish.”
She straightens her shoulders, taking a step back, looking directly into my eyes again. Challenging me. “I’m not going anywhere Titus. So do it,” she lifts her arms in a gesture that says here I am , “Treasure me. Cherish me. Hell, yell at me. Poke fun at me. But don’t ignore me. Don’t cut me out because you think you’ll do something to make me leave. I can’t guarantee we won’t ever fight, or that I won’t get on your nerves, because let’s face it, you’re a grumpy ass sometimes.” The corner of my lip twitches and she snorts in a damn adorable way. “Okay, most of the time. But I can guarantee that I’m in this for the long haul. That I see every inch of your infuriatingly grumpy soul and I am still here. So fucking give me your all, baby. There’s nothing you could do short of intentionally screwing me over that would send me packing.”
At her words, her honesty, her willingness to put me in my place, my fear takes a backseat. I prowl towards her, and she backs up, but there’s no fear in her eyes. Only excitement. Her whole speech was an attempt to get me to show her how much I care and it fucking worked. She’s about to find out just how damn obsessed I am with her.
Her back hits the wall, and she lets out a little gasp as I get in her space, my chest brushing hers. At my smirk, she gives me a feral smile and jumps on me, her arms wrapping around my neck and bringing my lips to hers. I devour her as I push her against the wall so she’s propped up between it and my body. Her legs come around my waist as she opens her mouth, her tongue brushing against mine, sending a shiver straight to my already hard cock. I swallow her moans as I grind my hips against her, nothing but the material of my pants and her thong separating us, since the skirt she was wearing has ridden up around her waist.
My hands reach up under her shirt to grope at her breasts, a perfect handful that has me salivating for a taste. A high pitched keening sound leaves her, and the sound of footsteps approach us, which I promptly ignore, continuing my exploration of her body.
“Fucking finally. Simon, you owe me fifty bucks!” Ollie’s voice shouts from next to us, and I only pull away from my girl long enough to growl at his smirk.
Simon pokes his head in and smiles. “I see you guys finally got it figured out.”
My gorgeous flower actually blushes and nods, hiding her face in my neck. I move my hands under her pert ass, supporting her weight as I move us from the living room to the stairs.
“Can’t get any damn privacy around here,” I grumble, and suppress a snort when I hear Ollie shout behind me.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t be feeling up the omega in the living room! It’s for living , Titus, not groping!”
Cady shocks the hell out of me when she shouts back, “But are you really living if there’s no groping going on?”
That does drag a laugh out of me, and I press a quick kiss to her lips before going up the stairs. “You are fucking perfect.”
She blushes again, and it’s now my goal to get her entire body that color. I take her back to my room without thinking, and lay her on the bed, peeling her out of her clothes before removing mine.
She lays stark naked on the bed, propped on her elbows, and I don’t miss the way her eyes roam my body and linger on my already swelling knot at the base of my cock like I’m the masterpiece here, and not her luscious curves. Her tits sway slightly with every breath she takes, and I want to bury my face between them.
“You’re so damn beautiful, you know that?” My voice is husky as I stare at her naked body. “Your body is fucking sinful, and you have the face of an angel. My angel. And my one way ticket to heaven.”
Her orange vanilla scent is heavy in the air, and I don’t waste any time, diving on to the bed, ready to taste it straight from the source. The scent that’s been haunting my dreams every night since Archie came home with it on his jacket two months ago.
The first drag of my tongue is pure ecstacy, and her head falls back, telling me she feels the same. “Ah, shit! Titus!” She cries out, her fists tight in the sheets. I flatten my tongue and run it over her clit, then quickly scoop up the reward of her sweet slick gushing from her pussy with my mouth.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, Titus! I need you! Please!”
“What do you need, angel?” I ask, needing to hear exactly what she wants.
“Knot me! I need your knot!” Her voice is keening as she tries to use her hands to drag me up her body.
“Okay, okay, angel, I got you.” I move up her body until my arms are on either side of her head, then line my aching cock up with her soaking wet pussy. I slide in, her walls clamping down around me so tight it’s like they’re trying to suck me in.
“Fuuuuck,” I grind out, gritting my teeth. When my knot hits her clit and rotate my hips a little, her pussy walls clench even tighter. I drop my forehead to hers, catching my breath as I attempt to not take her hard and fast. “Holy shit, gorgeous, you’re so fucking tight.”
“Titus, I need you to move,” she moans, trying to move her hips.
“Angel, if you do that I’m not going to be able to go gentle.” “I don’t want you to be gentle,” she stares into my eyes, “fuck me, Titus. Don’t hold back. Give. Me. Everything.”
Well, shit.
How can a guy say no to that?
“Be careful what you wish for, gorgeous.” I tell her before I draw my hips out nearly all the way, then plunge back in with one hard thrust. Her keening cry is all the encouragement I need as her nails dig into my back.
Lifting one of her legs over my hip, I draw out again, but immediately thrust in, and I continue at that same punishing pace until I feel her walls start to flutter around me.
“Shit, Titus, I’m gonna cum! Knot me, please!” She cries out, and I’m not one to refuse my omega. On the next thrust, I keep pushing past the slight resistance until my knot pops into that special area only omegas have.
She shatters.
Her scream might have sent the entire house running in here if they didn’t know what we were up to. “Fuck, fuck, Cady,” I groan, moving my hips as much as I can in shallow thrusts until my own release overtakes me. She shakes slightly again with the knot-induced mini-orgasm, and I collapse, rolling us onto our sides as both breath heavily.
"Holy hell, Titus,” Cady gasps, her brow slick with sweat. I’m sure I’ll have to wash my sheets twice after this, but it was so worth it. “That was incredible.”
“I’m glad you think so.” I give a dark chuckle. “Because as soon as my knot goes down, we’re going to do that again. And again. And again. Until you never doubt just how fucking obsessed with you I am.”
Her eyes grow dark with desire as she pulls me into a heated kiss, and I don’t think I’ve ever had a better reason to skip the rest of my work day.