11. Chapter 11 #3
Leo’s lips meet mine and he groans into it. The kiss is messy, fumbling. He pulls back but stays close.
“Addie,” he says against my lips. I can feel him moving into place between my legs. I open wider. His cockhead notches at my hole and slick gushes out of me. My skin is on fire, and my scent must hit him with the force of my need because he pushes forward, sliding all the way inside.
“Dear God. Addie,” he gasps out, and his hands come up to cradle my face.
I moan. I’m so full. So achingly, perfectly full.
Leo slides back out, then pushes in. All of my nerve endings are singing with pleasure. He does it again, groaning, gasping, chanting my name.
I wrap my arms around his back, my legs around his waist, and try to pull him closer, pull him deeper inside myself. My mating gland is a constant throb now—I need him to bite me, to claim me.
Leo bites at the collar, a growl ripping out of him.
I shudder and squeeze him tighter. His groin slaps my ass, my slick making the sound wet.
I arch my neck as far as I can, presenting myself for his bite.
He gnashes at the leather with his teeth.
Breaths are punched out of me as his hips pump into me with so much force all I can do is take it.
Nothing has ever felt this good.
And then, it gets even better. A swelling at the base of his cock.
Leo pulls back. He meets my eyes, dazed with the confirmation. I know I must look the same.
I knew, but this makes it real. It continues to swell and my hole instinctually clamps around it, trying to lock him in place.
“Shit, Addie, I’m going to breed you. Is that what you want, baby? Is that what you want?” he pants out as his thrusts turn shorter, harder.
I gasp, nodding my head erratically. I cry out as my walls ripple around him, my first orgasm for the heat.
His knot locks in place, and Leo throws his head back and groans as he starts to come. Wet warmth spreads inside me, filling me up. I’m too far gone to think about the birth control I’m on. My omega side has taken over, and it won’t recede until we’re fully sated. Until we’re tied and relaxing.
Because we will be tied. Because he knotted me. Because he’s my mate.
A melancholy washes over me as I’m pumped full. I shudder around him, both of us riding a climax that feels endless. He hasn’t bitten me. He hasn’t claimed me.
I come to slowly. I’m sprawled on top of Leo’s chest. My mind is no longer foggy with heat, just hazy from sleep. Leo’s hand travels up and down my back in a soothing caress. He smells satisfied. Happy. Relieved. But there’s an ache in him too.
I lift my head to look at him.
His smile is tentative. I return it, dazed that this happened. That he came back. That he spent—
“Leo, you spent twenty grand! What the fuck were you thinking?”
And now the panic sets in. He came back. He’s not safe. I’m collared, so he can’t claim me, but even if he did claim me, he’d have to challenge Benji to get me out of here. Benji, like all the alphas here, won’t take that challenge as a fair fight. He’ll probably haul Leo outside and shoot him.
“Hey, hey,” he says soothingly and reaches for my nape, clasping me firmly. “It’s okay. I’ve got you, it’s okay.”
It calms me, but I’m still breathing shakily.
“And I’d have spent a million,” he says.
I scoff. I’ll pay him back. We keep our earnings after we pay rent for the room, food, healthcare expenses, and whatever latest taxation William Whitman puts on us by order of his nephew, Troy Whitman. It’s not much, but if I work for like, ten years, I’ll probably save up enough.
But the thought of another alpha touching me now I’ve had Leo …
I blink rapidly, trying to get myself under control. Leo can smell that.
“Hey, hey,” he says, tightening his hand, the one rubbing my back turning firmer. “What’s wrong?”
He looks so troubled—guilty too. Smells it. Guilty?
“I’m fine,” I lie and push those thoughts to the background. At a minimum, I can return the cut I get of that twenty thousand.
He frowns. “Was it … okay?”
I look at him, trying to figure out what he’s asking. He smells unsure, and his frown is deepening.
My mouth drops open.
“The sex?!” Is he kidding?
But he nods, dropping his gaze. His hands loosen, his touch turning unsure.
“It was incredible! That’s not the issue!” He can’t be seriously asking me that. We’re still tied and even that feels amazing.
His smile, when he returns his gaze to mine, is achingly shy, but he’s getting some alpha bravado under it. “Yeah?”
I scoff. “I can’t believe you’re asking. Have you ever had sex like that?”
Oh, geez, why did I ask that? I don’t want to know about who else he’s slept with.
“Well, no,” he says, looking away from me. He smells … self-conscious?
“What?”
He takes a deep breath. He won’t meet my eyes. “I’ve never done it before.”
My mouth falls open—my jaw is going to land on his chest at this rate.
Those guys he came with that first night said something about him being a virgin.
I dismissed it—it was impossible. Leo wasn’t sleeping with anyone when we were teenagers, though, he was always with me.
And I know he handled his ruts alone because he told me he did.
But it’s been three years, and Leo, well … he’s Leo.
So why in the hell was he coming to a brothel to lose his virginity?
“But … you were here …”
He’s blushing. More humiliation floods his scent. But there’s anger now too.
“My dad told me you’d bonded.” He meets my eyes with that anger, but his expression softens as he looks at me. “And I just … gave up. I’d been waiting, but then … Well, I was too late.”
I don’t know what to say.
Wait, yes I do.
“I was waiting for you too.”
I hope he knows I’d have waited forever if I’d known he’d come back for me.
I’d have run before the state officials from the Department of Dynamics came to take me to the brothel.
Hell, if my omega father could do it, so could I.
I’d have stopped listening to those voices in my head that sounded a lot like the alphas back home who muttered their disgust about him, who talked as if an omega running away was worse than a murderer.
I’d have run and hidden and texted Leo to come get me when he got home.
But I didn’t know. I thought he didn’t want me.
“But … your heats?” he asks with a wince and looks away. “Sorry, sorry. I know it’s, like, necessary. Sorry, I shouldn’t bring those up, but—”
“My heats?” I cut him off and laughter bubbles up.
I remember being a hot, sweaty mess in my nest back home.
The sun from the triangular window burning my skin, stoking my heat as much as the smell of all of Leo’s clothes did.
The moon rising in that same window as I shoved the toy as deep as I could get it, chanting Leo’s name, thinking I’d die if he didn’t hear me and climb that fucking ladder and take his fucking omega like he was supposed to.
And well, I know I said I’d keep this secret, but this is my mate. There are no secrets between mates.
“Leo.” And he hears the smile in my voice because he’s skittering his eyes back to me, the hazel depths painfully hesitant.
Beautiful Leo, I think, and grin at him. He’s been cut up about this. Well, I can fix that. I can’t fix what’s happened since, but I can reassure him that I really was waiting. When it was my choice, I was waiting.
“I did my heats alone.”
His lips part, but his brow pinches. “What? No.” He shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut. “You don’t have to lie to me. I know you used a beta service. I couldn’t smell anything—”
“Leo.” I tap his cheek and wait for him to look at me again. He smells so fucking sad. I’m fixing that.
“I did them alone. My dad, both my dads, said it’s a myth. How do you think my omega’s managing his heats now?”
Curiosity blooms in Leo’s scent, and I see the realisation dawning in his eyes.
“But … you would’ve died …” he says faintly, like he’s not sure whether or not he believes that either. I can almost see him thinking what I thought after that first heat, when I had the clarity to parse through what my dad had said, what I’d just done.
The people in Hollow Point thought my dad’s drinking was compounded by the awareness of his omega being bred by another alpha—my dad would’ve felt that in high definition down their bond.
But of course my omega wouldn’t do that to him.
And no omega in their right mind would take suppressants. There had to be another way.
And there was another way. And that morning, when lucidity returned to me, I knew it. It’d been fucking hell on earth doing it alone, not going to lie, especially since I knew my mate. But I’d done it. I’d survived. I would be able to wait.
Well, that had been the plan before it all went to shit.
“You did them alone …” Leo says with awe.
He slips his hand up into my hair and pulls me down, kissing me deeply. It feels like a promise we’d tried to make to each other years ago.
Except now I’m here and that promise is a past shattered by the alphas who’ve had me since. And I’ve endangered him. Again.
I pull back. “Leo,” I pant against his lips. “It’s not safe. I asked Cammie to tell you. Why did you come back?”
I don’t understand the smile that ticks up against my lips. “I’m here to mate you.”
I know he hasn’t missed the collar I’m wearing, but I tug on it anyway and give him an exasperated look.
His smile widens. He shifts his hand around under the mess of my nest, looking for something, and then he produces a knife with a grin. I stare at it, dumbfounded.