Chapter 24
The second dose burns hotter going down than the first, my throat constricting in automatic rejection before I force the liquid past it.
My body already knows what’s coming and tenses as the chemical flush of want floods my system anew. My dick hardens before I can draw a full breath.
Orien takes the vial from my slack fingers, setting it aside. The moment he turns back to me, I push him down on the bed with a hungry sound.
He goes easily, pupils blown as I straddle his hips, knees sinking into the mattress on either side of his waist. I flatten my palms on his shoulders, skin warm beneath my touch, and slide my hands down his chest, tracing each defined muscle until I reach his cock.
It’s already hard, jutting up toward his stomach. I wrap my hand around it, measuring its thickness with my fingers and counting each pulse within my grip.
I watch him as I stroke his length, and satisfaction curls in my belly as his breath catches in response. His pupils dilate, eating up his pale irises.
My other hand pushes into his hair, using the grip to pull him up for a kiss that’s all teeth and tongue and hunger. He answers with equal ferocity, one hand gripping my hip hard enough to leave fingerprints I’ll carry tomorrow.
I gather the sticky mess from between my ass cheeks onto my hand before reaching between us to stroke our hard lengths together. The lubricant slicks our hot flesh, and when I twist my wrist on the upstroke, he groans, the sound vibrating through my body.
“Want you,” I demand. “Inside.”
“Fuck, yes.”
I pull back, my hand sticky, lift my hips, and line him up with my entrance.
I sink down, the stretch a deep burn in muscles already well used, and he stuffs me so full that I can taste him. My inner muscles clench around his thick shaft, and I moan, the sound filling the quiet bedroom.
“So fucking good,” Orien says, fingers flexing on my bruised flesh. “So tight.”
My hips roll in a motion that leaves us both gasping. The rhythm builds fast, my thighs flexing as I ride him, the position taking him deeper with each downstroke, my angle allowing me to hit that spot inside until my vision blurs.
Slick coats us both, each thrust slides deep and wet, and the sound of skin meeting skin fills the apartment in a steady cadence. Sweat gathers along my spine, and my hair sticks to my forehead, but I don’t care how I look. I just want more friction, more pressure, and more of my Alpha inside me.
Orien’s hands grip my hips, guiding when my tempo becomes too reckless.
“Slow down,” he murmurs. “Let me savor it.”
I try to comply, but the Heat shifts every thought toward the release my body desperately needs. When I lean forward to brace my hands on his chest for leverage, Orien sits up, one hand splaying across my back to support me as the angle changes.
The new position nails my prostate, and I cry out at the stimulation on the swollen bundle of nerves. My hips stutter, and Orien takes control of the pace, his grip on my hip tightening as he drags me down onto each thrust.
“Like this,” he says as he gives his hips a slow swirl. “Let me give it to you.”
I surrender to the rhythm, my thighs trembling with the effort of riding him, but my body keeps moving, driven by the drug and my own deep, desperate need. My dick bobs between us, dragging across Orien’s flexing abs.
My teeth find his collarbone, the skin hot under my tongue as I lick a stripe across it before biting down. I leave a shallow mark, not deep enough to break the skin, but it’s my claim on him to match the one he put on me.
The sight of it brings forth a possessive hunger I’ve never had before, and I do it again, leaving another mark a few inches away from the first. Orien’s breathing changes, his pace faltering for a moment before he steadies himself.
Then his hands tighten on my hips, pulling me down hard as he falls backward onto the mattress, bringing me with him. His hand in my hair turns me far enough for his teeth to find the sensitized skin just below my first Mark, and he bites down hard.
The pleasure-filled pain rips through me as his teeth break skin before he soothes the spot with his tongue.
My body responds in recognition, inner muscles clenching around his cock as pleasure spikes through me. The orgasm hits mid-thrust, my body clenching around him, head falling forward as the wave rips through me.
My inner walls pulse around Orien’s length, and he shudders in response, his hands gripping my hips hard to hold me still through our release.
When the last pulse fades, I remain seated on his cock, breathing hard, sweat cooling on my back. My thighs ache, the inside of them slick and tender, and the fresh Mark throbs at the nape of my neck.
Orien’s hands slide up my back, gentle now, fingers tracing the knobs of my spine with careful pressure. “You okay?”
I rub my cheek against his chest. “Yeah. I’m good.”
I don’t tell him how good. How everything settles into place when I’m here, in his bed, with his Marks on my skin and his cum inside me. How the heaviness in my limbs isn’t just exhaustion but contentment.
How I don’t regret a single second of what we’ve done, even as I doubt that it will be enough to save us.
After a moment, when my breathing steadies, I start to move again. Not frantic this time, but rocking in a slow circle that has Orien’s cock hitting new spots inside me.
“That’s it,” he murmurs as I find the rhythm. “Take what you need.”
And I do, over and over, until the darkness outside the window begins to lighten with the first hints of dawn.
When the second Heat ends, I’m trembling, my thighs slick and tender, the rest of me limp as exhaustion finally claims me.
Orien strokes the hair back from my forehead, the gentle touch barely registering through the fog in my brain. My whole body throbs, skin oversensitive, nerves firing random signals that make me twitch when the sheets brush my back.
“Water,” Orien urges. “You need to hydrate.”
He holds a glass to my lips, the rim cool on my swollen flesh, and I drink in small sips, not trusting my coordination enough to take the glass from him. Each swallow produces an uncomfortable click in my throat.
“One more,” he murmurs when I start to protest after emptying half the glass.
I take another sip, then turn my head away when my stomach protests the sudden influx. Orien sets the glass on the nightstand and settles against the headboard, his arm coming around my shoulders, guiding me to lean back on his chest.
Our combined scents saturate the apartment now, layered with Heat pheromones. No one who walked in now would mistake this for anything but a place where a mated pair has been living.
The thought sends a complicated shiver through me, part pride and part terror that I now have someone important to lose.
I rest my head on Orien’s chest, my ear pressed to the steady rhythm of his heart. The sound of it offers comfort, a counterpoint to the panic trying to swamp me. A pleasant heaviness settles through my limbs, as if gravity has doubled its pull, and I let myself drift in the quiet for a moment.
When I open them again, the nightstand swims into view, along with the third vial of Inductis waiting there. Not just another dose, but the last one, the one that will set the changes permanently in place.
I tip my head back to study Orien. He returns my stare, waiting in the same way he waited for me to come to the Blue Note, the same way he waited for me to choose him over my family.
For a heartbeat, I let myself think of the compound, the council chamber with its dark wood and heavy silence, the expectation of generations of Vartanians staring down from the portraits on the walls.
I think of Alexei, of the trust he’s given me, the space he carved out for me in a family that had no reason to want an Omega in their ranks.
I think of the anonymous message that engineered this entire collision, the false warning that sent me to the Blue Note to begin with, that pushed me into Orien’s orbit and set us on this path.
Grief rises for the life I’m leaving, for the brother I’m betraying, for the certainty I’m trading for a future I can’t predict. But no regret for what I’ve done or what I’m about to do.
My arm shakes as I reach for it before it falls back to the bed, far short of its mark.
I sag against Orien. “I don’t think I can do it.”
He stills beneath me. “No?”
“No. Do it for me.” And I open my mouth wide.
Orien uncaps the vial with a single twist, the seal breaking with a soft pop, and brings it to my lips.
I drink the sickly-sweet drug in one swallow, my body anticipating the flood of Heat that will follow.
And it does, washing through me in a wave that blurs my vision at the edges. Every nerve ending fires at once, but instead of scattering my focus, it narrows it to a single point of desire.
I want Orien. I want him inside me. I want his third Mark on my nape, permanent and irrevocable. I want to belong to him completely.
And I want it now.
He rumbles as he tracks the flush climbing my throat, my chest, my cheeks. His hand comes up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing away a stray drop from my lower lip. “You sure?”
“Yeah.” I curl my legs beneath me to rise up onto my knees. “Like this.”
Orien’s hands on my hips steady me. I reach between us to grip his cock and line him up with my entrance.
Then I lower myself slowly, taking him inch by inch, breathing through the stretch as my inner muscles protest. A whine escapes me, and my hips wiggle with him still only halfway inside.
“Shh, it’s okay. I’ve got you,” Orien murmurs as he guides me the rest of the way down, his fat cock finding its home inside my body.
I whimper, my muscles flexing around him. It’s too much, three Heats back-to-back, but at the same time, I still crave his release filling me up.
I swirl my hips, adjusting to the stretch.
Orien’s hands settle on my waist, fingers digging into the muscle as he holds me steady. “You’re killing me. Move. Please.”
I do, lifting myself until just the head remains inside before sinking back down. The drag of his cock within my body sparks pleasure-pain along my nerves, and I let out a needy whine, doing it again.
Orien’s control breaks. His hands tighten on my waist, and he flips us in a single smooth motion, planting me face-first and ass up.
“Like this,” he says, already moving, his hips driving forward in a rhythm that leaves no room for doubt. “If you want my cum, you need to work for it.”
I grip the messy sheets, brace my toes on the mattress, and tilt my hips to take his next thrust deeper. The angle hits perfectly, the head of his cock nailing my prostate with every stroke, and my balls pull tight as my release builds fast.
I bow my head, exposing the back of my neck without prompting.
Orien shifts, bracing himself on one forearm while his other hand comes up to cradle my throat. His mouth finds my nape, tongue tracing the existing Marks before moving higher.
Teeth sink in with steady pressure, deep enough to pull a cry from my throat that is equal parts pain and release. The sting of it blooms into heat that spreads into my limbs, turning my bones to liquid beneath his hands.
Orien holds me there, mouth firm on my skin, tongue tracing the wound to ensure the bond takes hold. His hips continue to move, each thrust driving his cock deeper as my body opens further to take him.
I clench around his cock, the sensation so intense I whimper, the sound lost in the sheet. My own dick leaks, untouched but on the edge, pleasure building in slow, inexorable waves.
Orien’s rhythm breaks as he drives into me with increasing urgency. “I’m close. So close.”
“Fill me,” I manage, the word breaking on a gasp. “I want to be stuffed with your cum.”
He does, with a groan torn from the depths of his chest. His cock pulses inside me, flooding me so full that his cum leaks around the seal of our bodies to pool beneath us.
The sensation triggers my own orgasm, slower and deeper than before, pleasure rolling through me in waves rather than a single strike.
My inner walls pulse around his length, milking every drop from him as my own release paints the sheets in clear fluid. The pleasure is so intense it’s painful, a full-body experience that leaves me shaking in its aftermath.
Orien collapses on top of me, pinning me to the mattress as we both struggle to catch our breath. His mouth finds the junction of my neck and shoulder, tongue soothing the fresh Mark with careful attention.
I go limp beneath him, satisfaction leaving every muscle loose and heavy, but my mind is clear in a way it’s never been before.
I’m not shattered by what’s happened. I’m more whole than I’ve ever been.
“I’ve got you,” Orien murmurs into my hair. “I’ve got you, and I’m not letting go.”
I hold him closer as tears slip down my cheeks.
I’m no longer Levon Vartanian, my brother’s spy and my uncle’s inconvenient Omega nephew. I am not Lee, either.
So who am I?