ELIANO #5
"Okay, I’m on board. But how exactly do you plan to get close to him? I seriously doubt he takes meetings with regular participants." He makes a gasp and adds, "And I especially doubt he’d want to talk to the nephew of the man who tried to kill him!" He looks mildly amused.
I stand there for a moment, rubbing my chin, realizing that this might indeed be a slight obstacle. Still, not everyone here knows my last name, especially since it’s classified in the paperwork.
Letting out a sharp breath, I mutter, "Either way, I want to ask him to support us joining the BA Follow-up program. If anyone can make that happen, it’s him. With a snap of his fingers," I say, determined.
"Fair enough. So what now?"
"Come on."
I take his hand, and we move toward the door. I crack it open and peek out.
"Okay, here’s the plan. We walk out like nothing’s wrong.
That beta I was talking to is still standing in that section of the hallway.
Fine. But just around the corner, a few dozen feet down, there’s a small storage closet where the cleaning crew keeps their stuff. Let’s try to slip in there and hide."
Salt smiles under his breath. "I like the way you think. Secret mission, very sneaky."
Still holding hands, we step out into the corridor, pass the beta with casual, unbothered expressions, and head down the hall. He watches us, but the moment we disappear around the corner, I speed up and veer toward the storage closet.
It is locked, but I shoulder into it and the lock gives way almost immediately.
Salt watches me with narrowed eyes.
"Sometimes I envy alphas. If something won’t open the normal way, you just force it. Betas and omegas would need a crowbar for a door like that."
I let out a low sound in AO, meant to signal my mild satisfaction at the compliment.
Salt blinks, then says, "I still can’t wrap my head around that I can understand AO language now. Never before have I gotten anything out of your AO growling."
I close the door, or at least brace it as well as I can with the busted lock, and press my eye to the narrow crack.
Salt crouches behind me, and I mutter under my breath, "I think your transformation into a beta with omega traits is already pretty advanced, Salt. You managed to produce an Omega Stun Sound. That’s not a small thing."
I turn and give him a meaningful look, then wink.
Salt lifts his fingers to his mouth and chews lightly on his nails for a moment.
"Yeah. That was weird, but kind of instinctive. It just slipped out of me."
I grow serious, gently pulling his finger out of his mouth and away from his face. "Hey. That’s how it works with True Mates. And you… you saved us, Salt." I lift his hand, and kiss the back of it. "If it hadn’t been for that sound, Drax would have shot us."
Our eyes lock in an intense stare. I brush a few small kisses over his palm, then along the sensitive skin of his wrist gland.
Salt just stares at me.
And then I say even more quietly, "It was insane, Salt, that you took bullets meant for me." As I speak, I hear my own voice grow more emotional than I intended. "If I’d taken them, I wouldn’t have been able to enter the Joining. We would have died. You did the hard part for both of us."
Salt looks away, his cheeks flushed a deep, hot red.
"You are incredibly brave, Salt."
Suddenly he seems fed up with his own embarrassment. He rolls his eyes and says, a little rebelliously, "I told you once, Eliano, when I’m in, then I’m all in!"
He smiles mutinously, but then a hint of shyness creeps back in. His lips tremble slightly.
"And I’m all in. All in on you."
I lean my back against the storage room door and look at him for a long moment. I let his words linger, spread through the air around us, wrap around both of us.
Salt lowers his gaze to my chest, then lightly touches my shoulder with his fingers and says, "Eliano… this might be hard to believe, but I kind of fell for you that day you saved me on the prison bus."
I raise my eyebrows, because what he’s saying sounds crazy to me. I was so sure he hated me then.
"Wow. I could swear I pissed you off."
Salt shrugs a little, slightly flustered.
"It was all on the surface, the way I acted!
" He shakes his head. "I remember the moment they grabbed me and started pulling down my pants, that awful thought. All those years I didn’t want to have sex with anyone.
I wanted to save it for someone special, someone who, in my eyes, deserved it. "
His voice softens, so unlike him. He closes his eyes.
"In my secret fantasies, the ones I barely admitted to myself, I dreamed of meeting someone I could share those first moments with. And then, on that bus, it was about to be taken from me in such a brutal way. I knew they’d tear me apart, that I’d bleed, that I’d suffer horribly.
And then… you showed up. For me, that moment was special in a way I really can’t explain.
We were strangers, each of us headed to this island for different reasons.
And still, you helped me. They tased you, they beat you, yet you fought for me, for a guy who had been only rude to you.
There are so many bad alphas, like Senu always said, but there are also ones who are… perfect. And for me, that’s you."
His confession leaves me staring at him, stunned. I never would have guessed he felt that way, judging by how proud and almost aggressive he seemed back then.
Salt’s hands slide up my chest and then to my neck. My hands answer the movement, gliding slowly over his hip and higher, slipping lightly under his T-shirt. My fingertips brush his bare skin and he squeezes his eyes tight. The temperature spikes instantly, our breathing quickens.
"I could not bear the idea of them hurting you. I wanted to claim you, to be the only one for you. I wanted you all to myself…" I whisper hotly, leaving wet kisses over his neck, as he moans softly.
"You saved my little star and claimed it for yourself…" he mutters. "It’s only yours… forever."
I suck a hickey on his neck, purposefully over the line of his collar. He’s mine. Mine.
"I’m gonna use it a lot, a loooooooot…" I murmur.
Our lips meet, and we exchange slow, erotic kisses.
"I discovered something a few days ago, but I didn’t tell you because I felt stupid," Salt murmurs into my mouth.
"What is it?" I ask, even though my focus is already slipping as I feel his lithe body pressed against mine and his hard length pushing into my thigh.
Salt breaks the kiss and looks at me intensely, "I can do this thing…" Then he opens his mouth. It looks strange at first. My gaze drops to his teeth and then, suddenly, bam.
Two thin mating fangs slide out from his gums. Normally, betas can’t do this.
"Oh fuck!" I blurt out, shuddering slightly, already knowing what he wants to do as his fingers tug at the collar of my T-shirt.
In a kind of stunned fascination, I stare at those pearly white, needle-thin fangs. A sharp rush of arousal tears through my entire body. I lean in, drawn by his energy, and see his eyes focus on my gland.
Suddenly Salt lets out a sweet, vibrating sound in AO, one that translates as, You are mine. I claim you.
A moment later, another sound follows, lower this time, with that specific vibration every alpha recognizes instantly. It’s a request for permission to mark my gland.
I know that True Mates can mark each other outside of heat, so I respond immediately with a low, inviting, accepting vibration.
And even though this is probably not an objectively perfect moment, considering we’re hiding in a supply closet that reeks of floor cleaner, it happens.
Salt steps closer, as I bend to make it easier for him, my hands sliding farther under his shirt, gliding over his bare back, teasing along his spine. Salt trembles, his cheeks flushed a deep red, his pupils blown wide.
I feel it, that moment, the sweet tension in the air, his readiness.
And then, in one sudden movement, Salt’s teeth sink into my gland, and at that exact moment we both… climax.
Damn. Coming in your underwear is obviously not ideal, but I don’t care, because this is it.
A pink wave spreads through our bodies and we shiver as an even stronger energy of our mating bond, now working both ways, settles within us.
Salt and I become one, a fully mated couple, deepening our Bond and fusing us together, energetically and emotionally.
Right at the moment when Salt’s teeth are still sunk into my gland and I’m drifting on the sweet currents of a strange, marking orgasm, I hear footsteps passing outside the door. It sounds like a group of people, and I know exactly who just walked by.
Salt pulls his teeth away from my gland, the sudden movement sending a brief jolt of disappointment through my system. I blink hard.
"Shit," Salt mutters. "That sounded like Blue and his bodyguards in the hallway. With how sharp my hearing’s gotten lately, I’m almost sure it was him."
I bite my lip lightly. "Yeah, I think you’re right."
"Damn!" he snorts. "I’m sorry for the… biting thing out of the sudden!"
"Nothing’s really lost. And I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything," I say, lifting my hand and gently brushing my thumb over Salt’s lower lip, where a smear of my blood still lingers.
"That was sexy, very… unexpected, but wonderful. I didn’t think something like this was even possible, that betas could also…"
Blushing, Salt grows fidgety, his fingers fussing at the fabric over my chest.
"I’ve read about it. Betas with omega traits can experience this when they’re in a close bond with their alpha."
"A close bond?"
His big, gray eyes widen as we lock gazes.
"We’re building one, right?" he whispers.
"We sure are…"
Slowly, I cup his face in my hands and lean in. Our lips meet softly. I taste my own blood as his tongue slips into my mouth.