Chapter 14 #4
I struggle once more on pure instinct, a small, panicked noise escaping, but he only holds me tighter.
Not restraining. Anchoring. His chest is a solid wall against my back.
His scent pours over me in heavy, calming waves—alpha pheromones in full force, telling every instinct I have that I am claimed and protected and not allowed to run.
The knot pulses again, deeper this time and swells more, and another rush of warmth spreads inside me. I whine, but Calder pushes my sweaty hair out of the way so he can see me.
“Shh, look at me. You’re fine.”
His dark, lust blown eyes meet mine and the panic loosens by degrees. My body, still oversensitive and full, starts to accept the lock instead of fight it.
He keeps murmuring against the side of my neck, voice rough but no longer frantic.
“That’s it. Just breathe. You’re okay. You’re right here with me.”
I go still in his arms.
Neither of us moves. Neither of us can.
I’m sealed to him, locked in place, and the heat doesn’t go anywhere. It doesn’t drop. It doesn’t let go of me for even a second. Every time the knot pulses, another slow wave rolls up through my body and I whimper into the pillow.
Calder swears quietly into my shoulder. And then he starts touching me, and he doesn’t stop.
His hand drags up my ribs, down over my hip, across my stomach, back up. Slow. Not going anywhere in particular—just moving, palm flat, fingers spread, covering as much of me as he can reach at once. Like he’s taking inventory.
Like something in him needs to have all of me under his hands or it won’t settle.
His mouth finds the back of my shoulder. He kisses it. Kisses lower. Then his teeth catch the skin and I gasp and feel him make a low sound against me, pleased, almost a growl.
"Sorry," he mutters into my back. He doesn’t sound sorry at all. He does it again, harder, and my whole body jolts.
And every so often his hips move.
Small. Shallow. Barely anything, because he can’t go anywhere—just enough to shift the knot in me, to grind deeper, to feel it. Each one punches a broken noise out of me and every noise I make gets him doing it again a few seconds later, like he’s testing what he can pull out of me.
"Can’t help it," he says against my neck. His voice has gone thick and slow. "Sorry. I can’t—fuck, you feel—"
He doesn’t finish it. His arm cinches tighter around my waist instead, hauling me back flush against his chest, and he buries his face in my hair and just breathes me in for a long moment.
"You alright?" he asks eventually. His voice is shot.
"Mm."
"That’s not an answer."
"I’m… I’m alright." It comes out slurred. I’m so tired my bones ache and I’m still, somehow, wound tight as a wire. "I didn’t… I didn’t know it would feel like… this."
"Which part?"
"It’s not… stopping." I shift and the knot tugs and we both make a sound. "It’s just—staying. It won’t… let go of me."
"Yeah." His voice drags. "That’s what it’s for."
He makes a low sound, something like agreement, and drags his nose along the back of my neck, and the wave that goes through me at that is so strong my eyes sting.
And that’s when it catches up with me.
An alpha knots in rut. Or with a bonded mate. Those are the only two.
I go still.
We’re not bonded. I know that much. Whatever this is, whatever’s happened in this bed tonight, nobody’s bonded to anybody.
Which leaves only one explanation. "Cal."
"Yeah."
"You said… this only happens two ways."
His arm tightens fractionally around my middle. He doesn’t answer.
"Calder."
"Yeah," he says. "I know."
"I think… you’re in rut."
"I think I have been for about an hour." A long breath goes out of him, hot against my shoulder. "I didn’t know what it was at first. I just thought—" He stops. "It’s in my chest. It’s like something else got in and it’s driving now and I’m sitting in the passenger seat watching it steer."
Something cold slides down through all that warmth.
"Are you scared?" I whisper.
"Yeah."
"Of me?"
"God, no." His hand flattens on my stomach and holds me back against him. "Of me."
I lie there in the dark, full of him, held down by a body that could break me without trying, and I should be terrified. I’ve got every reason. My mother taught me to be terrified of exactly this and she was right about all of it.
But I’m not.
"Sonny." His mouth moves against my shoulder. "Listen to me a second. While I’ve still got—while I can still think straight."
"Okay."
"It’s going to get worse before it gets better.
Both of us." His thumb moves once across my stomach like he’s trying to feel himself inside my belly.
"If I do anything you don’t want, you tell me.
You say it out loud and you keep saying it.
Don’t go quiet on me. Whatever’s in me right now, it isn’t going to hear anything else. "
"Okay." I nod, pressing my head back against his shoulder as he inhales deep.
"Promise me."
I blow out a shuddering breath. "I promise."
He goes quiet. I feel him press his mouth to the back of my neck and hold it there a long moment, right over the spot where my shoulder starts, and something under the skin there aches.
It aches through me like heartbreak
I fall asleep like that, our bodies still connected as Calder eases me onto the bed.
∞∞∞
I don’t know how long I’m under.
When I wake up, it’s worse. It’s so much worse.
The heat is a living thing under my skin, clawing, demanding. I’m already slick and open and aching before my eyes are fully open.
Calder is still wrapped around me from behind, knot gone soft sometime in the dark, but his cock is hard again against the cleft of my ass and his scent is everywhere—thick, heavy, alpha in full rut. It pours into my lungs and my body answers before I can think.
I push back against him with a small, desperate sound.
His arm tightens instantly. A low, rough noise rumbles out of his chest.
“Sonny—”
“Please.” My voice is wrecked, barely there. I reach back, clumsy, and try to guide him. “Please, Cal. I need— I need you in me. Now.”
He doesn’t make me ask twice.
He pushes inside in one long, smooth thrust and the relief is so sharp I sob into the pillow.
He’s thicker like this, hotter, and the stretch lights every oversensitive nerve.
He doesn’t give me time to adjust. The second he’s buried he starts moving—deep, hard, relentless—and the animal sound that leaves him is nothing like the careful man from earlier.
“Fuck—yes.” His voice is pure grit against the back of my neck. “That’s it. Take it. You’re mine right now. You know that?”
“Yes—” The word spills out of me without thought. “Yes. Yours.”
“Nobody else.” He drives in harder, one big hand splayed across my stomach to hold me in place. “Nobody’s taking you. Not while I’m breathing. You’re ours. You’re staying right here.”
“I’ll stay.” I’m babbling now, heat-drunk and open and promising things I don’t even understand. “I’ll stay. I won’t go. I’m yours—please don’t stop—I’ll be good, I swear, just don’t stop—”
“You already are.” His mouth drags along my shoulder, open and wet. “You’re so fucking good for me. Look at how you open up. Made for this. Made for me.”
Every thrust punches soft, broken sounds out of my throat.
I push back to meet him, chasing the fullness, the friction, the way his scent is rewriting something deep in my chest. The heat has burned all the fear out of me.
All that’s left is want and the desperate need to keep him saying those things.
“Harder,” I whisper. “Please, Cal—harder. I can take it. I want it. I want everything.”
He gives it to me.
The rhythm turns brutal, almost punishing, and still the tenderness never fully leaves—his hand keeps stroking my stomach, my ribs, my chest like he needs the contact to stay grounded even while the rut is driving.
His mouth never stops moving against my skin.
Praise and possession and crude, filthy encouragement all tangled together.
“That’s my good boy. Taking every fucking inch.”
I whine and whimper and lean my head back against him, baring my neck.
He grunts. “So wet. So perfect. Nobody else gets to feel this.”
I cover his hand over my stomach and push it down. Calder understand what I want and grips my oversensitive dick, stroking slowly just to tease me.
“You’re mine. Say it.”
“I’m yours.” It comes out easy. Dangerous. “I’m yours. I’ll do anything. Just keep me. Please keep me.”
Something in him snaps tighter at that.
His thrusts turn short and deep, grinding the head of his cock against the place that makes my entire body turn pliant.
The arm around my waist cinches harder, hauling me back until there’s no space left between us at all.
The spooned angle turns devastating—every thick inch of him, every pulse, every shift pressed right against that spot inside me with nowhere for me to go.
He fists my cock in time with his brutal hips.
His mouth finds the side of my throat.
Right over the scent gland.
I feel the moment he knows.
There’s one clear second where his breath stutters, where his whole body goes taut against mine like he’s fighting the last rational part of himself. He isn’t lost. He isn’t blacked out. He chooses.
Then his teeth sink in.
Hard.
Pain flares bright and sharp—skin breaking, the deep pressure of his bite claiming the gland. It hurts. It hurts more than anything else has hurt tonight. A raw, shocked sound tears out of me and my whole body goes rigid in his arms.
I don’t understand what’s happening.
Something enormous and warm tries to pour through the pain, flooding down my spine and into my chest, but all I can register is the tearing burn at my throat and the way Calder’s teeth are still locked there.
My hands scrabble weakly at the sheets. I keen and try to pull away but both of Calder’s arms hold me in place.