13. Esme
Thirteen
Esme
I wake up on fire. Not sick-fire. I know the difference.
I’ve had the flu, I’ve had food poisoning, I know what a fever feels like, and this is not that.
This is my whole body tight, drenched in sweat, and aching.
My skin, oversensitive even for the sheets, slick soaks through my clothes and covers.
An impossibly deep, hollow emptiness grows in my belly.
And none of this shit has to do with any food I consumed last night.
I lie in my wet sheets as I do the math, and I want to fucking scream. My heat just kicked the goddamn door down three fucking weeks early!!
My cycle’s been steady since I was nineteen.
I’ve been suppressed, scheduled, managed.
Now all that’s cracked wide open, and I know exactly why; I know exactly whose fault this shit is.
Weeks of being around him! With his fucking scent everywhere.
His hands on me. His mouth… his goddamn huge fingers, the way he fucking rumbles good girl in my ear, took me to a damn fair because he saw I was excited by the idea.
How he holds me, looks at me, scents me, makes me come over and over without ever giving me the real thing, all of him…
My body got fucking tired of waiting. Done. So it fucking decided.
My omega wants Sven Greymark, solely, specifically, completely, NOW! And my body has cleared its entire schedule for him.
“Okay,” I say to the ceiling. Fuck, my voice is wrecked… “We’re not doing that.”
Because here’s the thing. I am not calling that alpha and telling him I’m in heat.
We’ve been on three dates. Three fucking dates.
You do not, after date three, call the terrifying orc you work for and have been swooning over and say hi, so, my body’s gone into a sex fever for you, mind coming over for a few days to handle things?
There are rules. I still have my dignity.
Fine, I have very little of it left when it comes to Sven Greymark, but I’m keeping my scraps!
So I decide I’ll do what I always do: handle it myself.
I drag myself up, change the sheets, drink water, and email Sven (as my boss!) before the worst of it hits, while I can still type…
not feeling well, nothing bad, too many churros, taking the week.
Light. Breezy. No big deal. A regular girl with a common bug.
I hit send, and I’m more than a little proud of how normal it sounds.
And I don’t let myself think about the fact that I’m lying to Sven, because the truth is way too mortifying to put in an email.
Then I get ready. I drag the box out of the closet and lay everything out on a towel: small, medium, and the big one I ordered online the very day I met Sven…
felt pathetic about and am now extremely grateful for.
The Savage Destroyer Warchief. Yes, that’s what it’s called.
Yes, it’s exactly what I imagine Sven’s packing.
And yes, I am fully aware of what that says about me as a person.
Moving on. The Warchief is ten inches of girthy, green silicone with veiny ridges down the shaft, a thick, flared head, and a swollen knot at the base.
I found it on a monster toy website at 1 AM the night I met Sven, added it to my cart with shaking hands, and felt like a complete degenerate when the package arrived. I drool every time I look at it…
I stock my nightstand with water, dark chocolate (gotta have a taste of my guy…), and protein bars. Then I open my laptop and pull up the saved tabs, the ones with videos I’ve watched about a hundred times by now…
I have a system. I’m going to be fine… I last about two hours before I understand I’m not gonna be fine. None of this fake-ass shit works.
I do everything… the toys, the videos, my hands, all of it…
I come, over and over and over, and none of it even scratches the surface, because my actual problem has a name, a whole-ass huge body, tusks, and horns, pretty dark eyes, a taste to die for, and a magnificently enormous dick I’ve felt through our clothes, hands big enough to break me, heat so strong he feels like a fucking furnace, a scent that makes my mouth fucking water, and that motherfucker is not here.
I know what the real thing is now. That’s what ruined me.
I know what his mouth tastes like, that impossible honey-dark-chocolate that whites out my whole brain.
I know what his fingers feel like working into me knuckle by knuckle, what his voice does to me when he says good girl, what his chest sounds like when he purrs.
I had the real thing, even just the bit of it he gave, but now I’m lying here trying to fill an orc-shaped hole in my body with silicone and a laptop, and it’s like trying to put out a fire with a thimble.
I slowly push The Warchief inside me, inch by inch, folds spreading, inner muscles spasming, slick coating it, dripping around it, and I sob, because it’s not enough…
This shit is nowhere near enough, it’s not him.
When I licked it, it didn’t taste like my Sven.
It doesn’t growl, doesn’t call me any filthy pet names, doesn’t hold me after I come.
It’s just a thing. A sad copy. A sad substitute for the one thing I can’t have.
And my heat keeps building. It comes in waves, each one worse than the previous, my body’s crying out for my alpha, that’s who Sven Greymark is, I’m not even pretending anymore…
and between the waves I lie there wrecked, sweating, and half-insane, thinking about him.
I could call him. I could call him and not even say the real thing.
I could just say come over, and he would.
I know he would; he’d be here in minutes…
But then he’d smell it. The second he’d walk in.
He’d know. There would be no hiding it, no more lies, he’d walk into my place, scent me, and know I what called him for, and I can’t…
I can’t do that, I can’t be the pathetic little omega who falls apart after date three and summons her guy like fucking room service…
Another wave hits me so hard I cry out, curling on the bed, slick gushing from my poor abused cunt, clenching on nothing, empty, empty, so damn empty!
I reach for the green toy again. I’m crying, actually crying, frustrated, aching, so damn alone, and I think fine, fine, I’ll call him.
I can’t do this. I’ll call him and die of embarrassment, but at least I’ll…
And that’s when someone pounds on my door.
I freeze.
The pounding comes again… it’s not just a knock, it’s a fist, hard.
So hard it makes the door shake in its frame.
My first insane thought is that I conjured him, that I wanted him so bad he appeared, and then his scent hits me.
It comes under the wood. Cedar, smoke, and that dark, warm thing, here, thick and real and pouring into my apartment.
My body lunges toward it so hard I have to grab the headboard.
I’m clenching, slick dripping down my thighs, every cell in me turning toward that door, and I scream.
But shit, he thinks I’m sick. If he’s out there, he’s going to…
“Esme.” Sven’s voice comes through the wood panel. Low and rough. “Esme. It’s me. I came to take care of you, baby…” A pause, then his voice changes completely. It drops, turning stunned and feral all at once. Because he’s close enough now, because he knows. “…Esme.”
I’m pressed against the headboard in soaked sheets, my pussy stuffed to the brim with a gigantic toy, the alpha I’ve been losing my mind over is on the other side, and he’s stopped thinking I’m sick. He knows exactly what’s happening to me.
“Open the door, little one,” he fucking growls.