CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Gray
The desk lamp throws a pool of light across my economics textbook.
Outside, the campus is settling into nighttime quiet.
I've been sitting here for the past hour, staring at the same paragraph without reading a single word.
My phone sits dark beside me. Three missed calls from my father.
Two from my mother. I haven't listened to the voicemails.
The knock at my door is soft. I know it's her before she speaks.
"Gray?"
I get up and open the door. Reese stands there, her face unreadable. She's wearing one of Bo's hoodies, the sleeves hanging past her fingertips. Her hair is damp from a shower.
"Can I come in?"
I step aside. She moves past me, and her scent hits me hard. Honeysuckle and something darker now, something that calls to the Alpha in me. The door clicks shut behind her.
She stops in the middle of my room, arms wrapped around herself. "We need to talk."
"I know."
"Your parents." She turns to face me. "They want you to claim someone else."
She states it like the fact it is. I lean against my desk, gripping the edge hard enough that the wood creaks. "They have expectations."
"Expectations." She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "That's one way to put it."
"Reese."
"No, I get it." She moves to the window, looking out at the dark campus below. "Legacy families. Bloodlines. All that matters to people like them."
"You don't understand."
She whirls on me. "Don't I? My parents are the same, Gray. The only difference is they'd rather I wasn't an Omega at all."
The truth of it hangs between us. We're both trapped by families who see us as extensions of their ambitions rather than people with our own desires.
"What do you want?" she asks, and her voice breaks just slightly on the last word.
I push off from the desk and move to her. My hands frame her face, thumbs brushing her cheekbones. "You know what I want."
"Do I?"
"You're in my head every second. In my blood. I can't think straight when you're not near me, and I can't breathe right when you are." My forehead drops to rest against hers. "You've ruined me for anyone else."
Her hands come up to grip my wrists. "Then why are we having this conversation?"
"Because wanting something and being able to have it are two different things."
She pulls back, eyes blazing. "That's bullshit and you know it."
"Is it? You saw how they looked at you. At us. They have my whole future planned out, and you're not part of it."
"So change the plan."
"Change the plan?" I stare at her. "They control everything. My position on the team, my future career, all of it depends on playing by their rules."
"No." She shakes her head. "That's what they've made you believe. What about what you want?"
"I want you." The words tear out of me. "But I can't lose everything else in the process."
She steps back, and the loss of her touch feels like losing a piece of myself. "You mean you won't."
"Reese."
"No, I understand. Really, I do." She moves toward the couch, then stops, looking back at me. "But can we just... not talk about it? Just for now?"
I watch her sink onto the couch, pulling her knees to her chest. The lamp light casts shadows across her face, making her look small, vulnerable in a way she never allows herself to be.
I cross to her, sit close enough that our bodies touch. "What do you need?"
"I need to not think for a while." She uncurls, shifts to face me. "I need to pretend that tomorrow doesn't exist."
My hand finds her face again, thumb tracing the line of her jaw. "We can do that."
She leans into my touch, eyes fluttering closed. When she opens them again, there's something different there. A decision, maybe. Or a goodbye.
She leans into my touch, and the tension I’ve been carrying snaps loose. Her mouth covers mine, the kiss unhurried, deliberate. Not frantic. She kisses me like she wants to know every angle, every contour, like she’s committing me to memory.
Her hands go to my shirt, fingers deft as she works the buttons open one by one. The fabric slides off my shoulders, and her palms spread across my chest, warm and steady, as if she’s testing that I’m really here.
She strips Bo’s hoodie without hesitation, the tank beneath tugging up in the same motion.
There’s no teasing, no pause for effect — just bare skin revealed, inch by inch, until I see the line of her sternum, the swell of her breasts, the faint shadow of the place I ache to mark.
She isn’t asking permission. She’s giving herself to me outright, and the weight of that hits harder than it should.
She climbs into my lap, straddling me, knees braced against my thighs. We’re chest to chest, breath mingling, her eyes blown wide and dark. Her hands slide down my torso again, nails dragging lightly over muscle, grounding herself in the feel of me.
She kisses me once more, deeper this time, tongue parting my lips, pulling me under. My hands find their way beneath her tank, cupping, squeezing, testing her weight in my palms. I roll her nipples between my fingers and she moans into my mouth, hips shifting instinctively.
She grinds against me, slow but firm, heat pressing through the thin barrier of cotton. The friction is sharp, immediate, and my hands drop to her waist to guide her movements. She hooks one leg tighter around me, angling closer, and the damp heat of her seeps through to my skin.
I reach down and shove at her leggings, pushing the fabric past her hips.
She lifts just enough for me to drag them down, and they pool at her calves before she kicks them aside.
She’s bare now, spread over my lap, and the sight of her—wet, trembling, open to me—hits deeper than any threat or demand my family could ever make.
She shifts in my lap, but instead of taking me into her like I expect, she slides down to her knees between mine. My breath catches.
“Reese—”
“Let me,” she whispers, voice low, sure.
Her fingers trace the line of my stomach, slow enough that I feel every brush of her nails.
She undoes my belt, then my fly, tugging fabric down with steady hands until I’m bare and hard in front of her.
The sight of her kneeling there, eyes dark, mouth parted—it’s almost enough to undo me without her even touching me.
Then she leans in and runs her tongue up the length of me, from base to tip, savoring like she’s tasting something sacred. My head drops back against the couch with a groan I can’t hold back.
She doesn’t rush. She takes me into her mouth inch by inch, wet heat surrounding me, tongue stroking the underside until I’m gripping the cushions just to stay grounded.
Every movement is deliberate. She pulls back to lick me from root to crown, then swallows me down again, hollowing her cheeks, sucking slow and deep.
“Christ, Reese,” I choke out. My thighs tense under her hands.
She hums around me, and the vibration nearly makes me lose it. Her eyes flick up, locking with mine, and the look there guts me. Not playful. Not coy. Worshipful. Like this is as much for her as it is for me.
Her hand wraps around the base, stroking in rhythm with her mouth, twisting just slightly when she pulls back to flick her tongue across the head. I can feel myself teetering on the edge, and I know if I let her keep going I won’t last.
I fist a hand in her hair and tug gently. “Enough—come here.” My voice is raw, almost pleading.
She releases me with a wet sound, lips shiny, a little smile curving at the corner of her mouth like she knows exactly what she’s doing to me. She lets me drag her up into my lap.
When she sinks onto me, it’s slow, excruciatingly slow, her heat stretching around me until I’m fully seated inside her. My vision whites out for a second, the sensation so intense I have to hold her hips still to keep from coming right then.
She starts to move, rolling her hips in deep, measured strokes that grind us together in perfect rhythm. It isn’t fast. It isn’t frantic. It’s consuming. Every rise and fall feels like she’s trying to carve me into her memory, to keep this with her even after she walks out the door.
Her breasts bounce gently with each thrust, and I can’t stop myself from leaning in, from taking one of her nipples into my mouth. I suck, slow and hard, teeth scraping, tongue circling, and the taste of her skin makes something in me snap.
The Alpha in me surges forward. My canines throb. All I have to do is bite down, mark her here, make her mine forever. Her nipple sits against my teeth and I’m a breath away from claiming her right there, not on her neck, but on her breast where no one could mistake it.
She must feel it—the way my jaw tightens, the way my breath shakes—because instead of pulling back, she arches into me, offering herself.
“Do it,” she whispers, broken and brave. “If you want to.”
Everything in me screams yes. My body is ready to break every rule, burn every bridge. I want the bond, want it carved into my blood and hers.
But I can’t. My parents’ faces flash in my head, their threats, their control. The leash I’ve worn my whole life yanks tight.
With a strangled sound, I wrench my mouth away and press my forehead to her chest instead. “I can’t.”
She stills above me. For a moment, the only sound in the room is our breathing. Then her hand slides into my hair, soft, forgiving, and it kills me more than if she’d been angry.
“I know,” she whispers.
Her fingers stay tangled in my hair, stroking softly, almost like she’s comforting me. That hurts worse than anything.
“Reese,” I rasp, but she only shakes her head, cupping my jaw until I meet her eyes.
“Then just… give me this.” Her hips start to move again, rolling slow and deliberate, dragging me deep inside her. “One last time.”
The words spear through me, but I can’t stop her, can’t stop myself. I grip her hips and guide her pace, lifting her just enough that she sinks down harder on the next thrust. The sound she makes is sharp and raw, her nails biting into my shoulders.