Chapter 13
Dating Zayn somehow changed everything and almost nothing in Aiden’s life. They still hung out together, still studied together, still did the things they’d done before, but now with stolen kisses, little touches, and the promise of coming home to do more than that. It was their friendship, yet so much better, so much more.
They’d tried to brainstorm date ideas they’d always hoped to do with someone special, but had found they’d already done them all, with the exception of one.
“Now that I know what you are, can we do a moon viewing?” Zayn had asked, and Aiden couldn’t refuse a request like that. He’d wanted to spend a full moon with Zayn for years.
They even managed to snag a cabin tucked along the edge of Joshua Tree for the occasion, isolated so there were no other houses or people in sight. Just them and the moon and stars. Some light pollution stained the horizon, but not enough to dim the beauty of the night.
A gentle breeze blew over the landscape, carrying the faint aroma of desert plants and parched earth, though Zayn’s scent was better than anything nature had to offer.
As the moon rose, so bright and full even Zayn had no trouble seeing, they sat on the cabin’s porch and bathed in the moonlight. The night lay serene around them, the weather ideal, not a cloud in the sky.
It should have been perfect, but Aiden couldn’t sit still. The call of the moon sang in his blood. The needs of his wolf simmered right under the surface, barely contained. He itched to run, to give in to his instincts, to claim Zayn as his own, but he also wanted to savor this experience.
Zayn glanced over at him, and when Aiden looked back, he knew his eyes flashed with his wolf.
“You’re different tonight. Wilder, somehow. This is what you meant when you said you were less human on a full moon?”
Aiden nodded. “Our energy is tied to the moon. On full moons, that energy is at its peak. That’s part of why we shift and run. It helps use some of that excess.”
“Do you need to do that?”
Aiden shook his head. He had no desire to be anywhere but here, with Zayn.
“Do you want to do something else?” Zayn’s tone made his meaning more than clear.
Aiden very much did, but his control was tenuous with the moon at her fullest. “I’m not sure I can do anything tonight without biting you. Without bonding you. Knotting you.”
A shiver ran through Zayn, and he pinned Aiden with a look. “You don’t want to do that? Because I do. I want you to bite me, to bond me. I want to be with you. I want forever with you.”
Those words set Aiden’s heart racing, the ferocity of his desire for Zayn threatening to unravel what little self-control he retained. He’d never been as driven by his instincts as some shifters, but that night, his wolf was nothing but the primal urge to claim.
The moon’s pull intensified every sensation, every emotion. It left him raw with want and need. Zayn’s scent reached out to him, heady and beckoning, stroking over his senses, mixing with the moonlight to ignite like wildfire in his veins.
“Are you sure?” Aiden asked, a low growl punctuating the question.
Zayn’s eyes searched his, dark with desire and resolve. “More than I’ve ever been of anything in my life.”
The last vestiges of Aiden’s restraint vanished, and he gave in to the urges he’d been fighting. He stood and prowled the few steps it took to get to Zayn’s chair. Without a word, he tugged Zayn to his feet, the air between them crackling and charged as he leaned down and brought their lips together in a searing kiss.
It had only been a few weeks, but Zayn’s body, his touches, his kisses, felt like home, like perfection, like everything Aiden could ever need. He let his wolf take over as he led Zayn into the cabin, the moonlight casting a silvery glow through the large windows as they traded kisses on their way to the bed, reluctantly breaking apart to shed their clothes before tumbling onto the soft blankets.
Aiden ran his hands over Zayn, tracing lines and curves that had etched themselves on his soul, a map he’d studied and memorized as closely as the constellations. He wanted to spend his life exploring it just as thoroughly, finding every spot that’d make Zayn writhe if stroked lightly, every place that’d earn him the sweetest moans when sucked.
Energy hummed inside him, filling him with power and strength. He’d never felt as alive as he did in this moment, his skin tingling with an all-consuming need, with the half-feral instinct to mark, to possess, to give himself to Zayn.
The lust and arousal coming off Zayn was intoxicating, and Aiden feasted on his scent like it alone could sustain him. He trailed his nose down Zayn’s chest as he inhaled, his heart pounding, echoing Zayn’s thundering pulse.
Zayn arched into Aiden’s touch and tangled fingers in his hair. “Fuck, Aiden, please ,” he said, his voice low and rasping.
That was exactly what they’d do, but Aiden wanted to taste him first. He peppered kisses along Zayn’s inner thigh, then up his shaft until he was lapping at the precome beading on the tip. Zayn’s breath hitched, his stomach clenching as he tried not to buck into Aiden’s mouth.
They’d only done this a handful of times, but fuck, Aiden loved it. Loved the taste and feel of Zayn on his tongue, loved the filthy noises that spilled from Zayn’s lips, the pleasure he could give his mate this way. Maybe some other night he’d let Zayn fuck his mouth until he came, but tonight, Aiden needed control. He grabbed Zayn’s hips and pinned him to the mattress, swallowing him down as far as he could take him. Zayn gasped and cursed with each bob of his head. His arm flailed out, nearly knocking the lamp off the bedside table as he groped around to find the drawer and open it, blindly fumbling inside until he produced a bottle of lube.
Aiden blinked up at him.
“I was hoping,” Zayn explained, panting.
How had he gotten that in there without Aiden noticing? It didn’t matter; Aiden didn’t care. He let Zayn slip from his mouth and grabbed the bottle before settling between his legs again.
This was something else they hadn’t done often yet—just a few times each—but he loved it. He didn’t think there was anything that he wouldn’t love with Zayn.
Lubing up his fingers, he brought them to Zayn’s hole, and Zayn spread his legs wider for him, gifting him with the prettiest little whimper as he teased his entrance, then pressed two inside. He’d made Zayn come like this before, working him open as Zayn talked him through it, telling him what he liked, what he wanted Aiden to do to him, how he’d imagined Aiden’s fingers inside him whenever he stretched himself before using a toy. And Aiden was nothing if not an excellent student. He knew what Zayn’s body was begging for, and he gave it to him as he licked and sucked at his cock.
“I’m good,” Zayn said, but Aiden kept going. He maybe wasn’t as large as certain toys, but when he claimed Zayn, he wanted to make sure he’d be able to take his knot, and if that meant drawing more cries and pleas from Zayn first, well, that was a sacrifice he was willing to make.
Zayn threaded a hand through his hair and tugged. “ Aiden , I’m good.”
Aiden scissored his fingers once more, getting one last curse, before he crawled up Zayn’s body, and Zayn pulled him into a deep, desperate kiss. Aiden’s instincts were screaming at him to bury himself inside Zayn, to claim him completely.
He broke the kiss, his breathing heavy. “Ready?”
Zayn gave him a flat look with no heat behind it. “Have been for a while, yeah.”
Aiden grinned. “Good.” He kissed Zayn again, then propped himself up on a forearm to watch Zayn’s face as he lined himself up.
Despite everything they’d done, they hadn’t done this, and Aiden had so many fantasies about how it would go. He nudged against Zayn’s entrance, the head of his dick right there, but not pressing in.
“The next time we do this, I want you to ride me like one of your toys. Use me to get yourself off. I’ve wanted that since I first watched your reviews.”
“Next time?” Zayn asked, breathless. “We haven’t even gotten to this ti— oh, fuck, yes .” He moaned, clutching Aiden as he slowly pushed in.
Nothing had ever felt as good as this. As sinking into Zayn, his tight heat overwhelming in that moment of surrender and completion. Like something inside of Aiden, as ancient as the stars, had finally found its way home after millennia of wandering alone.
A soft gasp escaped Zayn’s lips. Their bodies fit together, two halves of a whole, and the little self-control Aiden had left wavered with each breath, each slow thrust, each shared heartbeat. He drank in the sight of the moonlight and shadows dancing over Zayn’s skin, and Zayn looked up at him with eyes as dark as the deepest space, hungry and possessive and ready for what came next.
He tilted his head to the side—a plea and an offering, silent permission. Aiden nuzzled into his neck, reveling in his scent.
His fangs dropped, and he scraped them along the juncture of Zayn’s neck, eliciting a needy whimper from Zayn, or maybe from himself. He let that tide of desire and instinct wash over him. When he bit down, when his teeth broke skin, the bond that had been waiting for them slid into place, the connection between them unfurling as everything that was Zayn rushed into him, as everything that was him rushed into Zayn.
Zayn knew what Aiden needed; he bit him in return, claiming him as his own. All the sensations and emotions mirrored between them, building in intensity, shivering through them, their desire burning brighter than any star, sweeping them away.
“You have no idea how much I’ve wanted this,” Aiden said, a whispered confession against Zayn’s skin, but Zayn was shaking his head. He’d wanted it just as much. Those years of longing swept through their bond.
Aiden’s grip tightened, their bodies in perfect sync, their rhythm building to a crescendo that swirled through them like a cosmic storm. Every cell, every particle of their beings, seemed connected.
Ecstasy coursed through them as Aiden’s knot began to swell. Zayn groaned, his eyes locking on Aiden’s, and Aiden sensed everything he was experiencing: the glorious feeling of being stretched open farther and farther, the need to be filled impossibly full, all combining with the demanding throb of his knot, the hot clench of Zayn’s heat around him. It entwined until he could no longer separate what came from him and what came from Zayn.
He slammed into Zayn a final time, his knot fully expanding, tying them together. Zayn shuddered against him as their orgasms hit. He spilled between them, and Aiden released deep inside him, leaving them trembling and panting, clinging to each other as they rode out the aftershocks.
They lay naked, limbs intertwined, bodies still connected. The heat of their passion lingered, and they relished its warm glow as the cool air in the room caressed their sweat-damp skin, slowly bringing them back to Earth. Aiden’s wolf rumbled a low, contented sound, secure in the knowledge that Zayn was theirs, that they were Zayn’s in return. The bond they shared was transcendent, their scents mingling and merging into something beyond perfection.
Zayn huffed out a shaky laugh. “So this is level-ten inflation. I think I might have to dock a star from Mr. Knotz because he doesn’t begin to compare.”
Aiden couldn’t help but smile, grinding into Zayn and earning a choked-off moan. “Does that mean I get five stars?”
“There are not enough stars in the universe for what you deserve.”
“Same.” Aiden buried his face in Zayn’s neck and breathed him in. “You smell so good after you come. When I’d go on a full-moon run after you started reviewing toys, I knew I’d come home to the scent of your pleasure filling the apartment. I knew what you’d be doing while I was gone. It was torture. But none of those times were a fraction as perfect as you smell right now—my scent covering you, my knot stretching you, my come inside you.”
Zayn shivered, pulling him closer, and Aiden ground into him again, dragging ragged moans out of Zayn with every movement of his hips, but he kept his rhythm slow. There was no hurry; they had all the time in the world.
In a few months, they’d graduate, and then they’d go to grad school together; Aiden felt that with a certainty deep in his soul. They’d continue their studies together, be ridiculously stressed together as they wrote their theses, celebrate as they got their doctorates together. They’d discover planets and galaxies. Their names would be written in the stars so that, for the rest of human history, people would look up into the night sky and know them and their love.
But even if that didn’t happen, this was more than enough. Their bond was as infinite as the universe that stretched out around them with its vast, glittering beauty—glorious and eternal.
They had each other, and that would always be enough.