THIRTY-EIGHT #2
I nod, because I’m pretty sure talking right now might just turn me into grains of dust.
Dakota moves on hands and knees, slow at first, then with a deep little scowl like she resents how careful she’s being even though she chose it. She stops just in front of me, close enough that her knees almost touch mine.
My hands remain exactly where they are. Her eyes drop to them.
Waiting. Checking. Then she reaches up and pulls the headphones off.
The music drips from the cushioned earpiece, barely there and soft as it bleeds into the room.
Her hair is still hidden under her hat, and her bandana still covers her mouth, but her eyes are right there.
Light hazel and furious and too alive for the dim room we’re sitting in.
“I want this to shut off,” she says.
I know she doesn't mean the music, so I swallow and ask, “Your head?”
“My body,” she corrects, her voice quieter now. “The buzzing. The flinching. The feeling like every part of me is just waiting for someone to turn me into a problem.”
“You are a problem,” I tell her, and her eyes sharpen. I lift a hand slowly, giving her time to stop me. “The best kind of problem I can imagine.”
She watches my hand but doesn’t move away, so I touch two fingers to the floor next to her knee first.
A question.
Her eyes dart down and then she shifts her knee until it presses against my fingers.
And there’s the answer.
My breath leaves my lungs very carefully as I slide my hand around her knee, then up to the outside of her thigh. My hand moves slow over fabric, not grabbing or claiming, just contact, and I watch as her eyelashes flutter.
“There?” I ask.
She nods.
I touch her thigh with my free hand. “Both?”
Another nod.
Then her scent thickens in the small room, honey spilling warmer now, rain turning sweet and electric. My own scent answers before I can even stop it, smoke and clove curling through the cramped room.
Dakota inhales and her eyes darken before she whispers, “That’s better.”
My Alpha goes completely still, not lunging but listening.
I keep my voice light, worried that if I make this too serious she might actually bolt out of her own skin. “That’s actually brilliant news for me and my magic smell.”
“Don’t get smug,” she volleys with very little bite to her words.
“Too late,” I tell her. “It’s gone to my head. I’m unbearable now.”
“You were always unbearable.”
“Then at least you know I’m consistent,” I argue.
With another almost-there laugh, her fingers catch the front of my shirt. It’s not gentle, but it’s not desperate either. It’s certain.
“Ewan.”
One word. Just my name. A command wrapped in need.
“Yeah?”
“Touch me.”
I’ll actually be damned if my brain doesn’t trip over itself like an idiot, landing face-first in a ditch I have to wriggle awkwardly out of. I nod once and mutter, “Right.”
Once again, Dakota’s eyes narrow and she asks, “Was that a little too hard for you?”
“No. No, no, I’m actually very good at hands,” I blurt quickly. “Had them for years.”
“Impressive,” she says.
“Thanks. I’ve actually been training since birth, you know?” I joke.
“Ewan.”
I nod once again. “Right. Touching. All the touching.”
Bloody hell, what is even wrong with me?
I do touch her, though. I let my hands slide higher, over her hips, then around her waist, pulling only when she moves with me.
She climbs onto my lap in one quick, determined motion, straddling me with her knees on either side of my hips, favoring one knee over her wounded one.
It’s different to how she carries herself in every room.
There’s no disguise here, no tiny Beta boy shape.
She settles over me like she’s just decided gravity is a myth, like it’s just another rule she can break. My back hits the wall harder than I planned, and a small sound slips out of me.
“You good there, Wales?” she asks.
“Yup. Just out here showing restraint and shit.”
“You made a noise.”
“I’ll have you know, I’m very heroically bottling several,” I inform.
That almost-laugh comes back again, caught behind that bandana of hers, then she reaches up to pull it away. Her mouth appears. Her chin. Her face, completely unhidden and close enough to actually ruin me.
“I don’t want quiet,” she says.
My hands tighten once on her hips before I force them to relax. “What do you want?”
“The music.” Her fingers grip my shirt tightly. “Your voice. Your hands. I want to know where I am.”
I nod.
“Then stay with me, Tiny Terror,” I say. “That’s all. No disappearing. No pretending you’re somewhere else to survive me. If you need to stop, we stop. If you need to slow down, we slow down. If you need to bite me instead, I’ll do my best not to be dramatic about it.”
Her gaze flicks to my neck, then back to my eyes. Something old and Omega-hot flashes through the air as she says, “Bite.”
My heart actively slams against my ribcage once, and I go very, very still.
Her fingers tighten once more, and she says, “Not yet. I just… I want to talk about it before my brain turns into soup.”
“Good plan,” I tell her softly. “Loving the soup awareness.”
“Ewan.”
I breathe out slowly before finally saying, “A claiming isn’t a joke, love.”
“I know.”
“It’ll bond us.”
“I know that, too.”
“I need to hear you say you want that,” I tell her. “Not because Davis scared you. Not because your body is looking for somewhere to hide. And not because I’m here and convenient.”
She scoffs while her eyes narrow. “You think you’re convenient?”
“I’m right here, I smell good, and you’ve already pinched my headphones,” I answer. “I can see how the lines have blurred.”
“I want you,” she says bluntly, ignoring my attempt to joke, and the words land like a live grenade.
She doesn’t dress them up, doesn’t lower her gaze.
“I want your stupid headphones and your stupid jokes and the way you somehow manage to make rooms feel less riddled with barbed wire. I want your scent. I want your hands. I want the bond because it’s you, and because when everything around me gets too loud, you don’t tell me to be quiet.
You make the noise actually make sense.”
I actually can’t talk. There’s not a single joke left in my brain. I think she just broke me.
Then something flickers behind her eyes, something that looks very much like guilt. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all.
“What?” I ask.
Her fingers twist in my shirt. “Xeon.”
It’s not a question, but more of a warning maybe? A door she’s leaving open so I can walk my merry ass right out of it if I decide to be an idiot.
I’m not an idiot.
I press my forehead to hers and softly tell her, “Yeah. I know.”
Her breath catches. “You know?”
“Love, the man walked out of that greenhouse looking like he’s finally met God and was politely told to keep it down,” I explain.
Dakota stares at me. Then, against all the odds in the broken world, her lips twitch. “He did not.”
“He absolutely did,” I argue. “He was very quiet about it, because he’s Xeon, but still. Man looked like he’d been emotionally rearranged.”
Her eyes drop then. “That doesn’t bother you?”
“Nope,” I answer quickly.
“You’re sure?”
“Tiny Terror, I’m Welsh. I can be incredibly dramatic about the weather, rugby, and shitty tea.
Not about you being wanted by someone who treats you like you’re a person.
” Her fingers finally loosen slightly in my shirt, and I let my thumb brush the edge of her jaw as I continue.
“What happened with Xeon is yours and his. I’m not here to take it.
I’m not here to measure against it either. ”
Her eyes shine in the dim room, and then she whispers, “I want this to be yours too.”
“Then it is,” I tell her simply.
Her breath shatters at that very moment, and then her mouth is on mine.
Not soft and not careful. Dakota kisses like she fights.
Direct and furious and deeply offended by the idea of hesitation.
I meet her right there, one hand at her waist while the other slides up to the back of her neck.
She shivers when I finally meet bare skin under the edge of her hairline.
The music continues to pulse from the player next to us.
A beat.
A thread.
Her hips move over mine, rough enough to make my vision spark, and I can’t help but groan into her mouth. She does it again, because Dakota is an actual menace, and then she whispers against my lips, “Sensitive?”
“Wildly offended by your cruelty,” I counter.
“Good.”
I laugh against her mouth, and she bites my bottom lip hard enough to shut me up, warming everything up a little bit more. The storage room shrinks to her weight in my lap, her scent filling my lungs, and her hands working under my shirt like she’s decided my skin deserves a thorough inspection.
I help her tug the hem up just enough for her palms to brush over my stomach. Her fingers are warm and her nails scrape across my skin lightly, and my laugh dies in my throat so quickly I almost fucking choke on it.
She notices, too. Of course she does.
“That shut you up,” she murmurs against my lips.
“Kota, I’m literally one bad decision away from embarrassing myself in a cupboard.”
Her mouth curves, and once again, she mutters, “Good.”
“Cruel, cruel woman.”
“Still touching me, though,” she points out, rocking her hips once more and sending my brain into oblivion.
“Never once did I say I was smart,” I tell her, my hands sliding under the edge of her shirt, reaching her waist.
Skin.
Warm.
Real.
She shivers when my thumbs brush over the soft spot above her hips. Just feeling her under my hands sends sparks through me. Then she rocks against me, and the pressure makes both of us breathe wrong.
I can feel how hot she is even through the layers. I can feel the slick want gathering in her scent, turning the small room thick with honey and rain and need. My knot aches something fierce, heavy and insistent and pressing against my trousers, and Dakota feels it.
Her eyes drop.
Then lift. Slowly.
“Is that uncomfortable?”
I laugh once, rough and helpless. “That’s actually the polite word for it.”