Chapter 6 #2
I did know it. I made myself the punchline before anyone else could get there. Nitsa made a joke of the need itself, shrinking her body's demands until they felt safe to say aloud.
I stroked the line of her back. Anatomy told on people through posture, breath, the set of a shoulder. I kept the thought to myself. Nitsa would hear commentary where I meant a compliment.
"Do you know her, from before?"
"She was sitting at a table near the windows," I said.
"At the rehearsal dinner. Auburn hair. Warm brown eyes.
Something dark green, I think, or blue. Something that made her skin look like she'd been somewhere sunny.
She was laughing at something someone said, full-out, like having fun was the whole point of being in the room.
My kind of person, I thought, before I thought anything else.
And then she turned and I caught the smile…
" I stopped. The memory was clear enough that it felt like picking up something warm.
"The kind of smile that made me want to be the reason for it.
It made me think…I bet whatever's happening in her head is more interesting than anything happening in this room. "
"So you noticed her before the scent match."
"I noticed her before I knew her scent existed. Her smile made me want to know her, know her. The scent confirmed what I'd already clocked, then turned the volume all the way up." I smirked.
Miner snorted. "Nothing about you is subtle, Isak."
"I'm a man of passionate and transparent desires. It's part of my charm."
"It's part of your everything."
"I love you." I smiled at the beta sitting nearly naked in the chair.
"You know I love you," he replied with a small blush.
The knot pulsed again. I shifted my hips as carefully as I could, trying to ease the pressure without waking her. Her body answered anyway, a small, unconscious clench that sent a pulse through me so sharp I had to close my eyes for a second.
"She jokes when she's uncomfortable," I said when I could speak again.
"Mine makes the room easier. Hers makes the need smaller.
She'll be sitting there with sweat running down her back, thighs shaking, and say something dry about the hotel's climate control.
The joke is for her. It lets her ask while pretending she isn't asking. "
"And you want to take that away from her."
"No. I want her to need it less. Or I want—" I stopped. Any explanation risked turning her into a problem for me to solve. "I want to know her well enough that she doesn't have to perform for me. I want to catch what she needs before she has to ask."
"So notice them," Miner said.
"I am noticing them. That's the problem. I'm noticing all of them and I can't do anything about it."
"She's asleep on your chest with your knot inside her."
"That's heat. Heat isn't an offer. A heat's a party her body throws whether she wants to host it or not. I'm just the guy who showed up with the swag bag."
Miner was quiet for a long moment. The morning light had reached the edge of the dresser now, a clean gold line cutting across the walnut surface. Denil hadn't moved. His breathing was deep and even, the kind of sleep that came after your body had decided it was done negotiating.
"She's our omega," I said. Not a claim, a fact that had reached my chest before my mouth.
"She doesn't know it yet. We don't know her yet.
But she's ours. The scent match doesn't lie.
We're going to bite her and bond her. Somewhere between now and then, I need to learn how to care for her without making care feel like weakness. "
"Start with the spine," Miner said. "You're good at spines."
I laughed, real and low and warm. Nitsa shifted against me and made a small sound in her sleep, almost a sigh. I went still. My hand settled at the base of her spine, palm flat against the warm skin, and I held my breath until she settled again.
The room was quiet. Miner sat in his chair with his legs stretched out in front of him, bare, relaxed, entirely present, and the sight of him there, steady, warm, mine, eased something I'd been holding without knowing.
My knot gave another slow throb, and this time my cock twitched inside her, deep as it could go, gripped tight. I breathed through it. Nitsa's weight on me was perfect, warm, solid, alive, and every time she exhaled I felt the rise and fall of her ribs against mine.
Miner's voice was so low I almost didn't catch it. "You haven't moved in forty minutes."
"I'm pinned," I said. "She's using me as a mattress. This is not voluntary stillness. This is constraint."
"It's care," Miner said. "And it's voluntary. You could wake her. You're choosing not to."
"I'm choosing not to wake the woman who has my knot inside her, yes. This is basic self-preservation. She's terrifying when she's annoyed."
"She's never been annoyed with you."
"She's been in heat for two days. Annoyance requires cognitive resources she hasn't had available."
Miner's mouth tipped up. "You don't know that.
" He uncrossed his legs and recrossed them, fluid and unhurried enough to catch my breath.
Naked in a chair at seven in the morning, or whatever it was, he looked completely at home while Nitsa slept on my chest and Denil slept nearby.
The room should have felt crowded. Instead, it felt whole.
Miner made complicated things feel simple. It was one of the reasons I loved him.
"You've been designing the room around her," he said. Not a question. A statement so clean there was no deflecting it.
"I design every room. It's what I do."
"You design every room for the person in it.
This room is built for her. The lamps are angled away from the bed.
The water glasses are on the right side of the nightstand because she's right-handed.
The throw pillows are stacked where she can reach them without sitting up.
You've moved the minibar contents twice. "
I was quiet for a moment. My hand was still on Nitsa's spine. Her breathing had settled into a deeper rhythm, the kind that came with real sleep instead of the fitful dozing of the past two days.
"She's different," I said. "The other heat dates were… they were good. They were what I signed up for. Someone in need, me with capacity, clear boundaries, clean exchange. This isn't that."
"No," Miner said. "It isn't."
"What do you think we need to change? At the house."