Chapter 20
Helena
Thunder gnaws the bones of our rented flat. I peel myself from a tangle of sheets and sweat, mindlessly groping for a patch of cool fabric but finding only sticky warmth and Zane’s arm draped heavy and sure across my waist.
He’s dead asleep. Or pretends to be. With Zane, it’s difficult to tell—his discipline for stillness rivals most statues, but I catch the careful way his breathing falters as soon as I stir. Every muscle in his body is tension, even at rest.
The storm outside simmers into a lull that presses hot air down against the world, lidding it like a steamer basket.
The ceiling fan overhead struggles. Each revolution is a drunken lurch that does nothing but recirculate the wet heat.
My skin crawls with it, like every pore is trying to wring itself out.
My head pounds. My mouth tastes sour. A slow fever radiates out from between my legs and turns the world around me into a fuzzy, slow-motion dream.
I roll onto my back. Zane’s fingers curl against my hip. He mumbles my name.
He’s as drenched as I am, black hair pasted to his temple. His jaw is shadowed in stubble and his pale arms shine with sweat. I blink hard, but there’s no blinking away the scent he throws off. Flint and the electric blue before a storm as mouthwatering and familiar as my own pulse.
I hate how good it smells.
I hate how easy it is to fall apart for him.
My thighs are slicked, pressed together tight enough to trap a fistful of the heat pouring out of me.
When I shift, it squelches under me, gross and humiliating.
Yet my hand drifts down, helpless, seeking some kind of friction.
My body is on autopilot, completely derailed from the prim, controlled Helena who was voted “most likely to die a spinster” at Omega Finishing School.
I know what this is. Heat. The “blessing” that’s supposed to be the pride of every omega. But it feels like my insides are melting and every part of me aches and throbs and needs. I bite the inside of my cheek, but the pain is nothing compared to the pulse between my legs.
Zane stirs. “Are you awake?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, mortified, but manage a, “Yeah.” It comes out more of a gasp than a word.
He props himself up on one elbow. The way he looks at me is so different from any alpha I’ve ever known. It’s not hunger or ownership. It’s feral concern.
“You should have woken me.” His voice is roughened by sleep but already tensed to act. He touches my cheek, hand cold from the pillow, and I almost sob at the relief. “How bad?”
My answer is another half-whimper. “I can’t think straight.” It hurts to talk. “I can’t—Zane, I need—” The sentence falls apart as I try to squeeze my thighs together, but there’s too much slick for friction. I am so far gone, my dignity’s the first casualty. “I’ve not had a heat in so long.”
Years.
Literal years.
Zane leans closer. The air between us is oven-hot and dense with pheromones. His and mine are braided together until it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. I catch his scent and nearly faint. My fingers slip down to my clit, circling frantically. I moan from deep in my throat.
He’s already moving, lifting the covers and seeing the mess I’ve made of myself. I expect him to smirk and tease. Instead, his jaw ticks once and a growl rumbles in his chest. “I’ll take care of you. You know that, right?”
My answer is an embarrassingly loud moan as his hand replaces mine, long fingers gentle but impossibly sure on my clit. I cry out and grab his wrist as I try to grind my hips against him. “Please,” I gasp. “Please, I—”
He hushes me. “I’ve got you, angel.” His thumb strokes over my clit, slow but relentless. His other hand splays across my belly, pinning me in place.
My entire body tries to climb the walls of sensation. The scent of him spikes every time he shifts closer. And each time I breathe it in, I get a little dizzier, a little closer to the edge.
“I need your cock. I need it. I need—”
“I know what you need.” His voice has changed. More commanding now. The blunt pressure of his thumb is enough to make me see stars.
He shoves his sleep shorts down and pushes my knees apart. The heat in the room is nothing compared to the furnace between my thighs. He slides in a finger, then two. My hips buck as he stretches me. Slick pours out in fresh waves as Zane rolls on a condom.
“Fuck. You’re soaked, Helena.” The sound of it is obscene, but my body clamps down, desperate for more. “Are you sure about this?”
I nod ferociously. “Yes, Zane. Please.”
Zane’s cock presses up against my entrance.
For a heartbeat, he just waits, eyes locked on mine, every line of his body drawn as taut as a bow.
His heartbeat thunders against me. He’s so large, so wide, but I want it all so badly, my vision blurs.
The urge to squirm is overwhelming, but I force myself to hold still, to let him be the one to cross the line.
When he finally pushes forward, rolling his hips the tiniest bit, the thick head parts me with an electric shock.
I gasp, my whole body spasming around the intrusion.
He doesn’t ram it in all at once, but even so, the stretch is monumental.
My walls grip him vise-tight. He pauses every few millimeters, only advancing when he feels me flutter and relax.
I whimper, abjectly grateful for the attention but also desperate to be filled.
The contradiction makes me seize around him harder.
He adds a hand to my thigh, spreading me open, thumb massaging little circles into my skin as he inches deeper.
“Breathe, Helena.”
I do, shuddering, sucking air into my lungs that seems to go straight to my brain and make me dizzier. My heart hammers behind my ribs. The burn between my legs is exquisite, equal parts pain and pleasure.
I never want it to stop.
When he bottoms out, his hips flush to mine, I nearly black out from the sensation. I’ve never felt so split open. Never so full.
Zane groans, a sound pulled up from somewhere deep and primal. “Gods, Helena.” He drops his forehead to mine, sweat already beading on his brow. “You’re perfect. Fuck.”
He stays there, unmoving, just letting me adjust. I think I could stay like this forever, impaled on him and staving off the next inevitable wave. But my body disagrees. It tightens and contracts, pulses hard around the thickness inside. A new flood of slick leaks out to soak the sheets beneath us.
He pulls back and thrusts again, so slow, so careful, I want to scream. The friction is a thousand tiny sparks against my nerves and my voice is gone, replaced by helpless gasps. My hands fumble for him so I can anchor on to his shoulders.
“You’re okay?” he asks.
I release a harsh breath. “Yes. Need you. Don’t stop.”
Zane grins. He draws out even slower this time, then pushes in with just enough force to make my body clamp down. And that’s all it takes for him to lose the last bit of control. He sets a harsh rhythm that sends the bed creaking under us. The storm seems to pound the windows in time with us.
The room is boiling and the sheets stick to my back. Every surface is slicked with sweat. Every time Zane drives in, his pelvis kisses my clit and sets off another little blaze of pleasure in my core. I brace myself on his arms, using him for leverage, chasing the rhythm until my thighs shake.
I can’t think. Can’t remember my own name. Every sense is reduced to the wet slap of bodies, the symphony of moans, the storm and Zane, Zane, Zane.
He ups the pace. I meet him thrust for thrust, our hips colliding.
“Harder,” I beg, and he delivers, every thrust now brutal and desperate.
I feel it then, the swelling at the base of his cock, his knot forming—the only thing I want in the universe. I tremble on the edge of cumming, but I need his knot. I need to be locked together with him.
He knows. Of course he knows. Zane is nothing if not tuned to my every need. When he senses my desperation, he slams in deep and grinds his hips, coaxing his knot to slip past my entrance. The burn is instant, a white-hot spear of sensation, so intense, I arch off the mattress and scream.
He bites down on my shoulder. The pressure is perfect, and with the next thrust, his knot lodges deep inside, locking us together. I cum so hard, my vision whites out. Every muscle spasms. I clutch at him like I’ll never let him go.
I don’t intend to.
Zane groans my name. His hips jerk, and I feel the pulsing warmth as he fills me with his own release. His knot seals everything inside. His weight crushes me, but I want it—want to be anchored to the world by the force of this alpha.
All I can do is pant and tremble. My skin prickles, not with the heat of the room, but with something else. The pain is gone, replaced by an immense fullness and sated, raw euphoria.
But the relief is brief. The aftershocks hit, smaller waves of need that threaten to build again.
I’m greedy.
I’m insatiable.
I whimper as my hips rock involuntarily. Zane lifts his head, eyes dark with concern and desire.
He strokes my cheek, thumb tracing my jaw. “Still hurting?”
“It’s not—” I have to swallow before I can speak. “I need more. I need…” I can’t finish. The words are shameful, the cravings worse.
“You want your pack,” he says, matter-of-fact.
“Please,” I say. “Call them. I need—Please, Zane, I can’t—”
He kisses me. “I’ll get them.” He tries to pull out, but his knot holds him fast. He curses, frustrated but amused. He brushes sweat-soaked hair from my face. “Guess we wait.”
He settles against me and holds me tight. I can feel every throb of his cock, every slow pulse of his release inside me while the storm outside continues to rage.
Eventually, his knot shrinks enough for him to slip free. My body protests the loss, clutching at empty air. The fresh wave of slick that follows makes me flush. Zane wipes me gently, using a corner of the sheet, then grabs his phone.
“Hang tight,” he says, already typing out the message to Lucas and Cole. “They’ll come running.”