2. Chapter 2
Chapter two
JD
The second her door clicks shut, I lose it.
My control, iron-forged, thirty-four years in the making, the kind of discipline that built a billion-dollar empire from nothing, cracks down the center like a fault line.
I press my palm flat against the hallway wall and lean forward, breathing through my teeth, trying to force my Alpha instincts back into the cage they've lived in my entire adult life.
And it doesn't fucking work.
Her scent is everywhere. Honey and vanilla, thick and sweet, layered with something darker now, something ripe and wet and ready.
My cock is already rock-hard, straining against my zipper, and my knot, that base of swollen tissue that only inflates for a true match, starts to throb with a desperate, aching pressure that makes my vision blur.
She's in the next room. Right there. One door between us.
I could kick it open. One kick. I could pin her to that bed, bury my face between her thighs, and drink the slick that's pouring out of her. I could mount her, knot her, claim her, make her mine in every way biology intended.
Stop.
I squeeze my eyes shut. My hand curls into a fist against the wall, knuckles white.
I am not a fucking animal.
I am not the feral, unwanted foster kid who grew up with nothing but rage and hunger. I am JD Blaine. I built Blaine Capital from a single loan and sheer stubbornness. I control boardrooms, I dismantle competitors, and I do not lose control over an omega I met fifteen minutes ago.
But God, her scent.
It's not just attraction. I've felt attraction before.
Hired omegas for heat cycles when the biological need became too much to ignore.
It was transactional, clinical, and forgettable.
This is something else entirely. This is the scent-match the agency promised, the one I didn't believe in, the one I only agreed to because Deklan was drowning, and Knox thought it would be funny and I was desperate enough to try anything.
Lily needs an omega. That's what I told myself when I signed the contract. Lily needs warmth. Lily needs softness. Lily needs someone who won't look at her and see a burden.
But I didn't expect Willow.
I didn't expect her wide, terrified eyes or her shaking hands or the way she clutched that battered duffel bag like it was the only thing she owned in the world.
I didn't expect her voice, soft, slightly hoarse, with a drawl that speaks to small towns and front porches, and a life so far removed from this penthouse that it might as well be a different planet.
And I sure as hell didn't expect my knot to start swelling the moment her scent hit me.
"JD."
Knox's voice comes from behind me. I don't turn around. If I look at him right now, he'll see everything. He'll see the primal need written across my face, the way my hands are shaking, the way my cock is pressing obscenely against my slacks.
"You need to handle that," he says, and his voice is rougher than usual.
He felt it too. The match. The pull. Knox hides behind his smirk and his dirty mouth, but I've known him since we were eight years old, shoved into the same overcrowded foster home in South Boston.
I know what he looks like when he's barely holding it together.
And he looks like that right now.
"I'm handling it," I say through my teeth.
"That's what I'm afraid of." Knox steps closer, and I feel his pheromones, smoky, sharp, and mixing with the honey-vanilla still hanging in the air. Two alphas in a hallway saturated with an omega's slick. It's a miracle we haven't started fighting yet.
"You're about two seconds from kicking her door down. I can see it. Deklan can see it. And if you don't get yourself under control, she's going to see it, and she's going to run."
I turn and look at him because he's right.
Knox stands three feet away, his golden hair disheveled from where he's been running his hands through it. His green eyes are still blown wide, the Alpha in him surging close to the surface, but his expression is serious. Rare for Knox. Almost unheard of.
"She's not a heat hire," he says quietly. "She's not one of the omegas we've used before. This is real, JD. The match is real. And if you go in there like a feral dog, you'll ruin it before it starts."
I know he's right. I know it. But my knot is aching, and her scent is in my lungs, and every cell in my body is screaming at me to go to her.
"I need a shower," I mutter.
Knox's eyebrow arches, and the ghost of his usual smirk flickers across his face. "Yeah. I bet you do."
I don't dignify that with a response as I turn and walk down the hall toward my bedroom, forcing one foot in front of the other like a man walking through quicksand. Every step away from her door feels wrong, my Alpha instincts howling, clawing, demanding I turn back.
I make it to my room, close the door, and lock it. Then I press my forehead against the cool wood and breathe.
Honey and vanilla. Wet. Ready. Ours.
The thought slams into me, ours, and it's so instinctive, so certain, that it steals my breath. Not mine. Ours. All three of us. The match doesn't lie. The agency's proprietary scent-matching algorithm doesn't make mistakes. Willow is ours.
And she's in the next room, slick and trembling and probably terrified, and I'm standing here like a goddamn teenager, hard enough to cut glass.
I push off the door and strip. The shirt first, buttons tearing because I don't have the patience to undo them.
Then the slacks, shoving them down my hips along with my boxers.
My cock springs free, thick and heavy, the shaft flushed dark with blood.
And at the base, my knot is already swelling, a dense, aching lump of tissue that pulses with every heartbeat, demanding something to grip, something to fill.
I don't look at myself in the mirror. I don't want to see what I look like right now, unhinged, desperate, and barely human.
I walk into the bathroom and turn the shower on. Cold. As cold as the tap will go, but it doesn't help.
The water hits my skin like ice, and my cock doesn't soften.
Not even a fraction. If anything, the contrast, the freezing water against my overheated skin, makes the ache worse.
I brace my hands against the tile wall, head bowed, water streaming over my shoulders, and try to think about something, anything, that isn't Willow.
Board meetings. Acquisition targets. Quarterly earnings.
Her scent.
No.
Lily's laugh. The way she says "uncle" with that lisp.
Willow's voice, soft and shaking. "I'm sorry. I don't know why…"
Stop!
The way her thighs pressed together, trying to hide the wetness. The way her chest heaved. The way her nipples hardened under that cheap blouse…
"Fuck," I snarl against the tile.
My hand wraps around my cock before I can stop myself. The cold water sluices over my knuckles as I grip the shaft, and the first stroke pulls a groan from somewhere deep in my chest. My hips jerk forward into my fist, and I let my head drop, forehead pressing against the wet tile, eyes closed.
I'm not going to be able to stop this. I know it. My body has already decided.
I start to stroke, slow at first. Tight grip, dragging from base to tip, my thumb sweeping over the head where precum is already beading, hot and slick despite the cold water.
My knot throbs at the base, swollen and sensitive, and when my grip brushes against it, a jolt of pleasure shoots up my spine so sharp it makes my knees buckle.
I imagine her. Willow, in that room next door, probably lying on that bed right now.
Is she touching herself? Does she feel the same ache I do, the hollow, desperate need that can't be ignored?
Is her hand slipping between her thighs, fingers sliding through her slick, trying to relieve the pressure that's building and building with no release?
My strokes speed up. My hips fuck into my fist, the wet slap of skin against skin echoing off the shower walls.
I picture her, pale skin, pink cheeks, that honey-vanilla scent thick in the air.
I picture her spreading her thighs for me, her slick glistening on her inner thighs, her omega instincts overriding every logical thought, begging me to fill her.
"Please," she'd whisper. "Please, Alpha."
A growl rumbles through my chest and my free hand slams against the tile, cracking it but I don't give a single flying fuck.
I imagine pinning her to the bed, her wrists above her head, held in one of my hands.
My body covering hers, my cock pressing against her entrance, feeling the wet heat of her, the way she'd arch beneath me, desperate for it.
I imagine pushing inside her. Slowly. Feeling her stretch around me, inch by inch, her slick easing the way, her channel gripping me like she was made for me.
Because she was. The match doesn't lie.
I imagine her moaning my name. Not "sir." Not "Mr. Blaine." JD. Breathless and broken and beautiful. I imagine the way her pussy would clench around me when she comes, the way her slick would flood my cock, the way her body would pull me deeper, demanding my knot.
And my knot, God, my knot. I imagine forcing it inside her.
The tight ring of her entrance resisting for just a moment before giving way, swallowing the thick base of my cock as she screams. The way it would lock us together, tied, bound, her inner walls spasming around me while I pump her full of cum.
Hour after hour. Rope after rope. Filling her until her belly swells with it.
Until she's so full it leaks out around the seal of my knot.
"Take it," I'd growl in her ear. "Take all of it. You're mine. Ours. Every drop."
My hand moves faster. Harder. My fist squeezes around my shaft, and my hips piston forward, chasing the image, the fantasy, the need. Water runs down my face, into my open mouth, and I'm panting, gasping, like I'm dying.
Because I am. I'm dying for her. For an omega I met less than twenty minutes ago.