3. Chapter 3 #4
"I want to drop to my knees and put my mouth on you again.
Not in a dream this time. For real. I want to feel your hands in my hair, pulling hard enough to hurt, while I tongue-fuck you until your legs give out.
" I step closer, and now my chest is nearly touching hers.
The heat radiating between us is suffocating.
"And then I want to carry you to that counter, spread your thighs, and bury my face between them until you come on my tongue so many times you forget your own name. "
"Knox..." Her voice is barely a whisper. Her eyes are glassy and unfocused. Her hips have started to rock, tiny, involuntary movements, her body chasing friction that isn't there.
"But I'm not going to do any of that," I say. "Not yet. Not until you ask."
I watch her face cycle through a dozen emotions: want, frustration, need, fear, and something deeper. Something raw.
"What if I don't know how to ask?" she says, and her voice cracks on the last word.
Something in my chest clenches. Not my cock, something deeper. Something that feels terrifyingly like tenderness.
"Then let me help," I say.
I reach out slowly, giving her time to pull away, time to say no, and cup her face in my hand. My thumb traces her lower lip, pulling it down gently, the way Deklan did in the dream and her breath shudders.
"Not a kiss," I murmur. "Not yet. Just this."
My hand slides from her face down the side of her neck, fingertips brushing her pulse point, racing, fluttering like a trapped bird, down over her shoulder, down her arm. I take her hand and place it on my chest, over my heart. She can feel it pounding. Hammering. As out of control as hers.
"You feel that?" I say. "That's not just biology. That's not just a scent-match. That's you. You walked into this house and broke something open in me that I didn't know was there."
Her eyes widen. Her fingers curl against my chest, gripping the fabric of my t-shirt.
"I'm not a good man, Willow," I say. "I grew up in the system.
I've done things I'm not proud of to survive.
I've shared omegas before, transactional and meaningless, just scratching an itch.
But this?" I look into her eyes, honey-brown, wide and terrified, but hopeful.
"This isn't transactional. This isn't meaningless.
This is the most terrifying thing I've ever felt, and I've been held at knifepoint in a foster home at midnight. "
Her lip trembles. "Knox..."
"I know," I whisper. "I know you're scared. I know you feel like you don't belong here. I know you think this is too fast, too much, too impossible. And you're right. It is. But that doesn't make it less real."
I step back. Just half a step. Putting distance between us, even though every cell in my body screams against it. Her hand is still on my chest, and I cover it with mine, holding it there.
"I promised JD I wouldn't touch you until you asked," I say.
"But I need you to understand something, Willow.
There's a difference between taking and giving.
I'm not going to take anything from you.
Not ever. But if you let me, if you ask, I will give you everything.
Every inch of me. Every drop of want. Every dirty, filthy, desperate thing my body is screaming to do to yours. "
Her pupils are fully blown now. Her scent is so thick I can taste it, sweet and wet and perfect. Her chest is heaving, her nipples straining against the thin cotton of her shirt, and her thighs are trembling.
She wants to ask. I can see it. The words are right there, sitting on her lips, and all she has to do is let them fall.
But she doesn't.
Instead, she does something that shatters me.
She presses her forehead against my chest and breathes. Just breathes. In and out, slow and shaky, her fingers curling into my shirt, her body listing into mine like she's finally found something solid to hold onto.
"I'm scared," she whispers into the fabric.
I wrap my arm around her. Not sexual. Not seductive. Just holding. My chin rests on the top of her head, and I breathe in the scent of her hair, honey and vanilla and something softer underneath, something that smells like home.
"I know," I say. "Me too."
We stand like that for thirty seconds. A minute. An eternity. Then she pulls back, and her eyes are wet, and her chin is trembling, and she looks up at me with an expression that's equal parts terror and want.
"You said you'd give me everything," she says quietly.
"Anything."
"Then just..." She takes my hand. Lifts it. Places it on her hip, where the hem of the oversized shirt sits on her bare skin. "Just this. For now. Just... touch me."
Something primal roars inside me.
She's asking. Not for everything. Not for my cock or my knot or the filthy things I described. She's asking for a touch. A connection. A reassurance that this is real, that she's not imagining it, that the want between us isn't one-sided.
And God, that's more erotic than any explicit invitation could ever be.
My hand spreads across her hip, thumb tracing the ridge of her hipbone.
I pull her closer, slowly, gently, until her body is flush against mine.
Her belly presses against my cock, hard and aching, trapped between us, and she doesn't flinch.
She inhales sharply, and her hips shift, just barely, grinding against me.
A groan rumbles through my chest before I can stop it.
"Feel what you do to me?" I murmur against her hair.
"I feel it." Her voice is muffled against my chest. "I've felt it since yesterday."
"Since the elevator," I correct.
"Since the elevator," she admits.
My hand on her hip tightens. My fingers curl, tips pressing into the soft flesh of her ass, and I pull her harder against me.
She gasps, and her head tilts back, and I look down into her face, flushed, parted lips, heavy-lidded eyes, and the urge to kiss her is so overwhelming I have to lock my jaw to stop myself.
"Not yet," I say, and the words are for me as much as for her.
"Knox…"
"The coffee's done," I say, and I watch her blink in confusion at the non-sequitur.
"What?"
"Coffee's done." I release her hip, God, it takes everything I have, and step back. The loss of her body against mine is physical pain. "You should eat something. Lily wakes up at seven-thirty, and Deklan gets insufferable if there's no breakfast."
She stares at me. Flushed, bewildered, still trembling. "You just, you said all of that, and now you're talking about breakfast?"
I grin. It's weak because I'm too hard, too hungry, too desperate for a real grin, but it's there.
"I told you, little omega. I'm not going to take anything from you.
When you're ready, when you ask, I'll give you everything.
But right now, you need coffee, and I need to not blow my load in my sweatpants like a teenager. "
Her blush returns full force. She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. "You're insane."
"Absolutely." I turn to the coffee maker and pour two cups, handing her one. Our fingers brush during the exchange, and the contact sends a jolt of electricity up my arm. "Cream and sugar?"
"Just sugar."
I reach for the sugar bowl, and as I hand it to her, I lean in close. Close enough that my lips brush her ear.
"For the record," I murmur, "you're not wearing underwear, and I can smell how wet you are through that shirt, and it's taking every ounce of self-control I have not to bend you over this counter and eat you for breakfast instead."
She spills sugar all over the counter.
I pull back, grinning, really grinning now, and take a sip of my coffee like I didn't just say the most obscene thing imaginable at 7 AM on a Tuesday.
"You, you can't just say things like that," she stammers, grabbing a paper towel and wiping up the spilled sugar with shaking hands.
"I just did."
"And then go back to talking about coffee!"
"The coffee is excellent," I say. "Colombian. Single origin. Deklan's pretentious obsession."
She stares at me, and I watch the frustration war with amusement on her face. The flush is still there, the arousal still thick in the air, but there's something else now, a crack of laughter tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"You're impossible," she says.
"I prefer incorrigible."
She takes a sip of her coffee, and over the rim of the cup, I see her eyes drift down. Again. To the very obvious, very prominent situation in my sweatpants.
"You're also still hard," she observes.
"I'm going to be hard for the foreseeable future," I say. "Possibly forever. You should probably get used to it."
She chokes on her coffee.
I'm still grinning when JD walks in.
He's dressed in suit pants, white dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled to the elbows. His dark hair is damp from a shower, and his expression is the careful mask of a man who has spent the night fighting his own biology and is determined to pretend he won.
He takes one look at the kitchen, at Willow in her oversized shirt, at me in my sweatpants with my cock visibly straining against the fabric, at the thick cloud of pheromones hanging in the air, and his jaw tightens.
"Morning," he says. His voice is level. Controlled. But his nostrils flare, and I see his hands flex at his sides.
"Morning," Willow and I say simultaneously. She sounds guilty. I don't.
JD crosses to the coffee maker, his movement precise and deliberate, the walk of a man who is aware of every muscle in his body and is keeping them on a very short leash. He pours a cup, black, no sugar, and leans against the far counter.
Willow is between us. She seems to realize this at the same moment I do, because her scent spikes, sharp, sweet, overwhelmed, and she takes a quick step sideways, putting distance between herself and both of us.