8. Chapter Eight #2
Viper draws back and surges into me again, his body covering mine, one arm banding across my waist, dragging me back onto his cock, while his other hand braces against the tree beside my head.
Each thrust steals the air from my lungs, and my fingers dig into the bark as heat sparks through every exhausted part of me.
"Y-yeah," I gasp, turning my cheek against the rough trunk so Knox can hear me. "I’m okay. Let him... let him work through it."
Viper’s breath drags hot over my neck. His mouth finds my mating gland, and the spike of fear that he will bite doesn't come.
If this is how we officially seal our connection and he claims me right here, right now, then that is how it was intended to happen.
However, he doesn't bite. He laves the gland with long, wet pulling licks as he makes sounds that are broken, possessive, and full of need.
The pace is punishing, almost violent in the franticness of it, a pounding with no other purpose but to possess. Every movement feels like a claim and a plea tangled together, his Alpha pouring all that rage and grief into the only thing he still recognizes.
Me.
His Omega.
"Gonna make you smell like me," he snarls, the vowels garbled around bared teeth, saliva dripping. "Pump you full of my come. Make you mine, lil' Omega."
My pulse leaps, and I reach up, clasping my hand over his braced on the tree, holding him tight.
"Yes," I breathe. "Yours. I’m yours, Viper."
His rhythm falters at the sound of his name. Only slightly, but I feel it through the bond, a flicker of him beneath the feral hunger.
"Mine," he says again, lower this time.
"Always."
His balls slap rhythmically against my clit, creating little sparks of pleasure that are only amplified by the drag of his cock against my inner walls.
Every time he takes me, his size never fails to take my breath away, but he usually gives me time to adjust. Not this time. He's using me hard, and I let him take what he needs because I can feel him fighting his way back with every ragged breath against my neck.
"Come back to me, Alpha," I gasp as his teeth scrape over my skin and a flurry of tingles shoot straight to my core. "Tell me you’re still in there, Viper."
His answer is a broken growl against my throat. "Pretty."
My chest aches at the word.
"Yes, that's right. I’m your pretty girl," I whisper. "Remember?"
"— so fucking pretty."
His arms tighten. The hard planes of his body press closer, heat and muscle and sweat-slick skin surrounding me until the forest melts away.
My Omega preens beneath him, dizzy with his scent, the weight of him, and the raw need pouring through the bond.
He knows me.
Beneath the darkness, he knows me.
His movements grow rougher, less controlled, and I feel the base of his cock thickening as his knot starts to form.
My hindbrain lights up.
"Yes, yes. Knot me, knot me, knot me."
He holds it there for a moment, just long enough for me to catch my breath, and then he thrusts. The knot slips inside me and rapidly inflates, pressing against the sensitive spot just inside my opening.
"My pretty girl," he growls, this time the words sound more like Viper, and it's enough to send me crashing into pleasure, sudden and blinding.
"Viper!"
My hands slip against the bark, my thighs shaking as my body gives way beneath the force of my orgasm.
Viper catches me before I can fall, holding me tighter as he rocks into me with slower, deeper grinds of his hips, each one pulling another helpless sound from my throat as I continue to ride my peak.
"Oh, please. Oh, please," I hear myself chanting. Begging, but for what, I don't know.
His whole body locks.
A guttural growl tears from him as his head lifts, and abruptly, he pulls me upright against his chest, his arms tightening until I feel consumed by him in every possible way.
Then he's coming.
Viper's cock pulses, and his tendons strain.
Heat spills inside me, and I shudder at the feeling of my Alpha pumping me full of come.
My pussy keeps fluttering, stretched wide around the base of his cock with his knot buried deep inside, and Viper grunts with each rope he shoots into me, his breathing heavy.
Finally, Viper stills.
His breath comes heavy against my neck.
"Halley?" he breathes.
My name sounds broken in his mouth. Lost and small in a way Viper never is.
I shift enough to see him, and Viper adjusts with me, keeping me braced against his chest. My legs tremble, but his arms stay steady. Through the bond, his presence flickers brighter, no longer buried beneath all that rot and darkness.
Viper bends over me and presses his nose to the side of my throat, right over the place where the wound used to be. His whole body shudders.
"You smell right," he whispers.
My throat tightens because I know what he means. I don’t smell dead anymore.
I squeeze his hand. "So do you."
A rough sound breaks out of him, and he folds closer around me. I reach through the bond, finding the damaged thread between us and holding on until it warms.
"Have you come back to me, Alpha?" I whisper.
His answer is a sob against my skin.
I stroke his hair, tears slipping free. "That’s it, big guy. I’m here."
He pulls back enough to see my face. His eyes are almost green again. The red veins have faded to faint lines at his temples, and the terrifying wrongness around him has drained away, leaving my Alpha looking shattered and afraid to believe what’s right in front of him.
He touches my cheek with one careful finger.
"You’re alive," he says.
I press my hand over his heart.
"So are you."