4. Grant
GRANT
She sleeps between waves like a child.
That's what I didn't account for. Maya Adeyemi in a full heat curled toward me with both hands tucked under her chin, her breath evening out the moment the wave passes, her whole body releasing into unconsciousness between surges.
She is twenty-two years old and she has been carrying everything alone for five years and even her heat has a structure to it: wave, exhaustion, sleep, wave again. Her body taking what it can get.
I lie in the dark and watch her breathe and the rut in me is a low constant hum, managed now, satisfied for the moment, waiting.
Something I have not felt in four years is present—fear. Not of her. Of what I've let myself want. Of how thoroughly I have already built my life around her without admitting it, and of the fact that I no longer have any desire to pretend otherwise.
She wakes at three in the morning.
I know before she says anything. Her scent shifts—the sweetness of sleep-Omega turning sharp and urgent, heat pressing back in. She finds me in the dark by smell, turns toward me with her eyes barely open.
"It's happening again," she says.
"I know." I pull her in. "What does the rule say?"
A sound—something between a laugh and a whimper. "I don't come until you tell me."
"That's right." I turn her under me and she's already reaching for me, her hands finding my chest, my shoulders. "Hold on to me and do what I tell you."
She grabs on. "Yes, Daddy."
The word. Every time. It does the same thing to me every time and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
"Good girl," I say. "Hold on tight."
The morning wave is harder than the night before—second day, peak intensity. She's soaking through the sheets by the time I get my hand between her thighs and she's already begging before I've touched her properly.
"Grant, please?—"
"Daddy." I correct her without heat.
A breath. A pause. "Daddy. Please."
"Better." I find her with two fingers and she arches off the mattress. "You're drenched." I bring my hand up and taste her. Her slick is sweet and warm and all hers. "You've been holding your heat back all week. Your body's been ready for days."
"I know. I just—I didn't want to?—"
I don't let her finish. My hand goes back between her thighs and my mouth finds hers—two fingers working her while I kiss her—and she grabs my shoulders and rocks her hips into my hand.
She's soaking through the sheets. Every stroke is slick and easy and the sounds she's making against my mouth are doing things to my rut I'm not yet ready to stop managing.
I bring her up fast, her whole body tightening around my fingers, then pull my hand back before she crests.
She makes a broken sound against my lips.
"I know what you didn't want." I move down her body. "You're going to stop managing it alone. That's a rule. Your heat is mine. Do you understand?"
"Yes." Her hips lift. "Yes, Daddy."
I take my time with my mouth on her. She's more responsive than last night—the second day of heat brings everything to the surface, makes every nerve raw. She comes apart at the first touch of my tongue, goes tight all over, and I hold her there, right on the edge of another orgasm, and deny it.
"Not yet," I say against her.
"Daddy—" Broken. "Please?—"
"Not yet." I trace her slowly. She's soaking my chin, my jaw, her slick running over my fingers. I groan against her because the scent of her is doing things to my rut that I'm choosing not to suppress. She shivers at the sound. "You want to come?"
"Yes. God. Yes, please, Daddy?—"
"Tell me you want my baby."
She goes still for a half-second. Then: "I want—yes. Yes, I want?—"
"Say it properly."
A breath. "I want your baby." Her voice is heat-raw and certain. "Daddy, please. Give me your baby."
"Good girl." I move back up her body. "You'll get everything. When I say."
She makes a sound of frustration that is also a sound of wanting that is also the most honest thing I've heard in years. I hold myself above her and her hands drag at my shoulders.
"You are the most patient man I've ever?—"
"No." Her legs wrap around my waist before I've moved—instinct, heat, the biology knowing what it needs—and I let her pull me in, pressing forward on her terms, and she gasps. "I've been the most patient man you've ever encountered for five weeks. I'm done being patient. This is something else."
Her mouth falls open. "What is this?"
"This is me taking what I've been waiting for." I withdraw and drive forward again and her eyes lose focus. "Slowly. Because I intend to take my time. Any other questions?"
"No," she breathes. "No, Daddy. No questions."
"Good."
I build a rhythm. Long and slow and deep. She grabs the headboard with both hands—she found this position herself, arms over her head, which tells me something about what she's figured out she likes—and I cover her hands with one of mine, pinning them.
"Keep them there," I say.
"Yes."
"Yes what."
"Yes, Daddy." Her voice is small and certain.
"Good girl." I drive deeper. She cries out. "You're going to take everything I give you today. All of it. Every wave." She clenches around me. "You're going to carry my baby by the end of this. Do you understand?"
"Yes." She arches under me. "Yes, yes, please?—"
"Beg me."
She begs. She begs in actual sentences and in syllables and in just please, Daddy, please repeated until the words lose their edges, and I give her exactly nothing until she's given me everything she has. Then I bring her close. Hold her there. Bring her close again.
"Please let me come," she breathes. "Daddy. Please. I've been—please?—"
"Not until you ask me properly." I slow my rhythm. She makes a sound that breaks something in me in the best possible way. "What do you want?"
"I want you to fill me up." Her voice is a wreck. "I want—I want your baby. Daddy, please, I'm asking properly, I'm?—"
"Come," I say.
She comes with her hands pinned over her head and her whole body shaking and my name in pieces.
I follow her over.
The knot starts swelling at the base of my cock—pressure rising, my balls drawing tight, the shape of me changing inside her with every fraction of a second.
She feels it. Her breath catches. I drive forward one more time and the knot drags against her rim and seats, the catch and lock setting in one motion—the squeeze of her around my base, the tightest, hottest, slickest part of her clamping the knot in place, pulls the first pulse out of me as the lock slams home.
God. My vision dims at the edges, a sound ripping out of me I don't have language for.
The ejaculation hits with the lock and the squeeze pulls another pulse from me before the first one's finished.
Then another. Hot, heavy, my cum spilling deep into her with no place to go because the knot has us sealed.
I feel each release all the way through me—the contraction in my groin, the heat leaving me, the heat going into her, the immediate squeeze of her body answering it.
The pressure builds inside her. I can feel her belly grow tight under my hand with what I'm putting in her. I keep coming.
She makes the sound she made last night—the helpless sound of being locked, of being filled—and I hold her through it.
"Daddy has you," I say. "Right here. You feel that?"
"I feel—yes. God. Yes." She's breathing in pieces. "The knot is—Grant, it's?—"
"I know." I press my palm low on her belly while we're locked. Where the warmth is. Where I can feel her getting fuller with every pulse from me. The breeding instinct in me is very old and very satisfied. "You're full of me, little girl. Everything I've got. Your body's going to keep all of it."
She clenches around the knot—deliberately this time—and another pulse hits me hard enough I groan into her shoulder. Her doing. Her body learning what it can pull out of me. I am going to have opinions about that for as long as she'll let me.
"That's it." I press my mouth to her temple. "Take it. Take all of it."
She makes a small sound. Not distress—something else. She brings her freed hands down and covers mine on her belly.
"I know," she says, quiet. "I know, Daddy."
We lie locked together through the morning.
I don't rush it. The knot holds for forty minutes and I spend them with my mouth at her temple, her hair, her throat, keeping her warm and still and mine.
She sleeps for twenty of those minutes—genuinely sleeps, right through the lock, which tells me how exhausted five weeks of pre-heat suppression has left her—and I watch her breathe and count her heartbeats.
When the knot releases I get up and bring water. She drinks it without being told—she's learned the between-wave protocol, has already built it into the rhythm. Good. She drinks the full glass and holds it out for more and I bring more.
"Crackers," I say.
"In a minute."
"Now."
She takes them from my hand and eats them, slowly, watching me from the bed. Her slick has soaked the sheets. Her hair is wrecked. She has never looked more like mine.
"You went gray," she says, between crackers.
"When?"
"Sometime in the last four years. It's very even. Did you do something to make it even?"
I look at her.
"I'm asking about your hair in between heat waves," she says. "Because I'm me and this is apparently how my brain works when it gets five minutes of clarity." A pause. "It looks good. That's what I was building toward."
Something in my chest moves. "Eat your crackers."
"Already on it." She eats another one. "Grant."
"Mm."
"When this is over." She looks at the window, the daylight there now. "What happens?"
"I'm going to tell Becca," I say. "And you're going to eat breakfast while I call her."
She turns to look at me. Her expression is complicated and completely readable, because Maya Adeyemi's face has been an open book since the first check-in, even when she's trying to perform fine.
"And?" she says.
"And you're going to stop calling me Mr. Lawson in any context."
"I've been calling you Grant for five weeks."