Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Mia
Iwake up already restless.
My omega doesn’t murmur or nudge this time. She gives one clear demand, making it hum through my veins.
Get. Claimed.
By the time I peel myself out of the nest and make it to the bathroom, the restlessness has sharpened to being the only thing I can think about.
I brace my hands on the sink and stare at my reflection. Pillow-creased cheek, sleepy eyes. I tilt my head, exposing the curve of my neck to the harsh vanity light.
Smooth skin. No bruise. No scar. No proof.
Everything that happened last night is still written all over the rest of me. There’s still a faint ache between my thighs, a delicious heaviness in my limbs, but here is blank.
Like nothing’s changed at all.
My omega pushes up another wave of stubborn determination. The answer settles in my chest with a steady, rooted certainty that feels a lot like: you’re getting claimed today or I’m going to throw a tantrum.
I shower. I dress. I stand in front of the closet for ten full minutes, only to end up going back for Knox’s sweatshirt that I’d slipped on last night.
By the time I pad downstairs, the house is humming in that specific way it does when they’re all in work mode. Low male voices. The quiet clack of keys. The faint whir of fans and servers.
I follow the sound to Knox’s bedroom.
They’ve claimed the space completely. Knox’s old bed is gone, replaced by a long table and rows of monitors.
Thick blackout curtains swallow the daylight, the only illumination coming from the blue-white glow of a dozen monitors.
It’s cold enough that a little shiver races over my skin the second I step inside.
Rhys and Knox are side by side at the far table, both in hoodies and noise-canceling headphones, posture locked in that focused, slightly feral hunch they get when they’re buried in code. Their screens are full of scrolling text that means nothing to me and everything to the rest of the world.
Declan’s in a chair near the corner, one ankle hooked over his knee, a tablet balanced on his thigh. He’s flipping between schematics and some kind of document, his mouth moving as if he’s silently reading.
Eli is at the main desk, directly across from the doorway, haloed by three monitors. He’s in a white shirt and dark jeans, sleeves rolled, tie gone but the power still clinging to him like an extra layer. Headset on, jaw set, eyes narrowed at the video conference taking up his central screen.
It’s wildly unfair that he can be that put-together while I’m over here trying not to squirm out of my own skin.
I step fully into the room, just as the AC kicks on again, stirring the air. Eli lifts his gaze from his screen, eyes flicking up.
That’s when he sees me.
For half a heartbeat, I know the conference before him must still be going, but his focus slams straight into me, swallowing me whole. His attention tracks over my face, where the sweatshirt displays my skin, the delicate point where my neck curves.
Declan looks up next, following Eli’s line of sight. His careful, observant gaze does the same slow pass down my face, straight to my throat.
Across the room, Knox tugs off one ear cup of his headphones, sensing the shift. Rhys pauses mid-type, glancing over.
Four sets of eyes. One exposed neck. One very clear decision beating under my skin like a drum.
I shift my weight, fingers brushing absently over the bare skin just above my collar. Eli’s gaze snags on the movement even while he’s still talking.
“…yes, exactly,” he says smoothly into his mic, though his focus is still not on the screen.
My chest heaves with heavy breaths as my omega ramps up her demands. I have to close my eyes for a moment. When I open them again, there’s a concerned frown on Declan’s brow.
“Hey,” he mouths, exaggerating the word so I can read it. He tips his head toward the empty chair beside him and pats it.
He’s so sweet. But my omega wants something specific.
A little spark of mischief lights up in my chest. Sitting quietly in a chair and sipping my tea while they work is one option.
It is not the option I choose.
Make him look, my omega whispers. Make the alpha break.
The idea lands and my whole body agrees before my brain can talk me out of it.
I set my mug down on a bookshelf with a soft thud, and walk straight toward Eli’s desk. Declan frowns, his head tilting as he watches me. He looks confused. Good.
Eli tracks every step I take, the grid of faces from a boardroom in London forgotten in the glass of his monitor.
“…latency is negligible,” he’s saying, voice still smooth for the call. “We’ve rerouted the primary clusters to ensure…”
His sentence trails off for a fraction of a second as I come to a stop beside his desk, close enough that he could lean in and touch me. Then I sink to my knees and slip under the desk, completely out of sight of Eli’s webcam.
Declan freezes. His eyes go wide. He stares at me, his mouth opening to ask what the hell I’m doing.
I put a finger to my lips, holding his gaze. Shh. Then I crawl.
The space under the massive desk is a private world. It’s dark, enclosed, intimate. It smells like warm rug and polished wood and Eli.
I crawl between his legs.
Eli is sitting with his feet planted flat, his thighs thick columns of muscle in dark denim, spread just wide enough for me to fit.
Above me, his voice rumbles through his chest, vibrating in the air.
“…we anticipate a full rollout by Q3. The infrastructure is solid…”
I rest my hands on his knees. The denim is rough under my palms, warm from his skin. I run my hands up his thighs, squeezing the hard muscle beneath, feeling the way his legs tense instantly under my touch.
Above me, Eli’s voice hitches. Just a tiny, microscopic stutter.
“…solid. The, uh, stability metrics…”
A smirk curves my lips in the dark.
Got you.
Leaning forward, I press my chest against his shin, the warmth of him radiating through the denim. His belt buckle gives with a quiet clink of metal as I undo it.
Eli’s legs go rigid instantly. His knees jerk inward but I push them apart, settling deeper into his personal space.
“As for the…the timeline,” he says to the investors, but his voice drops a fraction of an octave. Strained. Thicker. “We are looking at…minimizing downtime.”
While he struggles to keep his tone even, my fingers find the tab of his zipper. Metal rasps against metal as I drag it down slowly.
The sound seems deafening in the quiet space. A harsh zzzzzt. But the noise-canceling microphone must filter it out. Or maybe the investors are just too polite to ask why the CEO sounds like he’s running a marathon.
Sliding my hand inside his boxers, I find him rock hard.
He might be sitting here talking about profit margins and server loads, but his body knows I’m here. His cock is heavy and thick, pulsing against my palm as I free him from the fabric.
He springs free, hot and twitching against my cheek.
“Uh,” Eli says above me. Silence stretches for two seconds. Long enough to be awkward. “Sorry. Connection lag.”
I wrap my hand around him, stroking from base to tip. The skin is velvety soft, the muscle underneath iron-hard. A bead of pre-come gathers at the slit, salty and musk-heavy.
I lick it off.
Eli’s hand slams down onto the desk surface above my head. Bang.
“Sorry,” he chokes out. “Dropped…a pen.”
I open my mouth and take him in.
He tastes like salt and skin and control. I hum against him, swirling my tongue around the head, and then I bob my head, taking him deep.
Above me, the conversation dies completely.
“Eli?” a tinny voice asks. He rips the headset off and drops it on the desk, the voice now echoing faintly from the earpieces. “You okay? You look flushed.”
“I’m…fine,” Eli grinds out. His voice is tight, strangled. “Just…hot in here. The servers.”
I suck harder.
I use my hand to pump the base while my mouth works the head, creating a vacuum that drags a low, broken noise out of him. I want him to lose it. I want to strip away the CEO and find the beta that’s been driving me crazy underneath.
His hand comes down under the desk.
He finds my hair, his fingers tangling in the strands. Instead of pushing me away, he grips my skull, holding me there, his thumb pressing into my temple.
Mine, his touch says.
The pressure is grounding. It’s exactly what I needed.
I tighten my throat, using the suction to drag a groan out of him that he barely manages to stifle.
“Actually,” he says, and he sounds wrecked. “I think…gentlemen, I think we need to reschedule. Something came up.”
“Is it a security breach?” the voice asks, concerned.
I flick my tongue over the sensitive underside of the head, and Eli’s hips buck upward, driving him deeper into my throat.
“Nothing like that,” he gasps. “But it’s something…urgent.”
Someone, Rhys or Knox, coughs. Above us, I hear the beep of the call disconnecting, then the scrape of a chair being pushed back. I pull off him with a wet pop, gasping for air, and look to my left.
Declan is on the floor.
He’s on his hands and knees, peering under the side of the desk, his moss-green eyes so dark they’re almost black. He looks like he’s starving.
“What,” his voice comes out like a groan that deepens as I take one more long lick of Eli’s shaft, “are you doing?”
“Helping,” I whisper, my lips wet.
Knox joins us a second later, ducking his head under the other side of the desk, his headphones around his neck.
It’s getting crowded down here.
“Is she…” Knox trails off, his gaze dropping to Eli’s exposed cock, slick with my saliva and throbbing, then snapping to my face. His expression goes dark, possessive heat flaring instantly.
“She’s trying to kill me,” Eli says breathlessly from above.
“No. I’m trying to get your attention.”
I crawl backward, out from between Eli’s legs, but I don’t leave the floor. I sit back on my heels in the center of the office, and run my tongue over my lips.