Chapter Eleven #3
I paused. Three fingers deep inside him, feeling the way his body clenched around me, hot and desperate, and the look on his face—sharp, wanting, completely fucking done with being patient—was the thing that finally snapped the thread.
I withdrew my fingers. He made a sound—protest, loss, want—and I was already pushing my pants down, freeing my cock, slicking myself with more lube than was strictly necessary.
The rut had me by the throat now, the heat behind my eyes white-hot, and the last coherent thought I had before I lined up and pushed into him was: slow. Go slow.
I did not go slow.
I drove into him in one steady, controlled thrust that buried me to the root. The heat of him surrounded me, tight and pulsing, and the sound Jai made was raw—a punched-out groan that started low in his chest and tore its way out of his throat.
His back arched off the bed. His hands found my shoulders, grip bruising, and for one suspended second neither of us moved, locked together, breathing the same air.
Then I pulled back and thrust again. Harder.
Deeper. The wet sound of skin on skin filled the room, obscene and perfect.
Jai’s legs came up, wrapped around my waist, heels digging into the small of my back, and the angle changed, and the noise he made was the kind that lived in my spine for days afterward.
The rut took over. Not all at once, but in layers, like something shedding skin.
My hand found his hip, grip tight enough to bruise, holding him steady as I fucked into him with a rhythm that had nothing to do with patience and everything to do with the white-hot need burning through every cell in my body.
My other hand braced beside his head, fingers digging into the sheets, and the room narrowed down to points of contact: my cock driving into his ass, his legs locked around me, his hands on my shoulders, his mouth against my throat when I bent to kiss him.
He was tight. Hot. His body took every inch and asked for more, his hips rolling up to meet each thrust, and the sounds falling from his mouth were filthy—broken, ragged, profane in a way that would have made me laugh under any other circumstances.
Now they just fed the rut, every gasp and curse and half-formed plea adding fuel to a fire that had been building since the moment he walked into my life.
I hovered at his throat. My mouth found the junction of his neck and shoulder, the spot where his pulse jumped under my lips, and I pressed my mouth there—hard—teeth grazing the skin without breaking it.
The restraint cost me more than any physical effort I’d ever expended.
My wolf paced behind my ribs, frantic, insistent, the instinct to bite, to claim, to mark so visceral it felt like it lived in my marrow.
My teeth ached with it. My jaw clenched hard enough to send a dull throb through my molars.
I didn’t bite. I’d agreed.
The willpower required was its own kind of punishment, more severe than anything my body had ever asked of me. I pressed my lips to the spot, breathed against his skin, and felt his pulse hammer against my mouth like something trying to escape.
“Fuck,” Jai gasped. His voice was shattered. “Fuck, Braham, I’m close, I’m so close—”
His cock jerked between us, hard and flushed, and I reached between us, wrapped my hand around him, and stroked once—firm, from root to tip—and that was all it took.
His body went rigid. His back arched off the bed, every muscle locked, and he came with my name on his lips—“Braham”—raw and broken and completely, utterly surrendered.
The sight of him—coming apart under me, face open in a way I’d never seen it, every defense stripped away—pushed me over the edge. My hips stuttered. My rhythm fractured.
My cock pulsed deep inside him, and the orgasm rolled through me like weather, intense enough to blank my vision for a second, white-hot and consuming.
The knot swelled at the base of my cock, locking us together, and the feeling of it—the stretch, the fullness, the impossible intimacy of being physically bound to him—drew a sound from my throat I didn’t recognize as my own.
I pressed my forehead to his temple. Our breathing synced, ragged and slow.
His body pulsed around my cock, aftershocks working through him in visible waves, and the knot held us together, thick and insistent, the biological imperative of the rut finding its conclusion in the most literal way possible.
The heat behind my eyes began to ease. Not all at once—in increments, like a fever breaking. The white-hot pressure receded, leaving behind something warmer, slower, the clarity that came after the storm had passed.
I could feel my heartbeat in my cock, each pulse sending a dull throb through the knot, and Jai’s body answered each one, clenching gently around me.
He was boneless beneath me. One arm thrown above his head, the other resting on my shoulder, fingers loose now where they’d been digging in minutes before.
His chest rose and fell in the steady rhythm of someone who’d been thoroughly, completely fucked, and the expression on his face—soft in a way I’d never seen it, almost peaceful—did something to my chest I wasn’t prepared to name.
We stayed knotted. The biology of it demanded patience—five minutes, maybe ten, before the swelling receded enough to pull out without causing discomfort.
I used the time to catalog the details I’d missed in the frenzy: the sweat dampening his hairline, the flush spread across his chest, the small, satisfied sound he made when I shifted my weight and the knot tugged inside him.
The city glowed beyond the glass. Gold and grey, indifferent to whatever happened forty floors above its streets.
The rut’s heat had banked to something manageable, a low ember rather than a conflagration, and the particular clarity that followed—sharp, clean, the world rendered in higher definition than it had any right to be—settled over the room like something with mass.
Jai’s hand found my face. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, slow and deliberate, and when he spoke, his voice was rough but steady. “Soon,” he said. “You can bite me soon.”
I turned my head and pressed a kiss to his palm. Didn’t answer. Didn’t need to. The promise hung between us, patient and certain, and for once in my life, I was content to let a thing exist without immediately claiming it.
The knot held. His body held mine. The city kept its distance.
For now, it was enough.