16. Calder #2
“Harder,” she gasped. “Calder. Harder. I won't break.”
I gave her harder.
I gave her everything I had. The bed frame creaked under us.
The blankets slid sideways. Her nails caught at my back and I felt them score me but I didn't care.
I wanted the marks, I wanted to wear what she had done to me for days.
The slap of skin on skin was obscene and beautiful.
The sounds she was making, god, the sounds, low broken things that punched through me with every thrust.
“Calder.” Her voice was wrecked. “I'm... I'm going to...”
“Come for me,” I said into her hair. “Come for me, sweetheart. I've got you. Come.”
She did.
She came around me with her whole body, clamping down so hard my vision whited out at the edges.
Her cry was something I felt more than heard, vibrating through the place where we were joined.
I had to grip the headboard with one hand to keep from going over with her, because something else was happening to me, something I hadn't been ready for.
The base of my cock was thickening.
I was knotting.
I had never done this before. Not with anyone. The few times I had been with someone, it had been beta women, careful encounters, nothing that had ever called this out of me. I had assumed I was the kind of alpha who didn't. I had been wrong.
“Noa.” My voice came out strangled. “Noa, I'm...”
“I know.” She pulled my head down to her chest, held me there. “I can feel it. Calder. Calder. It's okay. Yes.”
“It's going to lock us together.”
“I know.”
“I can pull out. I don't have to...”
“Calder.” She tipped my face up so I had to look at her.
Her eyes were wet and her hair was a beautiful disaster.
She had a flush spreading down from her throat to the place where my mouth had been too rough, but she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
“I want it. I want to be locked to you. I want all of it.”
I pushed deeper into her. Slow this time. Felt the knot swell, felt her body stretch to take it, felt that incredible final pressure when it caught and we were truly joined, anchored, one.
I came apart.
It went on longer than I knew was possible.
Wave after wave, my hips making small helpless jerks I couldn't stop, every pulse drawn out by the lock of my knot inside her.
She shuddered through another orgasm somewhere in the middle of it, her body milking mine, and I think I said her name a hundred times into her hair.
I think I said other things too. Things about home and chosen and never letting her go.
I couldn't track any of it. I was just feeling.
When I finally surfaced, she was holding my face in both her hands and laughing softly.
“What,” I managed.
“You said the thing.”
“What thing.”
“Mine.” Her thumb traced my cheekbone. “You said mine. About six times.”
“Oh.” I closed my eyes. “Sorry.”
“Don't be.” She tugged me down until I could lay my full weight on her, which I tried to resist, except she wrapped her legs around the back of mine and held me there. “I am. Yours. So you don't have to apologize.”
I let myself collapse onto her. Carefully, mindful of the lock between us, but completely.
The knot tugged when I moved and we both groaned at the same time, half pleasure, half overload.
She was still flushed everywhere. Still smelled like cardamom and salt and sex and me.
Mostly me, now. I had marked her with my scent more thoroughly than any bite could.
“How long,” she whispered.
“Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.”
“Okay.” She kissed my temple. “Okay. Good.”
I lay there inside her and listened to her heart slow against my cheek.
The cabin had gone quiet around us. Somewhere outside, the storm was still going.
Snow against the windows. Wind in the trees.
The world had been trying to kill her three weeks ago, and now she was here, warm and bonded to me, breathing in my ear like she had been doing it her whole life.
“Thank you,” I said. It came out so quiet she almost couldn't have heard it.
“For what.”
“For choosing me first.” I had to swallow hard. “I know it's stupid. I know it doesn't matter. But thank you.”
She was quiet for a long moment. Then her hand smoothed down the back of my neck, an unbearably tender gesture.
“It wasn't stupid,” she said. “And it did matter. I chose you first because you were the first one I trusted. Because you didn't make me feel small. Because you've never asked me to be less.”
My eyes burned. I pressed my face harder into her shoulder.
“I'm not going to fail you,” I said. “I know I can't promise that. I know nobody can. But I'm telling you anyway. Whatever this is. I'm not going to fail you.”
“I know.”
“How?”
“Because you already would have.” She was crying a little. I could feel the wet at my temple. “You had a hundred ways out and you took none of them. That counts for something, Calder.”
I didn't know what to say to that. I held her instead.
Just held her, while the knot inside her slowly eased, while her breathing leveled out, while the second wave that had been building somewhere underneath all of this began to gather force again.
I could feel it. The heat hadn't broken. It was waiting.
“It's coming back,” she said. Her voice had gone rough again.
“I know. Tell me what you need, sweetheart.”
“Shepherd,” she said softly.
“I'll get him.”
“Stay until you can.” She caught my hand and pressed it to her chest, over her heart. “Stay until you have to go.”
I stayed.
I stayed while the knot eased, while my breathing slowed, while the second wave crept back up on her and her hands started to tremble at the edges again.
I stayed until the moment her scent surged sweet and desperate and she looked up at me and her eyes were glassy and faraway and I knew it had her again.
“Now,” she whispered. “Calder. Get him. Now.”
I kissed her forehead. I disentangled myself, carefully, both of us hissing at the slide. I felt the loss of her like a missing limb, which was not a thing I had been prepared to feel about anyone.
“Right back,” I said.
I pulled on my pants but didn't bother with anything else.
I crossed the cabin to the door of the reading nook and pushed it open.
Shepherd was already on his feet. Of course he was.
He had been waiting. They both had. Bo was at the window watching the snow, but his head turned the second the door opened, and his nostrils flared at the new layer of scent I was carrying.
“She wants you,” I said to Shepherd. “The next wave's hitting.”
He nodded once. Pushed his glasses up. Walked past me without a word.
Bo and I were left in the doorway watching him cross the room to her. I felt Bo's hand close around my forearm, just briefly, a steadying pressure I hadn't known I needed.
“You okay,” he said. Not a question, the way he asked anything. A statement that could be answered with the truth.
“No,” I said. “But I will be.”
He grunted. Squeezed once. Let go.
I sat down heavily in the chair by the door, where I could see her without crowding her, and I watched the second man I trusted with my life kneel down beside the omega I had just claimed and ask her, quietly, what do you need.
She told him.
I closed my eyes for one selfish second, just to feel the weight of what had just happened, just to let myself believe it.
Then I opened them again, because she had asked us to stay close, because I had promised, and because I wasn't ever going to be more than a few feet from her again if I had any say in the matter.
The storm kept howling outside, but it didn’t matter.
Everything we could ever need to survive was in that bedroom, in that bed.