Chapter 23
As Orien leads me toward the bed, I breathe in his pheromones in a desperate bid to ease the fire roaring through my veins.
It doesn’t work.
A sound, half sob, half a moan, tears out of me, and I want to be embarrassed, but the fever surging through my body swamps it, and all I can do is ride the sensation.
I shove a hand past the waistband of his sweats, desperate for his cock, but he catches my wrist with one hand.
“Not yet,” he murmurs, velvet over gravel. “You need to be lying down.”
I sway against him, dizzy. “Don’t care.”
“Yeah, you do.” He tucks an arm under my knees and lifts me without effort. My head spins, and I wrap my arms around his neck, rubbing my hard nipples over his pecs, legs restless as I seek friction for the hard ridge of my aching dick.
Orien’s breathing quickens as he sets me on the bed and drops to his knees, hands braced on my thighs to steady me.
I grip his shoulder. “How long—”
I lose the thread of the question when he slides his palms up my legs, spreading my knees apart. “Let it work. Don’t fight it.”
I want to argue. I want to prove I can take it without coming apart.
But the next wave hits, and I break, falling backward onto the bed as my hands scrabble for the waistband of my slacks. Orien undoes the button and zipper with a single motion, then peels them down my legs. My boxers come off with the pants, and the cool air shocks my system.
My hard dick hugs my lower stomach, leaking, the head flushed dark and angry.
Orien’s hands on my thighs pin me open as he draws in a lungful of my pheromones now flooding the bedroom. I whine, thrusting my hips toward him in demand.
He bends, nuzzling the inside of my thigh, just above the knee, then moves up, mouth hot on my skin.
I shake, not with cold, but with the violence of the desire pulsing through me. My hands fist in the sheets as he licks a line up to the crease of my hip.
I want to tell him to hurry, but the words come out as a broken whine. Orien lifts his gaze to mine, eyes pale and locked on me, and then he takes the base of my dick in his fist and gives me one long stroke.
I nearly come apart.
His thumb massages the ball of nerves just below the head, and then he brings his mouth down on me, slow and controlled. I arch off the bed, hips driving up, but he pins me in place with a hand flat on my pelvis.
The unbearable pressure rides the edge of pain, and I can’t hold back my cries.
Orien’s mouth works me, unhurried as he takes me, deeper and deeper, until the back of my head thumps onto the mattress, and I’m helpless to do anything but feel.
When I come, my thighs clamp around his shoulders, and an inhuman noise escapes me. Orien swallows my cum, then pulls off, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
He waits, letting me breathe, hands still bracketing my hips.
The aftershocks come, but the need doesn’t lessen. It just drops, coils, and builds again, stronger. I pant, sweat already cooling on my chest, but I want more. I want him inside me, want to be fucked until I’m reduced to nothing but sensation.
Orien stands, stripping off his T-shirt and sweatpants before pulling me up far enough to finish undressing me. My hungry eyes fix on his thick cock, flushed at the head, and I want it so much that my whole body cramps with the need.
He climbs onto the bed, kneeling between my legs, and slides two fingers into my mouth. “Get them wet.”
I suck, tongue working over the digits, and the salt of his skin sends another rush of slick from me. When he withdraws, he shifts down the bed, hooking my knees over his shoulders.
His fingers circle my entrance, and he tracks every reaction as he pushes in. I gasp, the stretch intense but not unwelcome. He works me open, steady, patient, until I’m whimpering and desperate for more.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Yes,” I whine.
He lines up his cock and thrusts past my loosened entrance. The stretch is intense, but the slick helps, and when he bottoms out, I can’t breathe, can’t think, can only feel.
He holds still, letting me adjust, hands splayed on my hips. When he starts to move in deep strokes that rub my sweet spot, I sob his name.
It’s still not enough, though. I want to be broken, want him to fuck me until my body can’t remember anything but this.
As if I said it out loud, and maybe I did, his pace becomes bruising, every thrust driving the air from my lungs, and when he leans forward to bite at the junction of my neck and shoulder, I want him to Mark me. To claim me.
“Do it,” I moan. “Please.”
He growls, the sound vibrating through my bones. Straightening, he drops one of my legs and shifts the other one until I half roll onto my side, and he leans down, one hand on my shoulder, holding me in place as his teeth find my nape.
Without hesitation, he bites down hard, breaking through skin. Pleasure unlike anything I’ve experienced before streaks down my spine, and I come harder than before, my body shaking apart.
He doesn’t slow, riding me through it, fucking me sideways until I’m nothing but sensation.
When he finishes, he unlatches his teeth and licks at the wound, ensuring that his DNA gets into my system, and then he comes with a possessive growl, his hot cum pumping into my body.
I melt beneath him, bones turning to liquid as the fever eases.
Without pulling out, he eases my other leg to the mattress and settles behind me, still licking and nuzzling his Mark, holding me as we ride the aftershocks together.
Before I can recover, though, the fire returns, blacking out my senses with a haze of need.
When I come back to myself, I’m on my back, my heart pounding, and an ache radiating out from the point where Orien’s cock still moves inside me.
His hands are planted on either side of my head, his arms corded with muscle as he holds himself above me, his hips driving me deeper into the mattress. Sweat drips from his brow onto my collarbone, then trickles down the side of my neck.
I moan, the air thick with pheromones, our hunger saturating every breath until I gag on it. My thighs clamp around his waist, heels digging in, afraid that if I let go, he’ll vanish, and I’ll shatter into pieces.
I cry out as the orgasm hits, leaving my muscles weak and my skin so hypersensitive that the scrape of the comforter beneath my back becomes sandpaper.
Orien stays deep, no longer moving as his body heat sears along the length of me. One hand comes up to bracket my jaw, and he searches my face. For what, I’m not sure. Everything’s gone to static. All I can see is the white-hot edge of want.
He nudges his nose along mine and whispers, “Still with me?”
I try to say yes, but the word gets lost on my tongue.
He smiles, a slash of white teeth, and draws back just enough that the next thrust is pure friction, scraping pleasure raw. I yelp, actually yelp, and he groans in response, pace picking up again, grinding into the deepest part of me.
My hands scramble for purchase, nails catching on his arms, his back, anything solid. I want to mark him, too, want to rake bloody lines down his spine to leave proof of my claim.
He moves me, rolling us so my back arches over his legs and I ride him, thighs straddling his hips. The angle is different, the stretch burning. His hands guide my movements, up and down, slow at first and then desperate, chasing the next crest.
I brace my hands on his chest, fingers spread wide, digging into muscle and bone. My body answers every push, every caress, like I’m built for this.
The next peak slams into me without warning, and my dick spurts between us, the cum mixing with sweat as my inner muscles clench and release around his thick length. He holds still, letting me tremble and twitch on his cock while I ride it out.
When the spasms stop, I collapse forward, cheek pressed to the side of his neck.
His hand comes up to the back of my head, fingers tangled in my sweat-damp hair, and he rocks into me, slower, now, but deeper, the slide easier, the friction changed from burn to heat.
He waits until my dick hardens again, and I shift restlessly on top of him before he pulls out and moves me to lie on my stomach.
Strong hands on my hips lift my ass into the air. “Look at you, dripping with my cum.”
My ass clenches in response, and liquid heat slips down my thighs.
“One more time should do it,” he says, and pins me down, one hand on the nape of my neck, the other wrapped around my waist.
His cock slams back into me, and I writhe in pleasure as he fucks me, his movements relentless, every thrust punching the breath from my lungs, every grind pushing me closer to the edge.
I come again, dry this time, just a clench and a rush and a gasp that leaves me whimpering, but the pleasure is so intense it’s almost pain.
Orien’s rhythm turns savage, chasing his own end. He ruts into me, hips snapping, and when he comes, it’s with a growl that rumbles through my whole body, the warmth of it filling me until I can’t stand it.
He collapses over me, body covering mine, mouth at my ear. “Breathe.”
For a while, it’s all I can do.
The sheets are ruined. My thighs are soaked, the inside of me a mess, my whole body marked and used.
I love it.
After a while, when I can move, I roll onto my side and curl against him, my head tucked under his chin. The Mark on my neck throbs, not with pain, just a steady presence.
Orien holds me, rubbing slow circles over my back and hips. The world is still white noise, but it’s softer now, a background hum that lets me rest.
I wake in darkness.
The Heat isn’t out of my system yet, but it’s become quieter, as if now that the animal need is satisfied, something else has room to surface.
Hunger.
I lie on my side, facing away from Orien, with his big body curled around mine. Head turning, I nuzzle into the curve of his arm to inhale my Alpha’s pheromones, and my body responds, my dick filling with blood before I’m even awake.
His hard cock nestles into the crease of my ass, and the hand that cups my hip is not gentle.
I rock my hips backward, greedy for more. “Want it.”
He slides into me from behind, my slick and his own cum still coating my hole. The stretch is easier now, my body loose and ready, but the pressure is still shocking. I gasp and push back harder, needing him deeper.
He rocks into me in long, slow strokes that never quite pull all the way out. The angle is different, the head of his cock striking my sweet spot, and my toes curl.
I stroke myself in time with his movements, the rhythm hypnotic.
When I come, it’s with a low whine, the pulse of it drawing his own orgasm out of him. He grinds into my ass, shuddering as he empties inside me.
This time, when he bites, it’s on my shoulder, just above the blade. Not to Mark, but to claim. I’ll bear the bruise with pride.
He stays inside me while our bodies cool, his hand never leaving my skin.
In the morning, the world will resume. The consequences will follow. But for now, I have the warmth of his breath at my neck and the certainty that I’m where I belong.
I come up gasping, surfacing from a sleep so deep it bordered on blackout.
The blinds are closed, but light leaks in at the edges, turning the air gold and blue. My throat burns, my limbs drag, and every joint from knees to hips to spine aches.
For a while, I lie very still, just breathing. Each inhale is filled with salt and sweat, the musky tang of cum, and beneath it all, the metallic echo of blood.
Orien sits on the corner of the bed, shirtless, pouring water from a filtered pitcher into a glass. He sets the glass on the nightstand next to the bed, then peels open the wrapper of an energy bar.
He looks over and waits for me to sit up before nudging the glass into my hand.
The water is cold enough to make my teeth ache, and I drink half of it before coming up for air. I take the energy bar from him and eat it in small bites. My body needs the fuel, but the simple act of chewing drains what little energy I have left.
When the water and the bar are gone, I rest my head on his shoulder, breathing through the last ghosts of the Heat.
The Mark throbs, and I reach back to brush my fingers over the ring of teeth. It’s scabbed, already setting, but it’s not permanent. It will fade with my next cycle if I want it to.
I can still walk out of here today and never come back.
Orien moves his arm, palm splaying across my ribs. “You good?”
I nod.
He nudges his nose into my hair and hums. “If you want to run, you should do it now.”
I almost laugh. As if that’s even a choice.
I burrow against his chest and let myself rest, letting the rhythms of his body settle my own.
When I pull back, I find him watching me.
Then, he reaches for the second vial waiting on the nightstand.
This one is identical to the first, clear liquid, small as a shot of cough syrup. A second dose, a second Mark, and one more step toward never being able to go back.
Hand shaking, I accept the Inductis and uncap it.