Prologue #6
But I’ve never given her a reason to doubt me, let alone not believe what I said, not on that kind of scale. Fibs and white lies, tall tales of a child, but I’ve never looked my mother in the eye and lied about what I was doing. I’ve never had a reason to.
She’s always known all of my plans, all of the people I was with, everything I was doing while I was with them.
It didn’t matter what it was, she knew. Mia Kozlov even participated, directly or indirectly, in a lot of it, illegal activities included, and I suppose that’s why she didn’t put up a fight.
That and my step-father probably told her to get off my back.
I can hear the conversation as if I was sitting in the room with them. Give him space, milaya. He’s a twenty-six-year-old man, not a six-year-old boy. Let him live a little, and in the safety he creates for himself.
Boris Volkov is good for that.
Then again, he was treating me like an adult by the time I graduated from high school and while he pushed for me to go to college and get a degree, he didn’t hesitate to remind me I was a man, therefore, had responsibilities to match.
Usually illegal ones, but still. The sentiment was there, it still is, and my step-father unknowingly aided in my gigantic lie because of it.
One he’d be just as pissed off to discover the truth of.
But I’ve never given him a reason to doubt me, either, and I didn’t have to worry about anything but omitting the truth with either of them until now.
Because this truly is the exception.
I guess omitting the truth is different in some ways.
It’s just leaving things out and making sure to avoid bringing them to the surface. Some of it was easy considering our family dynamic, other things were harder for the same reason. I haven’t been caught, though, and I was sure this little trip was going to make that happen.
Nothing good lasts forever, not in the world I’ve lived in the last twenty-three years. Why would this be any different?
That’s how I felt right up until the knock on my cottage door a day and a half after I arrived. As soon as I heard it, as soon as I saw his face and breathed in his scent, my worries and fears melted away. Just like the softest snow stretching for miles under the intensity of the winter sun.
He does that for me.
For as long as I’ve known him, he has made my anxiety disappear, he’s calmed my nerves and his presence has always been a balm on my very guarded heart.
That’s how I knew he was different, how I knew he was special, and as I got older and felt myself drawn to him in a different way, I couldn’t deny it.
We’d connected on a deep level, an emotional level I’d never experienced before, and soon that became an attraction I couldn’t fight.
One he didn’t fight, either.
Sneaking around was hard, it was scary but every stolen moment was worth it. When he asked about seeing me through my first real heat so we could bond, how was I supposed to say no?
My smile returns a little as I reach up and touch his bite on my chest, the deep pink still tender under my collarbones as his mark continues to heal.
I’ll never forget that moment or what it felt like to be so connected to him. How I felt it right down to my soul when he sunk his teeth into my skin, or when he encouraged me to do the same. Nothing could erase that, not when it was the single most defining moment of my life so far.
I didn’t think I’d wake up without him, though, and that makes the last several days a little bittersweet. Especially since I have to go home in a little over forty-eight hours, and I have no idea what’s going to happen when I do.
His mark is easy enough to hide. It’s not like I walk around shirtless at home all hours of the day, my chest is usually hidden.
It feels somewhat disrespectful to my mother and Tati if there isn’t a purpose to it, like swimming or whatever.
Plus, I’m a little self conscious about my body.
The scars from my G-tube aren’t my favorite to show off so I try to avoid it whenever possible.
He doesn’t care about that, but then again, he remembers what I looked like before I had it, and he knows why I had it in the first place. He’s told me more times than I can count how grateful he is for those scars because I wouldn’t be here or be his without them.
My mark on his body? That might be another story.
He wanted it where everyone would see it, so they knew he was a bonded male and proud to wear his mate’s mark.
That gave me so much anxiety I nearly threw up. Which, of course, was an extremely romantic way to start a two-week vacation with my scent match. He didn’t care, though. He talked me down, explained, and when I was still worried about the attention and repercussions from it, he compromised.
Once it was healed, he’d get a tattoo that didn’t cover it but incorporated it so it wasn’t so obvious.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
I trust he’ll get the tattoo, I just don’t know if I buy it being any kind of distraction from the impressions my teeth left on his skin.
Knowing him, it’ll showcase them and we’ll be dealing with a huge mess before I even get back to Woodstock.
With a grunt, I roll to my stomach and bury my face in his side of the bed, inhaling his scent like an addict, before deciding I need to get up and see what kind of damage we did to my cottage.
I don’t particularly care, not really, but my mother will send maids up here once I get home and I don’t need them reporting back to her about all of the slick and cum they had to wash out of the rugs and furniture leading to my nest.
I had no idea how hard or fast my heat would hit without the meds, but it did both, right in the living room while we were trying to pick out a movie.
My mother, unfortunately, knows I’m not a virgin and she doesn’t care outside of making sure I’m smart about being active, but this is very different.
Especially since the team of maids she’d send have worked for us for a long time.
They’d know I didn’t just have some stranger up here so we could fuck for two weeks straight.
I’m also not typically a messy person so jizz and the like outside of areas deemed acceptable for such would be a major red flag.
I yawn as I get up on all fours, crawling to the edge of the bed before I sit and plant my feet on the ground. I stretch again, smiling at the way the skin over my pec pinches, how it stings with a little reminder of why it hurts, then push to standing before I head to the bathroom.
Where I find a piece of paper taped to the mirror with my name and a note scrawled on it in a very familiar chicken scratch.
Niko -
Sorry to bolt, malysh, but I got orders.
Had to report early.
Didn’t want to leave you.
Make sure you eat. Something with protein and carbs.
Drink lots of water.
I left you my hoodie.
I’ll come back tonight if I can.
Text me.
I love you.
D
I wish he knew how perfect he is.
He doesn’t think he’s a very good mate, a good alpha to his omega, but I argue that every time he even feels the slightest bit of doubt.
Because he’s always taken care of me, always done things like this for me, even before we realized what we were to each other.
He left me the note because he knew I’d be hurt and a little concerned when I woke up without him, and I couldn’t love him anymore for it.
God, I love him so much.
Finishing up, I dry my hands and reread his words, grinning like an idiot at myself in the mirror before I take the note down and carry it into the bedroom with me.
I’m not showering.
Normally, that would make me crazy.
I shower at least twice a day, every day, and that’s a habit that formed as soon as I was able to vocalize my need to be clean, but this is different.
I don’t want to wash away his scent, I don’t want to get rid of any part of what happened between us, not when I have no idea what the future holds. I need this to last as long as possible because I don’t know when it will happen again.
Setting the paper on the dresser, I take out a pair of sweatpants and thick socks, pulling them on before I go in search of my alpha’s hoodie.
Which is exactly where it’s been since he pulled it off the night I went into heat: tossed carelessly on the end of the couch while he rutted the hell out of me.
My cheeks heat and my belly dips at the thought.
He has never been a gentle lover, not really.
Partially because we usually have to rush, but mostly because it’s not in his nature.
Rough, hard, fast. Restraints and pain, edging followed by a pleasure so great it’s hard not to become delirious and sob.
He fucks the way he does everything else; aggressively and with a fire that is all consuming.
It’s been like that since the first time when I was seventeen, and I wouldn’t change it for anything.
The first night he was here, something was different in him, I could see it the second he walked in the door, and for the first time since we’ve been together, he made love to me.
It was slow and sweet; it was emotional.
It was beautiful, really, and I know if I told him that, he’d tie me to the bed and fuck the thought out of my head but that’s what it was.
He made love to me, we made love, and it was perfect.
It did not, however, last.
As soon as I went into heat, as in the very instant it hit, he was in a rut so hazy it probably would have scared me if I hadn’t been out of my own mind and sticking my ass in his face begging for it.
I was, and so was he, and he had me naked and flipped over the arm of the couch so fast neither of us knew what was going on.
Then he damn near fucked me into the floor through the cushions and wood.
We broke the couch.
Broke it badly from what I can see now.