The upstairs hallway was dim, lit only by the fading evening light filtering through a window at the end. Then Oliver was laying me down on in the nest and I could feel some of the tension leave me., The blankets were cool against my overheated skin, and four alphas were looking down at me with hunger and love and promise in their eyes.
Completely. Permanently. Forever….And I couldn't wait.
Chapter Fifty-Two
Daphne
The nest enveloped me like a cocoon, familiar scents and textures grounding me even as the heat threatened to pull me under. I could feel it building again—that relentless wave of need cresting inside me, making my skin burn and my core ache with emptiness.
Oliver knelt beside the nest, his blue eyes dark with want but still so careful, so controlled. Even now, with my scent flooding the room, with every instinct surely screaming at him to take, he was holding back. Waiting for me.
"The others will wait downstairs," he said, his voice rough. "For the first wave, at least. Unless you want?—"
"You," I gasped, reaching for him. "I want you first. Please, Oliver." Something flickered in his expression—gratitude, maybe, or relief. He'd been the one to bring us all together, the one who'd led with patience when I'd been too scared to accept what they were offering. It felt right that he should be first.
The other three filed out, Levi casting one last longing look over his shoulder before Garrett pulled him through the door.Then it was just Oliver and me, alone in the nest he'd helped build, surrounded by pieces of all of them.
"Tell me if you need me to stop," Oliver said, climbing into the nest with me. The mattress dipped under his weight, and his scent—cedar and bergamot, warm and familiar—wrapped around me like a blanket. "Tell me if anything doesn't feel right."
"It all feels right," I breathed, pulling him closer. "Everything feels right with you." Oliver bent to press his forehead to mine, bracing himself above me with one broad hand splayed beside my ear. His weight shifted the nest, and the tension in his shoulders made it clear how much effort it cost him to hold back. I could feel his pulse beating in the line of his throat, quick and shallow. Up close, the silver threads at his temples gleamed, and the rough stubble along his jaw was almost too sharp to bear.
“Daphne,” he whispered, voice guttural around the shape of my name. There was a question in it, a tremor. Was he still worried I would change my mind? That even now I might bolt, break, say no or not enough or not like this? I slid my fingers into his hair, threading them through at the nape where it was softest, and pulled him down, closing the last bit of distance.
His mouth was gentle at first—chaste, even, lips barely parted. But beneath it, a held-in shudder, his whole body vibrating with the effort of not crushing me—of not overwhelming, not being the monster I’d once conjured him into during my most fevered, distrustful nights. That memory flickered and dissolved, replaced by the tethering realness of his hand stroking my cheek, the line of his hip bracketed close but not yet pinning mine.
He kissed me hungrily, then, teeth catching my lower lip, and I gasped—half pain, half pleasure, all of it a fuse burning straight into the hollow of my chest. Before, I would have flinched from that hunger. Now I licked the taste of him from my lips, greedy,and matched it. My chest heaved and I grabbed fistfuls of his shirt, yanking so hard the collar strained at the seams.
“Shit,” he muttered against my mouth, already breathless. He tried to slow us down, but I wouldn’t let him. It had always, always been about restraint with Oliver. I’d spent so long waiting, tongue against teeth, waiting for a sign I was allowed to want. Now I could. Now I did. I scraped my nails over his scalp and he groaned, deep in his chest. Hands flattened along my ribs, big and dry and hotter than I expected, like he meant to hold me together through sheer pressure. The fucking nest reeked of the two of us, of salt and sweat and the scent he always wore, something green and bitter, almost herbal.
He ducked his head, kissing the corner of my jaw, then my throat, then lower, and I let my head fallback, baring my throat for him. Instinct, but more than that—trust. I caught the grinding cage of his jaw on my skin, the sharp exhale through his nose. His hands curved under my thighs, dragging me toward the warmth of his body. The edge of the mattress pressed into my calves, spooling my nerves tighter.
He kissed lower, the rasp of his stubble waking up every inch of skin. My hands worked desperate at the buttons of his shirt, fumbling, then just tearing. A few popped off. He didn’t flinch. There was nothing in his eyes except wanting, blue and shivery and sharp. He shrugged out of the shirt and tossed it aside, then leaned down, shoving the covers aside until my sweatshirt rode up around my ribs.
He pulled it up over my head and I let him, let the air hit my flushed skin, let myself just be seen. My body was nothing like the polished girls who used to crowd magazine covers in the grocery aisle; everything was too pale, too soft, scars over my hips from years of haphazard living, thighs pressing together in a way reminded me, sometimes cruelly, of every bad year at the orphanage, every meal eaten fast before somebody couldsnatch it away. For a second there was a twist of old shame, a distant hum of less-than, but then I caught Oliver’s gaze on me—trainwreck intent, like he’d found something precious and couldn’t believe it was his. My breath stuttered in my lungs.
Oliver kissed me again, harsher this time, his hands moving with a certainty I hadn't realized I'd been craving. He mouthed down my chest, nuzzling the line between my breasts, stubble scraping enough to make me jerk. He caught my reaction, froze, then looked up—one eyebrow arched as if to ask, is this okay? I nodded, and he grinned, mouth gone wolfish, all teeth. For a wild second he looked like he might bite, actually bite, and the thought made my thighs clamp tight around his hips. Oliver caught my wrists in one of his hands, pinning them over my head in the nest's warmth, and used his other to unfasten the last barrier between us.
"Daphne." He said it like a sacrament, not a name. The sound of it burned me from the inside. He pressed my wrists into the blankets, not rough but beyond gentle—a kind of command, seeking my permission and finding it in the way my body moved for him, eager and greedy and starving for contact. He traced down my ribcage with his nose, inhaling deeply right over my sternum, like if he breathed me in deep enough, there'd be no air left in the room for anything except me and him and the snapping tension between us. His hair fell forward over his forehead and I wanted to touch it, to rake my fingers through that impossible softness, but he still had my wrists pinned, and the helplessness of it did something ugly and thrilling to me.
His mouth found my breast, tongue hot, teeth blunt and just barely grazing. His other hand mapped the edge of my waist, fingers spanning the scar there, and lingered in a way that made me feel bare, not just naked. The heat in me was a tight wire, painful, and I arched up into him, pleading without words. He slid down, mouth pressed to the dip beside my hipbone, and bit—gentle, then not so gentle. My hips jerked, and I may have whimpered. The sound didn’t even embarrass me. He looked up, and there it was again, that hunger, but also a kind of focus, like he was trying to memorize this moment so hard it might bust.
"You're shaking," he murmured, his lips brushing the skin just above my navel. He didn't sound worried. It was more like he was proud, like my unraveling had become evidence—of what, I didn't know, but I didn't want to figure it out. I just wanted him lower. As if he'd read my mind, Oliver let my wrists go, and I immediately curled my fingers into his hair, tugging at him, dragging him where I needed him. I wanted the weight of his body, the scratch of his light stubble, the relentless surety of his hands.
He eased my thighs open with deliberate slowness, not to tease—no, there was nothing calculated about the way he moved, more like he was drawing out the moment to memorize it for later. His hands were everywhere: bracketed tight around my hips, sliding along the backs of my knees, up my calves, stroking over the places I was most sensitive. He kissed the insides of my knees, the faintest brush of stubble making my thighs tremble. It was enough to make me whimper again, breathless and high-pitched in a way that would’ve mortified me, except that Oliver seemed to love it. Every sound I made seemed to stoke his focus, his tongue tracing the lines of my body like he was learning a secret language. I’d never been handled like this before—never even imagined it.
He pressed his mouth where I needed him, hot and deliberate, and the jolt went straight through me. Not slow, not trying to draw it out this time, but certain and greedy. I clawed at his shoulders, dug my nails into his skin, needed some way to anchor myself to the world. There was a slick, obscene sound to it, and my face burned, but I needed more, wanted more, andwhen I writhed, he just held me firmer. I knew my heat had fully taken over as I let myself let out a high keen.
It was worse, and better, than anything I'd ever endured. I'd gone through heats before, alone and ashamed, fighting the urge to drown myself in my own need. This was nothing like that. Oliver took me apart with a reverence that bordered on worship, and then put me back together with each kiss, each press of tongue and teeth, as if the whole point was to prove I could be remade into something wanted.
I dug my heels into the mattress, lost track of the world beyond his shoulders and the searing pleasure, and tried to bite back another moan but lost. At the sound, he groaned, a low rattle in his chest, and the vibration tripped something in me—made my muscles lock, made my vision fizz at the edges.
"Fuck, Oliver….Alpha… I'm—" I didn't finish; couldn't. My whole body shuddered, too full, too much, and the release hit so violent I nearly sobbed. I heard myself make a small, animal sound, raw and ugly, and I clapped both hands over my mouth out of habit—but Oliver's hands were faster, catching my wrists and peeling them gently, inexorably, away from my face.
"Let me hear you," he said, the words nearly lost against my thigh. He held me there, steady, his eyes meeting mine with a smile that wasn't so much gentle as stubborn.
I wanted to laugh and curse at him at the same time, lost to the clatter and fizz of every nerve in my body. But I didn't have words left—just sensation, hard and bright, then dull and distant in the wake of release. I felt myself slacken; my legs went heavy, a slow collapse, and I slumped back into the pillowy mass of blankets and borrowed shirts. My hips twitched, an aftershock, but he eased back up my body, moving with that aching patience I'd wanted to hate him for. He lay half over me, not all his weight, just enough to pin me in the folds of the nest. His handcradled my jaw, rough palm—callused from a lifetime of work—thumb stroking lazily at the fevered spike of my cheekbone.
Oliver’s chest was bare now, a salt sheen slick across his collarbones, and I inhaled the scent of him, heady and heavy in my throat, laced with the wild-bitter taste of my own sweat. My brain wouldn’t focus, but my body was alive with a clarity that bordered on pain, every nerve ending skinned raw and hypersensitive. I loved it. I hated how much I loved it.
