Levi pulling me closer, burying his face in my hair. “Love you.”
We lay tangled together, his knot slowly softening inside me, our bonds thrumming in harmony. Three marks on my neck now. Three threads connecting me to my alphas.
"Micah's going to lose his mind," Levi murmured eventually, a trace of his usual humor returning. "He's been pacing downstairs like a caged animal. Oliver had to physically block the stairs at one point."
I laughed, the sound bubbling up despite my exhaustion. "Poor Micah."
"Don't feel too bad for him." Levi pressed a kiss to my forehead. "He's about to get everything he's ever wanted." He paused, something flickering in his eyes. "Just... be careful with him. He's more fragile than he looks. All that control? It's because he's terrified of what happens when he lets go."
"I'll take care of him," I promised.
"I know you will." Another kiss, soft and sweet. "That's why we love you." The heat was already beginning to stir again, thefinal wave building in my core. Micah was waiting—Micah, who had held himself back for so long, who had loved me from the shadows, who was about to finally claim what was his.
I couldn't wait.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Daphne
The next wave of my heat didn't creep. It detonated.
One moment I was drifting in the warm aftermath of Levi's claiming, his sunshine bond humming contentedly alongside Oliver's gold and Garrett's bedrock. The next, I was jackknifing upright in the nest, a scream tearing from my throat as the heat slammed into me with the force of a freight train.
This was different. This was worse. Every nerve ending in my body had been stripped raw and set on fire, every inch of skin hypersensitive to the point of agony. The sheets beneath me felt like sandpaper, the air in the room too thick to breathe. My core clenched around nothing, empty and aching, and the pain of that emptiness was so acute I thought I might die from it.
"Micah," I sobbed, though I wasn't sure if the word actually made it past my lips. "Micah, please?—"
The door didn't open. It exploded inward. Micah stood in the doorway, and I barely recognized him. Gone was the composed, controlled man who analyzed every situation with clinical precision. In his place was something feral, something barelyleashed, his dark eyes blazing with an intensity that made my breath catch even through the haze of heat.
His usually immaculate hair was wrecked, standing up in wild spikes like he'd been tearing at it. His shirt was untucked, half the buttons missing, revealing glimpses of lean muscle and pale skin beneath. His hands were clenched at his sides, tendons standing out in sharp relief, trembling with the effort of restraint. And his scent—God, his scent… pure alpha musk so thick it coated my tongue and made my head spin.
He looked like a man who had been holding himself together by sheer force of will, and that will had finally, catastrophically failed.
"Daphne." My name came out broken, shattered, nothing like his usual precise diction. His chest heaved with each breath, nostrils flaring as he drank in the scent of the room—of me, of heat, of three alphas' releases still leaking from my thoroughly claimed body. A sound escaped him, low and guttural, more animal than human. "I can't—I tried to wait—I tried to be patient?—"
"Don't be patient," I begged, reaching for him with trembling hands. "Micah, please, I need you—it hurts so much—" He crossed the room in three strides, and then he was in the nest, his weight bearing me down into the mattress, his mouth crashing against mine with none of the careful precision I'd come to expect from him. This kiss was desperate, uncoordinated, teeth clashing, tongues tangling, both of us too far gone for finesse. He tasted like the tea he always drank, something herbal and slightly bitter, and underneath it the taste of his own need, sharp and electric.
His hands were everywhere, not the methodical exploration of before but frantic, grasping, like he was trying to touch every inch of me at once. He palmed my breasts roughly, fingers digging into the soft flesh, then dragged his hands down mysides, over my hips, between my thighs. When his fingers found my center, already slick and swollen and desperate, we both groaned.
"So wet," he breathed against my mouth, his fingers sliding through my folds, gathering the evidence of my arousal—and the releases of his pack mates still seeping from me. "You're dripping. Soaked. Three knots and you still need more."
"Need you," I gasped as his fingers circled my clit, the pressure just right, his touch precise even now. "Only you left. Please, Micah?—"
He pulled back just enough to look at me, and what I saw in his eyes made my heart stutter. Hunger, yes—raw and overwhelming—but also something softer. Vulnerability. Fear, even. Like he was terrified of what he might do if he let go completely.
"I've been holding back," he said, his voice strained. "For months. Years, maybe. Wanted you so much it felt like dying. But I was afraid—" His jaw clenched, a muscle jumping beneath the skin. "I was afraid I'd hurt you. That I'd lose control and?—"
"Lose control," I interrupted, grabbing his face in my hands, forcing him to meet my eyes. "I want you to lose control. I want everything you've been holding back. Give it to me, Micah. All of it."
Something cracked behind his eyes. The last fragment of his carefully constructed composure, shattering into a thousand pieces.
"You have no idea what you're asking for," he growled, and then his mouth was on my throat, teeth scraping against the sensitive skin, not biting but promising. His hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise, lifting me, positioning me, and suddenly I was on my stomach, face pressed into the pillows, ass in the air.
"Micah—" I started, but then his mouth was on me, and I lost the ability to form words.
He didn't tease. Didn't build slowly. He buried his face between my thighs from behind and devoured me like a man possessed, his tongue plunging inside me, lapping at the combined releases of his pack mates before focusing on my own arousal. The angle was different like this—deeper, more intense—and I screamed into the pillow as his tongue found spots I didn't know existed.
His hands gripped my ass, spreading me open, holding me in place as he feasted. I could feel his nose pressing against my perineum, his chin slick with my arousal, his breath hot and ragged against my most sensitive flesh. He ate me with a single-minded focus that left me breathless, every stroke of his tongue precise and deliberate, calculated to drive me higher.
