This time, I nod and drag myself out of bed. The room tilts as I get to my feet. The warmth I became aware of a couple of hoursago has morphed into something I feel around me, not only inside me. A thick shroud that makes my skin tingle and cranks up my core temperature. There’s heat everywhere. Sunlight on my skin and flames lapping at muscle and bone. Sensitive parts of me swell and expand, stiffening to an uncomfortable degree.
Alfie holds my hand as we head to the kitchen, both clad in sleeping pants and T-shirts. I’ve been aware of his presence for months. If I’m honest, I’ve been acutely aware of him since I first arrived. Now, he looks different. Familiar in an intimate way. He’s rumpled from sleep, a shallow line creased into one cheek, and the hair on the back of his head is a little disheveled. All of it blends together to make him look extremely approachable.
He seemed untouchable when I first got here. Standoffish and difficult. Now, it seems like the most natural thing in the world to lace my fingers between his and lean into him as we walk to the kitchen. His skin is warm, the hair on his arms brushing against mine, and far from making me uncomfortably hot, there’s something soothing about coming into contact with him. Something so right that it’s a balm rather than a deterrent.
When he asked me about it, I told him what my first heat was like—not good and not terrible either. At least, it wasn’t purposefully terrible. The alpha I chose to help me through it was a good acquaintance, not a good friend or romantic partner. At the time, I thought that was a desirable quality in a heat partner. I thought it would keep things simple and make the experience easier to deal with. I liked him well enough out of heat. I still do. He’s a good person. It’s just that when the blaze took hold, I felt detached. From him. From myself and my body.
It hadn’t been great, and the experience left me feeling vulnerable and alone. The memory of it makes me wrap my free hand around Alfie’s upper arm and cling to him tightly. I feel a little ashamed of my behavior because I’m not in heat yet.The first symptoms have barely started, and I’m already feeling needy.
I plaster a smile on my face and try to relax my hold on him.
When we get to the kitchen, I hover near the table as Alfie flits around from the fridge to the oven. He’s quick to lay out trays of food.
“I wasn’t sure what you’d be craving,” he says, looking hesitant but also a little pleased with himself, “so I asked Cook to prepare everything you’ve enjoyed since you got here.”
I start giggling as the trays from the fridge keep coming. Alfie isn’t kidding. Cook has made almost everything I’ve eaten since I got here. He’s prepared each dish in small, bite-size portions to be eaten cold or after being reheated. It’s hard to describe how delicious it all looks. All of my favorite foods served on pretty floral trays with edible flowers and herbs scattered around.
“May I feed you?” Alfie asks.
His expression is enough to make my heart burst. Earnest and caring with such a strong desire to please me that it’s drawn into the lines near the corners of his eyes.
I nod sheepishly, half embarrassed by how much I like the idea of being hand-fed, but too turned on by it to say no. Hand-feeding was more common in the Old Ways. A tradition that’s fallen out of favor in recent decades, but right now, I can’t think of why people stopped doing it. Taking my food from the fingers of my alpha—what’s not to like about that?
Alfie pulls out a chair, sits on it, and pats his knee. I sink onto it and lean against his chest as he takes his time choosing the first bite for me. His hand hovers over a gooseberry and then a litchi, eventually settling for a piece of melon. The juicy flesh has been neatly trimmed to remove all traces of peel and sized to easily fit into my mouth. He lifts it to my lips, watching me so intently as he does it that his own lips part slightly, mimicking mine as I open my mouth.
He teases me for a second, holding the fruit almost within reach, so close that I could taste it if I extended my tongue, but drawing the moment out by not giving it to me. I tilt my head back and close my eyes. Darkness envelops me and so does a warm cloak of surrender. Alfie growls softly because he knows what just happened. He understands what I just gave him. My trust and submission.
I’m rewarded by a sweet, icy swipe of fruit over my bottom lip, followed by a burst of nectar that wakes my taste buds before the fruit even lands on my tongue.
I chew and try not to moan in satisfaction. The sweetness, the juice, the cool burst of flavor is exactly, precisely what I desire. The hunger I’m feeling is natural for a heat, but unnatural for any other time. It’s a ravenous thing. An animalistic craving so rampant that right now, there’s a gnawing emptiness in me that can’t imagine ever being sated.
Alfie works his way through more fruit, feeding me a slice of mango, a few seedless grapes, and a fresh strawberry that he slathers in clotted cream before putting it in my mouth. Each time he gives me a bite, his expression is the same. Earnest and caring. Sweet and hopeful and so happy to be taking care of me that it makes me want to cry.
It occurs to me dimly that he’ll need his strength over the coming days as much as I’ll need mine. “Shouldn’t you be eating too, Alfie?”
“Oh! You’re right. Good point,” he exclaims.
From there, he takes a bite every time he offers me one. He eats the same thing I do. A bite of granola with yogurt and honey for me, a bite of granola with yogurt and honey for him. We smile at each other like idiots as we chew, and by the time he holds out a decadent mini cinnamon-and-brown sugar pastry for me, I’m in such a lather that I take it from his fingers with a soft, undulating roll of my tongue.
His jaw drops fractionally, eyes fixed on me so intently it looks like he might have forgotten how to blink.
We work our way through the hot food and savory goods, each bite more delicious and satisfying than the last. When we’ve done as much damage as we can to each tray and have finally gotten to the delicate pink-and-white china platter laden with mini desserts, things have turned rather carnal. Alfie slots a creamy raspberry cheesecake into my mouth, and I take it from his fingers with a soft moan and an excessive use of my tongue. I use both hands to hold his hand to my lips, licking his fingers hungrily, sucking them into my mouth two at a time and groaning as the heat coursing through my veins amps up. I scrape my teeth over the pads of his fingers, tasting what he’s feeding me and his skin too. But more than that, taking the opportunity to scent the unending goodness that’s him.
His smell was light at first, just a hint of home that’s gradually gotten denser as the suppressant has worked its way out of his system. A beautiful, full-bodied scent now fills the air around me, making my vision blur. Mine affects him the same way. It must because he drops his chin, the tip of his nose a cool pressure under the shell of my ear as he inhales repeatedly.
The sound he makes on the inhale is that of an orgasm that happens in a dream. Rapture unleashed with no intention to rein it in. He breathes in again and again, and when he finally meets my gaze, his head is unsteady on his shoulders, but his eyes are blazing. Dark orbs have been lit from within. Tiny gold striations let the light that exists within him shine out.
I hold on to his wrist, clamping it tightly to my nose as I inhale like a drug. “Holy shit,” I chant. “Holy hell. Holy fuck. You smell good.”
The sound of his laughter slithers down my neck, blazing a trail as it caresses my skin. When our lips find each other, it’s not a kiss we fall into so much as a kiss that falls into us. There’sno order, no planning, no forethought. There are only lips and tongues. He and I. His scent and mine mingling and becoming one.
When I’ve eaten and drunk everything I can possibly manage and then some, my hunger finally relents. At least, my physical hunger is sated. There’s a primal appetite ripping through me that’s far, far from sated.
“Are you still all right being out here?” he asks. “Or would you like to go somewhere else?”
I know he’s checking to see if I’d like to go to the heat chamber yet, and part of me yearns for the comfort of a safe, enclosed space, but there’s somewhere I want to go first.
“Can we go to the library? Just for a while?”
