I can’t even answer. I’m shaking so hard my teeth are clicking, thighs clenched, kneeling in a puddle of my own slick. Every alpha in the place can smell what just happened. They can smell the orgasm, the desperation, five months of pent-up need all spilling out in one humiliating moment on my knees.
“Take a second,” she says. “Breathe.”
I try to breathe. It doesn’t help. Every breath just brings more of his scent, and every breath makes my body clench and ache and want so bad it makes my solo heats look like nothing. I’vebeen starving for five months, and what I was starving for is right here. My body just made that painfully obvious.
I get a hand on the wall and push myself up. My legs are shaking so bad the beta hovers nearby, ready to catch me. I wave her off. If I can’t stand on my own, I should just crawl out and never come back, mask or not.
I manage to stand. My pants are ruined, thighs wet, cock still hard and pressed painfully against my damp underwear. The orgasm is still echoing through me, little aftershocks running up my spine. And the heat is already building again, even worse this time, because now my body knows he’s here and it’s not going to settle for anything else.
I look up. Across the floor, past the shifting bodies and the colored light and the smoke-thick air, a man is leaning against the bar with a beer in his hand.
He’s watching me.
He’s not surprised. His body language is all wrong for that. No tension, no sudden attention, no leaning forward. He’s just leaning back, relaxed, one elbow on the bar, one foot crossed over the other, head tilted like he’s watching something he knew was coming. Like he’s been waiting for this.
Even with the mask, I can see his shape. Tall, but not huge. Lean muscle, the kind you get from actually using your body, not just showing off. Shoulders broad enough, but not trying to prove anything. Tattoos that I remember tracing with my fingers. He looks way too comfortable here, like someone who’s been coming to this place for months.
Because he has. He’s been coming here for months. For me.
I know it the same way I know his scent. Nobody had to tell me. My body just reads his from across the room, and it’s obvious. He’s not cruising, not scanning the crowd. He was waiting for the door, saw me come in, and set himself up so hisscent would hit me first. He just watched me come on my knees in front of everyone, and he’s not even a little bit sorry about it.
My hands curl into fists at my sides. I’m pissed and I want him, both at once, and I can’t even tell which is stronger. He did this to me. He put himself right where his scent would hit me, waited, and watched me fall apart. I can’t see his face, but I can read the rest of him. He looks satisfied.
Satisfaction. The calm certainty of a man whose patience just paid off.
Another wave of heat hits and I grab the wall, holding on. My hole clenches on nothing, desperate and pulsing, slick running down my thighs, cock leaking through my ruined jeans. I'm embarrassed that he's doing this to me. I'm mad that he knew I'd come back. And I'm mad at myself even more, because he was right.
He picks up his beer. Takes a sip. Sets it back down. Pushes off the bar and starts walking toward me.
The unhurried stride of someone who knows exactly where he’s going and exactly what’s going to happen when he gets there. Every step brings his scent closer, and every step makes my body tighten and ache. My heat is screaming, actually screaming inside me, months of deprivation collapsing into a singular need so intense that my vision narrows to the shape of him moving through the dark.
He stops right in front of me. His scent is everywhere, drowning out every other alpha, every other option, every lie I told myself about 'any alpha will do.' I can feel myself swaying toward him, fists unclenching at my sides.
He reaches out and his fingers find my jaw, tipping my face up. The touch sends a jolt of heat straight to my cock and I gasp. His thumb rests on my chin. He tilts his head.
“There you are,” he says. Low. Warm. Smiling behind the mask — I can hear it in his voice. “Five months, three days. I stopped counting the hours around month two.”
I should push his hand away. I should tell him to fuck off. I should walk past him, find the pine-scented alpha or literally anyone else, and pretend my body didn’t just out itself in front of a room full of strangers.
I don’t do any of those things. I stand there with his hand on my jaw and his scent in my lungs and slick running down my legs, and I say the only honest thing I can think of:
“I hate you.”
He laughs. Quiet, warm, and completely unrepentant.
“I know,” he says. “Come here.”
Finch
He pulls me into him and I go.
I wish I could say I put up a fight. That I shoved his hand away, told him to fuck off, told him I was here for literally anyone else. That he doesn’t get to stalk my heat cycle and just expect me to roll over for him. But his hand moves from my jaw to the back of my neck, thumb digging in, and I just melt. My forehead lands on his bare chest and I breathe him in, and the noise I make is so desperate I want to punch myself. He’s warm, he smells even stronger up close, and I end up pressing my face into him like I’m trying to disappear.
“That’s it.” His hand moves up into my hair, fingers threading through it, cradling the back of my skull. “God, you smell good. You smell even better than I remember and I remember everything.”
“You’re insane,” I mutter into his skin. His scent is everywhere, in my nose, on my tongue, all over me. I’m hard enough to hurt and my heat is just getting worse with every breath.
“Probably.” He says it easily. His other hand settles on my lower back, wide and warm, pulling me closer. “I calculated your heat cycle. Did you know that? Three months average, give or take a week based on suppressant history and stress levels. I had a window. Showed up every Thursday in that window.” His hand slides lower, settles on my hip. “This is Thursday seven.”
