“Hey.” I put my hand on his jaw. Gentle, through the mask. “Look at me.”
He opens his eyes. They’re wet.
“You liked it because it felt good,” I say. “That’s it. That’s the whole explanation. It doesn’t mean anything about who you are, what you do, or how good you are at your job. It means you like being told you’re pretty while you’re getting fucked. That’s allowed.”
“It doesn’t feel allowed.”
“I know.” My thumb moves on his jaw. “That’s why you ran.”
“That’s why I ran.” A breath shudders out of him. “And that’s why I came back. Because nothing else — no one else—”
He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t have to. I can smell the truth of it on him, the wanting underneath the shame, and my chest aches with something that has nothing to do with rut and everything to do with the fact that this man is sitting in my lap telling me the thing he’s most afraid of and he’s shaking, and he’s staying.
“I’m going to say those things again,” I tell him. “When the next wave hits. I’m going to tell you you’re pretty and I’m going to tell you I’m going to breed you and I’m going to use every word that makes your body light up. And I need you to hear me when I say that none of it makes you less. It makes you more.”
His hands unfist. Flatten against my chest. His breathing steadies.
“Okay,” he says. Small. Fragile. Real.
I pull him in and press my mouth against his forehead. I feel him exhale.
“I want a room,” I say against his hair. “A private one. For the next wave. Just us.”
He nods. “Just us.”
I flag a beta, and she leads us down a hallway to a private room — a door that closes, low bed, clean sheets, dim amber light instead of the blue and purple of the floor. I carry him because his legs aren’t ready and his arms go around my neck and he lets me, and that letting is the biggest thing he’s given me all night.
I set him on the bed. He lies back, and I look at him — flushed, naked, slick and come drying on his thighs, his cock soft against his stomach, his body carrying bruises from my hands and marks from my mouth. His chest rises and falls. His scent is thickening by the second, the warmth of it filling the small room, and his heat is building again.
“You said you’re a vet,” he says, watching me.
“Yeah.” I undo my jeans. Push them down. His eyes drop and widen slightly, and I don’t miss the way his breath catches when he sees my cock — hard again, still slick with him, the knot at the base already starting to thicken because his scent is doing things to me that make rational thought difficult. “Small animal. Emergency and rescue, mostly.”
“That’s—” His mouth twitches. “That’s not what I expected.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Something less gentle.”
“I am gentle,” I say, and I climb onto the bed over him, and his legs fall open for me. My cock drags through the mess between his thighs and his breath hitches. “When I want to be. Right now I don’t want to be.”
The wave hits him then. I see it — his eyes go glassy, his back arches off the bed, his scent explodes into something desperate and sweet. I’m breathing it in, and my cock throbs and I press the head against his hole. He’s so wet and open from the knotting that I slide in with almost no resistance.
“Oh — fuck—” His hands fly to my arms. His body is oversensitive; I can feel it, the way he clenches and twitches at the intrusion. He’s had three orgasms tonight, and his body isresponding to a fourth entry, and every nerve is live and raw. The first thrust jolts his whole body.
“Too much?” I know the answer. I’m asking anyway.
“Yes.” His voice breaks. “Don’t stop.”
I fuck him slowly. Deep, grinding strokes that press my cock against his front wall on every push, and he’s making sounds that are barely human — high, thin, continuous, like every thrust is pulling a wire through him. His cock is half-hard, trying, oversensitive, twitching between us. His thighs are shaking. His hands are gripping my forearms so hard his nails cut crescents into my skin.
“There’s my pretty omega.” I say it low, deliberate, right against his ear, and his body clenches around me so hard my vision blurs. “There he is. Came back for me. Couldn’t stay away.”
“Please—” Broken. Wrecked. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for.
I pull almost all the way out and push back in slowly, and his whole body shudders. He’s so wet that the sound of it fills the room — the obscene slick squelch of my cock moving through the mess inside him, his slick and my come from the first knotting mixing together. I can feel it dripping down my shaft, pooling where we’re joined.
“Listen to that,” I murmur. “Listen to how wet you are. Full of my come and still dripping. Still leaking like your body can’t get enough.” I thrust deep and hold and grind, and he makes a sound like something’s being pulled out of him. “Nobody else gets you like this. Nobody else has ever heard these sounds. This is mine.”
