Page 37 of Keep My Alpha

Two fingers. Now there’s something to it: the width of his knuckles spreading me, the drag as he pushes deep and curls. His fingers are thick and rough-skinned, and they find the spot like he drew a map, like he memorized the topography of me. I gasp. My hips roll. Slick runs down the inside of my thigh, soaking into the sheets.

“God.” He pulls back to look at his hand, at the mess of me on his fingers, and his pupils are so blown his eyes are almost black. “Soren, you’re—“

“If you say wet, I’m kicking you out of this nest.”

“Ready.” He pushes a third finger in, and I choke on the sound I make. “I was going to say ready.”

Three fingers stretching me open, working me in slow, deliberate strokes while his thumb presses against my rim. His free hand shoves the flannel up my chest, his flannel, on my body, in our nest, and his mouth finds my ribs, my sternum, the soft skin below my navel. His tongue drags flat and hot, and my cock twitches against my stomach, leaking.

I grab his wrist. “Enough. I was ready before you got here.”

He withdraws his fingers; the sudden emptiness makes me whine, actually whine, and shifts over me, one hand bracing by my head, the other guiding his cock. The blunt, hot press of him against my hole and my whole body goes taut, strung between want and something darker. Something that whispers if he fills you up and you’re still empty after, then what?

I shove the thought down and wrap my legs around his waist and pull.

He sinks into me in one long, slow push.

The sound I make isn’t pretty. Half moan, half something wrecked and broken. My back arches as he fills me, the thick, steady slide of his cock opening me up inch by inch until his hips are flush against mine and I can feel him everywhere. He’s big, and I’m soaked, and it takes a second to adjust, my body clenching around him, the stretch bright and overwhelming. My nails dig into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks.

Wren holds perfectly still. His arms tremble with the effort. “Okay?”

“Yes.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Move. Please move.”

He pulls back, a long, dragging withdrawal I feel in my teeth, and pushes in. Again. Finding a rhythm, unhurried and deep, the kind of pace that says I have you, we have time, I’m not going anywhere. Each thrust presses me into the nest, blankets shifting under my back. His cock drags across the spot his fingers found, and the edges of my vision go soft.

I bury my face in his neck and breathe him in, and it’s the thing I can’t name and have stopped trying to: the smell that makes my whole spine go quiet, thicker now with sweat and sex and the fact that he’s inside me. My bite throbs in answer.

But even here, even with him inside me and around me, his weight pinning me to the nest, the birds flash behind my closed eyelids. The empty bench. The windowsill where the eighth bird should be. I’m thinking about it while Wren fucks me, while my mate gives me everything, and the guilt is a fishhook in my chest.

Stop it. Be here. He deserves you being here.

I imagine, for one sharp and guilty second, what it would feel like if the admirer’s hands were the same as these. If the unknown someone who carved Keats with all that patience and care were the one now sliding down my spine. The idea ghosts over the real thing for half a heartbeat, and I moan into Wren’s mouth before I can stop it.

The shame is instant. Wren is right here. His actual body, his actual hands, his actual cock buried inside me. And I’m layering a phantom over him like he’s not enough. He is enough.

I clench around him on purpose, pulling a groan from him, and use the sound to ground myself. His hips stutter, then move harder. The angle changes when he lifts my leg higher, and suddenly he’s deeper, pressing against something that makes my whole body spark. Slick is everywhere, between us, on his cock, pooling in the ruined sheet beneath me, and the wet, rhythmic sound of him moving inside me fills the room, real and grounding in a way my thoughts aren’t.

“Wren—“ His name comes out punched. “Right there—don’t stop—fuck—“

He keeps the angle. Steady and relentless, like he was built for this, like holding me in place and taking me apart is the one task he’ll never half-finish. His mouth finds the bite mark and drags his lips over it, and it goes straight down to my cock. I’m shaking under him, thighs trembling where they’re locked around his waist, cock trapped between our stomachs and leaking with every thrust.

His pace builds. His breathing goes rough against my neck, hips snapping harder, and the base of his cock is thickening, the knot starting to swell. My body responds before my brain does, clenching in rhythmic pulses, slick gushing, hot and fresh between us.

“Close,” I manage. “I’m—Wren, I’m close—“

His hand slides between us, wrapping around my cock, and the first stroke rips a sound out of me that I’d be embarrassed about if I had any capacity left for embarrassment. His thumb drags through the slick mess on my stomach and uses it, stroking me in time with his thrusts, his cock deep inside me, his hand on me, his mouth on my bite, and it builds until there’s nowhere for it to go but through me.

I come hard. My whole body locks up, back bowing, nails clawing at his shoulders, my hole clenching so tight he gasps. The orgasm rips through me in long, shuddering pulses, cum streaking his hand and my stomach and the bunched-up flannel I’m still half wearing. For four or five endless seconds there’s nothing in my head but static and the feeling of him inside me and the taste of his skin under my tongue.

Then it ebbs, and I’m trembling, oversensitive, every nerve lit up. Wren’s rhythm goes ragged. He thrusts twice more, deep and desperate, and buries himself to the hilt and comes. The hot, thick pulse of him filling me, his cock twitching, the low wrecked groan he makes against my throat. His hips grind against mine, working through it, warmth pooling deep in my belly. His knot hasn’t fully caught, not this time, not with the pace we set, but the partial swell holds him inside me, keeps him close, and his cum leaks around his cock, mixing with slick, dripping to the sheets already ruined beneath us.

His full weight settles onto me. I take it. I want it. His face is pressed into my neck, and his breath is hot and unsteady, and his heartbeat slams against my chest like it’s trying to sync with mine. My hand finds the back of his head, fingers threading through sweat-damp hair, and I hold him there while the tremors slow.

For a few seconds, it works. The birds are birds. The bench is a bench. There’s only the wet heat of our bodies tangled together and the warmth soaking through the nest.

Then he shifts, easing his weight to one side. His hand cups my jaw, thumb tracing my cheekbone. He pulls back to look at me, and his eyes are so soft, so completely wrecked and present, that the thing I’ve been running from all night catches me in a single breath.

“Hey,” he murmurs. His thumb swipes under my eye. I didn’t know I was crying. “Talk to me.”