Page 79 of Heat Lightning

“You sure you don’t want me to be possessive?” I asked, dragging my teeth down his neck through the mask. “That little omega in you seems to love it. You’re quite a needy thing.”

He harumphed and continued shifting his hips in tiny circles, moaning and whimpering.

Heady rut descended over me, urging me to fill and take and provide. He was mine to keep satisfied, after all.

“Fine,” I said, flexing my thigh to give him a harder surface to rub up against. “I won’t make a thing of it. But that means you shouldn’t make a big deal out of the fact that I’ve never been in rut before, either.” Reaching around, I gripped his ass. “Never spent a heat with another omega or knotted anyone besides you.”

He blinked up at me, gaze heat-heavy and soft. “Wait. Never?”

I shook my head and slid one finger into his slick hole, pushing my cum back inside. “Never. Not until you, sweet boy.”

He gasped and gripped my shoulders for leverage. “How is that p-possible, when you’re so…” his hips stuttered, caught between the pleasure of my thigh and fingers.

I raised an eyebrow. “Approachable? Yeah, I’m fighting partners off left and right.”

He snorted, quickly followed by a protest when I pulled out my finger. That, too, was short-lived once I slid down the bed until my face hovered over his erect cock. It fit perfectly in my hand, with a pretty, dusky pink tip that wept for attention.

“Well?” I asked, hooking the mask over my nose again to mouth at the base. “How are you doing with not making it weird?”

His laughter was drowned out only by the sound of his moans when I swallowed him down.

Neither of us spoke very much after that. I spent long minutes lavishing attention on his cock with my mouth and tongue, inhaling his scent straight from the source. I made him come like that once, and then again, alternating between drinking his fresh omega slick and cum while I milked his prostate with my fingers.

When the scent of his heat intensified to the point of driving me insane, I crawled up his body and thrust inside in one push. Tears ran down his cheeks, and I licked them off, one by one.

I was unprepared for him to taste of joy so acute I almost wept alongside him. It nearly made me blow my load on the first thrust. “Are you happy? Do I make you happy?”

I wasn’t sure why I asked that. It was an odd question in the middle of a heat wave, but I had to know. I needed to hear him say it. My words were broken and stuttered by our bodies moving against each other and by what this had become.

Not just a heat wave, or going through the motions to satiate a never-ending rut, or an unclaimed bond.

But something deeper; something else entirely.

“Yes,” he sobbed. “So happy.”

When the wave peaked, and he shuddered, ready for my knot, I gave it to him.

“Say my name,” I begged just before pushing inside. “Say it, say it⁠—”

“Atlas,” he wailed, fingers gripping the sheets. “Atlas, breed me!”

My knot popped past that tight ring of muscle, and it closed around the base of my cock. I shouted, fireworks exploding behind my eyes when he squeezed around me. The head of my cock brushed up against the softest part of him, nearly ready.

Claim him, claim him, my alpha snarled.

At the last second, I turned my head, biting the pillow until it tore. My climax guttered, and I cried out at the ruined orgasm.

He was mine. I needed to make him mine. It wouldn’t be right until I did.

Too far gone in his own pleasure, Max passed out in my arms almost immediately after. Panting and locked together, I realized how foolish, utterly foolish, I was for thinking this could ever be temporary.

TWENTY

ATLAS

Watching Max sleep was genuinely one of my favorite things to do.

I was aware of how much of a creep that made me. All those nights I stayed up late, watching him from the house across the lake, I couldn’t say whether I was more disgusted with myself or soothed by my need to see him tucked into bed, safe and sound.