Page 69

I looked up at him, at his impressive chest and his impressive shoulders, down to the place where we were knotted together, where his impressive knot was buried inside me. “I do want it,” I said in a tiny voice.

“Soon, omega,” he said, running his hands all over me. He found one of the places he’d bitten me before. They were clustered in various areas—the undersides of both of my breasts, my armpits, inside my thighs—places where you would not see them when I was naked, even. I’d had sex with men who didn’t notice them, not if we did it in the dark and I steered them from doing too much exploring.

I knew the first time he did it, I didn’t ask. It had been like this had been. We were in the aftermath and he was running his teeth over my skin, and I liked it and he liked it, and he eventually just bit down.

We both realized it hadn’t done anything, but we both liked it, and I started begging for them a lot, most especially in that month where I had gone away to college, where he’d come see me in my dorm and we’d be checking the time because my roommate was coming back, and he didn’t want to knot me because of that, because who knew how long it would take for his knot to go down, so I’d beg for a bite, somewhere no one would see, but please, for him to mark me, for him to scar me, for him to claim me.

And he’d do it and lick me afterwards, the tending, the pain, the blood, the insanity of it seeming to keep me from losing my mind somehow.

He was not mine, but when he bit me, he was.

“Hell, Leo, how many times did I do this to you?” he breathed, fingers tracing the little half-moon scars that were nestled in under my breasts.

I remembered how it would feel to wear a bra when one of them was healing, how it would hurt and I would like that. It would remind me of him. It would make me believe, every time my bra abraded the place where he’d bitten, that I still had him, actually, that even though he’d bonded my best friend, he was still mine.

Why had I been so pathetic?

“A lot,” I said.

“Why didn’t I stop?” he said, and he tried to get off me, but realized, right away, we were knotted together. He made a face. “I get it. Why you don’t forgive me.” He looked down at where we were connected.

“You didn’t stop because I kept begging you for it,” I said.

“Partly,” he said. “I wanted… I liked…” His touch was gentle as he explored me. “What do people say when they fuck you and they see these?”

My lips parted. “You want to talk about that?”

“It’s disturbing,” he muttered. “I’m disturbed. You and me, we’re disturbing.”

I sagged into the blanket, sighing. “I tried to keep people from noticing.”

“Anyone who goes down on you is going to notice the ones on your inner thighs,” he said.

“True,” I said.

“So, people noticed.”

“Sometimes,” I said in a tiny voice.

“Were they disturbed?”

“They were,” I said, feeling defeated.

“Someone should have stopped me,” he said, caressing me. “It was bad enough what I’d already done to you. Putting all these marks on you, these permanent marks, Leo, this isn’t good. If some other man had done this to you, I would kill him.”

I made a pained noise. “Do you think I’m ugly now?”

“No.” He shook his head firmly, meeting my gaze. “You’re perfect. You’re beautiful. And, you know, it turns me on. When I’m hard, I like seeing them. I like possessing you, you get that?”

“You’re hard right now.” I nodded at his knot.

“I just had an orgasm,” he said. “So, uh, there’s that clarity.”

I shut my eyes, wanting to simply dissolve into the blanket.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said, fingers leaving the bite marks. “You get that?”

“It turns me on, too, though,” I said. “Sometimes, I play with them and touch myself.” I didn’t open my eyes when I said this.