Page 11

It’s a joke, and his quiet laugh tells me he gets it. “I once heard a heat clinic nurse say omegas crave cum on a cellular level.”

I cover my face with my hands, my “It’s so bad but it’s so true,” muffled as I fall back against the bed. “Or like, alpha fluids,” I amend, peeking up at him through my split fingers. “It doesn’t have to come from a man.”

“You speaking from experience?”

“Maybe.” It was just once, during a heat, when the heat clinic could only supply one male alpha. The other alpha who had joined us, a French woman on vacation in Canada, had been wonderful. “Yes.”

“You’re bi?”

“I guess? I’ve never put a label on it. What about you?”

He shakes his head. “Mostly straight.”

“Mostly straight?”

“I’m whatever I like watching other guys’ dicks disappear into omega pussy and DVP feels great is.”

I laugh. “That’s just being an alpha.”

“Exactly.”

I sit up again and run my hands up and over Matiu’s chest, pushing his open shirt off his shoulders. He drops it on the floor, adding his belt to the pile a moment later. Without the clothing, his biceps look even more magnificent, as does the rest of him. He could easily play a superhero in a movie with those leading man abs. “I didn’t realise you had tattoos,” I say, spotting the matching pattern, like a small wave, that curves over each hip towards his groin.

“Tā moko,” he replies, turning around and dropping his pants. “On this part of the body it’s called pūhoro.”

“Oh, wow. Wow.”

The tattoo extends from mid-back at its highest point to his lower thighs, an intricate combination of swirling patterns and tiny straight lines etched in black, and I may not have been here for long but I’ve already seen enough in the last two days to know this is recognisably Māori, just like the tattoo worn by the woman in the book I flicked through. I trace my hand over his backside—he has a fantastic ass—circling in line with the spiral pattern that covers each cheek. “How long did this all take?” I ask.

“Days. It was a big deal for me, to get it done. My brothers and I are the first to wear moko on our skin in six generations. For a while I felt like maybe I didn’t have the right credentials to wear it; I’m not fluent in te reo Māori, I don’t live anywhere near home, but I had some mentors encourage me to get it, and it’s a promise to myself, to keep on going with things, language learning, pro bono work that aligns with Māori initiatives, that sort of thing. Just… contributing.”

“It’s beautiful. Am I allowed to say that?”

“Of course.”

I hesitate, wanting to ask more and nervous to at the same time. He sees, and turns back towards me with a smile. “Ask away.”

His cock is practically in my face—and it’s an amazing cock—but I keep my gaze locked on his face. “Do the patterns represent certain things?”

He nods. “Māori was an oral culture, eh, before the Europeans arrived. We didn’t have a written alphabet, though I’d argue that the assertion that we didn’t record anything is a lie told through a Western lens. Because this isn’t ‘writing’ but it tells a story. My tūpuna used patterns such as these carved into wood to prompt memories. On the body, it’s a living record of your life.”

I run my hand over the front of his muscular thigh. The tā moko wraps right around his upper legs, ending an inch above each knee. “Will you get more?”

“Probably not. But we joke that between us, my brothers and I have the whole tinana covered, ‘cause the oldest, Rāwiri, has his mataora,” he says, gesturing at his face, “and out of my younger brothers, Īhaka has it here,” he runs his hand over his shoulder and arm, “and Eruera chose his calves. It just worked out that way. Now,” he adds, changing gear, “I’m naked and you’re not, and I think that’s a problem that can be easily rectified.”

I grin up at him. At this point my cheeks hurt from so much smiling, and I can’t remember the last time anything felt so easy with another person. “You think?”

“Yeah, I do.” He bends, kissing me deeply, and I use his distraction to wrap my hand around his cock, grinning against his lips at his grunt of surprise. Stroking him is easy, my finger and thumb tight around him, working his foreskin up over the head of his cock and back down again. I squeeze his already swollen knot with my other hand and my pussy aches, desperate to be stuffed full.

He grabs my hands suddenly with a quiet, shaky, “Fuck, you’re gonna make me come.” My clothes are stripped away in a rush in between kisses and careful bites and Fuck you’re beautifuls, my best set of underwear—a black, lace-edged, and sheer, worn today just in case—earning me a very alpha growl. Somehow, we’ve moved into the centre of the bed, and I lie back under his gaze, the quote paint me like one of your French girls flitting through my mind.

His hands cup and squeeze my breasts, and I can almost forgive all the back pain given the way he looks at me. “Can’t believe you had this on under there the whole time,” he says. “Fuck.” I love the way he bites his lower lip, the intensity in those dark brown eyes, the small gap between his front teeth. I don’t feel self-conscious with him, not when he grips my flesh like I’m the best thing he’s ever laid his hands on.

“I’m guessing you’re a boob man?”

He grins, kissing my breast where the flesh spills out over the cup. I shift slightly, gasping when he follows my lead and sucks my nipple through the sheer mesh, the sensation going straight to my pussy.

“I’m an everything man. Speaking of which, roll over so I can get a good look at that arse of yours. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”