“The other alpha,” he says. “The one I was with.”
“I know.”
“He’s still here.”
I look up and scan the floor. Takes me a second, but I spot him—leather mask, standing by a support column maybe fifteen feet away, arms crossed, just watching. He’s been there the whole time. Through the fucking, the knotting, me holding this omega while he shook and cried. I look at him and I don’t feel guilty, but I’m not gloating either. It’s just... acknowledgment. He was here first. Doesn’t change a damn thing.
“Yeah,” I say. “He is.”
The omega lets out a rough, frustrated breath. His body language says he’s pissed, but his body keeps giving him away. He’s still leaning into me, still breathing me in, his hips shifting against my lap in these tiny, needy movements. His heat’s starting up again.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he says.
“No.”
“I had a plan.”
“I know.” I press my mouth to his hair, right above the mask strap. He smells like heat and sex and underneath all that, just him—warm and sharp, the same scent that caught me from across the floor and dragged me over here like I didn’t have a choice. “I wasn’t looking for this either.”
He laughs. Short, bitter. “Yeah, well. You seem to be handling it better than I am.”
“I’m not,” I say, and I mean it. I just know how to fake it. Twelve-hour shifts in chaos will do that to you. You learn to keep your hands steady even when your brain is screaming. That’s been me since I walked in here and caught his scent—my rut went from manageable to a fucking disaster in two seconds flat.
He goes quiet for a while. The bass fills up the silence. I just hold him, breathing him in, trying not to think about how in a few hours he’ll walk out and all I’ll have left is his scent stuck in my head for weeks.
He tips his head back against my shoulder, looking up at me through the mask. I can see his eyes now—dark, sharp, even with the heat still in them. He’s thinking, sizing me up the same way I’ve been doing to him. Even with the mask, I can tell he’s trying to make sense of what just happened and how it fits with whatever plan he had.
“Your hands,” he says. “They’re steady.”
“Yeah.”
“Why are your hands steady?”
I think about how to answer. Not the whole truth—we don’t do names here, no backstories. But he deserves something after what I took from him tonight.
“I’m used to people shaking,” I say. “It’s what I do.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then: “That’s either really comforting or really creepy.”
I smile behind my mask. “Probably both.”
He shifts in my lap, turns a little, and brings his hand up to touch my jaw through the mask. It’s light, careful, like he’s trying to figure out what I look like under there. His fingers trace the edge of the mask where it meets my skin, and he’s so gentle it actually makes me catch my breath. He notices. His fingers pause on my jaw, and his eyes meet mine.
“Huh,” he says.
Something changes in him. The anger pauses—not gone, not forgiven, just a crack in the wall where something else could maybe get in.
I pull him closer. He lets me.
We just sit there for a while, his back against my chest, my arms around him, both of us breathing. The floor keeps moving around us. The other alpha by the column hasn’t budged. My rut is simmering, steady, waiting. His heat’s doing the same. I can smell it building in his scent, getting sweeter, slick starting up again. His body’s warm against mine and getting hotter, his hips shifting in my lap, slow and not quite on purpose yet, but close.
“It’s coming back,” he says. Quiet. Almost resigned.
“I know.” I can feel it. His body’s tightening up, clenching around nothing, and his scent is getting thicker by the second. My cock’s already hard again, pressed up against his ass, and we’re both pretending not to notice, but it’s obvious.
“Is it—” He swallows. “Is it going to be like last time?”
“Worse,” I say, not sugarcoating it. “Deeper. Your body’s already had my knot. It just ramps up from here.”