"I can clean myself up."
"Yeah." I wring the cloth out, reach for a fresh one. "You're not going to, though."
He makes a sound that's almost a laugh, or would be if he weren't so wrecked. His eyes close again. I bring him water in one of the small bottles the club provides and he drinks half of it without opening his eyes, just tilting his head back when I press it to his lips. The trust in that gesture, the casual way he lets me tip water into his mouth without checking what it is, makes my chest feel like someone's standing on it.
He doesn't trust me. He trusts the situation. He trusts the anonymous alpha who just gave him the most intense experience of his life and is now cleaning him up and bringing him water. He trusts the role I'm playing. And the role is real, everything I'm doing is real, but it's not the whole truth and the gap between the role and the truth is where I'm going to lose him if he ever finds out.
When. Not if. I'm not stupid enough to think this stays hidden.
I sit back against the wall and pull him against me. He comes easily, tucking into my side like he was made to fit there. I wrap my arm around him and press my nose into his hair and breathe in and it'sWren. It's Wren and my scent mixed together and it's the best thing I've ever smelled in my life. Tate is going to kill me.
His hand is resting on my chest. His fingers are long, the nails bitten short, a callus on his middle finger from the way he holds a pen. I know that about him because I've watched him take notes at Tate's kitchen table, hunched over a textbook, chewing on the end of his highlighter. He studies like he's angry at the material for not being inside his brain already. Everything Wren does has that edge to it, that impatience with the gap between what he knows and what he wants to know. It's one of the things I like most about him. I have never once told him that and I'm not going to start now, in the dark, while he's heat-drunk and half-asleep and doesn't know my name.
His breathing is slow but not even. He's hovering in that space between sleep and waking where the filter comes off.
"That was—" He stops. Swallows. "I didn't know it would be like that."
"Like what?"
He shifts against me. His face presses into my neck, right near the scent gland, and my whole body goes tight. "I thought it would just be the physical part. I read about it. The knotting and all of it. I thought I could just—experience the biology and then leave."
"But?"
"You were nice to me." He says it like an accusation. Like being nice was the part he didn't prepare for. "Nobody told me that part."
My arm tightens around him. I don't mean for it to. He doesn't notice, or doesn't mind.
"Do you do this a lot?" His voice is rough. Small. "Stay after."
"No."
He's quiet for a long time. I can feel him thinking, even through the heat-haze, that sharp brain turning something over. Then he says, "Why me?"
Because I've been wanting you for two years. Because your scent has been keeping me up at night since before I knew what it meant. Because I watched you walk onto this floor looking like you'd rather die than be here and I thought,that's the bravest fucking thing I've ever seen.
"Because you smell like mine," I say instead. Which is also true.
He doesn't answer. His breathing evens out. I hold him and listen to the sounds of the club around us, muted now, the bass and the moans and the wet sounds of other people's heat nights happening in the dark. I think about Tate's face if he could see this and I think about Wren's face tomorrow morning when the heat clears. I think about my hand on his hip where the scar is, the scar I've seen before, and I don't move. I don't leave. I stay exactly where I am with his weight against me and his scent in my lungs and the full knowledge of what I've done sitting in my chest like a stone.
***
The second wave hits him like a switch being thrown.
One second he's drowsy against my side. The next his whole body goes rigid, his spine arching, and I feel the heat pour off him in a wave I can actually smell, his scent going from warm and sleepy to sharp and desperate in the space of a breath. His eyes fly open and his hand grabs my thigh and his nails dig in. The sound he makes is barely human.
I'm ready for it. I've been half-hard since the lull started because his scent hasn't stopped doing things to my brain. Now it's fully back and my body responds like a match to gasoline. Rut kicks in, the deep pull that saysyour omega needs you, go,now, and I let it take me partway but not all the way. I want to be clear for this. I want to choose what happens next.
I push him onto his back. He goes easy, his legs falling open, and he's already wet again, I can see it shining on his thighs in the low light. His cock is hard against his stomach and his chest is heaving and he's reaching for me, grabbing at my arms, trying to pull me down.
I don't let him.
"Look at me."
His eyes find mine through the masks. Wide and desperate and glazed.
I lean down close. Put my mouth near his ear. "I'm going to make you say it this time. Out loud. What you want."
He shakes his head. Stubborn even now, even with slick pooling under him and his cock leaking onto his stomach. I almost laugh. I settle between his thighs instead and slide two fingers into him and he gasps and bucks. I start a slow rhythm and then I stop.