Jace

“Bite me,” I begged. “Mark me, I want you to.”

A growl was his answer, and it had the same compulsion as his bark. I hung limp in his hold, his to do with whatever he pleased, only he wasn’t doing anything and I needed him to.

“Look at you, beautiful,” he said, eyes luminous in the darkness. The dashboard lights were just enough for me to see features, but even that little bit broke me. The glisten of blood on his lower lip, the swelling and darkening skin to his jaw and right cheekbone, his hair dishevelled from the fight.

One big hand reached to cup my cheek, the thumb brushing over my skin in a way that was almost reverent. I blinked through the tears that wanted to fall and yet were somehow trapped. “Bite me,” I whispered, confused, feeling like my gut was being ripped out when he wouldn’t do this for me.

He didn’t want an omega, he was just saving me from Snake. That knowledge broke me a little more.

“Don’t fucking ask me to do that, baby,” he said. “Not now. We’re not safe yet, and the only way I’m biting you is when I’m buried in your pussy and you’re fisting around my knot.”

I groaned, and a great gush of slick poured out in answer. He grabbed a handful of my hair, face stark and terrifyingly beautiful in the gloom of the vehicle, while I gloried in his handling of me, heart thudding. There had been a moment when Snake was holding my legs apart, inspecting me, that I had seen my worst future. Fear, so visceral that it left me cold and dead inside, had gripped me then. Now it was hope blooming as I hung in my alpha’s arms.

Jace wasn’t telling me no, only telling me to wait. But I didn’t want to wait.

He had come for me. He’d beaten a man for putting his hands on me. It had been brutal, and yet I rejoiced in everything about it. This savage man, this beautiful god, was going to be mine.

If he wasn’t going to bite me, I was going to bite him.

I was going to claim him, and I wasn’t prepared to wait.

My head turned to the side, lips finding his wrist, kissing, nipping, then I rubbed my cheek against his firm flesh.

He groaned, weakening, grip loosening a fraction before tightening again. Then his lips were on mine, hot, hungry, sucking at my lower lip, our teeth clashing and tongues tangling as we tried to consume each other.

“For fuck’s sake!” came from the front.

I didn’t bloody care. My hands were on his buckle, and my focus on what was separating me from my prize was absolute. I needed him inside me, and I needed him now.

He tore his mouth from mine, trailing hot kisses across my cheek and down my throat. I tugged at his belt, gasping in joy as my fingers closed around his rigid cock, then growled as I tried to open my legs farther, straining to get firm flesh where I needed it, deep inside me. His teeth nipped at my throat, taunting me, his hands under my arse helping to lift, putting my pussy right over him.

His tip snagged my entrance, and I sobbed in joy as he impaled me in a single savage thrust. Nails raking his bare chest, I put my lips to his throat and bit.

“Fuck!” he growled, reaching to cup the back of my head, even as he clamped an arm around my waist, pi

“Take my knot,” he snarled into my ear. “Take all of my knot, baby.”

I didn’t have a choice. The power, as he hammered into me, was the perfect remedy for my fears. I craved everything about the co

His knot was swelling, I could feel it growing with every deep thrust, his hand bruising on my waist, and I fucking loved everything about that too.

“Good girl, mark your alpha, and he’s going to fill your needy little pussy all up with his cum.” That hot whispered growl, the dark car, the flashing illumination flickering over us, the roar of the engine smothering our gasps and groans, and the rough passage of the road beneath us, it all cast an otherworldly spell over the moment.

My lips popped off his throat as my climax tore through me, pussy convulsing in heavenly waves around his knot. He slammed deep and stilled, mouth seeking and finding mine, swallowing up my mewling cries of joy as a hot flood poured deep inside me, and my pussy locked down tight, squeezing, gripping, encouraging yet more of his seed. Here, right here, as we swallowed each other’s cries of ecstasy, the taste of blood and the rich scent of pheromones saturating the air, I found a new home.

I found where I belonged.

Messy, dirty, rough, I felt like I’d gone through an apocalypse and found a shattered and yet perfect peace on the other side. As his lips left mine, I blinked up at him, hearing the wild beat of my heart thudding through my ears, and there, deep inside, the pulse of his cock. He growled, grinding me down onto him, drawing me closer into him. My nose pressed to the crook of his neck, where my starved lungs could be filled with his comforting scent.

He purred, and it sapped the last of my energy, leaving me boneless and blissed out. Shifting again, he drew me even closer, like he was trying to meld me to him, strong arms providing a cage inside which I was safe, warm skin taking the chill from me.

My pussy clenched in a little spasm, and I felt the cum leak out around his knot.

“Feels like you’re wasting a lot, omega,” he said, lips beside my ear. “You know what happens to naughty omegas who waste their alpha’s seed?”

I shuddered, and my pussy squeezed again as if to taunt him into telling me. I gave my head a little shake. He looked at me then, and something else seemed to stare out at me. His eyes were darker, almost black, but a fire lit within them, flickering restlessly. I was prey in the path of a predator and he had me in his sights, but I wanted to be there. I wanted to be seen, to be held, to be claimed. As if reading my mind, he continued.

“They get rutted, claimed, and filled all up again. Expect to spend a lot of time locked on my knot. I’m going to feed you my cum. I’m going to bite and mark you all over your hot little body. Then I’m going to smear my cum over you until every breath you take is saturated with me and only me.”

“Please,” I said. “I want you to.”

Here, shattered, broken down, turned inside out, and stuffed full of cock and knot, I had no sense of worry or fear.

But the peace was gone a heartbeat later as a brutal contraction tore through my womb. My pussy squeezed so violently that it pushed out his knot, his cock slipping free, a great gush of cum and slick pouring out.

“Fuck!” someone growled, only it wasn’t Jace.

Jace growled back, savage, full of rattling menace at the other males in the car, males he’d tolerated before but wasn’t now.

Another savage contraction, and then pinpricks bathed the surface of my skin.

“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” the other voice growled. “Punch it, for fuck’s sake. She’s going into heat.”

12

Sloane

I was on fire, burning from within, but it wasn’t a painful thing. Instead, everything extraneous was burned away and there was only him.

“Jace…” I whispered.

“Got you, babe.”

And he did, scooping me up and pulling me out of the car, marching me straight over to the elevator and punching the button.

“We’ll…stay back here,” Dane said, not moving away from the car. “Hold down the fort and…”

“No one comes up to my floor, no one but Ma, not unless there’s a nuclear attack or something.”

“Got it, boss,” Ryder ground out, looking very, very pale. “I’ve got a little beta I need to update anyway.”

That should’ve meant something to me, somehow I knew, but it wasn’t making sense right now. There was only him, who held me tight as we swept into the elevator, his dense woody scent filling the carriage as we got inside. Then ding, ding, ding, up the floors we climbed, until we reached a familiar floor. I didn’t inspect his space this time, just grabbing the hospital gown I’d been given and ripping it off, the buttons skittering across the tiles.