“I need you to be sure,” I grind out, my alpha growling in protest at having stopped. “I need you to be sure you want me to do this. If I knot you now . . .” I suck in a ragged breath. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”

I feel Mackenzie’s slim fingers reaching to touch my knuckles, rubbing a soothing circle as her face turns against the mattress to look back at me. “Please, Alpha,” she whispers hoarsely. “Please give me your knot.”

I hiss a curse when she pushes against my cock, waving her hips tantalizingly to accentuate her point. I smooth my hand over her lower back as I dip my hips to notch at her entrance, holding my breath as I watch the swollen head slip inside to disappear inch by inch. It’s mesmerizing, watching her stretch around me—her body tight and warm and wet and taking me inside like she was made for me. I make a choked sound when the only slightly swollen base of my knot disappears to leave me rooted fully inside, knowing that soon it will swell, that she’ll take everything I can give her and more.

And it’s that thought that forces me to move.

I can see everything like this—unable to tear my eyes away from the sight of her body opening up for me again and again, and I can hear words that I’ve never spoken fall from my mouth, like they were waiting for her.

“Look at you,” I rumble. “Look at how good you take my cock.”

“Yes,” she whines. “Just like that.”

I slap my hips against her, slamming inside a little more roughly. “Is this what you need? Did you need your alpha’s knot?”

Not her alpha, some small voice whispers from far away. Not hers.

I completely ignore the voice.

“Say it,” I growl. “Say you need your alpha’s knot.”

“I—fuck.” Her face buries in the blankets as she makes an unintelligible sound. “I need—please—I need your knot, Alpha.”

“Good girl,” I hum, smoothing a hand down her spine.

Her hair looks darker dripping with sweat, clinging to her skin at her temples and shoulders. Her mouth is parted and swollen and red when she turns her face to press her cheek to the mattress, and when her eyes flutter open, when they find mine—the amber irises almost seem to glow with how bright they look.

“I’m going to make it feel better,” I grit out, the slap of my skin against hers ringing in the air. “I’m going to knot this pretty little body until you can’t take it anymore.”

“Mm. Yes,” she pants, her fingers curling into the blankets to fist the material. “What I want.”

“So fucking beautiful,” I manage through clenched teeth. My lashes flutter as the pressure in my cock swells to unbearable levels. I can feel my knot already beginning to thicken, making it more and more difficult to push inside her with every thrust. “You’re perfect, Mackenzie. You know that? So goddamn perfect.”

“Noah, I—”

She cries out when I hit deep, the head of my cock sliding against the most sensitive place inside of her as she trembles around me. I can feel how close she is in the ragged pants of her breath and the shaking quality of her limbs, and I can just wind my arm around her middle, my fingers slipping between her legs to tease the still-sensitive bundle of nerves there.

“Fuck,” she hisses.

I roll quick circles against her clit, feeling her clench around me with every swipe of my fingers as her voice comes out in a garbled mess of my name and Alpha and please and all sorts of filthy utterings. There is so much of her slick between us that the sound of my skin colliding with hers is wet and sloppy, and I can feel my stomach clenching as the pressure in my cock reaches the tipping point, barely able to hold on as I wait to feel her let go.

I barely make it, letting go only seconds after I feel her coming apart around me, practically roaring with relief as I push as deep inside her as I can and curl my body around hers as the sweet pleasure of release washes over me. The sensation of her body accepting my knot is indescribable, like every good thing I’ve ever felt all rolled into one as I lock inside her, ensuring that she can’t be anywhere but right here with me.

Even after, when the howling of my hindbrain calms ever so slightly, when it gives way to some semblance of rationality—I still can’t find it in me to feel worried about this. With all my talk of consequences and being careful . . . Right now I can only focus on how good she feels. How right. She snuggles against me afterward like she was made to, her body fitting with mine as if by design. I wrap my arms around her tightly as I nuzzle her hair, my chest rising and falling heavily against her back.

When I hear her breathing even out, telling me that she’s slipped into a peaceful sleep—I press a kiss to her hair, pulling her impossibly closer, like I’m afraid that she might not be there when I wake up if I don’t. I close my eyes and try to will myself to rest, too, knowing that this is only the beginning and that there will be more of this frenzy to come—but in my head there is a buzzing of something that wants to make itself known, something that I’ve been doing my best to ignore, I think.

Because with Mackenzie in my arms like this . . . I’m realizing that I don’t want to let her go.

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17

The last few days have been a blur of sweat and sensation—and today is no different. In the haze of my heat, everything feels far away and also impossibly close, my senses in overdrive and my body in a constant state of burning pleasure and pain.

And Noah has been there for every second of it.

I can’t remember a time when it’s been like this, when I’ve seemed to need someone like I’ve needed Noah—and with every passing hour where I give more of myself to him, an anxiety grows on my hindbrain like a parasite, fueling my actions, making me needy. I cling to him in sleep and while awake, and every second that he isn’t inside me feels like torture. Which, to be fair, hasn’t been very often.

My eyes are shut tight so I can focus on what I’m feeling—my thighs spread over his lap as I ride him, his fingers digging into my hips to help rock me against his cock. My body is just as lined with sweat as his, and the entire room at this point is a cloud of our scents morphing together to make something new, something intoxicating.

I gasp when his thumb finds my clit to tease, still sensitive from the orgasm he gave me only a few minutes ago. I have to brace my hands on his shoulders as my head lolls forward, trying to keep up the rhythm of my hips as he bounces me on his cock.

“Look at you,” he hums, slipping his thumb between my folds, where a gush of my slick escapes. “You’re making such a mess.”

“I’m—oh. I’m sorry, I—”

He leans up from the pillows to leave kisses at my jaw. “Don’t apologize,” he murmurs. “I like it.”

He’s been like this ever since we came here; he uses words and gives praises that are filthier than I’ve ever heard from him, and apparently the more primal parts of me fucking love it. His voice whispering dirty things in this sequestered room just for us makes me shiver, almost as much as his touch.

“I’m so close,” I groan.

His thumb continues to rub circles against my clit, his other hand curving against my ass to squeeze as he starts to meet my thrusts. “Can you take me again?”

His knot.

I’m practically addicted to it now. As good as it was before, now—when my entire brain seems to be functioning solely on instinct—his knot might as well be a cocktail of everything good I’ve ever had. The sensation of him filling me until it feels like he has no room left, like I might burst with it—it’s a pleasure that goes beyond just sexual and makes a home deep down in my bones as if my body is finally getting what it’s always wanted. What it’s needed.