I let that knowledge settle, considering all the things that come with it as I take a larger sip from my glass this time. Everything he’s saying makes sense, and there is a part of me that wonders if I am being reckless. No one’s ever accused me of being overly careful in my life, that’s for sure, but still . . . I can’t bring myself to change my mind. Not after the all-over pleasure I’d felt just from kissing him. A girl can only withstand so much, really.
“Your apartment is nice,” Noah says in what I suspect is an attempt to break the silence. “Cozy.”
“You mean it’s small,” I laugh.
He glances around my studio, his eyes moving from the kitchen behind the couch to the bed that sits on a platform to our left. “No, no, I just meant . . .”
“It’s fine,” I assure him. “I’ve never liked big houses.” I frown into my glass then. “Too much space.”
“What’s wrong with space?”
A familiar melancholy settles in the back of my mind, a brief glimpse of my dad’s face leaving our house for the last time flashing through my thoughts. I quickly shake it away as I take another swallow of wine. “Just feels lonely, I guess.”
“Oh.”
More silence. Noah isn’t looking at me, eyes transfixed on my carpet again as he holds his glass against his chest like some sort of tiny security blanket. My glass is nearly empty now, I realize, and the warmth the wine leaves in my belly is giving me that same courage Noah might have been chasing.
“So, if you’ve never been with an omega,” I try carefully, watching his jaw tense, “does that mean you’ve never knotted anyone?”
His knuckles go white against the wineglass in his hand, and for a moment I think he could almost break it in his grip. It’s subtle, the change in him, but with that one word I can sense the slight increase of his breathing, the ragged quality of it. It makes my heart pound a little faster, sets off a tingling between my legs.
And his scent.
It might as well be a wax melt, with the way it’s filling the room.
“No,” he says quietly, almost hoarsely. “I haven’t.”
I finish my glass with one quick tilt—reaching to set it on my coffee table as I slowly scoot closer to him. I can feel the warmth of him when my body presses to his side, feel the slight trembling in his skin when my fingers graze over his forearm. It makes me feel strangely powerful, knowing I can make this big alpha shake like this. I pluck his glass away to set it by mine, bringing my hand to his chest to tease at a button there, my mouth inches from his jaw.
“Would you like to?”
This close I can see the subtle flecks of green hidden in the clear blue of his irises, the discovery short-lived with the way his pupils continue to dilate to a point where his eyes almost appear black. His heart is pounding so hard I can feel it against my fingers, and at this point, its cadence more than matches mine.
I like the way that his breath catches when I lean into him, the way his hand settles at my waist as if by instinct (and well, I guess it is, if I took the time to really think about it) when I situate myself so that my knees press on either side of his hips, straddling his lap. Already I can feel the press of a hard something against my core when I settle there, and I find I like this too.
“Mackenzie,” he says roughly, his voice seeming to have dropped an octave. “Are you sure that you want to—?”
I catch the rest of his sentence at my lips, kissing him gently as his continued attempts to be chivalrous fade into a soft groan. He really does talk too much, for someone whose preferred form of communication I’d previously thought was scowling. On any other day, I might celebrate a man being so decent—but it’s been at least a year since I’ve been past second base, and right now I am wanting Noah to be entirely indecent.
There’s a bit of a bite of his nails as they press into the softness of my hips, a slight sting that I can feel even through the material of my dress. His lips part immediately when I urge them to with my tongue, and the taste of him when I deepen the kiss might be more dizzying than an entire bottle of the forgotten wine on my kitchen counter.
I don’t mean to rock into him; my body seems to have some sort of unconscious need to be closer, but the feel of his cock slotted against me, rigid and hot, seems to undo him. I feel his fingers in my hair, winding around the length of it to fist it tight so that he can pull me in, and then there is the shape of one large hand on my ass that grips me in a way that is anything but decent.
Yes, I think. This is what I want.
I’m not sure if he actually recognizes that I’m undoing the buttons of his shirt; I guess I would have trouble being overly aware of my surroundings, too, if I was kissing someone senseless like he is—but when my fingers slide across bare chest and press higher over his shoulders, I feel him shudder against me, a pained sound in his throat.
“Bed,” he grinds out, his mouth hardly breaking from mine.
Not much of a question, but the meaning is all too clear. “Yes.”
“Condom,” he grunts. “I don’t—”
“IUD,” I urge breathlessly. “And hell, you might know my gyno. She works on the second floor. So as long as you’re negative, we can—”
I yelp with surprise when he lifts me from the couch in one smooth motion, hands gripping the backs of my thighs as he takes me to bed.
I guess that answers that.
My back hits the mattress when he practically throws me into the middle of it—the earlier hesitancy Noah had shown nowhere to be found as he crawls up and over me lightning fast as if he can’t stand to be away from my mouth, his lips finding mine greedily.
“You smell”—I feel his breath huff against my cheek—“fucking incredible.”
I’d like to tell him he smells pretty good, too, but his tongue at my throat makes me forget the desire altogether.
“You taste even better,” he growls against my pulse, his voice sounding unlike him.
His hips roll into me, and I can feel his cock straining in his jeans where it rubs against my thigh. There is a mess between my legs already, my body seeming to know more about Noah’s alpha than I do, if the slick there is any indication. I can’t actually remember any time before this when I’ve ever been as wet as I am now. Then again, it’s hard to remember much outside of the way Noah is continuing to suck at my pulse.
“Noah,” I gasp, tilting up my hips in a silent plea. “Will it hurt?”
“I won’t hurt you,” he says in a more soothing tone, a whisper on my skin. “Not you.” His teeth nip at my shoulder, and I can feel his fingers tucking under my dress to slide over my thigh. “Because you’re a good omega, aren’t you?” My breath catches when I feel him pressing against my underwear, teasing the wet slit beneath them. “You can take it, can’t you?”
I feel a shiver pass through me, his crooning words speaking to some part of me that feels almost tight with disuse. Like I’ve never actually touched it before. I feel some sensation like a stretch inside me, like waking up from a very long nap—an all-over pleasure from his praise that I’ve never felt.
And maybe that’s biology, too, most likely is, actually . . . but I’m too far gone now to care.