Page 5

“But I can’t always,” Striker says, returning to rubbing ointment into my bruised neck.

“Sometimes I can force things and other times I can’t.

So, I don’t know if that means anything is really safe.

Furthermore, when I think about blood, I…

” He gives me a helpless look. “I just don’t trust myself around you, baby girl. I don’t trust any of us.”

calix

IT’S LATE WHEN I get home from work, because I have to drive two hours from Cedar Falls to the compound upstate.

I feel as if it was a wasted day, too. I didn’t really get any information that’s useful.

Even though Tammy said that law enforcement might be there, I didn’t actually see anyone.

Mostly, it was business as usual, weird as that sounds.

The omegas were really antsy and clingy, and I had to alpha them a lot to get them to calm down.

I always feel weird about doing that, but it’s worse now, because I see Lotus in all of them.

There is some person in there, trapped and cut off from their memories, and I want badly to save all of them.

If they don’t have scent matches, does that mean their amnesia can’t be reversed? Are they permanently damaged? Isn’t there anything we can do for them?

When I get into the cabin where we’re staying, it’s dark outside.

I come into the house and find them all in the nest room, asleep in a big pile.

They’re all in various states of undress except Striker, and it looks like Knight has fallen asleep with his dick inside Arrow.

Arrow may have fallen asleep inside Lotus, too, from the look of their bodies, but she’s rolled free of him and is curled up against Striker’s chest.

I’m hungry.

But I’m also exhausted. The nest has more pillows and quilts, and it looks inviting.

It reminds me of my mother’s nest when I was a little boy.

Sometimes, when I was too afraid to sleep in my bed, I’d come and climb into it, worming my way in between my dads’ bodies to find a nice comfortable spot to sleep in.

It seems just good. Safety. Home. Family.

I crawl in with them, unable to stop myself from rubbing my face against Lotus’s thigh, just wanting to get her scent on me.

Lotus stirs. She smiles at me, stretching. “Calix,” she says, so happy to see me.

Wow. My chest feels tight. I love this woman. I’m home. I smile up at her.

She sits up. “Need to go to the bathroom,” she says, climbing out of the nest, over the sprawled out limbs of our mates.

I flop back down into the nest, sighing.

I hear her out there. I hear the toilet flush. Then I hear her out in the kitchen, opening cabinets, looking in the refrigerator. I could stay here, but…

I get up, too, and I wander out there.

She’s a sight for sore eyes, totally nude, peering into the open refrigerator, her curves on display, her lovely shapely legs, her round ass. She straightens, shutting the door, and there are her breasts.

I sidle over to her and get a handful of one.

She likes that, winding her arms around my neck.

We kiss, a long, slow, soft kiss, and I run my other hand over her bare back and down to cup her ass.

She tilts her head back.

Oh, man, my dick is perking up.

She feels it, giggles, and reaches down, rubbing me through my scrubs.

I gasp, kissing her again, harder, and then something else happens. My mouth—my teeth—I pull back, startled. I stop touching her to reach into my mouth and touch them. I have… fangs?

“Oh,” she says. “You have them too.”

“Too,” I echo, confused.

“Alpha teeth,” she says.

“No, these aren’t…” I touch the end of one of the fangs. Shit. It’s sensitive, like cock sensitive. I knot up right away, and my pants are suddenly way too tight.

Then, it’s sort of hazy. I know that I should be freaked out about the fact that I’ve suddenly turned into Dracula, but I’m not, because I’m wicked turned on and my instinct and my arousal take over.

My naked omega is here, in my arms, and she’s perfect and smooth and pretty and very fuckable, very bitable, very everything .

I nudge her backwards, careful, gentle, moving us until we hit one of the counters in the kitchen. I turn her so that she’s facing away from me, and I press into her from behind, running my hand down the notches of her spine.

“You’re the most perfect little omega I’ve ever seen,” I tell her.

She perfumes, rubbing her ass into my crotch.

I sigh, putting my teeth against the nape of her neck. I don’t penetrate her with them. Yet. I rub the smooth part of them over her skin, and it sends ripples of pleasure through me that wrest guttural sounds from my chest.

I push my pants out of the way, not even all the way down, just enough to get my cock out, and my hard cock nestles itself into the crease of her ass, like it has a mind of its own.

We both sigh.

“Spread your legs for your alpha, sweet omega,” I murmur.

She does, arching, clutching the counter, presenting her pussy to me. It’s dripping wet.

“Such a good girl,” I breathe. “Such a perfect, good, slick, little omega. Take your alpha’s cock, okay?”

“Please,” she sighs.

I slide easily into her, and she is snug and yet slippery, and I easily push my knot into her, sealing us together.

She cries out.

I reach around and take her whole mound in my hand. I squeeze that as I begin to stroke in her.

“Ah, shit, Calix, that’s going to make me come,” she says in a strained voice.

“Not yet, omega,” I soothe her, gently kneading her mound as I fuck her. “You’ll come when you get your bite, baby girl.”

“Oh, please, alpha, bite me,” she says in a rush, her voice stretching out like a song.

“I will,” I assure her. “Get used to my knot first.”

“I’m used to it,” she protests. “It’s perfect. It feels fantastic, and I want to come, and I want your bite. Please.”

“You are not used to it,” I tut, working myself into her a little deeper. “I will tell you when you’re used to it.”

She feels it and cries out.

“There we are,” I huff. “Now, you’re ready.”

She whines. “I’m so close, Calix, I’m so close.”

“I got you, sweetheart,” I say, licking the back of her neck, brushing her hair out of the way, getting her ready for me. “I’m here. It’s okay. I’ll give you a very nice orgasm. Just let your alpha take care of you. Surrender, omega. Give yourself to your alpha.”

“I’m yours,” she wheezes. “Please, alpha, please, I’m yours .”

My head rears back, and my teeth get even longer and even more sensitive, and I hone in on that spot, right there, on the back of her neck, my spot.

Then, I strike.

My teeth slide into her skin, all the way deep into her, and I’m rooted here, at her neck, and rooted there in her pussy. My knot pulses, and my cock stutters. The tips of my fangs are insanely sensitive, and I can taste her.

I become dimly aware of the fact we’re both coming, and she’s clenching hard on my knot, but she’s not making any noise and neither am I.

I feel like I tunnel down into the center of her, right into her core, lights flashing in front of my eyes as I delve deeper and deeper, each one flashing brighter, until they aren’t white but prismatic, like a rainbow, and then there are other colors, colors I’ve never seen before, and then I anchor into her, hook right in, and when I do that, she rushes back up the tunnel, back through herself and into me.

She flows into me, like her blood is flowing into my mouth, and her essence floods me like a crashing ocean wave.

We collapse into the kitchen counter, both gasping for breath.

My teeth retract, as if they’d never even been there. I have to tend.

Oh, shit, this is the tending instinct. Oh, fuck.

I lap at my bite, my hips jerking as I fuck her, and she lets out a prolonged moan.

She’s still coming.

I feel it now, but I feel not just her body clenching on me but her essence in me, that ocean that now fills me, crashing into the walls of me.

Her orgasm is like the breath of spring and the warmth of summer, like the first pink of the sunrise and the warmth of the dusk, and I thought I loved her before.

But I didn’t know what love was.

I tend my bite, banding an arm around her waist, working my knot in her as I nudge her ecstasies through both of us again and again and again.

“Lotus,” I rasp. “You’re everything.”