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He wakes sometime early morn, when the sun begins to flicker above the horizon, and the birds have not yet sung.
She lies stark still beside him. It would worry him more if he weren’t acutely attuned to her breathing, if he couldn’t smell the lilac-soaked essence of her calm, rightfully drenched in pieces of him.
He leans over, carefully, so as not to startle her. The thin sheet is draped just above her belly, and he regards his work with pursed lips: bare breasts covered in teeth-shaped welts, traveling nibbles up the slope of her painfully inviting neck.
Perhaps he got carried away.
Perhaps he doesn’t care.
He places the back of his hand to her temple. Warm, but subsided. He anticipates another spike. This time, he’ll be prepared.
A myriad of other concerns, however, pose numerous tasks ahead. He hardly has to think about them. He simply knows. Knows what she’ll require, what she’ll need in this vulnerable state of being.
She’s dehydrated.
Hungry.
Though he presumes a greater hunger will take priority. Still, it’s instinct to prepare. So innately dire that he thinks he’ll have to crawl out of his own skin if he doesn’t answer its calls.
He’ll start for the kitchen, but not without a price. Not without leaning over and gently pressing his nose into the crook of her neck. He inhales deeply, and his mouth waters. Descends to press a kiss just below her jaw. She sighs, but doesn’t stir. A smile tugs at his lips.
There is still an ever-present ache in his gut when he wills himself to stand. It travels through his veins, most irate between his legs, where the deflated piece of him still hums for attention.
The timeline isn’t clear, lost to lust and nature's haze, but he suspects they were joined for an hour, maybe two. And even when they came apart, he kept her no less near, spending most of the night with the weight of her slumbering on his chest, perfectly grounded.
He can’t remember the last night he slept so sound.
An ease has settled over him, one that did not exist in the days, months, decades prior. Unanswered questions and self-pitying doubts collect like webs, but there’s no time to weed through them. No urgency other than that to give, to serve. The labyrinth before him is foreign but plain, and he maneuvers it expertly, as if he’s seen its path before.
He breathes so deep, his bones expand. He is weightless, unburdened.
And it’s abnormal, this sudden sense of clarity. But he has no desire to acknowledge it. Not when it feels more right, more real than anything he’s made of himself for the better part of twenty years.
He’s in the middle of shucking up his crumbled jeans, grunting about how the denim feels against his tender skin, when a succession of thumps meets the front door.
His ears perk up, and his eyes shoot to the sleeping body on the bed, fearful that the intrusion may disrupt her much-needed rest. Thankfully, she doesn’t seem to break from her reverie, and Joel uses it as an opportunity to hunt for his discarded t-shirt, taking long strides for the door when the sound picks up again.
He takes in a sharp breath, and the familiar scent halts his hand above the lock. His eyes fall shut, and he bites the inside of his cheek until he tastes iron.
“Shit,” he hisses, but waits only a moment longer before turning the deadbolt and twisting the handle.
Maria stands on the porch, where he stood frenzied only hours ago, her hands dutifully at her sides, erect posture unmoving. Her countenance is hardened, but he senses no immediate threat. He tries to decipher the air around her, but she’s masked her intentions well. It’s difficult for any kind like their's to sniff out another’s emotions, but Joel has always had a particularly difficult time reading his sister-in-law, equally matched designation aside.
They stare at one another for a long while. He doesn’t know what to say, so he lets the first thing that comes to mind tumble out.
“It ain’t what it looks like.”
What does it look like to the outside eye? Nothing good. Nothing expected, or planned, or accepted, even. In true fashion of the universe and its disregard for his luck, he hasn’t had the time to reflect on it himself. What is so plainly spelled out, ready and ripe for the beast, still unclear to the man.
And worse, he has not had the chance to tend to her. To see this fledgling cycle through to its end, and then, only then, when he is most lucid, will he decipher the next steps.
He would be more proud of his good sense if it weren’t for the sickening pit of anxiety sitting in his stomach.
Maria looks him over. Once. Twice. She inhales audibly, and her eyes coast over his shoulder into the dim cottage.
“Is she alright?”
He blinks. He isn’t sure what he was expecting her to say, but the nonchalance takes him aback.
“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. He leans his hip against the doorframe, eyes downcast. “Asleep.”
She nods in his periphery, and through the growing silence, a nauseating thought takes root inside his mind. So unsettling, he has no choice but to voice it.
“I didn’t force any of this—“
“I never asked if you did,” she interjects, and he’s almost grateful she doesn’t allow the full idea to be spoken into existence. As if she can sense—and she likely can—the utter repulsion that ripples over him. His eyes shoot up to her, and her head tilts, a severity in her gaze. “Nor am I suggesting it.”
There’s a ripple effect of what comes next, a flicker of shock and disbelief. But in its gradual resolution, relief. Hastily flooding in, that his sister-in-law may not think so poorly of him after all.
Maria shuffles her feet, hooks her fingers around the loops of her jeans, and expels a heavy breath, bracing.
“There’s already been talk.”
The looks she gives him then suggests a subtle disapproval, and he wonders, briefly, if he were to express his utter disdain for this truth—which certainly, very furiously, he does have—that she would valiantly take his side. Proclaim and protect the notion that it’s nobody else’s goddamn business what’s happening behind closed doors, and that they’d do better to mind their own.
His jaw clicks. He tries to rationalize it. Tries to navigate through this heat-driven haze and acknowledge that every breathing designation within a mile can smell what blooms here.
He should feel embarrassed. All he feels is pride.
“Well,” he starts, expelling a great breath of his own. “It’ll…. it’ll all just hafta wait.”
A similar flicker crosses Maria’s eyes. A sameness. An appreciation for his ability to govern the temperament that so often reigns him and pour that energy into something else. Something more important.
She doesn’t say it, but he receives it all the same.
“You call us,” Maria insists, a serious arch to her brow. “If you need anything, if she needs anything, you call.”
He has to tame himself, that awakened piece inside of him, not to take offense. As if he does not know exactly what she needs. As if he were not born and bred for this very moment, where nature bestows him the title of nurturer, if only for a little while. To bend to her will. To carve himself open and let her take her pick of which parts of him to keep. He suspects by the time it’s over, she’ll have consumed him whole.
But he knows it comes only from a place of earnest, so he nods once, curt, but promising.
Maria takes a final look over his shoulder and slowly descends the steps. He waits until her body disappears into the brush, enters the field that spans hundreds of yards between the heart of Jackson and this sheltered oasis, before he shuts the door.
He locks it. Presses his forehead to the wood. Squeezes his eyes shut, then his fists, splintering knuckles digging into the panes.
It’s too much and not enough all at once. Pieces of himself slipping through cracks to make way for something larger, but in all its beauty, he still suffers. A million thoughts, doubts, course through his head, and it would be so simple to supplicate himself to insecurity for the sake of certainty.
But he finds it elsewhere. Woven into the sound of his name, beckoned once, softly, wistfully. A gentle cry, a siren's whistle, lulling him out of worry and into inevitability. The pieces take their fallen positions, ash and dust, and in their place, new treasures of life that beat and hum as erratically as his heart.
He’s there in a matter of strides. At the threshold of heat, the nest they’ve built. She’s perched—and by the looks of it, with great difficulty—at the edge of the mattress, eyes glazed over with fever and tears. The sheets are still haphazardly twisted around her legs, as if she woke in such a panic, and could not manage to rid herself of them.
And he is magnetized by this, by her, unable to even move for what feels like eternity. The potency of her scent returns, sticking to his lungs, disarming him. There is a twinge, however, of something spoiled that pulls his brows low and sets his instincts on fire, ready to denounce, ravish the source of it.
“You left me,” she hiccups, tears streaming down soft cheeks.
He comes to, realizes his faults. His shoulders fall in shame, and he shakes his head. The coil in his gut winds tight, extends its hands, and pulls him forward.
“Never.”
He meets her at the edge of the mattress, a mirror image of the night prior, only now, there is no hesitation as she hoists herself to her knees and clambers after him. No uncertainty in the way she weaves her sticky limbs around him and nuzzles her face into his neck, licking at his already pulsing gland, grinding her hips against his middle, leaving a trail of her scent behind.
“Easy. Easy, now, slow down—”
He has no control here, hard as he tries. Her skin burns into his touch, calloused hands coasting the length of her spine, regarding each bending vertebrae. The lull has vanished, and the fever spikes again. The ripe scent of summer, fucking heavenly, and when she whimpers, painfully digging her claws into his neck, tearing at his t-shirt, and babbling a succession of Alpha, Alpha, please. It hurts, it hurts again; he must abide.
“Alright, c’mere. C’mere, baby. I’ve got you.”
Their bodies hardly part as he wrestles her down to the mattress. Belly down, bent over the edge, her toes dig into the wooden floors, and her hips writhe ceaselessly in the large caress of his hands. A glistening string of fluid drips down her thighs, thicker, more potent than the night before. He brings the curve of his nose to the base of her spine, inhaling the sweetness, and his eyes grow black. They’re in the deepest parts of it now.
“C’mon now, settle down,” he coaxes as she thrashes. Bares her teeth, twists and grinds helplessly until she’s able to rub herself against the front of his jeans. The coarse friction makes her cry out, and he pins her flailing arms between her ribs before she can hurt herself.
“Settle down.”
Maybe it’s the tone in which he commands it, or the steadying heat of his body blanketing over her, smothering her into the sheets, but her limbs go loose, her body still, save for her erratic breath.
He’s dizzy. Has to compose himself for a moment, savoring the smell, the heat, the whole of her sandwiched between himself and the already incessant need to take.
His free hand descends between their buzzing bodies, and it is there, between her legs that part so pliantly, effortlessly, just for him, that he finds his prize.
Wet and ripe, trickling down her thighs and coating his fingers that part her lips and sink to the knuckle. Three, all at once now. And she sighs a garbled sound, already so prepared, so willing.
“That’s it,” he praises, when her muscles loosen, only a hair, but enough to redirect her energy to the feeling of him filling her cunt. She huffs and squeaks, meeting the rhythm of his wrist, hooked fingers thrusting deep and slow.
She clenches, and another string of slick squelches around his digits, pooling into his palm. The scent of sugar blooms, and it’s then that Joel loses a fraction of his composure. Then that the man is shadowed by the beast, and his eyes roll back, his teeth poking between parted lips and grazing between her shoulder blades.
She comes apart, just like that. Convulsing around his fingers, under his chest. His mouth fills with honey, and his teeth ache for blood, and he tears his hand away from her to paw greedily at his jeans, ripping the seams, shucking them down to his ankles. He never should’ve put them on in the first place. Shouldn’t have left their nest, opened the door, ruined their sanctuary. Should’ve stayed here, kept her filled, the only thing his brain and its short-circuited wiring can understand now.
She’s anguished at the loss, her orgasm a momentary reprieve. Anguished, then angered, and releases something of a growl, a sound so distinctly hers that, despite her irritation, he cannot help but glow with pride.
He reaches around, grabs her by the jaw with the same, slick-soaked hand that was just inside of her, and arches her back against his chest. Her lips part on instinct, making room for his index finger sliding over her tongue. She sucks dutifully, obediently, though her scent still simmers with impatience, with need. He tugs her back by the teeth until his nose is buried in her hair.
“Don’t you get huffy with me,” he chides, but presses a soothing kiss to her jaw. “Ain’t gonna have you hurtin’ yourself. Needa stretch you open.”
I am, I am, Alpha. Please, I am, he thinks she mutters, unintelligible around his fingers, but all the caution in the world could not stop her from seeking what she most desires, ready or not.
He’s more certain than he was last night. Or, perhaps he’s just as lost, just as ravenous. Following the footsteps of this other who whispers in his ear and tickles his senses, Yes, she is, and he cannot bear another moment of denying either of them.
He gives her chin a tender squeeze, and she understands. Dutifully releases his fingers with a pop, and he leans off of her just enough to see through his narrowed vision as his pruned fingers wrap around his cock, lining himself up, teasing the pulsing tip through her parted lips.
And he can see the way she flutters around nothing, the way her body speaks to him, beckoning him, and all he is, in. And his cock jumps, and his knot fucking aches, and his temples pound with sweat and lust and through this growing frenzy, he can hear her pant and plea, and perhaps that is why he is so unforgiving in the way his hips snap forward, filling her to the brim.
She cries out, ecstasy, and he releases her wrists in favor of her hips, leaving indents at the crease while he sets their ceaseless pace. Her hands, free now, claw at the sheets below, and he’s not sure what part of the sight before him is the most alluring. The slope of her spine, arching toward him. The sight of his cock disappearing inside of her, reemerging glistening, sweet scent rough around the edges now—vanilla, leather, smoke, two bodies, one being. Or her eyes, that he now notices, craned neck, peering back, pupils blown three times their normal size, watching the spot they’re joined as if it’s her place of worship.
As if she can sense the heat of his gaze, her eyes snap to his. Her lips part and quiver and a dent takes shape between her brows.
“Alpha,” she whines, and the sensation that follows is one of many firsts.
A ripple in time, making room for this symbiotic thread to latch itself onto each of them. Later, he’ll look back on this blip, and he will regard it as the moment life as he knows it—his many lives, each feeling less deserving than the last—changed.
For now, he is merely bound to her call. The phantom thread weaves around his ribcage, and he crests his body over hers, nuzzles his nose just below her jaw, and kisses the column of her throat.
“So good,” he grunts, and she shivers. His thrusts have slowed, making way for long, bruise-deep strokes. “Perfect.”
She beams at his praise, glows around the edges. He can smell it, feel it engraved into his chest, a permanent reminder of this moment, its importance, its lasting impact on their lives.
Pants turn to moans, growing in decibels. Her legs quiver, and he has to bite on his tongue to keep himself from knotting her then and there, when she grips him like a vice and calls his name over and over.
“Go on,” he urges, and he’s surely gone mad. Licking and sucking the skin of her neck and shoulders, furrowing at the sugared taste of her gland on his swelling tongue. Haunched over like an animal, rutting to a nearly melodic slap, slap, slap, wet skin on skin. “Let go.”
She does, so effortlessly under the blanket of his approval. And it almost feels more this time. Fuller, more intimate, more freeing, more painful, frightening, all-encompassing. She cries a hailing sound and tears slip from the corners of her eyes, and he vaguely hears his mirroring roar, bursting deep in his chest.
They move forward as one. Her mattress squeaks, and the frame scrapes against the wooden floor. He hinges forward, buried, spent, hissing as his knot inflates and he spills inside of her.
His is stronger, too. This undoing. Digging the tips of his fingers into her ribcage as if it’ll curb the sensitivity, the seemingly never-ending twitch and expulsion of his seed.
It satiates the beast. Of course it does. But it’s beyond chuffed pride and the greed of conquer. It is a quiet. A stillness. A resolution. The discovery of an unquantifiable variable.
He is distraught and enamored all the same, and he does not even realize the extent of his weight on top of her, the way he’s smothered her, stole the air from her lungs, and replaced it with the taste of him. Buries his face in her neck, sucking on his teeth, huffing, grunting, bending to the will of his nature until—
“Bite me.”
It’s the first coherent string of words she’s uttered all morning. They hit him with a mighty force, knocking the full picture of their predicament back into frame. The answer tastes like acid before he even musters the strength to give it.
“No.”
“Please.”
She wiggles her hips and bares her neck further, garnering leverage. He squeezes his eyes shut, and his teeth crest her shoulder, prodding at the bone instead of the ripe gland centimeters away.
“No.”
She wails, nearly chokes on her sobs, the room reeking with her rejection. She cracks his heart right in two, but it’s salvaged by the certainty that it’s only—
“Not now. Not yet.”
Because that’s when reality comes swinging back in. A pendulum between truth and shame. Her vulnerability, an open wound, preceded by the fact that before this, before now, they hardly knew one another.
But that’s not true, is it?
He flinches. The other trying to stake its claim in his rationale, but he won’t be so easily swayed. Not even when he’s hugged by her womb, and his skin prickles at the prospect of its consequences. When every particle they are made of seems to oscillate around one another, and months of silence, avoidance, seem minuscule in the face of something cosmic.
“When?”
“Soon.”
“When?” she presses, and Joel sighs. This stubbornness comes at a price. An ache, a burn somewhere untouchable. A fire only she stokes, not easily smothered.
She’s regaining a sense of self, awareness. But now, it’s only fleeting. Soon, it will be permanent. Soon, he will face her in clarity, no other trying to coax him into a choice she may live to regret.
He can’t take that away from her. He couldn’t possibly live with himself if he did.
Instead, he takes a breath so deep his lungs hurt. He maneuvers them carefully onto the mattress until he is curled behind her fetal body, pressing her into his chest. They never part, and he welcomes every tug around him, each ooze of warmth that fills her and makes them sigh in unison. He litters his lips along her scalp, her shoulder, nuzzling his face into her hair and relishing in the calm that finally settles over her.
He’ll savor this for what it is. While he still has it.
“We’ll talk about it soon,” he assures as her body gives way to sleep, his own eyes heavy. “When you’re feelin’ better.”
When we’re both in our right minds, he wants to add, but he’s not sure he’ll ever be.
Not with her. Not anymore. He’s turned the inevitable tide and can only hope, pray, dream hers runs the same.
A second chance, Tommy called it.
He drifts asleep, knowing he’s nothing without it.