Chapter Sixteen: Rex

I n the weeks that followed the attack on our town, I found myself roped into helping Beck deal with the fallout. It was rough for a while, with people mourning the six shifters who had died and calling for us to retaliate. There was no point reminding the townsfolk that our dragons had done far more damage to the attacking side at the time, either.

I also thought that we had gone vigilante enough when we held the contingent of seven Moonmusic shifters against their will, questioning them for hours about the motivations for the attack. As much as I hated them for trying to take my kid, I didn't think we needed to devolve into our own cult-like mentality. Perhaps that was the part of me who had been raised human, but I believed in the justice system.

Thankfully, in the end, Beck sided with me and we reached out to nearby law enforcement. Imagine our surprise when the cops who turned up were also shifters! They assured us they weren't sympathizing with the old-school packs —especially when one of them was an omega himself— and we were more than happy to send our hostages off in the backs of their trucks.

On top of that, we began discussing the need for proper pack security. More and more strangers were visiting the town, and I couldn't help but wonder how many were staking us out for our weak points. I felt ridiculously paranoid, but at the same time, I couldn't help feeling justified in those feelings. Our kids needed to grow up safely.

"You're doing the ‘burn the world' face again," Damon said, shaking me from my musings. He switched off the bedroom light and sauntered towards the bed, backlit from the nightlight in the hallway. We left the door open, and even though we both had enhanced shifter hearing, we kept a video baby monitor on my bedside table, too. "We're safe, babe, I promise."

If anything good could have come from the whole abduction saga, it was the closeness Damon and I now shared. Maybe it wasn't healthy that we had clung so tightly to each other in the fallout, but I'd been in love with him beforehand, and I was even more in love with him after watching him fight to save our kid and the pack from further harm.

But I hadn't said the words yet. Firstly it was because I'd promised to let him set the pace. Then it was because I didn't want him to think I was professing my love just because he'd given birth to our son. Then it was because I didn't want him to think it was a trauma response.

I swear to the Gods, I wasn't making excuses. I was turning forty-three soon: I was adult enough and mature enough to face my feelings.

I was.

Except, alright: maybe I was a tiny bit afraid that he'd still find it too much, too fast. I mean, he'd just been through something traumatic, too. Was it wrong to give him some time to process that first? I didn't think so.

As it was, I was almost afraid to point out that he had all but moved into my place in the weeks following the attack. At first, I thought he was silently humoring my desperate need to keep him and Cam in my sights as often as possible, but then I paid a little more attention and realized he was making himself at home. My inner cat preened with smug satisfaction. My mate was settling into the home I had provided!

Some part of that felt mildly patriarchal and outdated, but I didn't care. I wasn't forcing him to be there, and he seemed happy to settle in my home. If he was happy and I was happy, there was no problem, right?

"Seriously, you're starting to freak me out." Damon sounded mildly amused beneath his concern and I blinked, smiling sheepishly.

"Sorry. I was thinkin'."

He laughed and shook his head. "Yeah, I got that. I was giving you a damn strip tease and you were not reacting the way I wanted."

Those words had my attention. I focused on what he was wearing —or, rather, what he wasn't wearing— and my mouth went dry.

"That's more like it," he practically purred, giving an enticing swivel of his hips as he dropped his underwear.

My heart hammered. It had been almost seven weeks since Cam's birth, and we had done little more than cuddle. I obviously hadn't been pressing the issue, knowing that Damon needed to take as much time as necessary to recover from pushing an entire person out of his body, but we'd both also been kind of wiped after working and then looking after a newborn. Whoever coined the expression ‘slept like a baby' has obviously never spent time with an honest-to-God baby. They don't sleep. At least, not for extended periods of time.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. Sex.

Sex with Damon.

Fuck, had I missed sex with Damon.

"The baby…" I protested, looking at the monitor as though our beautiful —but potentially evil if his sleep schedule was any indication— child would wake up at any second.

Damon laughed and climbed onto the bed beside me, sliding beneath the covers before reaching for my hardening cock. "I just put him down. He'll be good for a couple of hours."

With his hand squeezing me through the thin cotton of my underwear, I caught maybe five words of that. Not that I had any plans to argue with him. "Fuck, kitten…" I bucked my hips. I flashed back to the last time we'd had sex and almost whined. "Please don't tell me you need me to tie you up tonight. I don't have the patience."

I'd promised him we'd experiment more with rope play after the baby was born, but there was no way I'd hold out to do it right. Not at that moment.

Damon chuckled and the sound went straight to my dick. "We'll need to get Beck and Ollie to babysit if we wanna do that," he said, and I ignored the stab of anxiety at the thought of handing our son over to someone else for a night. "Tonight," he continued, whispering sensually and mouthing at my neck, "I just want you inside me. I need your knot, alpha."

I've never scrambled to get naked so fast in my whole damn life.

"On your back, darlin'," I instructed, having a very clear idea of how I wanted this to go down, so to speak. "Let me take care of you."

With the exception of that last time, where his legs had been tied and splayed out, or the few times he had ridden me with his belly in between us, we'd never made love face-to-face before. That was what my alpha was demanding I do, and I was going to take my time worshipping Damon the way I should have when I first met him. I'd thought he deserved more than a quick bathroom fuck at the time, and now I was going to make up for that.

The heat in Damon's gaze softened into affection, even though his eyes still burned with lust, and he lay back on his pillow. "Yes, alpha," he answered teasingly.

Fuck, but he had to know that it went straight to my cock when he did that.

I kissed him deeply, showing him with my actions how I felt for him when I still couldn't quite say the words.

"Rex…" he breathed my name against my lips when we parted for air, and the words tumbled out anyway.

"I love you."

There was a moment of stunned silence and then he grinned, grabbed my face in his hands and tugged me down for another deep, delicious kiss. "I love you, too," he whispered afterwards, the confession ghosting over my skin in the scant space between us. "Now, please, get inside me."

"Not yet."

"Wh—"

I cut off his question with another kiss, then pulled back to pepper more down his cheeks, his neck, his chest, and his abdomen. His breathing hitched when I got to his leaking erection, and I didn't waste any time sucking him into my mouth from tip to root.

His ecstatic cry was cut off and muffled as he grabbed for my pillow and held it over his face, making me chuckle around his dick. That made him moan and writhe some more. It was glorious.

While he mewled and complained into my pillow, I continued to suck, then brought my fingers to his slick hole. He was almost as wet at the day we'd met, practically dripping for me, and I moaned to find him so ready and aroused.

"Mmphk mmmmee," he begged, still trying to keep his sounds muffled with the pillow over his face.

I smirked and slowly pulled off from his cock. "What was that, kitten?"

He yanked the pillow from his face and hit me with it. "I said fuck me, damn it."

"Ask nicely, darlin'." I pumped my fingers in and out of him, watching as he threw his head back and bit back another moan. "Say ‘please, alpha' like a good boy."

The gush of extra slick coating my fingers told me that he liked that as much as I did.

"Please, alpha," he repeated, rocking his hips. "Please. I need your knot."

"Good boy," I repeated as I withdrew my fingers, sucking the slick from them while he watched, open-mouthed. I crawled into position over him, then froze as the baby monitor caught my eye.

"He's still asleep," Damon huffed impatiently.

"Yeah, but…should I…should we maybe use a condom?" It was probably something I should have thought about earlier. I didn't even know if the ever-present condom in my wallet was still in date .

Damon shook his head vehemently. "The chances of you knocking me up off-heat while I'm still feeding him from my body is slim to none."

It was cute the way he avoided saying ‘breastfeeding' wherever possible. I made a mental note to tease him about that later.

"You sure?" I asked.

"Rex, I swear to God, if you don't get inside— oh, fuck, yes. "

I was just as impatient as he was, even if some part of me had wanted to hear his idle threat in full.

Sinking inside him was complete, utter bliss. His body gripped mine like a glove, and we moved together in a well-practiced rhythm, kissing and sighing as our bodies got reacquainted. We pressed our foreheads together and rocked slowly, neither of us wanting to rush to the finish line. Not this time, anyway.

"I love you," he gasped after one particularly well-aimed thrust of my hips.

"I love you," I repeated back to him, thrilling at how easy it was to say now.

"I'm…I'm super close," he warned me after another thrust.

"Me, too."

Then he tilted his head to the side. "Mark me, alpha."

My hips stuttered along with my heart. " What? " I could hardly bring myself to hope that I'd heard him right.

He didn't hesitate to reply, "Bite me. Please, alpha. Bond with me. I'm yours."

"Fuck," I cursed as his words pushed me over the edge and my orgasm rocketed through me, "fuck, kitten…"

He arched off the mattress as my knot began to swell, then tugged me down for what I thought was a kiss as I continued to come. But instead of pressing his lips to mine, he sank his teeth into the juncture between my shoulder and neck. The pleasure I felt from his mark was instantaneous and almost indescribable. Instinct told me to bite him back, so I did.

Suddenly, the bond between us opened in a rush. I could feel his physical and emotional bliss almost as though it was my own, and I knew that he could feel mine. It became a feedback loop, and the tightening of his slick flesh around my sensitive knot almost made the ensuing continued orgasms too much to bear.

Almost.

It was amazing. I was wrung out in the best ways, but simultaneously energized. Everything about this moment felt right and perfect. My inner alpha was beyond satisfied with this turn of events.

I rolled us to our sides as I collapsed in a sweaty, sated, ridiculously sappy heap on the bed, my cock firmly locked inside Damon by my knot.

He cuddled into me, with his head tucked beneath my chin and his leg slung over my hip. A strange ‘ prrrr' overrode the erratic thumping of my own heartbeat in my ears, and it took a moment to realize that it was purring.

We were purring.

Together.

Considering how much other crazy shit I'd seen since I'd met Damon in that bar, nothing surprised me anymore.

"Holy shit," Damon murmured after a while, careful not to move or disturb my slowly deflating knot. "We're bonded."

I could feel his elation through the bond, and I was relieved that there wasn't even a hint of regret.

Kissing the top of his head, I said, "Mmhmm." Then, because I needed the reassurance to be verbal, asked, "No regrets?"

He gently leaned back so he could look me in the eye. "None. I'm yours now. Forever. And you're mine."

If someone had asked me a year earlier whether I liked the idea of being committed to someone for life, with a newborn baby and all, I would have laughed them off and run for the hills. But since meeting Damon, I couldn't think of anything I wanted more.

"Forever sounds good to me, darlin'."

And it really, truly did.