Chapter Two - Rex

" M mm," Damon practically purred as I manhandled him into the only ladies' bathroom stall in the building, sucking light hickeys into the skin of his neck, "there's, uh, there's something I should tell you before we…oh , God, your mouth…your beard… "

I chuckled and delighted in the way he seemed to shiver at the sound. "Hmm?" I asked him once the door was locked, tugging at his shirt, trying to free the hem from beneath the waistband of his sinfully tight jeans. "What have you got to tell me, darlin'?"

"Fuck," he muttered, rubbing his face into my beard in an almost feline way, "I never have to do this." He was blushing so hard, it felt like his cheek was on fire. I could feel it through my beard.

"Do what, kitten?"

He huffed out a little laugh and then swallowed audibly. "It's funny you should call me that. I'm, um," he took a steadying breath and then stepped out of my hold, putting barely a foot of space between us as he leaned against the opposite wall.

He eyed the door behind me before setting his beseeching gaze on mine again. His brown eyes were wide and flecked with gold. They were so mesmerizing; it was what had drawn me to him to begin with.

"Don't freak out, but…I'm a shifter. A puma shifter, to be specific. And if that's too weird or it's a deal-breaker, I'll just—" Damon moved, edging around me towards the door, but I looped my arm around his waist, tugging him back into position in front of me. I stifled a chuckle as he blew out a breath to clear away the lock of dark hair that had fallen over his eyes.

"Shifter, huh?" Theoretically, I knew they existed, but I didn't think I'd ever met one before. Well, not one who had come out and told me what they were. There had been a lot of news about shifters reappearing in society after a freaking dragon had brought a building down in Manhattan. That had only happened a few months earlier, and sensationalism was still running rife in the media. Nevertheless, I didn't buy into the rhetoric that shifters couldn't be trusted. I figured they were like most people: there would be both good eggs and bad. "That's neat."

Damon didn't reply.

I cocked my head at him, smiling as gently as I could, considering the way my jeans were tented obscenely. All I wanted to do was get inside him. I couldn't care less that he wasn't entirely human. With long, dark hair and those gold-flecked eyes, he was as pretty as he was witty, and his lips tasted like ambrosia. In the moment, that was all that mattered. "There a reason why you had to tell me? I wouldn't have known if you didn't. "

"Yeah, you would have." He squirmed on the spot. "I'm what shifters call an omega. It's like a secondary gender, I guess. I…well, to cut to the chase, my body produces slick to assist with…" His blush deepened and he cleared his throat, tucking his hair back behind his ears. He was adorable, especially when he refused to meet my gaze any longer. "Anyway, when I get really horny, I get wet."

I blinked. "Wet? Like—"

"—I've prepped with way too much lube?" he finished for me, nodding as he laughed nervously. "It doesn't normally happen with humans…or often, really…but I, um, it's been a while, so I must be more worked up than I thought." He cringed. "I get it if it's too weird. I can just leave. Just…just don't freak out and beat me to a pulp or anything, okay?"

My heart clenched. Just what kind of men had he been associating with if he had to ask me such a thing? "No, kitten. I wouldn't ever hurt you like that."

It was a stupidly intimate thing to say when we were only going to hook up and part ways, but I couldn't say nothing, could I?

"So, um…" Damon finally looked back up at me. His cheeks were still bright pink, and his eyes were still blown wide with lust. My dick, which had started to flag under the more serious tone of the conversation, bounced right back into action at the blatant need in his eyes. "Are you still in? Or should I go?"

"Oh, I'm definitely looking forward to being in ," I replied playfully, offering him a wolfish grin.

He rolled his eyes, but the flush of his cheeks and the way his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed gave his excitement away.

The bathroom stall we were in was a narrow, closed room, with a toilet on one end of the space and a wall mounted sink on the other. It was cleaner than the men's room, potentially because it wasn't used as frequently, but it was still kind of dingy.

I closed the space between us and kissed him again, my body demanding contact. I'd never felt quite as desperate to be with someone before, even though I'd had my fair share of one-night stands and impromptu bar hookups over the years. This felt different. I didn't think I could walk away from this opportunity if I tried.

Damon melted into my renewed embrace, as though he felt the same relief from reconnecting. His fingers scrabbled at my belt buckle, and I chuckled into his mouth.

"Need help with that, kitten?"

He nodded and rocked his hardness into mine. "Please. I can't wait a minute longer. I need …"

The sheer desperation in his voice went straight to my cock. When was the last time anyone had wanted me so badly? It did wonderful things to my ego, and I was determined to reward him for making me feel so damn vital.

"I've got you," I promised, getting my pants unbuckled and unzipped in what had to be record time. I moaned as he took my exposed cock in hand and stroked me without a second's hesitation. There were some perks to going commando at times like these. "Easy, sweetheart. I'll take care of you. Gotta get your jeans off, too."

"Hurry," he begged, rubbing his face in the crook of my neck. His skin was still feverishly heated with arousal and perhaps a hint of that earlier embarrassment. It was adorable.

I squeezed his denim covered ass before I reached between us to fumble with his button and fly, trying not to be too distracted by his hand still working my dick. "You're gonna have to help me get these painted-on jeans of yours down, kitten."

He whined with frustration, an almost mewling sound, but released his hold on me to do as I'd asked. I watched him hook his fingers into the material and then shimmy the pants over the slight curve of his hips, then further still down his slender thighs. He turned around in the tight space of the room and bent over, easing the jeans all the way to his ankles. My mouth watered when I discovered the jockstrap he was wearing, practically delivering access to his waiting hole on a silver platter.

Unable to resist, I reached out to squeeze the perfect, lightly fuzzed peach he had presented to me, trailing my fingers between his cheeks, unsurprised to find him slicked up for me. He'd told me to expect as much, after all.

I groaned and teased at his hole with the pad of my index finger, my cock dribbling to find him opening for me with almost no resistance.

"Yes, please, get inside me…" Damon begged and pushed back onto my probing digit, practically sucking the finger into his body with a pleased sigh. He was hot and wet inside as promised, almost like he'd been prepping with copious amounts of lube. He wriggled and squirmed, seeking stimulation. "Rex, please!"

I startled at the sound of my name falling from his lips. Nothing had ever sounded so right before. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with a matching sense of urgency to be inside him.

"Bend over. Brace yourself on the sink."

My kitten scrambled to obey, leaning on the sides of the wall-mounted porcelain bowl with each of his forearms. He spread his legs as far as the jeans around his ankles would allow and his enticingly dusky-pink hole glistened with the evidence of his arousal. I used two fingers to breach him this time, testing his limits. They slid inside with the same ease as the first.

"Fuck," I growled out, delighting in the way he thrust back onto my fingers with abandon.

"Now, Rex. Now. Please. I can't handle the emptiness…" Damon babbled, already sounding wrecked.

With my other hand smoothing down his spine, I caught his gaze in the chipped, rust-speckled surface of the mirror. His youth-rounded face was bright red, his eyes wide and gleaming. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead and the sides of his cheeks. He looked debauched already, even though we had barely started.

"Please!" he begged again, rocking back onto my fingers. "I can't explain it, but if you don't fuck me, I…. fuck …I'll combust."

A similar need was building in my gut, causing my dick to ache. It strained towards him like a divining rod.

"Shh, kitten," I assured him, withdrawing my fingers and wiping the remaining slickness from them over my cock before I gripped its base and brought the flushed, weeping head to his hole, "I've got you, remember?"

"Yes, fuck, yes!" Damon bounced his hips backwards, encouraging me to sink inside him, and when I did, the sensation almost overwhelmed me.

"You feel amazing," I told him, gripping his hips as I pulled out and then dove right back into the welcoming warmth and slickness of his body. "So tight. So hot. So wet."

With the way his inner walls gripped my cock, it felt like he was made for me.

In the mirror, I watched as Damon closed his eyes and tilted his head back, his lips moving soundlessly. He was beautiful; a wrecked vision of pleasure and all-consuming need.

Looking down to where we were connected, I enjoyed the sight of watching my cock slide in and out of his ass for a few more thrusts before I realized just how selfish I was being. Hell, I hadn't even helped tug his dick free from the front of the strap!

Moving to correct my mistake, I leaned forward to do just that, unsurprised to find the material covering his straining erection damp from his precum.

"Yes!" Damon cried out as I slid my hand inside the waistband and stroked him in time with my thrusts. "Yes, just like that. I'm so fucking close."

Releasing his shaft, I allowed my hand to drift lower, finding his balls and fondling them. They had drawn up tight and I knew it wouldn't take much to push him over the edge. Rolling them in my palm before I let them go again, I returned my attention to his leaking length and then squeezed the base before my next upstroke. I shifted my hips, attempting to find just the right angle and then—

"Oh, fuck !" Damon squeezed his eyes shut even more tightly as I hit my mark. I repeated the action, my breath hitching as the channel of his ass convulsed around my cock. "Oh my God. I'm coming. Fuck . I'm there, Rex, I'm there. I'm… nnnngh ."

Warmth coated my hand and the inside of his underwear as he rode my fist through his orgasm, but it was the clenching and spasming around my cock which undid me, too. I threw my head back and practically roared as my own orgasm barreled through me, waves upon waves of unexpectedly intense bliss rolling through my body. I came in jets, filling him up with—

Oh, fuck .

My hips stuttered as I continued to empty my load inside him, while my already erratic heart squeezed with panic.

I hadn't worn a condom.

I'd gone bare with a stranger I'd met in a bar. A shifter stranger, at that. Who knew what kind of risks I'd just taken.

I was so distracted by the panic of being unsafe that I didn't register the weird tingling at the base of my cock until it was too late. "What…?" I asked at the same time Damon ground down on me and moaned, inexplicably making me come again, my dick more sensitive than I could ever remember it being.

"Holy fuck!" Damon raised his head to meet my terrified gaze through the mirror. His expression was blown wide with shock. "Y-you're knotting me."

I tried to pull out of him. Jolts of equal parts pleasure and pain rippled through my cock. I yelped.

"Stop!" Damon cried, and I stilled. He softened his tone, realizing that I was in the middle of a pretty significant panic attack. "Stop trying to pull out. You'll only hurt us both."

"What's happening to me?" I demanded, gritting my teeth when he pushed himself up from the sink to look at me over his shoulder. The movement sent more bolts of sensation through my cock, forcing me to come again, however weakly. This was definitely not normal.

"I don't know," he admitted. "This has never happened before. The only people who can knot an omega are alphas and—"

"I have no idea what that is, but I ain't it."

His lower lip quivered and he bit down on it. I felt a little guilty for being so antagonistic while I was still inside him, but the situation was so far from normal, I didn't think standard social etiquette applied anymore.

"Well, no, you…you scented completely human," he finally replied when I had nothing else to offer him. "A-and alphas are extinct. This…this is some kind of anomaly… ohhh ." He went stock still and the pink flush returned to his skin. "Fuck. I'm sorry. But you feel so good and I need…" Swiveling his hips, he groaned, and my voice joined his as he stimulated my…whatever the fuck he wanted to call it.

My legs were beginning to feel like jelly from the multiple (paranormal?) orgasms. I cast a quick look around. My gaze landed on the toilet. Scrunching my nose, I figured it was that or wind up in a heap on the questionable floor.

With a brief warning that I was moving us, I held him upright and shuffled backwards until I felt the cold surface of the toilet bowl hit the back of my calf muscles. I shuddered and came through numerous tugs to my body's newest feature as I shuffled my jeans down my thighs and then sat on top of the closed seat, bringing Damon with me onto my lap.

He shouted in surprised ecstasy as the landing brought him down hard, pushing my cock impossibly deeper inside him. I was convinced I was going to pass out from the intensity of the pleasure that caused. Then he experimentally bounced in place, not seeming to care that my fingernails were digging into the exposed flesh of his hips.

"Yes," he whispered as he moved, exhaling the word with every bounce. "Yes, yes, yes, yes ."

Despite being freaked out, I couldn't deny that my body craved every single jerk to my…knot? Was that what he'd called it? It was as though every nearly painful bolt of pleasure cooled the burning ache to fuck him hard and raw just one fraction at a time.

"R-rex," Damon moaned my name, practically hissing the ‘x' into six sibilant syllables. "I can't…can't get enough."

I knew how he felt. Some part of me demanded that I fuck him and fill him over and over again, and it wouldn't be satisfied until… until …

Whatever thoughts had been on the edge of my consciousness fled me as Damon let out a keening cry and I felt the tell-tale convulsions around my cock. I bit back another gravelly bellow as his body milked my balls until they ached.

Damon slumped back against me, his head rolling into the crook of my neck. He nuzzled the underside of my jaw and I fought back the instinct to kiss the top of his sweaty head.

"So…we just wait it out?" I asked into the strangely tense silence that descended.

"Yeah, I guess. Your knot should deflate after a while. At least, I would assume so." He yawned. I tried not to focus on how cute the squeaking sound that accompanied the yawn was. "Alphas and omegas couldn't possibly stay tied together forever."

With no other alternative than to try and relax and let the whole bizarre situation run its course, I just nodded.

An hour later, after another short, impulsive, irresistible burst of fucking and coming, we were separated. I hastily cleaned myself up and ignored the sounds of Damon doing the same behind me. I'd never experienced a more awkward parting than that one. I wished him well, ignored his attempts to try and discuss what my being able to knot him meant, and I fled the bar as though the hounds of hell themselves were at my heels .

Some inner part of my soul whined to turn my truck around and head back to him, a voice in my head telling me that I would regret my choice to run away. I ignored those instincts.

Whatever that had been, I had no intention of repeating it.

That didn't stop him from becoming the only thing I could think of day in and day out, though.

* * *

My senses changed over time. It happened so gradually that I barely even noticed it. But, one night, sitting in a roadhouse bar in Mississippi, I realized I'd been listening in on a conversation being held clear across the crowded room.

My ears pricked at words I hadn't heard spoken aloud in months.

"…shifters. Potential alphas, they said," one man was murmuring lowly as he nursed his beer. His companion was seated across the booth from him, a worn Stetson on his head and a dubious expression on his face.

"Come on, now. That's gotta be just another fairytale," the second guy said on a sigh. "I know that mess in New York was shifter related, but I reckon the alpha thing is just a story they're making up to save face."

The first guy shook his head. A lock of thick, red hair fell across his forehead. He pushed it away impatiently. "No. My cousin…you know, Mindy? Anyhow, she's got a friend who lives in Iowa, and they said that there really is an alpha. Startin' a whole new pack 'n everything." As though he could sense me listening, the guy looked over both of his shoulders cautiously. I lowered the brim of my own hat and pretended to fiddle with my phone. Seemingly satisfied, the first guy spoke again. " They're spreadin' word that there might be more alphas out there like him. Guys who didn't know they were shifters until they started to change."

The second man snorted. "Please," he rolled his eyes and sat back against his seat, chewing on a toothpick. "These ain't nothin' but urban legends, Beau."

Beau huffed impatiently. "But what if they ain't? What if these potential alphas are out there? It could mean that we omegas might start bein' treated right again. We'd have value again."

I sat up a little straighter, frowning. In my bid to forget that night, I had studiously avoided all talk of shifters and their secret societies. I hadn't Googled. I hadn't read any of the news articles that were still circulating following the mess in New York. I hadn't gone on a deep dive to find any of the shifter communities or packs that I suspected were littered across the country.

But, in that moment, I realized avoidance had been a mistake.

What did Beau mean when he said that omegas would have value again? The implication that they didn't have value as things stood was upsetting. They shouldn't need these mythical alphas in order to be treated as equals. They were people, damn it. All people had value.

The thought that omegas weren't treated right among their own damn species because of something outside of their control made me feel sick. It came too close to reminding me of the way I'd felt when I'd come out to my adoptive parents and they had told me they didn't accept it. Over two decades later, it still stung like hell.

Was that why Damon had been so skittish when he'd told me what he was? When he had asked me not to hurt him? Was he so used to being considered little more than an object that he had expected me to treat him poorly?

I wasn't proud of the fact that I'd essentially panicked and run away after my own body had changed, and after hearing Beau's words, I felt worse. Guilt ate away at my insides. Had I treated him any better than his own people had? Than other men had?

He'd been just as into our little-more-than-anonymous hook-up as I had, but then shit had gone down and I hadn't even stopped to ask if he was okay. I mean, sure, my body had changed, but he had been just as stuck as I was, his ass stretched and impaled on my knot, experiencing something that —if the conversation I was overhearing was to be believed— was completely unexpected for him, too.

And I just ran away with my tail between my legs .

I didn't even get his number so I could check in on him after I'd calmed down.

If I ever saw him again, I would apologize for that. He'd deserved better treatment. Hell, even now, months after our encounter, I couldn't shake him from my thoughts, and that had never happened with any of my previous hook-ups before. Sure, some of the focus could be attributed to the fact that it had literally changed my life —and body— but it was more than that. I couldn't quite explain it, but there had been a spark between us. A connection. I'd been drawn to him, determined to make him mine, if only for twenty minutes.

Courtesy of the knotting thing, it had been longer than that.

Not wanting to linger too much on those thoughts, I tuned back into the conversation across the bar. The room had become more crowded, and a band was setting up on the little stage at the back of the room. I doubted that I'd be able to listen in for much longer, even with my recently advanced hearing.

"…still think it's all a tall tale," Beau's companion sounded like he was trying his best to talk him down from his escalating hopes.

"It's not!" Beau thumped the table between them with his fist, causing the glasses accumulated on its surface to clatter against each other. "Bessie told Mindy she even saw the alpha and his mate. She said the mate, the omega, was super pre—"

I winced as the drummer chose that moment to give an impromptu solo fill, his sticks hitting every drum on his kit with rapid double strokes, creating a loud but pleasant cascading effect from one end of the kit to the other. When the guitarist also started riffing, ostensibly double checking the tuning of his bright red strat, I gave up on being able to eavesdrop any longer.

Draining my glass, I set it on the worn timber tabletop in front of me and then eased out of my seat, sliding my leather jacket back on over my shoulders. I'd come to a split-second decision: I was going to head to Iowa and see if there really were other men like me. If nothing else, they might have the answers I had spent so long trying to avoid.