Claiming What’s Mine(2)

Claiming What’s Mine

Chapter 2

Noah took the shower first.

I stayed in the main room with my back against the far wall, arms crossed so tightly my shoulders ached, listening to the water run and trying not to picture what he looked like under it. The cabin was too small. His scent was already seeping into every corner — warm, sweet, and climbing higher with every minute the heat advanced. My wolf paced under my skin in restless, angry circles. My cock had been hard since the creek and showed no interest in going down.

I opened a window. Rain-slick air rushed in. It barely helped.

When the water shut off I forced myself to stay exactly where I was. Noah appeared a few minutes later in a pair of my old sweatpants and a T-shirt that swallowed his frame. His hair was damp and curling at the ends. A faint bruise darkened the skin along his left ribs where something — or someone — had caught him hard. The sight of it made a low growl vibrate in my chest before I could stop it.

He glanced at me, then away.

“Stop looking at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re deciding whether to fix me or fuck me.”

Both, I didn’t say.

I nodded toward the kitchen instead. “Sit. Eat.”

He sat at the small table. I moved around him in a wide arc, pulling out leftovers, heating them, setting the plate down without ever getting close enough to touch. Every time his scent shifted I felt it like a hand wrapping around the base of my spine. The early slick was starting. Faint, but unmistakable. My mouth watered. I clenched my jaw until it hurt and stayed on the opposite side of the counter.

Noah ate in silence for a few minutes. Then he set the fork down.

“You’re bleeding control all over the place,” he said quietly. “I can smell it.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” He lifted his eyes to mine. The green was darker than it had been at the creek, pupils already a little too wide. “Your wolf is louder than you are right now. And you’re looking at my throat every time you think I’m not watching.”

I was.

I looked away and stared at the rain running down the window instead. “You should sleep. The spare room is ready.”

“I don’t want the spare room.”

The words landed between us like a match tossed into dry grass.

I turned my head slowly. Noah was still seated, but his shoulders had gone tight and his breathing had changed. A fresh wave of scent rolled off him — thicker, sweeter, laced with the unmistakable edge of an Omega whose body was starting to demand what his pride still wanted to refuse.

“Noah.” My voice came out rough. “Be careful.”

“I’ve been careful for three years.” He stood. The too-big shirt slipped off one shoulder. I tracked the bare skin like a starving thing. “I spent three years telling myself the bond was a mistake. That you were a mistake. That if I just stayed away long enough the pull would die.” He took one step closer. Then another. “It didn’t die, Kade. It got worse. And now my body is trying to crawl out of my skin because you’re ten feet away and still not touching me.”

I stayed rooted to the floor by pure force of will.

“You told me to forget you existed.”

“I was nineteen and angry that you hesitated.” Another step. He was close enough now that I could see the rapid pulse in his throat. “You were the first thing that ever felt certain, and you looked at me like I was a problem you needed to solve. So I solved it for you. I left.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m in your cabin, wearing your clothes, going into heat, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t want the one thing I’ve always wanted.”

My control snapped so hard I felt it in my teeth.

I crossed the space in two strides, caught his face in both hands, and kissed him like I’d been dying for three years. Noah made a broken sound against my mouth and opened for me immediately. He tasted like rain and need and something that had always belonged to me. My wolf roared in triumph. I backed him against the table, shoved the plates aside, and lifted him onto the edge without breaking the kiss.

His legs wrapped around my waist. The heat of him soaked through the thin sweatpants. I could feel how wet he was already starting to get. A growl tore out of my chest. I dragged my mouth down his jaw, his throat, and bit down just hard enough to make him gasp without breaking skin.

“Kade—”

“Tell me to stop,” I said against his neck, voice shaking with the effort of still offering the out. “Last chance. Tell me to stop and I will sleep outside in the rain if I have to.”

Noah’s hands fisted in my shirt. He pulled me closer instead of pushing me away.

“Don’t you dare stop.”

Something inside me finally let go.

I yanked the T-shirt over his head and threw it aside. My mouth found his collarbone, the soft skin over his sternum, the faint bruise on his ribs that I kissed with more care than I felt capable of. Noah’s head fell back. His breath came in short, punched-out sounds. When I shoved the sweatpants down and wrapped a hand around his cock he was already hard and leaking. The first stroke pulled a high, desperate noise out of him that almost finished me on the spot.

“Fuck— Kade, please—”

I dropped to my knees between his spread thighs, pulled the sweatpants the rest of the way off, and put my mouth on him without warning. Noah’s hands flew to my hair. His hips jerked. The taste of him — clean skin and the first traces of slick already coating the inside of his thighs — made my vision narrow to a single point of need. I sucked him deep, worked him with tongue and throat until his thighs trembled against my shoulders and he was openly moaning my name.

I pulled off only long enough to shove two fingers into my mouth, get them wet, and press them against his hole. He was soaked. My fingers slid in with almost no resistance. The heat of him clamped down immediately. Noah cried out and pushed down onto my hand like he couldn’t help it.

“That’s it,” I muttered against his hip, curling my fingers until I found the spot that made his whole body jolt. “Take what you need.”

I worked him open while I sucked him again, adding a third finger when he started rocking down greedily onto my hand. His scent had gone thick enough to taste. My own cock was throbbing so hard behind my jeans it was borderline painful. Every broken sound he made fed the bond until I could barely think past the need to get inside him and stay there.

Noah’s voice cracked. “Kade— I’m gonna—”

“Come.”

He did, with a sharp cry, spilling across my tongue while his hole clenched hard around my fingers. I worked him through it until he was shaking and oversensitive, then stood, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and looked down at him.

Noah was wrecked already — lips swollen, chest flushed, thighs still open, my fingers still buried inside him. He looked up at me with those green eyes half-lidded and dark with heat, and the last thread of my restraint snapped clean through.

I pulled my fingers out, opened my jeans, and freed my cock. Noah’s gaze dropped to it. His throat worked.

“You sure?” I asked one final time, even though the answer was already written in every line of his body.

He nodded, voice raw. “I’ve been sure for three years. I was just too proud to say it.”

I stepped between his thighs, hooked his knees over my elbows, and pushed into him in one long, controlled thrust.

The heat of him closed around me like a fist. Noah’s head fell back on a broken moan. I bottomed out and stayed there, breathing hard, forehead pressed to his, giving both of us one second to feel the bond finally settle into place the way it had always been meant to.

Then I started to move.

Deep. Steady. Claiming.

Noah’s hands scrambled for purchase on my shoulders. Every thrust dragged a new sound out of him. The table creaked under us. Rain hammered the windows. I fucked him like I was trying to rewrite the last three years with every stroke, and he took it like he’d been waiting just as long.

“Mine,” I growled against his mouth, the word torn out of somewhere deeper than thought. “You’ve always been mine.”

Noah’s answer was a broken, perfect yes.

And for the first time in three years, the wolf under my skin finally stopped snarling and simply claimed what had always belonged to it.