Page 18 of Swipe My Alpha
"It's not messy."
"Your office was a paper explosion."
"That's my office. My apartment is different."
"We'll see."
He reaches across the table and takes my hand. Just holds it. His thumb rubs across my knuckles and I let him because nobody in this coffee shop knows us and his hand is warm and my omega is purring so loud I'm surprised the barista can't hear it.
I go to his apartment alone that afternoon. He has a meeting with his advisor that he can't skip, and honestly I'm glad because I need to do this part by myself. I don't know how to explain that.The nest has to be mine first before it can be ours. My omega is very specific about this and for once I'm not arguing with it.
His apartment is a one-bedroom on the second floor of a walk-up about fifteen minutes from campus. Clean, like he promised. Not sterile, just organized. Books everywhere, on shelves and stacked on the nightstand and piled by the couch. A few plants on the windowsill, one of them slightly droopy. His bed is made with a dark blue comforter and it smells like him. The second I walk into the bedroom my knees go soft.
There's that dark undertone I can't name, the one that makes my brain go quiet and my body go liquid. It's everywhere. In the sheets, the pillows, the worn t-shirt draped over the desk chair. His scent, undiluted, private, completely his, and my omega drops into it like a warm bath.
I sit on the edge of the bed. Press my face into his pillow and breathe.
For a long minute I don't do anything else. I just sit there, breathing him in, and something inside me that's been clenched tight since the hotel finally loosens. Not all the way. But enough that I can feel the difference. Like taking off a shoe that's been pinching all day.
Then my omega takes over and I stop thinking.
I pull every pillow and blanket out of his closet. I strip the bed and remake it with the softest sheets I can find, layering blankets, building walls on three sides with pillows. I take his worn t-shirt off the chair and tuck it in. I pull off my own hoodie, the one that smells like both of us from his office, and work it into the corner where my head will go. I find a flannel in his closet that smells strongly of him and add that. Then I rearrange everything twice until the shape is right, the weight is right, the scent is balanced between his and mine.
When it's done I crawl into the middle and curl up and close my eyes.
It's right. The buzzing in my chest goes quiet. The restless, itchy feeling that's been eating me alive settles into something calm and steady. I'm in a nest that smells like my alpha and me and nobody else and my omega is so happy it's embarrassing. I'm purring. I can feel it in my chest. It's involuntary and animal and I should be mortified but I'm too comfortable to care.
I fall asleep.
I wake up to the sound of a key in the lock. The front door opens and closes. Footsteps. Then silence, the specific silence of someone standing in a doorway and trying not to make a sound.
I open my eyes. Rhys is in the bedroom doorway. He's still in his henley from the coffee shop, his bag slung over one shoulder, and he's looking at the nest like he's never seen anything so important in his life. His lips are parted. His chest is rising and falling too fast. His eyes are glassy.
"Hi," I say. My voice is sleep-rough and soft and I don't bother fixing it.
"You built a nest." His voice isn't much better.
"Don't make it a thing."
"Jude." He drops his bag on the floor. Takes a step closer. "You built a nest in my bed."
"Our bed. You gave me a key. That makes it our bed. Those are the rules."
He makes a sound that's somewhere between a laugh and something broken. He toes off his shoes and kneels at the edge of the bed, outside the nest walls, waiting. Not pushing in. Waiting for me to let him in.
I reach for him. Grab the front of his shirt and pull him into the nest. His weight settles against me and his face is in my neck. He inhales deep and shaky against my skin and the sound he makes is wrecked. Completely wrecked.
"You smell like home," he says against my pulse point.
"That's the point, genius."
He pulls back enough to look at me. Pushes the hair off my forehead. His thumb traces the line of my jaw and he's looking at me like I hung every star, like I'm something precious. I want to make a joke but nothing comes out because my chest is too full.
He kisses me. Slow and soft and nothing like the office, nothing like the hotel. His mouth moves against mine like we have all night and we do. We actually do. There's no unlocked door, no thin walls, no time limit. Just his apartment and our nest and the whole evening stretching out ahead of us.
I pull his shirt over his head. Run my hands over the tattoos on his chest, his ribs, trace the geometric sleeve down his arm. He shivers under my touch and I feel it through the bond, this warm pulse of want that's mine to hold.
He undresses me slowly. Kisses each piece of skin as it's uncovered. My collarbone, the center of my chest, my stomach. He mouths at my hip bone and I arch up into it and he pins me down gently, one hand flat on my belly, not restraining. Steadying.
