Page 44 of Match My Alpha
"Tell me." I ride him faster, finding a rhythm that builds the heat low in my belly. His hand strokes me in time with my hips. "Tell me how I look."
"Like you're trying to kill me. Like you know exactly what you're doing and you're enjoying every second of it." His thumb swipes over the head of my cock. I jerk, and he smiles. "Like you live here."
I actually laugh mid-stride. "Like you live here" shouldn't be dirty talk, but coming from Callum, it's the possessive, real-estate-obsessed filth I apparently need.
"I do live here," I say, breathless. "You gave me a key and a fern and a drawer, and I'm keeping all of it."
"Good." He thrusts up, deep and deliberate. "This is what you get every night."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
The laughter dissolves into something urgent. My thighs burn, my cock leaking slick against his stomach. His hand moves faster, tighter. I feel his knot starting to swell at the base—a thick, heavy pressure that catches with every stroke, stretching me wider. I bear down against it, my body demanding it.
"Take it," he groans, rough and pleading. "Can you—"
"Yeah." I push down, feeling the knot press insistently against my rim. "Yeah, I can take it, I—"
I push. The stretch burns beautifully. His knot is so much wider than his shaft, dragging against my rim as I bear down.The pressure is enormous. My body resists for one breathless second, and then it gives.
It pops through. I'm full—completely, utterly locked. The knot seats deep inside me, heavy and round, pinning my hips flush against his. The pressure on my prostate is relentless, and I shatter.
It hits me like a wave. My cock pulses into his hand, come striping across his stomach. My body clamps down hard around his knot. He groans my name—just "Milo," broken and honest—and comes inside me. The flood of heat fills me up, the knot locking us together so nothing escapes. I'm shaking, he's shaking, and his arms wrap tightly around me as I collapse onto his chest.
I shift my weight slightly, and the knot tugs at my rim, a deep stretch that sends an aftershock rolling through me. My body clenches reflexively around it. I can feel the wet, hot mess of us—slick and come pooling between our skin where we're locked together. I go still against his chest, letting the fullness hold me.
I trace a lazy line down his sternum. His skin is damp, his chest rising and falling under my hand. His arm is heavy across my back. The apartment is quiet. From here, I can see both our phones charging on the nightstand, his wallet and my keys in the little dish on the dresser. Our things, mixed together. Our bedroom. Our nest.
The words are right there. They've been right there for weeks—maybe since the night he put a band-aid on my hand and I realized his carefulness was love. I've been holding them too tightly, afraid saying them would make them real in a way I couldn't take back.
But there's nothing left to hold back. No fear. No escape route.
"I love you," I say into the skin of his collarbone.
Callum's arm tightens around me. He takes a deep breath, his heartbeat picking up under my cheek. He doesn't say anything for a second, and I'm not afraid of the silence. I just wait.
"Been trying not to since the day we met," he says, his voice rough with the faintest edge of a laugh. "But you made it impossible the night you named my fern."
I smile against his skin. "Gerald sealed the deal?"
"Gerald sealed the deal." His hand slides up to the back of my head, fingers threading through my hair. The humor drops away. "I love you, Milo."
The words settle into my chest like a breath I didn't know I was holding. Something loosens. Something steadies. His knot holds firm inside me. My hand finds his on the mattress, our fingers lacing together—the loose, automatic grip of two people who don't need to hold on tight because neither one is going anywhere.
His thumb traces a lazy circle on the back of my hand. My eyes get heavy. The knot holds, and this is home.
Epilogue - Milo
The peanut butter chocolate chip cookies are still warm when I carry them out to the patio, which means I cut it close, which means I spent too long in the kitchen saying goodbye to the nest this morning, and Jude intercepts the tray before I make it three steps past the door.
"Are these the peanut butter chocolate chip?"
"Those are for everyone."
"I am everyone." He grabs two and shoves one into Rhys's hand without looking, the way you pass something to a person whose exact location you always know without checking. Rhys takes it, takes a bite, nods at me once — his version of applause — and goes back to whatever he was saying to Marco near the grill.
The patio is full. Not crammed — full in the good way, the lived-in way, where every chair has a person and every person has a drink and the noise is the layered kind that means nobody's performing. Declan strung the lights up this morning and they're not on yet because it's still afternoon, the sun on the mismatched tables and the brick wall that separates Byrne'sback patio from the parking lot. Someone put a speaker in the window and whatever playlist is running has the energy of a Sunday that knows it doesn't have anywhere to be.
