Page 13 of Glass

Good boy. Take it. One more and he lets you come. One more. You can do one more. You've done everything he's asked all night and you can do this. Hold still. Hold on. Hold it together. Hold it.

I hold. I hold because he said good boy and I'm his good boy and I can take one more stroke on the inside of my thigh and I can stay strapped to this bench and I can.

Except this time the stroke doesn't land on me. It lands in me.

The thing that's been in my chest all night surges up. The territorial, animal, alpha thing I've been pressing down every time his hand touched my chest, every time he said good boy, every time I felt the leather hold. I press it down. It doesn't go. I press harder. My arms pull against the cuffs. My jaw clenches. My whole body locks tight, every muscle fighting, because I can hold this. I've been holding this. I've been holding this my whole life. Mind your size, be careful, be gentle, hold it, hold it, hold it.

And it doesn't go.

It rises. Like a tide. There's no shore. There's no wall. There's no careful, gentle, minding-my-size part of me left high enough to stay dry, and the last thing I hear before it takes me is my own voice in my own head saying good boy, good boy, you can hold it, and then the room drops away.

The bass from the floor, the concrete walls, the smell of leather and disinfectant, all of it goes, replaced by one thing, one scent, so total and close it's like putting my face into a cupped handful of it and breathing until my lungs are full.

Him.

And this is different from the way I've been smelling him for three hours. That was warm, appreciated, a thing I liked. This is need in a shape I've never felt before, a hunger that starts in my jaw, my chest, my gut, my balls, pulls everything toward one point, one purpose, one word that's closer to a heartbeat than a thought:

Mine.

My cock, which was hard, becomes something else. A thing with its own urgency, its own direction, thick, dark, aching, pointing at him like a compass needle.

I heave against the chest strap.

It doesn't give. I heave again, and this time I'm pulling because the strap is between me and the only thing in the world that matters, and I can hear something, his voice, far away, saying my name, but it's at the bottom of a well and I'm at the top and I don't care.

The chest strap splits.

The sound is nothing, a soft tearing, leather giving up, but the feeling is everything. My chest comes free and the rush of it, the power, the yes of my own strength finally being used for the thing it was built for, is so sharp and bright that I groan out loud. My free hand goes to my left wrist on instinct, fingers wrapping around the cuff to tear at it, and my nails bite into my own arm. I don't feel it. I won't feel it until later.

"Teddy."

His voice. Closer now. I can hear it. I don't care.

I yank my left wrist. The metal clip on that side snaps off the anchor, a bright, absurd ping in the small room, and both hands are mine again, both arms, all of me, and I sit up and the thigh straps are still on but I can reach them now, I can reach everything, and I unbuckle them with fingers that still work, still precise, because the rut has my brain but not my hands. Thigh straps off. I lean forward and undo the ankles. I'm off the bench.

I'm standing.

Torn leather hangs off my wrists. I'm naked. I'm covered in sweat, the dried streak of his come from hours ago, the pre-come that's been running out of me all night. My cock is so hard it hurts, curved up against my stomach, the head dark and wet. My chest is heaving. My mouth is full of saliva.

He's three feet away.

The crop is in his hand. He hasn't raised it. He hasn't said stop. He's looking at me, standing very still, his breath coming fast through his teeth, short, sharp pulls, and I can smell why. Under the cedar and the gin and the careful, composed omega I've been kneeling for all night, his scent has changed. Gone thick. Gone sweet. Gone open. The scent of an omega whose body has registered an alpha in rut and is answering, slick flooding, muscles going soft and ready, biology overriding composure.

His thighs press together. Then release. I can see the slick, wet streaks down the inside of them, shiny in the low light, more of it coming, the scent of it hitting me like heat, like a hand on the back of my skull pushing me forward.

He's not running.

He's not saying red.

He's standing there with the crop in his hand and his legs slightly apart, his breath ragged, his scent saying yes in a language older than the one he's been using all night, and I don't know if his mind has agreed to this but his body has, and right now I don't have the part of me that would stop to ask.

"Teddy."

My name. Breath-hitched and low, and it's not a no.

I cross the three feet in one step.

My hands close on his upper arms and I lift, and the feeling of it, the weight of him coming off the floor, his feet leaving the ground, his whole body in my hands, breaks something open in my chest. He's a grown man, dense and real, and I'm holding him off the floor with two hands like he's nothing, like it costs me nothing, and the ease of it is the most terrifying and the most right thing I've ever felt in my life.