by Hannah Haze
He tries to home in on the sensation of the girl’s lips against his, the subtle way she grinds her groin and the little whimpering noises of arousal she’s making. They sound fake. Designed for his benefit.
She tastes all wrong and he can’t get a grip on her odour. It’s buried beneath the manufactured scents she’s sprayed herself in, something he’s sure the cosmetic companies claim Alpha’s find irresistible.
It’s nothing like Cora’s scent. A scent you couldn’t create or capture in a bottle. It’s multilayered and intricate. An aroma that matches what she is. Fierce, fruity and beautiful.
He catches a hint of it now. Where is she? Have his thoughts pulled her towards him? Her scent filters into the room, clear above the sticky smell of alcohol and the other girl's perfume. Cora's scent betrays her emotions, as always. Her tension, her hatred, but there's more this time. A hint of arousal. That can't be right, can it?
He leans away from the other girl and searches for Cora. She's out in the corridor, wrapped in her coat, perfectly still in the shadows, watching him. It's like that time in the library, unsaid words tripping in the air between them.
Arousal? Does she want him? He opens his mouth to call to her, then stops. Her eyes roam his face, her pupils blown wide, and he’s frozen by it.
Then the other girl tugs at him and Cora averts her gaze, hurrying away. Has he screwed up again? He’s not even sure how. She confuses the hell out of him.
"You want to come back to mine?" the girl asks, her hands everywhere. He peels them from him and pushes her away.
"No." Time to leave. Perhaps he can catch up with Cora.
"What's your problem?" the girl hisses, hands on her hips, pouting like she wants him to know what he'll be missing.
He just shakes his head and leaves. Out in the cold, he hunts for Cora's scent, beginning to follow her trail. But the urgency of his steps fades as he walks down the Cowley Road, away from the bustling bars and back toward the silent city. His head thumps and his muscles are stiff from the game. At Magdalen Bridge he stops, peering down into the black river. Voices echo eerily from under the bridge and water sloshes against the stonework.
He keeps walking through the main Oxford city drag until he reaches the cross roads. He stops. Turn left and follow her scent? Turn right and head to his room? He swings his head from side to side. Then his shoulders drop and he slinks down the hill away to his place.
Three days later, he's jogging around the perimeter of the university parks when he freezes. Slowly, he twists his head to his left and then his right. He sniffs the air, chasing the molecules jostling in the breeze. It's faint, ever so faint, and he hardly believes what his brain is telling him: Cora's going into heat. Only just — the sweet hint of it probably only obvious to someone who knows her scent so well.
He hunches over his knees, sweat running down his chin and dripping onto the pavement below. It's early. There's only been two months since her last one, when they were together. Usually Omegas only have them twice, maybe three times a year, if they're on suppressants that is and almost all Omegas are. There's a few mother-earth hippy types that don't believe in them, but they usually live on communes with hoards of babies. Clearly Cora is not one of them.
Maybe he's wrong.
He takes a long inhale through his nose, closing his eyes and focusing all his attention on the air rushing along his nasal passages, over his tongue and down his throat. There's no doubting it and there's no way in hell she's having a heat without him.
Chapter Four
Cora can't understand it. She flicks through the pages, counting the days, and then pulls out her packet of suppressants from her purse to re-examine them. They are meant to help her regulate her heats, without them she'd have one every month. Did she forget to take some? Did she count the days wrong? How can she be about to start a heat so soon after the last one?
Not that she's one hundred percent certain that she is, but there's all the usual little signs. Her sense of smell has gotten more acute, she'd retched at some man's aftershave when she’d served him coffee earlier today, and her skin is tingling, her woollen cardigan irritating her neck and wrists. Plus her mind seems a bit foggy — twice she'd given customers the incorrect change at the cafe and once she’d messed up an order.
She pulls on her coat and packs her stuff back into her bag. Explaining that she's going to need some time off can wait another day until she's certain. Hopefully someone will swap shifts with her because she can't afford to lose the money.
When she steps out onto the wet pavement, Noah's there hovering by the doorway, his hoodie pulled up over his head, his hands buried in his coat pockets. The wind blows from the north and the cold is biting. For a split second she wonders why he is there, who he's waiting for. Then she realises he's waiting for her.
"You're going into heat?" he says with a growl, his gaze fixed on her black boots.
Well now she knows that she must be, although how the hell he sensed it when she's barely realised it herself is beyond her comprehension.
"Yes, maybe, I'm not sure. Not that it's any of your business." She begins walking and he strolls along beside her.
"I can see you through it." He's still not looking at her and his posture seems stiffer than usual. "Like last time."
"Because that was so nice!" she says.
"Yes, it was."
She looks at him in astonishment. He left her before it was over, and as shitty as that was for her, it would've been unpleasant for him too seeing as he was still in rut, still permanently engorged and hardened. How could he describe that as nice?
"It really wasn't."
"Anyway," he stops walking and she does too, unable to resist hearing what he has to say next. "It makes no difference to me. I'm offering my help if you want it, there's no need to be so catty." He holds out a scrap of paper.
"It doesn't matter either way. My house mate will be home. I'm going to have to go it alone."
"Can't you tell her to piss off for a few days?"
"No."
His face is as taut as his body, like he's keeping a tight rein on it and any moment it might snap. It makes her edgy, and a tiny bit curious. She wonders what she'd have to do for him to break. He presses the note into her hand, quickly, before she has a chance to refuse it.
"In case."
Later, in her room, she unfolds the scrunched up note and spreads it out flat on her mattress. He's written his name (his first, no surname) and his number. She ought to throw it away. Instead, she types it into her phone. Under Jack Black. Just in case.
She’d meant to tell Rose all about it, she really had, how somehow she’d ended up in bed with Noah Wood. Over Christmas and into the new year, her thoughts and emotions had been a tangled web of self-disgust, bitterness and longing. She’d wanted, no needed, someone to confide in, someone who would help her sort through this confusion of feelings. Someone who would tell her to forget Noah Wood and the way he'd made her feel. Someone who would remind her of all the things she stood to lose if she finished up a casualty of his destruction.
Rose seemed the perfect person, actually the only person, to whom she could confess. They’d met the day Cora had arrived at Duke's College (one of the many colleges that made up part of the University of Oxford). Rose was there already, unpacking suitcases in the room they were to share. Up on the top floor of the ancient stone building, their individual bedrooms had been tiny, barely big enough for the narrow single beds, but the shared lounge had a view over the neatly kept grass of the quad on one side and the bustling streets of the city centre on the other.
They’d spent their days together, curled up on the window seat reading, writing essays and observing all the students coming and going into the college. On clear nights, when they’d been sure nobody was about to see, they’d climbed out of the windows and sat out on the roof of the college, hidden by the tall turrets that ran the perimeter of the building and gazed up at the stars discussing everything from politics
to sex to their dreams for the future.
Rose was the kind of passionate individual who swept you along in the tide of their enthusiasm. Her eagerness had been infectious. American, easy going and oblivious to the hidden British snobbiness that seemed to infect so much of this new city, this new hierarchy, this new social construct, she’d shown Cora that being smart and owning an opinion could be an advantage, a tool to implement change. Without her, Cora would have been intimidated and lost, bobbing along but never brave enough to truly swim.
They rented a college flat together down a city back road in their second year and stood for positions on the College Student Union, Rose encouraging Cora to commit her ideas in writing and submit them to the student newspaper.
Yes, Rose was the person she desperately wanted to speak to and for days before she was due to arrive back from the States, Cora had rehearsed in her head how she would explain it, how she would say it. But then Rose walked through the door, drained and exhausted, heading straight for her bedroom and flinging herself on the mattress.
"Rose, what’s wrong?" Cora had asked.
"Nothing, I’m tired."
Cora followed her into the bedroom. "Didn’t you sleep on the flight?"
"I haven't slept in weeks," she said into the bed.
"Why? Has something happened?"
Rose had leaned up on to her arms, puffing up the pillow and tucking it under her chin. "My parents are getting a divorce."
"What?"
Rose’s family had always appeared to be a model of domestic perfection. Happy, successful, together — Rose, her mother and her father. Rose's parents had visited twice during their first year at University, insisting Cora join them for dinner, talking brightly about their lives, interested in the girls.
Rose had sighed. "It gets worse."
"What do you mean?"
Rose turned her face towards the wall.
"My bastard father has run off with another woman. A woman who's only a few years older than us."
Cora hadn’t known what to say. It seemed impossible. Utterly impossible.
"Oh, and instead of doing the right and honourable thing, he’s trying to screw my mom over. She’s a mess." Her body had shaken then, and Cora knew she was crying. She’d lain down alongside her and wrapped her in her arms. "I’ve been trying to help her the best I can. With the legal stuff. It was so hard to leave her Cora."
It hadn’t been the right time to reveal her own trivial, crappy concerns, and as the days passed the right time had never emerged, Rose wrapped up more and more in the increasingly messy divorce.
◆◆◆
In the end, Cora’s heat falls across the weekend and she finds herself unexpectedly alone. Someone's parents are away, leaving their large house in London empty and most of her friends head there for a party. When Rose leaves on the Friday afternoon, Cora pleads illness — what with her feverish appearance, Rose doesn't argue it. Cora’s too embarrassed to admit the truth. Usually she times her heats for the holidays when Rose will be away and doesn’t have to know anything about it.
The first night isn't too bad. A combination of painkillers, a hot-water bottle and an Alpha dildo ease the pain. By late Saturday morning, though, she's writhing in agony. Usually she gets through this, she endures it. Why does it seem so much worse this time? Maybe it's because this one has happened in such quick succession to the last, or perhaps it's knowing what this would be like if he were here.
She thinks of him standing on the pavement, with the grey sky behind him, how he'd sought her out, offered himself up to her. It's more than she can bear. Her body screams at her to get him here.
Chapter Five
His knock on the door is loud, jolting Cora out of her haze. She wraps her dressing gown around her boiling body and stumbles to the hallway, leaning against the wall for support as she does. This time he has a duffel bag with him, slung over his left shoulder.
"Alright?" he says as she opens the door.
She shakes her head, utterly relieved to see him, biting down hard on her bottom lip to stop it from wobbling.
"Come on, then." He takes her hand, slamming the door shut behind them and leading her down the hall. "Get into bed. I'll be there in a moment."
"Where are you going?"
"To put this food in the fridge."
"You brought food?" She curls up on the mattress; already his presence makes her calmer, like he's a sedative.
"Of course." He stomps away, and she hears the opening and closing of the fridge and cupboard doors. When he returns, his bag is emptied and he throws it to the floor and rakes his eyes over her.
"I got tested. You wanna see the paperwork?"
Unsure if he's serious, she peers at him through her eyelashes. "No."
He nods, shrugs off his coat, and tugs his jumper and his t-shirt over his head. The February day is another dull one, and everything in the room appears muted. Except him, his skin as translucent as ever. The crisscross of his veins visible beneath his skin and dark moles scattered across his body like someone flicked him with a paintbrush. His chest and his arms are strong and defined. It's a strange combination; the fragileness of his flesh, the hardness of his muscles.
"You still sure about this, Omega?"
Why is he hesitating? He hadn't last time — he'd been unable to hold back. This time she could almost mistake his behaviour for nerves.
She lifts her head. "Do you want me to beg or something? Is that what this is?"
"This isn't anything," he says crossly and steps inside the room. She can smell him, how hard he must be, and that point somewhere deep in her abdomen buzzes with excitement. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in, like a smoker taking a longed for drag on a cigarette.
"What's wrong then?"
His eyes are still closed. "If we do this, I'm not sure I'll be able to stop."
What does he mean by that? She doesn’t know and she remains silent, a little scared, a little delighted by the possibilities. He takes her lack of response as confirmation to proceed and whips off his jeans and boxers, stalking towards her.
Kneeling up on the bed, he pushes her down and raises her hips, guiding her on to him. He pauses to arrange a pillow under her backside and to run his hands over each of her breasts. Then he fucks her, grasping her waist and working her onto him.
As she tumbles from one orgasm to the next, she wonders vaguely how he knew that this would work. How many times he's done it before. How many women he's slept with. The boyfriend she'd been with before seems so tame in comparison to Noah. That sex had been respectful, at times tender even, but mostly perfunctory. The handful of other short dalliances and one-night stands she's had were mostly awkward and frustrating. Certainly no more satisfying than her own fingers and imagination.
With Noah, it's different. There's this rawness to him. He doesn't care what people think of him. He's not bound and limited by that, and so he unleashes everything, taking her higher than she's ever been and letting her float there, free.
Gritting his teeth, he stops himself from coming and arranges them on the bed so both have their own space. Then he releases his breath with a hiss through his teeth and she feels him flood inside her.
Although entwined together, they don't speak, but he holds her gaze until his eyelids gradually fall shut and his breathing mellows into sleep. She watches him. His face becomes more expressive as he sleeps, his brow furrowing and his mouth twitching. He's dreaming. She wonders what about. He doesn't seem the type to be haunted by nightmares.
Not like her. There's one repeating dream that's always plagued her. Pulling her back to that moment when they took her away. In her mind, she's divided everything into before that moment and after. It is puzzling to her that her subconscious should find that particular moment so distressing when the time before was clearly so much worse in so many ways than the time afterwards.
She doesn't want to think about that now, though, and ruin the pleasant haze that bathes her body. So
she reaches out and traces along the ridge of his pectoral muscles and the faint lines of his abdominals, visible every time he inhales. His eyelids flutter as she does and he murmurs. His face stills and she falls asleep too.
◆◆◆
In the afternoon, he wakes her with a glass of water and a bowl of macaroni cheese he’s heated in the microwave. Her cunt throbs and she pushes the drink and the food away, reaching for him. He grasps her hands in one of his with a shake of his head.
"You need to eat and drink, Omega. I’m not fucking you again until you have." She scowls at him and his brow becomes heavy, a low guttural growl forming in his throat. "Do as you’re told for once, will you?"
With a sulk on her lips, she snatches the glass from his hands and drains the lot.
"Good," he says. "Now the food." He holds out the bowl.
She turns her face aside and folds her arms over her chest. "I’m not hungry." She can’t quite believe he actually cares enough to make her eat. He’s here for the sex.
"Omega." His voice is stern. "You need to eat. You haven’t eaten since I’ve been here."
She flips back around to him. "It hurts. I don’t need food… you know what I do need." Her tone starts snarky, but it fades to a whimper and his face softens.
He takes her hand. She tries to pull it away but he hangs on to it firmly, pulling it towards him. Ducking his eyes to hers, he says, "I know little Omega. But just a few mouthfuls." He dips the fork into the pasta and lifts it up towards her lips. "Please."
She opens her mouth automatically, her heart swelling involuntarily at his soft words. Nobody has ever really cared whether she’s eaten before. The gnawing feeling of an empty stomach is all too familiar to her.
His face stays neutral as he tips the pasta into her mouth, but she can see the strain on his forehead and around his neck, as if he’s concentrating. When she’s chewed and swallowed, he offers her another mouthful and then another.