The couch in the trailer was a lost cause, a monument to synthetic fabric and questionable stains, but it held them like a throne. The evening was bleeding away outside, a slow bruise of purple and orange against the single window. Inside, the only light came from the flickering glow of the television, casting shifting shadows that danced over the clutter of empty beer cans and a half-eaten bag of chips.
Chris was lost in the geography of your mouth. This was a mission he understood, a simple, perfect objective: make you sigh, make you melt, make you forget your own name. Your hands were fisted in his t-shirt, and his were mapping the delicious curve of your back under your top. The air was thick with the scent of you—that sweet, driving Omega scent that cut through the smells of gun oil and cheap deodorant and went straight to the lizard part of his brain. It was a scent that said home and mine in a language older than words.
He broke the kiss, breathing ragged, his forehead resting against yours. “God, sweetcheeks,” he mumbled, his voice gravelly. “You taste like… I dunno. Something good. Like those fancy gummy worms.”
You laughed, a breathy, intoxicating sound, and nipped at his bottom lip. “You’re such a dork.”
“Your dork,” he corrected, and the truth of it hit him like a physical blow. He was. He was your dork. This woman, with her smart mouth and her soft skin and her way of looking at him like he wasn’t a complete fuck-up, had claimed him just as surely as any bite ever could.
The thought of the bite sent a jolt through him, a primal current under his skin. His Alpha instincts, usually a background hum, were roaring now. Mark her. Claim her. Make it permanent.
He shifted, his body caging yours into the cushions. The worn springs of the couch groaned in protest. He nuzzled into the junction of your neck and shoulder, inhaling deeply. His scent—musky, metallic, all Alpha—mingled with yours, creating a new, intoxicating perfume that was uniquely them. His lips brushed over the skin there, feeling the frantic flutter of your pulse against his mouth.
“Chris…” you breathed, and it wasn’t a question. It was a surrender. Your head tilted back, offering him everything.
His mind, for once, was quiet. No jokes, no doubts, no ghost of his father whispering taunts. There was only the heat of your skin, the sound of your breathing, and the overwhelming, terrifying, perfect rightness of this.
“I wanna… shit, I really wanna do it,” he whispered against your throat, his voice thick with want. “I wanna give you my bite. Right now.” He pulled back just enough to look at you, his eyes dark and serious. The flickering TV light caught the earnest fear in them. “Is that… are you gonna be cool with that? ‘Cause once I do it, there’s no sending me back. I’m like, factory-sealed. Final sale.”
He was trying to make it a joke, to lighten the monumental weight of what he was asking, but the tremor in his hands gave him away. He was more scared than he’d been facing down a hundred butterflies.