Page 23 of Healing the Alpha

I chuckle. “Yeah, that one. He basically said all that matters is that it feels right. And that you shouldn’t let all the other shit, like being ‘straight’ or whatever, get in the way of a good thing. I’ve thought about that a lot, over the last couple of days.”

Kyle pulls his lower lip between his teeth, a small, hopeful smile tugging at his lips. “Sounds like good advice.”

I hum.

“So, does it feel right?” he asks, his smile matching mine as he finds my hand under the covers and threads our fingers together. “Us? Whatever it is we’ve been doing these last few weeks? Because it does to me. It feels really fucking right, Maxie. Like, scarily, head-fuckingly right.”

“Fuck yeah it does,” I breathe, no hesitation. My ginger scent flares warmly around us, and I watch him inhale the pheromones into his lungs without his alpha instinct flinching for a second. “You’ve been my favorite person for nearly thirty years, Ky. No one could ever fucking compare, even if you are a hardheaded ass sometimes. I fucking want you. I want to figure it all out with you.”

Kyle closes the gap between us, drawing me in for a bruising kiss that feels like the answer to every question that’s been racing through my head since he first touched me like something more than a friend.

“I want you too,” he murmurs against my lips, pulling back just to stare at me. “And as soon as I’ve got two arms again, I swear to god I’m gonna make it up to you—every meal you’ve cooked me, every time you’ve helped me shower, every time you’ve taken my dick in your ass—”

“Oh my god, Kyle,” I groan, flushing and kicking him gently under the sheets. “It’s not a fucking competition.”

“Everything’s a competition with us.”

“Then it’s not one I’m winning,” I say softly. “You’ve been looking after me since we were kids, dumbass. When my mom packed up and left to move in with her boyfriend in Colorado when we were sixteen, who brought me home? You didn’t even ask. You dragged me into your house, told your parents I was staying, and let me sleep on your bedroom floor until we were old enough to sign a lease on our own place. You gave me a family, Ky.”

I shuffle closer until our knees knock, my toes pressing against his.

“You got me a job with you at your cousin’s shop so I could pay my way through college. When I was broke and starting up the gym with Marcus, you covered my half of the rent for six months and told me you’d shave my eyebrows off if I ever brought it up. You sat in the corner of every amateur fight I ever had, wiped the blood off my face, and hyped me up even when I lost.

“So yeah, six weeks of taking care of your stubborn ass after work is nothing. Having the best sex of my life with you to get you through your rut is nothing. It’s just what we do. Because I love you, Ky. Always have, always will.”

If there were any remnants of anxiety left on his face, they’re gone when my eyes meet his, replaced with a bright, glimmering hope that takes my breath away. He slides his good hand up my broad back, burying his nose in the crook of my neck and breathing in our combined scents.

“I love you too,” he mumbles into my skin, and hearing him say those words barely even feels like a grand confession, because we’ve been proving it to each other every day since we were kids. “Always have, always will.”

I let him push me back into the mattress, our lips crashing together as we kiss away all the weirdness and uncertainty of the last few weeks, until it’s just again, just two inseparable idiots who might be about to get a whole lot more insufferable.

The kiss turns heated quickly, Kyle’s scent flaring strongly around us, his rut on the way out but not entirely over yet. My mind takes on that hazy quality that’s become familiar since I walked into a room thick with Kyle’s rut pheromones for the first time, my cock hardening despite my exhaustion; it’s a response I don’t quite understand, but god knows I’m not fighting it.

“Maxie,” he growls, his teeth scraping hard against the skin of my throat, the nickname on his lips, in this context, sending a dirty thrill through me. He's panting now, his body burning against mine as the last embers of his fever ignite the lingering instinct to claim me.

“Take what you need,” I mumble, helping him pull off his shorts and kicking off my own in record time. The moan I let out when our cocks slide together, slick with precum and searing hot, is totally unabashed, neither of us holding anything back anymore.

“Fuck,” he rasps, sounding feral as his teeth nip at my neck. “I need to mark you. I need everyone to fucking know.”

Oh, fuck. The thought of it makes my whole body tremble; the idea of Kyle’s teeth sinking into my neck, and walking around with matching mating bites on our necks… my cock throbs, my hole clenching around nothing. But even if we want it, it’s not something we can have—it would be useless at best, dangerous at worst.

“Hey,” I pant, catching his jaw with my palm and forcing him to look at me. His eyes are dark and wild. “You can't bite me. We're both alphas.”

“I don't care,” he growls, his chest heaving against mine. “I need to claim you, Max. Right fucking now.”

I smile softly, my entire body sensitive and alive, running my thumb over his cheek. “Then fuck me, mark me, bruise me,” I say, my voice low in his ear, loving the way he shivers against me in response. “Claim me in every other way you can.”

I don’t give him a chance to hurt himself by pinning me to the mattress like I know he desperately wants to. I roll onto him instead, bracketing my legs around his hips and grabbing the nearly-empty bottle of lube we thankfully found in the back of Kyle’s bedside cabinet, reaching back to slick us both up as quickly as I can.

Then, I guide his heavy, swollen length straight to my entrance, and sink down on him in one fluid, agonizingly sweet movement.

Kyle lets out a wrecked sound, pulling me down and into the crook of his neck as he buries himself to the hilt. He’s big, thicker than I ever thought I’d be able to take, but I stretch to accommodate him almost like I was built for it, and the sensation is so much and so, so good.

“You’re fucking mine,” he murmurs against my neck as he starts to fuck into me in long, brutal strokes, and hearing him say it feels even better when I know it’s really true.

“Yours, Ky,” I murmur into his neck, helpless against the powerful thrust of his hips and each burning jolt of pleasure that rips through me every time his blunt cockhead brushes against my prostate. “Fucking take it.”

Kyle drops his mouth to my neck, locking his lips right over my scent gland. He sucks with a hungry, punishing pressure. He drags his tongue across the skin, laving over the spot before sucking again, forcing what I can only guess is a dark bruise to the surface until my entire neck throbs with every touch of his lips.