Chapter 106: 16.3.2 x
gabriel refuses to fuck koen like this. he wants their first time together to be romantic and have both of them mentally present
The shame was a cold, metallic taste in his mouth long after he’d cleaned the floor. Gabriel moved through the grey dawn light of the townhouse like a ghost, ritualistically washing his hands, changing his clothes. The physical evidence was gone. The memory was a brand.
He brewed tea he didn’t drink, standing at the kitchen window and watching the mist coil over the cobblestones of the silent street. His mind was a storm of static. He needed to work. Work was order. Work was a firewall against the chaos of scent and need emanating from upstairs. He retreated to his study, a small, book-crammed room off the main hall, and summoned a minor ledger. The figures blurred. The lines of celestial script swam before his eyes. All he could hear was the phantom echo of Koen’s breath, the rustle of that damned nest.
An hour crawled by. The house was too quiet. The silence felt like a held breath. He should check on him. That was the decent thing. Ensure he was still asleep, that the water pitcher by the bed was full. It was basic caretaking, not predation. He repeated this to himself as he stood, his body moving with a will that felt separate from his spiraling thoughts.
He climbed the stairs slowly, each step a negotiation. The hallway was cooler, the air still. He approached Koen’s door and placed a hand flat against it, as if feeling for a fever through the wood. Nothing. He should just turn around. Go back downstairs. His hand found the latch.
The door opened a crack.
And the scent—Gods, the scent—uncoiled from the room and punched him in the gut, a visceral, physical force.
It had transformed. The spent, hazy ache from before was gone. This was the peak. The true, raging heart of the heat. It was molten honey and crushed pine needles, musk so thick it was almost smoky, and underneath it all, the unmistakable, slick, sweet perfume of an omega in full, desperate readiness. It poured over Gabriel, into him, through him. His vision spotted. His knees nearly buckled. A primal, deafening roar filled his skull, drowning out every civilized thought.
His cock hardened instantly, a painful, urgent thickness straining against his trousers, so sudden it made him gasp. His breath came in ragged pulls, each one flooding his system with more of Koen, with the explicit promise in that air. He was leaking, a damp, embarrassing patch already forming on the front of his pants. His jaw ached with the need to bite, to claim, to mount.
He stumbled back from the door, slamming it shut with a force that shuddered the frame. He fled down the hallway, not to his study, but to his bedroom. He locked the door again, his hands trembling. He collapsed against it, then pushed away, prowling the small space like a caged animal. The scent was on him, in his nostrils, on his clothes. It was inside his head.
His body was on fire. The fantasy from before was a pale, pathetic shadow. This was no longer a speculative image. It was a demand. His skin felt too tight, hypersensitive. He could all but feel the heat of Koen’s body under his hands, see the sweat-slick sheen on his back, hear the ragged, begging cries that were no longer memory but inevitability.
With a snarl of frustration, he tore at his clothes, buttons pinging off the wall. He didn’t make it to the bed. He sank to his knees on the rug, his cock springing free, already weeping pre-cum. He didn’t need to stroke it. Just the cool air on his overheated skin was a shock. But he took himself in hand anyway, the grip brutal, his knuckles white.
He let the fantasy run, wild and unbidden.
This time, in his mind, he didn’t hesitate at the door. He kicked it open. The room was a furnace, the scent a solid wall. Koen was on his hands and knees in the wreckage of the nest, back arched, presenting. He was naked, skin flushed a deep rose-gold, trembling with need. Slick gleamed on his inner thighs, dripping onto the rumpled blankets below.
“Gabriel,” he’d whine, voice shredded. “Please, fuck, I can’t— I need it. Need you to fuck me. Now.”
And Gabriel, in the fantasy, would be on him in two strides. No gentle words. No romance. A hand would fist in Koen’s damp hair, not enough to hurt, just enough to control, to tilt his head back. He’d lean down, his lips against the shell of Koen’s ear.
“You smell like you’re dying for it,” he’d growl, his voice unrecognizable, dark with want. “All this slick. You made this mess for me?”
“Yes,” Koen would sob, pushing his hips back. “For you. Just for you. Fucking give it to me.”
Gabriel’s other hand would slide down the sweat-slicked groove of Koen’s spine, over the curve of his ass. He’d spread him, rough, and watch as the clenched entrance gleamed, wet and inviting. He wouldn’t prepare him. In the fantasy, Koen was already open, ready, his body screaming for it. Gabriel would spit into his own palm, slick his aching cock with a crude, hurried stroke, and then position the broad, flushed head right at that waiting entrance.
He’d push in. Not slow. One relentless, driving thrust, burying himself to the hilt in one brutal stroke.
The scream Koen would let out wouldn’t be pain. It would be pure, shattered relief, a sound torn from the core of him. He’d collapse onto his forearms, his body clamping down around Gabriel’s cock in a velvet-stranglehold, hot and impossibly tight.
“Fuck,” Gabriel would gasp into his back, hips flush against ass. “You’re so fucking tight. Taking me so good.”
Then he’d move. Hard. Deep. Setting a punishing rhythm from the first moment. The slap of skin, the wet, filthy sounds of their joining would fill the room. He’d fuck him like an animal, like his alpha blood demanded, each drive forward punching a choked cry from Koen’s throat. One hand would stay fisted in his hair, the other would dig into the meat of his hip, holding him in place to be used.
“Is this what you needed?” he’d grunt, his own breath coming in hot bursts against Koen’s sweat-salted skin. “This fucking cock? You wanted me to ruin you, didn’t you? To fuck you stupid in your own nest?”
“Yes! Yes, gods, harder, Gabriel, please!”
He’d give him harder. His thrusts would become erratic, brutal, chasing his own peak. He’d feel Koen’s body begin to tighten, convulsing around him. He’d reach around, take Koen’s leaking cock in a rough, unforgiving grip, and stroke him in time with his thrusts.
“Come for me,” he’d command, biting at Koen’s shoulder. “Come all over my hand, you desperate thing. Do it.”
And Koen would. With a broken wail, his body seizing, spilling hot stripes over Gabriel’s fingers and the blankets below. The clenching, rhythmic milking of his orgasm would be Gabriel’s undoing. With a final, deep, grinding thrust, he’d bury himself as deep as he could and come, a hot, endless flood pumping into that clutching heat, claiming, filling, breeding—
On his knees on the rug, Gabriel’s orgasm ripped through him with a force that blinded him. A raw, choked shout was torn from his throat as his back arched, his hips pumping uselessly into his own fist. Thick jets of cum spattered the woven wool between his knees, some landing on his discarded trousers. The waves of pleasure were so intense they tipped into pain, hollowing him out, leaving him shuddering and gasping.
He slumped forward, catching himself on one trembling hand. His head hung low, sweat dripping from his brow onto the rug. The fantasy evaporated, leaving the familiar, cruel clarity of aftermath.
The scent was still there. In the hallway. In the house. Koen was still in there, suffering, needing. And he was here, on the floor, again, having gotten off on the image of using him like a thing, of taking him in the most base, animalistic way possible while his mind was lost to biology.
A fresh, more profound shame flooded him, hot and nauseating. He looked at the mess he’d made. This wasn't him. This wasn't what he wanted. Not really.
The instruction, his own silent vow, cut through the post-coital haze with the sharpness of a sanctified blade.
The words were a lifeline. A truth he’d almost drowned in the pheromonal tide.
He would not. He could not.
The fantasy was a lie. A biological trap. Their first time would not be in a sweat-drenched nest with Koen mindless with fever. It would not be him, Gabriel, reduced to a grunting, claiming animal. It would be with wine, perhaps. With slow, explorative touches. With Koen’s clever, stupid mouth smiling up at him, his orange eyes clear and wanting, his words his own. It would be with laughter, maybe. With whispered confessions after. It would be theirs, a shared choice, not a biological imperative.
This resolve solidified in his chest, a hard, clean crystal forming in the mud of his arousal and guilt. He would not cross that threshold. No matter how thick the scent, no matter how hard his cock got, no matter how many depraved fantasies his body conjured.
He cleaned himself up again, movements deliberate now, not frantic. He dressed in fresh clothes. He left his room and went not to Koen’s door, but downstairs. To the kitchen. He pumped water, filled a pitcher. He found a fresh cloth. He moved with a new purpose, not as a panicked caretaker, not as a tempted alpha, but as someone who had drawn a line in the sand of his own soul.
He climbed the stairs. The scent was still overpowering, still made his head swim and his blood heat. But he held the pitcher in front of him like a talisman, focusing on the cool weight of it, the practical task.
He opened the door.
The sight that greeted him was both more and less than his fantasy. Koen was half-conscious, writhing slowly on the bed, the blankets tangled around his legs. He was naked, his skin gleaming. The air was so thick with the smell of sex and need it was hard to breathe. Koen’s eyes fluttered open, landing on Gabriel. They held no recognition, only a deep, endless want.
“Alpha,” Koen slurred, the word a plea.
“It’s Gabriel,” he said, his voice surprisingly steady. He approached the bed, setting the pitcher down. “I brought you water.”
Koen didn’t seem to hear. He reached out, a clumsy, seeking hand. “Need… hurt…”
Gabriel caught his wrist, not forcefully, but firmly, halting its journey toward his trousers. The skin under his fingers was fever-hot. “I know it hurts. I’m here.” He guided Koen’s hand back to the damp sheet, then turned to wring out the fresh cloth in the cool water.
A wounded, confused noise rattled in Koen’s chest. He watched Gabriel with glassy, burning eyes as the angel leaned over and laid the cloth across his forehead. Koen flinched at the coolness, then sank into it with a whimper. The relief was momentary. His hips gave a tiny, unconscious roll against the empty air, a mute search for friction, for pressure, for anything.
“Why won’t you?” The words were thick, slurred, but the accusation in them was needle-sharp.
“Won’t I what?” Gabriel kept his voice soft, neutral, dabbing the cloth along Koen’s hairline.
“Fuck me.” Koen said it with a blunt, heartbreaking clarity. His brow furrowed in profound confusion beneath the cloth. “I’m… here. I’m ready. S’all wet for you. Can’t you smell it?” He made another aborted movement, trying to spread his legs, to show him. Gabriel gently pressed his thigh back down, holding him still.
“I can smell it,” Gabriel admitted, his own voice rough. The scent was a living thing in his lungs. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what’s wrong?” Koen’s voice cracked, rising with a note of genuine distress. He blinked up, pupils vast and black, swallowing the orange. “S’wrong with me? Not good?” His free hand patted clumsily at his own chest, his stomach. “Not pretty enough? Not… not enough slick? I can make more. I will.”
“Koen, no. Stop.” The words came out harsher than Gabriel intended, laced with a pain that wasn’t his own. He saw the flinch, the way Koen’s face crumpled. This was the fissure, the horrible misalignment. Gabriel saw a line of morality he refused to cross. Koen, in his fever-addled state, saw only rejection, a fundamental failure of his own omega body to call its alpha to mate.
“‘M broken,” Koen whispered, turning his face into the pillow. A hot tear tracked through the sweat on his temple. “Knew it. Demon part… ruins it. ‘M a bad omega. Useless.”
“You are not broken.” Gabriel’s hand cupped his jaw, turning his face back. He forced Koen to look at him, needing him to see the truth, even if he couldn’t understand it. “You are perfect. You are so fucking perfect it’s killing me to sit here. But I want you when you’re you. Not when the heat is thinking for you.”
Koen stared, uncomprehending. The logic was too complex, a distant language compared to the screaming void in his gut. The perceived rejection was a sharper, more immediate truth. He sniffed, a wet, pathetic sound, and his body gave another violent, twisting shudder. The pain was back, eclipsing the brief moment of clarity. Need overrode thought.
His hand shot out again, this time not seeking permission, but seeking purchase. It landed on Gabriel’s thigh, fingers digging in. “Just… touch me,” he begged, voice raw. “Anywhere. Please, Gabe. I’ll be good. I’ll do anything. Just… put your hand on me.”
Gabriel’s entire body went wire-tight. The heat of Koen’s palm bled through the fabric of his trousers. Every cell in him howled to give in, to give that touch, to give so much more. He could imagine it—slipping his hand between Koen’s thighs, feeling the soaking wet heat there, stroking him until he screamed. It would be so easy.
He didn’t move.
Koen’s fingers crept higher, trembling, inching toward his groin. Gabriel caught that wrist too, his grip tighter now. “No.”
The refusal, simple and absolute, seemed to snap something in Koen. A frustrated, agonized sound tore from his throat. He rolled, with surprising strength, pushing himself up onto his knees on the ravaged bed. He loomed over Gabriel, who still sat on the bedside chair, his body a landscape of taut muscle and flushed skin, gleaming with sweat and slick.
“Look at me!” Koen demanded, his voice breaking. He took Gabriel’s hand—the one that held his wrist—and pressed it flat against his own lower belly. His skin was like furnace-heated silk. “I’m empty. I’m so fucking empty it burns. You’re supposed to fill it.” He dragged Gabriel’s hand lower, through the rough trail of dark hair, toward the dripping heart of him. “This is for you. It’s all for you. Why won’t you take it?”
Gabriel ripped his hand away as if scalded. He stood up so fast the chair screeched backward. His breathing was ragged, his own control fraying into splinters. “Because I see you!” he shouted, the sound raw in the thick air. “I see Koen, who spends his bullet money on my favorite whiskey just because. Who sings off-key in the bath. Who thinks tactical geometry is ‘fancy guesswork.’ That’s who I want! Not this… this animal in pain!”
Koen recoiled as if struck. He sank back onto his heels, the frantic energy draining away, replaced by a hollow, devastating defeat. The animal didn’t understand the poetry. It only understood the refusal. He wrapped his arms around himself, making his naked body small in the center of the big bed.
“Just go away then,” he mumbled into his knees, his voice muffled and thick with tears. “If I’m so bad. If you don’t want it. Just go.”
Gabriel stood there, trembling, wrecked. The urge to crawl onto that bed and prove just how badly he was wanted was a physical ache in his teeth, in his bones. He looked at the curve of Koen’s spine, each vertebra pronounced under damp skin, at the shaking shoulders.
He didn’t go.
He righted the chair. He sat back down. He picked up the cloth from where it had fallen on the blanket, re-wet it in the pitcher with a hand that only shook a little. He reached out and began to gently wipe the sweat from the back of Koen’s neck.
Koen flinched, but didn’t pull away. A shattered sob escaped him.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Gabriel said, his voice low and absolutely final. “I’m staying right here. You hurt, I stay. You curse my name, I stay. You think you’re broken, I stay. I stay until you believe you’re not. Until the fever breaks and you can tell me to leave yourself.”
He kept up the slow, rhythmic motion of the cloth. The only sounds were Koen’s ragged, hitching breaths and the soft, wet whisper of linen on skin. The scent in the room didn’t lessen. The need didn’t abate. But a new, terrible silence settled between them, heavy with Koen’s crushed belief and the stark, unyielding shape of Gabriel’s devotion.
But a new, terrible silence settled between them, heavy with Koen’s crushed belief and the stark, unyielding shape of Gabriel’s devotion.
The hours bled together after that.
Gabriel stayed. He moved through the cycles like a sentinel against his own nature. He brought water, coaxing sips past Koen’s cracked lips. He refreshed the cloth, cooling his brow, the back of his neck, his wrists. He said nothing when the fever pitched Koen back into wordless, thrashing need, or when it ebbed and left him crying softly into the pillows. The scent in the room changed gradually, shifting from that piercing, urgent sweetness to something deeper, more exhausted, a spent fire banking itself into embers.
Two more days passed this way.
On the third morning, a different quality of quiet filled the townhouse. The oppressive, feverish energy had dissipated. Sunlight, weak and pale, filtered through Koen’s window and found a room that looked ransacked. Empty water pitchers stood sentinel on the floor. Discarded cloths were piled by the basin. The nest was a devastated landscape of tangled linen.
In the center of it all, Koen slept.
It wasn’t the desperate, fitful sleep of the peak heat. It was the profound, heavy coma of total systemic depletion. He was on his side, one hand tucked under his cheek, his breathing slow and even. The flush had faded from his skin, leaving him pale beneath his freckles. He looked young. Fragile, in a way Gabriel had never associated with the man who could throw a full-grown wyvern-kin.
Gabriel watched from the doorway, a hollowed-out version of himself. He hadn’t slept in a proper bed in days, catching only scant minutes in the chair. His clothes were rumpled, his perfect hair a mess. He felt frayed, thin as old parchment.
He was about to turn and finally, finally, collapse onto his own mattress when Koen stirred.
A low groan vibrated in the hunter’s chest. His nose wrinkled. He cracked one eye open, a sliver of dazed orange, and immediately squinted against the light. He blinked slowly, his gaze swimming around the room before landing on Gabriel. There was no recognition at first, just a blank, exhausted observation.
Then, a faint, ghostly awareness flickered.
“G’briel?” The name was a dry, rusted thing, scraping out of a raw throat.
“I’m here.” Gabriel’s own voice was rough from disuse. He didn’t move from the doorway, giving him space.
Koen’s brow furrowed. He tried to push himself up on one elbow, his arm trembling violently with the effort. He made it halfway before collapsing back with a defeated huff. He lay there, breathing hard from the minimal exertion, staring at the ceiling. His thoughts were clearly moving through mud.
“S’over?” he finally managed.
“I think so,” Gabriel said softly. “The worst of it, yes.”
Koen gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod. His eyes drifted shut again, but he didn’t fall back asleep. He seemed to be taking inventory of his own body, his mind. A long minute passed. Then, he turned his head just slightly on the pillow, his gaze finding Gabriel again. The sharp, cunning hunter was nowhere in sight. This was just a creature, soft and shattered in the aftermath.
“M’brain feels… fuzzy,” Koen murmured, his words sloshing together. “Like wool. Stuffed with it.”
“That’s normal,” Gabriel said, taking a tentative step into the room. “Your body just ran a marathon. Your mind needs time to catch up.”
Koen didn’t seem to hear the explanation. His attention was elsewhere, turned inward. He clumsily patted the empty space on the mattress beside him, his movements uncoordinated. The blankets rustled.
When he spoke again, his voice was small, stripped of every defense. It held none of the heat’s desperate begging, only a simple, profound want.
“C’n you… come here?”
Gabriel stilled. “Koen…”
“Not for that,” Koen interrupted, his eyes opening fully, meeting Gabriel’s with a heartbreaking clarity amidst the fog. He wasn’t fully present, but he was trying so hard to be. “I know. I remember… you said no. I get it.” He swallowed. “Just… cold. Empty feeling. In my bones. Doesn’t hurt. Just feels… hollow.”
He patted the mattress again, a little more insistently. “Need a… a weight. Please. Just to lie down with. Just cuddles. Nothin’ else.”
The request was so pure, so utterly stripped of agenda, that it bypassed Gabriel’s last remaining defenses. He saw the slight shiver that ran through Koen’s shoulders, seen the way he was trying to curl in on himself for warmth. The heat had burned everything out of him, leaving a cold, vacant shell.
Gabriel crossed the room. He didn’t overthink it. He toed off his boots. He carefully lowered himself onto the very edge of the ravaged bed, the springs creaking softly under his weight. He lay on his back, stiff, leaving a foot of space between them, his hands folded on his stomach.
A disappointed, frustrated noise came from Koen. He rolled with immense effort onto his side, facing Gabriel. He wormed one arm under his own head and used the other to clumsily grab at Gabriel’s shirt, fingers hooking into the fabric.
“Nuh-uh,” Koen mumbled, tugging weakly. “Cuddles. Means close. C’mere.”
He pulled, a feeble insistence, until Gabriel relented and shifted onto his side to face him. The moment the space closed, Koen moved. He shuffled forward, burying his face against Gabriel’s chest with a sigh that seemed to come from the soles of his feet. He flung one heavy arm across Gabriel’s waist, his leg hiking up to hook over Gabriel’s thigh. He was like a starfish, latching on, seeking maximum contact.
He was still warm, but it was a human warmth now, not a fever. He smelled of sleep and salt and the faint, clean remnant of his scent, like a forest after rain. His body was a dead weight, completely pliant.
“There,” Koen sighed, his words muffled against Gabriel’s shirt. “S’better. You’re warm. Solid.”
Gabriel remained frozen for a long moment, his body thrumming with the memory of recent wars. Then, cautiously, he lifted his arm and draped it over Koen’s back. His hand settled between his shoulder blades, feeling the slow, steady heartbeat under his palm. The last of the tension leaked out of Koen’s frame. He nuzzled closer, his sharp canines clicking softly against a button.
“Knew you were soft,” Koen slurred, already half-gone back to sleep.
“I am not soft,” Gabriel whispered automatically, the protest hollow. His fingers began to move, tracing idle, soothing circles on Koen’s back.
“‘Are. Underneath. Like the… the stuff inside a fancy pillow.” Koen’s breathing deepened, grew rhythmical. Just before he slipped under completely, he muttered, “Thanks. For stayin’. For… for the water. And the no.”
His grip loosened. His body grew heavier still, fully surrendering to a true, healing sleep.
Gabriel held him. He watched the sunlight trace a path across the floor. He felt the absolute trust in the weight against him, the simple animal comfort he was providing. It wasn’t romance. It wasn’t sex. It was something quieter, and perhaps more profound.
The rigid ache in his own body began, finally, to unwind. He rested his cheek against Koen’s disheveled hair, closed his eyes, and for the first time in days, breathed easily. The storm was over. They were here, in the wreckage, holding together. It was a start.