Chapter 10: Morning Sickness, Midnight Lust
Consciousness returned in a slow, syrupy drip. Ben first became aware of the heat. Not the fever of his heat, but the radiant warmth of another body pressed against his back. Then came the weight. An arm thrown heavily over his waist, a palm splayed possessively low on his abdomen.
He kept his eyes shut, trying to cling to the numbness of sleep. But his body was already reporting its new reality.
A deep, cramping tightness low in his belly. A dull, strange fullness. A whisper of nausea curling in the base of his throat.
His breath hitched.
Slowly, against every screaming instinct of denial, his own hand came up to cover Jaxson’s. His fingers trembled as they explored the landscape of his own skin. It was still flat, still lean from his fast metabolism, but there was a new firmness there, a subtle, unyielding curve just below his navel that hadn’t been there yesterday. His womb, preparing. Adapting. Reshaping itself around the invasive, undeniable seed planted deep within it.
Bile rose, sharp and acidic. He swallowed it back, a cold sweat breaking out on his temples.
Jaxson stirred behind him, a low, contented rumble vibrating through Ben’s spine. The arm around him tightened, pulling him flush against the Alpha’s hard, naked form. Ben felt the insistent press of Jaxson’s morning erection against the cleft of his ass.
“Morning,” Jaxson’s voice was rough with sleep, laced with a smug, unbearable satisfaction. He nuzzled the claiming bite on Ben’s neck, and the bond lit up, a hum of connection that felt like a brand.
Ben remained stiff, silent, staring at the city coming to life through the windows, painted in the violent gold and crimson of dawn. His dreamless sleep felt like the last peace he would ever know.
Jaxson’s hand on his stomach flexed, his fingers pressing gently into that new hardness. “Feels different already,” he murmured, his lips moving against Ben’s mark. “I can feel it. My pup taking root.”
“Don’t call it that,” Ben croaked, the first words of the day tasting like ash.
“What should I call it?” Jaxson’s tone was dangerously soft. His hips pushed forward, grinding his hard cock against Ben. “The inevitable consequence? The proof you’re mine?”
Ben squeezed his eyes shut. The movement had jostled something inside him. A fresh wave of nausea crested, stronger this time. He jerked out of Jaxson’s hold, scrambling from the bed. The world tilted. He barely made it to the attached bathroom before he was vomiting into the pristine porcelain toilet, a thin, bitter stream of nothingness. His stomach clenched, the muscles protesting around the new, foreign firmness within.
He heard the soft pad of footsteps. Jaxson leaned in the doorway, a towering silhouette etched in dawn light, watching him. There was no sympathy in his gaze, only a profound, animalistic fascination.
“Sick already,” Jaxson observed, as if cataloging a fascinating biological process. He stepped into the bathroom, the tile cold under his feet. He filled a glass of water and held it out.
Ben slapped it away. Water and glass shattered against the marble wall.
Jaxson didn’t flinch. He just looked at the shattered crystal, then back at Ben’s heaving form. A slow smile, devoid of warmth, touched his lips. “Still got that fire. Good. I’d hate for motherhood to make you docile.”
“Fuck you,” Ben spat, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He tried to stand, but his legs were weak.
In one swift motion, Jaxson closed the distance and hauled him up, manhandling him back into the bedroom. Ben struggled, a weak, pathetic flutter against the Alpha’s immovable strength. Jaxson threw him onto the rumpled sheets, the scent of their sex rising around them like a phantom.
“You already have,” Jaxson said, his voice dropping to a gravelly purr as he loomed over him. “Again and again. And you’re about to again.”
Ben’s body betrayed him immediately. The proximity, the dominance, the raw scent of an Alpha who had just claimed him, triggered a fresh gush of slick between his legs. He hated it. He hated himself.
“My heat’s over,” Ben lied, his voice trembling.
Jaxson laughed, a short, derisive sound. He gripped Ben’s thighs, pushing them apart, his piercing blue eyes fixed on the evidence of Ben’s arousal glistening on his inner thighs. “Liar.” He leaned down, his nose almost touching Ben’s cunt. He inhaled deeply, a predatory growl resonating in his chest. “You’re dripping. Your body knows what it’s for now. It’s hungry for it. For me.”
Before Ben could form a retort, Jaxson’s mouth was on him. Not a kiss. A claim. His tongue speared into him, rough and seeking, lapping up the slick with a grunt of approval. Ben cried out, his hands fisting in the sheets, his back arching off the bed against his will. The sensation was too much, too direct, a violent intimacy that shredded the last fragments of his resistance.
Jaxson tasted him with a carnal thoroughness, then pulled back, his chin wet. “Still the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.” He reared up, aligning his body over Ben’s. He didn’t ask. He just guided the fat, ruddy head of his cock to Ben’s fluttering, soaked entrance and pushed.
It was easier than last night. Ben’s body opened for him, a well-used, welcoming sheath. But the stretch was still profound, the fullness absolute. Ben gasped, his head thrashing side to side as Jaxson sank in to the hilt in one relentless stroke.
“Look at me,” Jaxson commanded, his voice strained with the effort of control.
Ben’s tear-filled green eyes snapped open, meeting Jaxson’s fierce blue gaze.
Jaxson began to move, a slow, deep, possessive rhythm. One hand pinned Ben’s hip to the bed. The other returned to his lower belly, fingers splayed wide over the slight but definite swell. “This is why,” Jaxson grunted, thrusting deep, punctuating his words. “This is what you’re for. This tight little belly, swelling with my child.” He leaned down, his breath hot on Ben’s face. “You can hate me all you want, Omega. But your body loves me. It was made for this. To take my knot. To carry my breed.”
Each thrust was a violation. Each filthy word was a brand. Ben’s climax built not as a cresting wave of pleasure, but as a tectonic shift of surrender. It was unbearable. It was inevitable. He came with a shattered scream, his channel convulsing violently around the invading cock, his vision whiting out.
Jaxson swore, a raw, guttural sound. His thrusts lost all rhythm, becoming frenzied, brutal. His fingers dug into the firmness of Ben’s belly. “Gonna fill you up again,” he panted. “Seed the pup. Make sure it takes.”
The crude promise tipped Ben over another edge, a secondary, weaker orgasm rippling through him. He was sobbing openly now, broken sounds he didn’t recognize.
Jaxson’s final thrusts were punishing. With a roar that seemed to shake the room, he slammed home and came. Ben felt the hot, pulsing flood deep inside him, a redundant claim, a brutal reaffirmation. Jaxson collapsed on top of him, his weight a final anchor.
In the heavy silence, broken only by their ragged breaths, Jaxson’s hand smoothed over Ben’s stomach again, almost absently. His voice, when it came, was quiet, stripped of its earlier aggression. “It’s already there, Ben. In every cell of you now.”
Ben turned his face into the pillow, away from the sunrise, away from the Alpha, away from the undeniable truth hardening under his own skin. The fight was no longer about escape. It was about what came next. And he had no idea how to wage a war against himself.