Chapter 1: Waking Knotted
The first thing he felt was weight.
A deep, inescapable pressure anchoring him to the bed, followed by a dull, throbbing fullness low in his belly. Leo’s eyes fluttered open to the blurred gold of dawn through towering windows. His head pounded in time with the ache between his legs—a brutal, syncopated rhythm of regret.
Memory returned in jagged pieces.
The printed photographs on the kitchen island. Jacob’s smile, someone else’s hand on his waist. The bottle of cheap whiskey. The dizzying elevator ride up to the penthouse office he had no business entering at midnight. Slurred words choked with tears. And then him—Dominic Ashford. His boss. Catching him as his legs gave out. The low, questioning growl. The scent of alpha, of sandalwood and crisp power, cutting through the alcohol haze.
And then the rest. The crushing kisses. The expensive silk of the sheets against his back. The raw, commanding voice in his ear telling him to be good, to take it. The pain that melted into a shameful, breathtaking heat.
“Fuck,” Leo whispered, his voice shredded.
The weight shifted. It was Dominic’s arm, a heavy band of muscle across his chest, and Dominic’s leg thrown over his thighs. And deep inside, a swollen, persistent knot, binding them together in the most primal way. He was still locked. They’d fallen asleep like this.
A wave of nausea rolled through him. He tried to move, a tiny, panicked jerk, but the arm tightened instantly.
“Stay still.” The voice was sleep-rough and absolute, vibrating against Leo’s spine where Dominic’s chest was pressed. “It’ll hurt if you pull.”
Leo’s breath hitched. He stared at the sprawling cityscape, the clouds tinted pink and orange. It looked fake. Everything felt fake and horribly, mortally real. The scent in the room was overpowering—sex, sweat, his own sweet-omega distress, and Dominic’s dominant alpha musk, now intertwined, claimed.
“Last night…” Leo started, his throat tight.
“Happened.” Dominic finished. His lips brushed the juncture of Leo’s neck and shoulder, not a kiss, just a possession. A statement. “You came to me. You were crying. You stank of another alpha’s betrayal. And you begged.”
Leo flinched. “I didn’t beg for this.”
“You did.” Dominic’s hand slid from his chest down to his stomach, pressing flat against the softness there. Leo could feel the intimidating bulge of his boss’s knot even more intimately with that pressure. “You said, ‘please.’ You said, ‘make me forget.’ So I did.”
The hand moved lower, fingertips tracing the delicate skin of Leo’s hip bone. “You were so tight, Leo. Clenching around me like a vise. Soaked for me. You came twice before I even knotted you. Remember that?”
Heat flooded Leo’s face. He did remember. The memories were visceral, obscene. The feel of Dominic’s cock, huge and relentless, stretching him open. The way his own body arched off the bed, betraying him completely, screaming for more even as his mind shattered. The filthy, perfect agony of the knot pushing past his rim, locking them, forcing him to take every last pulsing drop.
“That was the liquor,” Leo choked out.
“That was you,” Dominic corrected, his voice a dark caress. “Finally being honest. This is who you are. Who you belong to.”
He rocked his hips, a small, deliberate movement. The knot shifted inside, a shocking reminder of its presence, and a broken sound escaped Leo’s lips—part pain, part something else entirely. His body, traitorously, hummed with a residual pleasure, sensitive and raw.
“I have a husband,” Leo said, the words tasting like ash.
“You had a cheating bastard who didn’t know what was in his own bed,” Dominic growled, the sound primal, rumbling through Leo’s very bones. The arm around his chest became an iron cage. “He’s gone. He touched what was mine, and he’s fucking gone. Do you understand? You don’t go back to that empty house. You don’t look at his pictures.”
Leo’s heart hammered against his ribs. This was a fever dream. A terrible mistake spiraling into a nightmare. “You’re my boss. This is… this is insane. Let me go.”
“No.”
The simple word was a death sentence for the life he knew. Dominic nudged his nose against Leo’s scent gland, inhaling deeply, and Leo felt a corresponding clench deep in his core. His biology was responding to the alpha’s proximity, his claim, despite the cyclone of fear and shame in his mind.
“The knot’s going down,” Dominic murmured, as if commenting on the weather. He pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to Leo’s shoulder. “But this isn’t over. You’re staying here. Today. Tonight. From now on.”
“You can’t just keep me—”
“I can.” Dominic’s teeth grazed his skin, a near-bite that made Leo freeze. “I will. You think this was just a fuck? I’ve waited years. Watching you walk through the office with your soft smiles and your quiet diligence. Watching that worthless piece of shit you married take you for granted. Last night you didn’t just fall into my bed, Leo. You fell into my hands. And I don’t let go of what’s mine.”
The fullness inside him began to soften, the terrible, intimate connection easing. As soon as the pressure lessened, Leo scrambled forward, ignoring the sharp twinge of protest from his body. He fell off the side of the massive bed, his knees hitting the cool marble floor with a jarring thud. He was naked, covered in dried come and bite marks that weren’t his husband’s. He felt ruined.
He looked up.
Dominic was sitting up against the headboard, the silk sheet pooled around his waist. The dawn light carved the brutal, perfect lines of his torso—the defined pectorals, the ridged abdomen. His dark eyes weren’t sleepy anymore. They were focused, predatory, and utterly possessive. His cock, still wet from Leo’s body, lay heavy against his thigh. The sight was indecent. Leo had taken that. Had come apart on it.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Dominic asked. His tone was deceptively calm.
“Home,” Leo whispered, pushing himself up. Every muscle ached.
“This is your home.”
“I need my clothes. I need… I need to think.”
“Think here.” Dominic moved, a fluid uncoiling of alpha power. He was off the bed and crossing the room before Leo could even process it. He stood before him, a wall of naked, tattooed muscle, blocking the path to the door. He cupped Leo’s chin, forcing his head up. “Look at me. Really look.”
Leo looked. He saw the ruthless billionaire who commanded boardrooms. And beneath that, he saw something else—a fervent, obsessive heat that stole the air from his lungs.
“Jacob betrayed you,” Dominic said, his thumb stroking Leo’s cheek. “The world out there is going to eat you alive. I won’t. I’ll cherish you. I’ll fuck you so deep and so well you’ll forget your own name. But you walk out that door to go back to him, to that life? That’s the only betrayal I won’t forgive.”
He leaned down, his lips a hair’s breadth from Leo’s. His scent enveloped Leo, a demand and a promise.
“The choice is simple, omega. Be mine willingly, or be mine anyway. But you are mine.”
He released Leo’s chin and stepped back, as if granting a phantom space of freedom. “The shower is through there. There are clothes in the closet that will fit you. I have a conference call at eight. You will be in the kitchen, eating the breakfast I’ll have prepared for you, when I’m done.”
He turned and walked toward his walk-in closet, as if the matter was settled. As if Leo’s entire world hadn’t just been ripped apart and reassembled in the shape of this one man.
Leo stood shivering on the cold floor, the ghost of the knot still a phantom stretch inside him, the marks on his skin burning. The door to the closet closed with a soft, definitive click.
He was trapped. Not by locks, but by something far more inescapable. The choice, he realized with dawning, terrifying clarity, had never been his at all. It had been made the moment Dominic Ashford decided he wanted him. And the scariest part, the part that coiled hot and silent in the wreckage of his soul, was the tiny, shameful relief that finally, someone had.