Chapter 6: The Claiming
The smell of Adam was on him all day. It was in his skin, a musk beneath the shower soap, a phantom pressure between his legs. Jaxson moved through the penthouse like a ghost, listening to the echo of Leo’s laughter in a playroom stocked with toys that had appeared overnight.
A nanny arrived just after lunch—a beta woman named Mara with kind eyes and a no-nonsense demeanor. Adam had arranged it. “We need to talk,” was all he’d said, his tone leaving no room for argument. His eyes, when they flicked to Jaxson, were shuttered. The man from the balcony was buried again.
Now, with Leo engrossed in building a fortress with Mara, Jaxson stood in the vast living room, feeling exposed. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed a steel-gray afternoon. On the cold marble mantel, photographs of Adam alone—at galas, on yachts, receiving awards—seemed to accuse him. Perfectly framed loneliness.
He heard the soft click of the study door.
Adam entered, not looking at him. He went to the sidebar, poured two fingers of amber whiskey into a heavy glass. He drank half in one swallow. The silence was a weight.
“He seems to like her,” Jaxson said finally, just to break it.
“She’s the best.” Adam’s voice was neutral. He set the glass down, the crystal clicking sharply on the wood. Then he turned. His gaze was a physical touch, scanning Jaxson from head to toe, lingering where his sweatpants hung low on his hips. The air changed. It became thick, difficult to breathe. “Comfortable?”
“It’s all borrowed,” Jaxson said quietly. “The clothes. The room. The time.”
A muscle ticked in Adam’s jaw. “It’s not borrowed. It’s yours. It always was. You left it.”
“You know why.”
“I know you made a choice.” Adam took a step forward. Then another. The calculation was back in his eyes, the predator’s focus. “A choice that cost me four years. Four years of his first steps. His first words. Four years of wondering if you were dead in a ditch somewhere, or if you just hated me that much.”
“It was never about hate,” Jaxson whispered, backing up until the backs of his knees hit the low, firm edge of the leather sofa.
“Wasn’t it?” Adam closed the final distance. He didn’t touch him. He just loomed, his scent enveloping Jaxson, stirring the embers of last night’s violation into a fresh, aching heat. “It felt like hate last night. It felt like you wanted me to break you against that railing.”
Jaxson’s breath hitched. “I didn’t stop you.”
“No. You didn’t.” Adam’s hand came up, not to strike, but to cradle Jaxson’s jaw, his thumb rough on his bottom lip. “You came on my cock like you were starving for it. After everything. So tell me, omega. If it wasn’t hate, what do you call it?”
Jaxson had no answer. The guilt was a stone in his throat. The truth—that he’d been terrified, that he’d seen the suffocating future in Adam’s world and fled for both their sakes—sounded weak now, here, surrounded by the evidence of Adam’s sterile success.
Adam’s thumb pushed into his mouth. Jaxson’s tongue touched it instinctively, a submissive flicker. Adam’s eyes darkened.
“You owe me,” Adam said, low and quiet. The words weren’t angry. They were final. A verdict. “You owe me four years.”
He pushed. Jaxson fell backwards over the arm of the sofa, landing on the cold, buttery leather with a gasp. Before he could right himself, Adam was on him, a heavy, relentless weight. He yanked Jaxson’s sweatpants and boxers down to his ankles in one vicious pull, the fabric biting into his skin. The air was cool on his exposed ass, his cock.
“Adam—”
“Shut up.” Adam spat into his own palm, the sound crude and wet. He slicked his cock, already thick and hardening, with the crude saliva. He didn’t prepare Jaxson. He didn’t check. He just lined himself up and pushed the broad, flared head against Jaxson’s hole.
Jaxson was tight, clenched with anxiety, but his body betrayed him, producing a slick, shameful trickle of ease. It wasn’t enough. Adam drove in.
The burn was sharp, a tearing stretch that made Jaxson see white behind his eyelids. He screamed, a raw, ragged sound that echoed off the high ceilings. Adam shoved a hand over his mouth, muffling him as he sank the rest of the way in, one deep, unyielding thrust that buried him to the root.
“Fuck,” Adam groaned, his body trembling with the effort of control. “So goddamn tight. Like a virgin.”
He pulled out almost all the way and slammed back in. The couch squeaked in protest, a rhythmic, lewd sound underneath Adam’s harsh grunts. He set a punishing pace from the first, each thrust a blunt, unforgiving punishment. He fucked like he was trying to reach something deep inside Jaxson, to excavate it and destroy it.
Jaxson writhed, trapped under the weight, the pleasure already coiling insidiously around the pain. His cock, trapped against his stomach, leaked steadily.
Adam removed his hand from Jaxson’s mouth, instead wrapping it around his throat. He didn’t squeeze hard enough to choke, just enough for Jaxson to feel the fragile pressure, the utter dominance. To know his air was a gift Adam allowed.
“You feel that?” Adam panted, his hips a relentless piston. His silver eyes were wild, unguarded. “You feel how deep I own you? This cunt is mine. It always will be. You could run for another four years, and it would still remember me. It would still fucking weep for me.”
He angled his hips, and the next thrust hit Jaxson’s prostate dead-on.
A broken wail tore from Jaxson’s throat. His body bowed off the couch, electric shocks of pure, debilitating pleasure shooting up his spine. “There,” Adam snarled, a vicious satisfaction in his voice. He hammered that spot again, and again, each impact making Jaxson’s vision blur. “That’s it. That’s your spot. The spot that makes you my good little whore.”
The filthy words, the brutal claiming, the expert assault on his body—it was too much. Jaxson’s control shattered.
“I’m gonna—Alpha, I’m gonna come—”
“Do it,” Adam commanded, his hand tightening a fraction on Jaxson’s throat. “Come on my cock. Do it now.”
The orgasm was volcanic. It erupted from his core, tearing through every nerve ending. He came violently, stripes of white shooting over his stomach and chest, his channel clamping and fluttering around Adam’s pounding length in frantic, milking pulses. He sobbed, the sensations too intense, shredding him to pieces.
Adam watched him fall apart, his own control fraying. Jaxson’s convulsing tightness tipped him over the edge. With a guttural roar, he buried himself as deep as possible and came. Jaxson felt the hot, urgent flood of release filling him, pulse after pulse. The swelling followed immediately—the thick, delicious bulge of Adam’s knot expanding rapidly, locking them together, sealing his cum inside.
Adam collapsed on top of him, his weight driving the knot deeper, a final, profound possession. They were stuck, panting, a mess of sweat and come. Adam’s face was buried in Jaxson’s neck, his breaths hot and ragged against the scar.
For long minutes, there was only the sound of their breathing and the faint, distant hum of the city. The knot held, an inescapable tether.
Slowly, Adam shifted his weight to one side, though the join remained. He looked down at Jaxson’s wrecked face, the tear tracks, the bliss-glazed eyes. He leaned close, his lips brushing Jaxson’s ear.
“This,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, “is just the beginning.”
The knot subsided. Adam pulled out, the slow, slick drag making Jaxson whimper. Adam stood, tucking himself back into his slacks with an unsettling casualness. He looked down at Jaxson, splayed and used on the leather, come drying on his skin.
A door opened down the hall. Leo’s happy chatter echoed.
Jaxson flinched, scrambling to pull up his pants, his fingers clumsy and shaking.
Adam watched him, his expression unreadable. Then he turned and walked toward the sound of his son’s voice, leaving Jaxson to clean himself up, to try and reassemble the façade of a parent from the shattered pieces of a used omega.
He managed to get his pants up, to wipe his stomach with a throw pillowcase, just as Leo rounded the corner, holding Mara’s hand.
“Daddy! We built a castle!”
Jaxson’s smile felt like cracked glass. “That’s amazing, buddy.”
Leo looked past him, to where Adam now stood leaning in the doorway to the hall. “Adam! Come see!”
Adam’s eyes met Jaxson’s over their son’s head. In them, Jaxson saw the same stark, unresolved ache from the balcony. The same broken glass.
“Yeah,” Adam said, his voice strangely soft. “Let’s go see.”
He pushed off the doorframe and followed Leo, not looking back. Jaxson stayed by the sofa, the scent of sex and betrayal clinging to him, knowing the debt was far from paid. It was just compounding, with every touch, every thrust, every silent meal ahead of them, into something that might drown them all.