Chapter 23: Dinner
The space between them on the sofa felt charged, like the air before a summer storm. Aurora’s hand remained on his shoulder, a tiny anchor. Rhys looked from her eyes to her lips, then back again. He didn’t move.
“You’re staring,” she whispered, but there was no fear in it. Her thumb moved again, a faint, subconscious stroke.
“Yeah,” he said, the word gravelly. He didn’t offer an excuse.
His own hand came up, covering hers where it rested on him. His fingers were so much larger, swallowing her hand whole. He didn’t move it; he just held it there, warming her skin against his. “How do you feel?”
“Empty,” she breathed out, surprising herself with the honesty. “And… full. At the same time.” The heat was a memory in her muscles, a hollowed-out, clean ache. But the space he occupied in her living room, in her personal atmosphere, felt overwhelmingly substantial.
He nodded, as if this, too, was a technical specification he understood. “Your first one’s always the weirdest. The crash after.”
“Is it always like that? The… intensity?”
A shadow, fleeting and dark, passed behind his eyes. A callback to someone else, to a different heat in a different room. He pushed it away, focusing on the wide hazel eyes watching him. “It can be. Depends on the omega. Depends on the alpha.” He said the last part carefully, testing the words between them.
She swallowed. “And… the alpha? After?”
He gave a slight, rough laugh. “We’re built for it. To handle it. To provide.” The word ‘provide’ hung there, heavier than the rest. It wasn’t just about fixing sinks.
Her stomach chose that moment to growl, a loud, long rumble that broke the tension. Aurora flinched, her face flushing a deep, warm pink. “Oh.”
The corner of Rhys’s mouth twitched upwards. “There’s the empty part.”
“I’m starving,” she admitted, a hand flying to her abdomen. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this hungry.”
“That’ll happen. You burn through everything. It’s a metabolic furnace.” He finally moved, releasing her hand and shifting to sit forward, elbows on his knees. “You got food here?”
She glanced toward her kitchen, mentally cataloging the contents of her fridge. Yogurt, wilted spinach, leftover quinoa. It sounded profoundly sad and insufficient. “Nothing good. Nothing… enough.”
He looked over his shoulder at her, his expression shifting into something warmer, easier. “Alright. What’s the move, then? What’s your poison?”
The question, the normalcy of it, was a lifeline. “Um. Giuseppe’s. The pizza place on Elm. They deliver.” She uncurled herself from the blanket, the throw pooling in her lap. “I have the number saved.”
“Giuseppe’s it is.” He watched as she scrambled off the sofa, her movements still slightly drowsy-soft, and padded to the small wooden desk tucked in the corner. She pulled a takeout menu from a drawer, her fingers fumbling as she located her phone.
She dialed, putting it on speaker. The cheerful, cacophonous sounds of a busy kitchen echoed in her quiet apartment. “Giuseppe’s! Hold please!” Muffled Italian opera followed.
Aurora bit her lip, looking at Rhys. “What do you want? They have everything.”
“You’re the one who’s starving. You pick.”
The line crackled back to life. “Sorry ‘bout that! What can I get for you?”
Aurora took a breath and began to order. It started with a large margherita, then spiraled. “And… a medium meat lovers. And an order of garlic knots. And the mozzarella sticks. And the… the chicken parm sandwich. And a large Caesar salad.” She paused, her eyes wide as she mentally tallied the monstrous order. “Please.”
Rhys’s eyebrows climbed, a slow, amused smirk spreading across his face.
The person on the line whistled. “Big night, huh? That’ll be about forty-five minutes. Name and address?”
She gave the information, her voice growing smaller with each item she repeated. When she hung up, she stared at the phone. “I think I ordered a banquet for six.”
“You ordered fuel,” he corrected gently. “Now, how do you pay for this feast?”
“Oh! Right.” She turned back to the desk, opening the top drawer to hunt for her wallet. It wasn’t there. A flutter of panic rose. “It’s… I had it in my bag yesterday, I think, but after the heat, I…”
She began opening other drawers, her movements becoming more frantic. “It’s here somewhere, I just…”
“Aurora.”
She stopped, turning. Rhys was standing now. He had pulled his own wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. He extracted a black credit card and held it out to her between two fingers.
She stared at it as if it were a live wire. “No. I can’t. Rhys, I ordered a ton of food. That’s… I can’t use your card.”
He didn’t retract his hand. “Why not?”
“Because it’s yours. Because I… you already fixed my faucet. You stayed. You can’t… pay for my pizza crisis.”
He took a step closer, closing the distance between the living room and the desk. The lamp light carved the planes of his face, highlighting the stubborn set of his jaw. “Let me get this straight. You just had your first heat. With me. Your body’s running on fumes. And you think I’m gonna let you scrounge for your wallet while I sit here?”
“It’s my responsibility,” she whispered, but the protest was weak.
“Tonight, it’s not.” His voice dropped, losing its edge, becoming something closer to the tone he’d used when stroking her hair. “Tonight, let me handle it. Okay?”
He reached out with his other hand, not with the card, but to cup her cheek. His thumb smoothed over the apple of her cheekbone. The touch was so startlingly tender her breath hitched. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead, just above her brow. It was warm, dry, and over too quickly. A claiming of sorts, but a gentle one.
“Use the card, Aurora,” he murmured against her skin.
Her resistance dissolved. The simple act of him taking the decision from her shoulders felt like the greatest kindness she’d ever known. She took the cool plastic from his fingers, her own trembling slightly.
“Okay,” she breathed.
When the delivery arrived, the young beta at the door struggled with the enormous bag. Rhys took it from him, tipping him generously with cash from the same wallet. He brought the fragrant, steaming haul to her coffee table, moving her poetry book aside with care.
They ate on the floor, surrounded by cardboard boxes and the rich, greasy smells of cheese and garlic. Aurora devoured two slices of margherita and three garlic knots before she came up for air, a string of cheese clinging to her chin.
Rhys, working on the meat lovers pizza, reached over and wiped it away with his napkin. “Easy, tiger. It’s not going anywhere.”
She flushed, but smiled around a mouthful of bread. “It’s so good.”
“Told you. Fuel.” He took a bite of his own slice, watching her with a quiet, focused satisfaction. He wasn’t just feeding himself; he was watching her replenish what had been lost. The primal part of him, the part he’d tried to silence after his ex, purred in approval.
As she reached for a mozzarella stick, her movements slower now, content, she glanced at the black card she’d placed carefully on the table beside his keys.
She hadn’t just used his card. She’d accepted his provision. And the world hadn’t ended. In fact, nestled in a nest of pizza boxes with this massive, tattooed alpha calmly eating beside her, it felt, for the first time, like it might just be beginning.