CHAPTER 226: CHAPTER 226: LET YOURSELF. (WIN-WIN)

Dax’s breath left him in a quiet, stunned exhale.

"You were in the bathroom," he murmured, "touching yourself because I had been there. Because my scent was still in the air."

Chris wanted to fling himself through the nearest window. "It was ONE TIME!"

"It was," Dax continued, moving closer with the unhurried grace of an alpha who had just solved a puzzle he’d been waiting months to understand, "the night I came back early from the military briefing. You said you had a headache. You avoided me for hours. You wouldn’t even sit on the same couch."

"That was a coincidence," Chris lied boldly.

"No, it wasn’t."

Dax leaned in until Chris felt the warmth of his breath against his cheek. "I remember hearing the shower running. I remember thinking you were tense."

His voice dropped. "I didn’t know you were tense because of me."

Chris slapped his palms to his face again. "I hate everything."

"You love me," Dax corrected softly, "and your body has loved me longer than you admitted."

"DO NOT SAY IT LIKE THAT."

But Dax was already getting close, so close that Chris could feel the heat before the scent hit him.

Because that’s when Dax let go.

A slow, warm pulse of dominance rolled out from him like heat from a hearth, thickening the air, darkening it, and filling the room with something rich and intoxicating and so unmistakably Dax that Chris’s breath stuttered.

The scent deepened. Warm black spiced rum, yes.

But now there’s layered golden heat beneath it, something sharper threading through, something molten and hungry and mating-coded.

Chris’s knees wobbled.

"Dax," he whispered, horrified, "what are you doing..."

"Letting you feel what you’ve never been able to," Dax murmured.

Chris grabbed the edge of the table again. "Turn it off."

"I can’t," Dax said simply. "Not all of it."

"What do you MEAN you can’t?!"

Dax leaned closer, voice low, soft, intimate, and dangerous in the way velvet could be dangerous if wrapped tight enough.

"You imposed a celibacy ban," he whispered. "You declared that I was not allowed to touch you for over a week."

Chris’s jaw dropped. "I did not declare it like a decree!"

"You did," Dax corrected gently. "You said if you have to suffer, then I suffer too."

"That is NOT the same thing!"

"It is exactly the same thing," Dax purred. "And because of that ban..."

He paused, gaze traveling over Chris with heated patience.

"I did not take my suppressants."

Chris stopped breathing.

"You... you what?"

"It is dangerous," Dax continued, voice steady, "for a dominant alpha to take suppressants while in the middle of prolonged... physical deprivation."

The confession hung between them like a live wire. Chris could only stare, his mind reeling. The air was so thick with Dax’s scent now that it felt alive. It coiled around him, seeping into his pores, a phantom touch that made his skin prickle with desperate need.

Dax’s hand came up to touch his cheek. The heat radiating from his palm was a brand. "My control is... frayed. My biology is overriding my discipline. And you," he said, his voice dropping to a gravelly whisper that vibrated straight through Chris’s core, "are drenched in the scent of your own denial. My omega. Denying me."

Chris’s head was spinning from the pheromones and their bond, and he was certain that if he hadn’t been pinned to the table by his alpha, he would have melted through the floor.

"Now," Dax murmured, finally closing the last inch of space. His lips brushed the shell of Chris’s ear. "Tell me you want me to stop."

Chris’s mouth opened. Nothing came out but a shaky exhale.

"Tell me," Dax insisted, his voice a low thrum of power, his nose skimming down the column of Chris’s throat, inhaling deeply. "And I will walk away. I will lock myself down until this passes."

It was a lie. A beautiful, generous lie. They both knew it. The pheromones pouring off Dax were a tidal wave, and Chris was already drowning in it, his own body singing an answering chorus of yes, yes, finally.

I... I can’t," Chris choked out, the admission tearing from him.

"You can’t what?" Dax prompted, his teeth grazing the sensitive skin over Chris’s pulse point. The scrape was gentle and possessive, and it sent a jolt of pure lightning straight to Chris’s belly.

"I can’t... tell you to stop."

The words were barely a whisper, but they were all the permission Dax needed.

A low, approving growl rumbled from Dax’s chest, a sound that seemed to vibrate through the floor and up into Chris’s bones.

Dax’s mouth crashed down on his. Hard and demanding, all-consuming heat and the dark, spiced taste of him. Dax’s tongue swept into his mouth, and Chris met it with his own, a frantic, hungry dance. His hands came up, fisting in Dax’s shirt, holding on for dear life as the world narrowed to the slick heat of their mouths, the crushing pressure of Dax’s hips against his, and the unmistakable, hard ridge of the alpha’s erection grinding into his own.

Dax broke the kiss, both of them gasping for air. His eyes were black pools of pure need. "I’ve waited," he breathed, one of his hands sliding down to grip Chris’s thigh, "so damn long."

"Dax..." His voice cracked, soft and rough in a way that made Dax’s pupils darken further. "I... oh gods..."

Dax’s hand slid from his jaw to the back of his neck, his thumb brushing over the mark.

"I feel you," he murmured, the words low and rough, reverent and hungry all at once. "You’re opening up to me."

Chris tried to answer, but a shudder ran through him, his knees threatening to give way as a flush spread across his throat and chest. He sank down onto the edge of the table, gripping at the edges, trying to ground himself. His body betrayed him with sharper breaths and the faint roll of his own pheromones as instinct screamed to reach for his mate.

Chris clung to the table, breath shuddering as the pheromones curled around him again, sinking under his skin like warm liquid. The rush hit him harder this time, so potent he almost staggered with it, and something in him finally, unmistakably shifted. It felt ancient and instinctively right, like a lock turning for the first time in the door it was carved for.

And he had no idea why he had fought this for so long.

The heat that coiled low in his stomach wasn’t subtle. It rolled through him in sharp waves, causing his fingers to tremble against the polished wood and making each inhale feel both too deep and not deep enough. He inhaled Dax’s scent again, black spiced rum, molten heat, that sharp golden edge that always felt like teeth grazing against his nerves, and his body reacted instantly, hungrily, and without shame.

’Gods,’ he thought, dizzy. ’Why did I fight this? Why did I pretend none of this touched me?’

Dax saw every flicker of surrender. His eyes darkened, pupils blown wide, breath catching just a little as he took Chris in: the flushed cheeks, parted lips, and the faint roll of his own pheromones beginning to answer the pull.

"Christopher," he murmured, voice low, warm, and coaxing. "Now you feel me."

Chris’s throat worked around a swallow. "I shouldn’t be reacting like this."

"You should," Dax said, inching closer with maddening patience. "You just never let yourself."