milk teeth

by sweetandsure

Summary:

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It starts with bread.

But he doesn’t really understand it— didn’t, he thinks, want to understand it— until she’s standing in the doorway of his home-office two days later, wrapped in the duvet from his bed like it's a cocoon.

And he laughs at first, at the sleepy, pouty-lipped little shape of her as she shuffles over to him and climbs into his lap and grumbles until he wraps her up into his arms.

“I was working,” he chides softly, but when he ducks his head to press his mouth to her forehead, her skin is flushed and sticky with heat.

And it’s there, he finds it, understands it— can’t ignore it— a sickly-sweet smell just under the familiar smell of his baby. That cloying, clinging scent that lingers in the heat he chases along her cheek, something hot and syrupy, made more of a feeling than a real scent. (A pooling thing, like a slow drip along his spine, a slow drip in his stomach, something molten, sugared, full of need and hunger.)

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Or, the nicoellie abo.

Chapter 1

 

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m i l k   t e e t h

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      It starts with bread.

September sunlight, Louis Prima in the speakers; yeast and warmth, a gold-touched girl in his shirt with a dusty trail of flour over one cheekbone.

He smiles, peeling off his suit jacket and leaning against the wall by the kitchen, stealing a few seconds to watch her before she notices him.

Ellie startles and laughs out a breathless Daddy when she sees him; sliding a soft ball of dough into the oven on a pizza stone before walking over to him, rocking up on her toes, curling her flour-covered fingers over his shoulder to tug him down; full of jittery pride and hope and eagerness as she presses a kiss to his cheek, smelling like a little shoot of fresh grass in the summer sun.

“I made bread,” she says and pulls him towards the loaves she already made, cracking crusts, still warm and soft inside, exactly the way she’s been taught; a little stool in his parent’s kitchen, at his father’s side. Italian and Russian lessons over Italian and Russian food, a little love language: un po' più di farina, solnyshka. Brava.

Ne mesi slishkom mnogo, malyshka.

Ellie tears off a piece and lifts it up to his mouth for him to taste.

“Is it good?” she asks, with bright eyes and her teeth sliding over her bottom lip as he chews. “Do you like it?”

It is. He does. He sinks into one of the barstools around the kitchen island and pulls her into his lap, pressing a kiss to her dusty, warm cheek. “It’s perfect, baby girl.”

She flushes warmer, laughing into his jaw. They eat it there in the kitchen, tearing off pieces, smearing butter as she tells him about her day, legs swinging, chittering about school and friends and all the drama of being a teenage girl surrounded by other teenagers at a private school. 

(Teenagers who are friends, but like, totally not friends, Dad. Proximity association. Contingent cordiality. 

Big words, he says, and gets an eye roll and an elbow in the gut.)

He thinks he notices it then, the damp heat in the back of her knees when his hand cups it as her legs swing over his, lean little thigh muscles flexing; the heat behind her ear when he brushes his nose there in laughter. The little slick of sweat under his thumb when it brushes her inner elbow as she slides off his lap to get the next loaf from the oven.

He notices it, he thinks, he’s sure he does, but the moments are all wrapped up in familiarity and domesticity like the soft melt of butter over warm bread. His girl in his clothes, warmed by laughter and the oven and happiness. 

The September sunlight is warm, he tells himself, their body heat bleeds together, it's nothing more than another day.

 

 

        It’s pelmeni next. 

A Saturday afternoon, with Ellie’s body a boneless weight over his on the couch. The Crown playing on the TV screen; her cheek a hot, soft weight against his collarbone as he flips through emails and texts one-handed, the other stroking idly through her hair. 

She pushes up in a rush, quick enough it knocks a huff of air out of his stomach when her elbow digs into his chest as she sits back on her knees between his legs and blinks at him.

 “I’m gonna make you— us dinner.” She scrunches her nose and rolls off the couch. “Do you know where Nana’s recipes are?”

The rest of the afternoon passes in a quick trip to a store for last-minute ingredients they don’t have, a flour-covered workspace, her shoving him back out of the kitchen when he tries to help or offer suggestions. 

I’m doing it, go away.

She ties her hair up in a knot on the top of her head as she reads his mother’s instructions and works her way through them, aided by the memories of making them with her through all of her childhood. A frequent Sunday dinner staple.

A flush spreads on her face as the smell of garlic and onion and butter fills the penthouse. A self-conscious thing, burning over her cheekbones like a sunburn right across the bridge of her nose, knowing he’s watching her even though he pretends he’s more focused on answering emails, talking calls in the main area of the penthouse, near enough to keep her in sight, but far enough away that she still feels like she’s making it on her own the way she wants to.

He notices it then, too. The heat in her cheeks that’s different than anything he’s seen before, the dampness on the back of her neck when he cups it and strokes his thumb along her pulse when he presses a kiss to her cheek and there’s something… something warmer, cloying in her smell.

But he leans back and tells her it’s perfect, baby girl, and the thought and the smell get lost as he grins at the way she fights her smile, (that jittery, nervous pride and hope, a little green shoot,) her happiness at his praise; sitting on her knees on the chair next to him and biting her lip to keep from being too obvious about all the things he can smell in her anyway.

“Of course it is,” she sniffs, forking a dumpling and dipping it into sour cream. “I’ve made it with Nana like, a thousand times.”

He laughs. “Oh, at least a thousand, huh?”

She hits him in the arm and ducks her head, cheeks burning red, giving into her grin, her happiness leaking out around them as strong as the smell of the pelmeni.

Like a sunrise, pinked-gold, a promise in the brightening edges.

 

 

 

 

    It starts with bread. 

But he doesn’t really understand it— didn’t, he thinks, want to understand it— until she’s standing in the doorway of his home-office two days later, wrapped in the duvet from his bed like it's a cocoon. 

And he laughs at first, at the sleepy, pouty-lipped little shape of her as she shuffles over to him and climbs into his lap and grumbles until he wraps her up into his arms.

“I was working,” he chides softly, but when he ducks his head to press his mouth to her forehead, her skin is flushed and sticky with heat. 

And it’s there, he finds it, understands it— can’t ignore it— a sickly-sweet smell just under the familiar smell of his baby. That cloying, clinging scent that lingers in the heat he chases along her cheek, something hot and syrupy, made more of a feeling than a real scent. (A pooling thing, like a slow drip along his spine, a slow drip in his stomach, something molten, sugared, full of need and hunger.)

His stomach tenses as Ellie gives a soft little sigh when he rubs his nose along the sharp curve of her jaw, breathing her in where it smells the strongest, along the damp curve of her neck, beating in her pulse like a song.

He cups her jaw, soothing his thumb over her cheek and the blotchy warmth in it, sliding his fingers over her nape and finding more heat and more sweat.

“I’m hot,” she mumbles, but curls tighter, turning her forehead more into his neck, fingers unknotting from the duvet to twist into his shirt as she squirms in his lap, pulling herself closer, twisting until she can bury her face into his neck completely. She sighs there, a shaky, damp thing, her lips soft and hot, rubbing her face against his skin, clinging even tighter as she hitches a breath and shivers, chasing his stubble with her cheek.

It’s instinct to pull her closer— a different instinct beneath it; a hum along the back of his brain, up his spine, in his hands— to keep her safe and warm and comfortable, to give her what she needs— anything that she needs— to sate the heat building under her skin. To peel open the duvet and ease the fever, chase the tremble— but all he does he breathe her in, letting her squirm and grip at him, her fingers twisting and knotting and unsteady on his shoulder until they slide, damp and hot over his nape where she scrapes her nails, blunt and sharp, digging in to hold him close. 

To pull herself just that much closer. 

Or, baser than that, he knows what she’s seeking, the alpha that sits under his skin, in his own sweat and smell and warmth. Something she scrapes off his skin and tucks under her nails like she’s gathering it to keep for herself.

Pre-heat, he thinks, or barely that. Heat-spotting. 

He tells himself he knew what she would be. That he knew what it meant—

That he isn’t surprised by what she is, it’s always been there, that sweetness.

Books and professionals will say there’s no way to know, no way to predict what anyone will present as… but he knew. He knew right from the first time he saw her, held her— the tiniest fucking thing he’d ever seen or held— his baby girl wrapped in pink. Pitching cries that tore at his heart until they’d handed her to him in the cold, sterile delivery room and she’d hiccuped a breath and looked at him, falling quiet, blinking up at him with his own eyes. This little girl he’d created.

 And when he’d rubbed a finger over her cheek, smelled that sweetness, found that sweetness, even blood-tinged, antiseptic-touched…she’d gripped his finger in her tiny little hand and wouldn’t let go.

No, he thinks, he knew she’d be this. Knew she’d always be this soft, tiny little thing he’d have to learn to let go of. Right from the first moment he’d had to pass her back to the nurses and every instinct and urge and base thing in his body and brain had clawed and snarled at the idea of letting her go.

He’d nearly cracked a tooth holding it all back.

Holding himself back. 

It had been the first time in his entire life where he’d truly understood the old stories. All those history and  biology and psychology books that talk about alphas and bloodthirst; half-feral beasts stuck in human skin.

If instinct had a feeling, it would be this: sharp little  pricks along the skin, a pit opening in the gut, waiting to be fed with anger or calmness or a quick tongue. And he'd spent years feeding it violence and still, still he'd never felt unhinged from his own morality or humanity.

Not until then. Not until her.

He pulls Ellie closer, tugging at the bulk of the duvet just enough to get his nose into her neck easier; breathing her in, chasing the smell of that baby that still lingers in her. His head full of every smell he can still find in her, every shift of her scent from childhood to adolescence to now— every little change, everything that’s stayed the same:

From the milky-sweetness that was a bone-easing, heart-aching thing he found most in the little grip of a newborn's hand; the little, impossibly small spread of her fingers against his palm. Ten tiny perfect fingers and ten tiny, perfect toes. To the sun-touched, air-spun candy that he chased in baby-fat cheeks and dimples and shrieking giggles— to now, his stubborn, sharp-toothed girl. Demanding and bratty and still so fucking perfect.

Baby, he says into her neck, and she hitches a breath and drags her cheek over his jaw, her nails scraping harder into his nape. 

Daddy.

    

He hasn’t gotten any fucking better at letting her go, he knows.

 

 

         The smell and heat fades away the next morning, and he isn’t relieved by it, even though it feels like a knife’s been tugged out from his chest when he wakes in the pale pre-dawn light to Ellie wrapped around him, smelling exactly as she should. As she always does.

This sun-wrapped, golden, warm drip of honey, touched by raspberries and amber and magnolias. 

And him.

Beneath everything that makes Ellie smell like Ellie, there’s always been this… trace, this… after-taste, of him.  A taste on the last swallow, on an inhale. Stuck to the back of his tongue.

It's always been too comforting. 

Always too much like possession. Ownership. (A blood and bones thing. Ego wrapped in animal wrapped in God.)

If Ellie’s embarrassed by anything, aware of anything from last night, he can’t find it in her now. She complains and clings to him when he slips out of bed, complains and clings to him when he comes back, showered after a workout and ready to steal a ten-minute cuddle before he has to make sure they’re both up and getting ready for school and work.

She’s the same as she always is in the morning– or any morning he gives into her sleeping in his bed. Eighty-percent brat, twenty-percent leech. 

Clingy and sleep-warm, soft-cheeked and still, somehow, grumpy. Pouty, desperate for five more minutes, Daddy— don’t go. 

Fuck school. Don’t need an education.

Quit. You’ve got enough money already. 

I don’t mind being a trust-fund baby.

He’s tried a thousand times to keep her to her own bed, and sometimes it sticks for weeks at a time, months broken by only one or two nights…but inevitably she’ll beg him, pout at him, a fake, teary-eyed please, Daddy— and he’ll give in. Even knowing he’s being manipulated, he’ll give in. 

Or, more likely, she’ll slip in at night when he’s half-asleep and it’s all… instinct and hindbrain (daddy-brain) urge to wrap her up in his arms and chase the smell of her along her neck or nape or hair. 

It’s something stuck between alpha-urge and parent-urge and habit. To provide, to protect, to comfort… and the muscle-memory of caring for her, every time she’s slept in his arms, every time she’s slipped into his bed since she was old enough to walk on her own.

It’s too easy, too familiar— too much something he enjoys — to really let go of.

It’s an easy choice then, to indulge his own selfishness, to give into the relief of her familiar smell, he ducks his head and rubs his nose over her jaw.

“Want to play hooky with me today, princess?”

Her smile is slow and sleepy, rolling in his arms to wrap her arm around his neck, to curve a leg over his waist, a hum in her throat, mmhmm.

“What do you want to do?”

She huffs into his neck. “Daddy.”

He breathes a laugh. Sleep, he knows, and wraps her back up in his arms.

Later, they’ll make breakfast, the Sunday morning kind, with pancakes and bacon and sausages after he calls her out sick for the day. After, they’ll head to the park, soaking up the last days of summer’s warmth before coming back home and sinking into the pool.

In his arms, even touched by chlorine, skin slippery and warm in the afternoon sun, she smells like herself and him beneath it. 

It’s not relief, he tells himself, but it is exactly what he needs.

 

 

        Over the next week it's a barely-checked beast made of denial and possessiveness that keeps him silent as he comes home to a girl shedding the last of her childhood like the trail of his clothes he finds all over their home.

And it’s all wrapped in a trailing, salt-touched loss, a clinging thing like sand in his shoes. He feels it constantly, these sharp little granules that feel like the ticking of a clock in the back of his throat, every tick a second, every tick a moment lost, every tick wrapped in his pulse. A second less, a second less, a second less.

His closet and drawers get plundered. Shirts and hoodies and sweaters. Socks— comically too big for her, stretched over her calves or bulked and folded over her ankles.

An ache in her jaw, little canines growing just a little longer, a little sharper. The smell of tylenol under her skin when she opens her mouth and says look, Dad, and drags his finger up to the sharp edge of her canine, pressing the pad of his index finger against the tip of her tooth. A little omega sharpness.

“D’you feel it? They feel so weird, was it weird when yours grew? I think I’ve bitten my cheek a hundred times already. It’s annoying.”

He’s sure it felt strange, but it’s hard to remember, his presentation was so wrapped up in the full body ache of alpha-growth that it blurs together. Every inch of him felt stretched and unsettled.

“They’re cute,” he says and taps the little sharp white of her bared teeth. “Very vicious. Do you want me to buy you a teething ring? I still have yours from when you were a baby, actually. I could pull those out.”

Ellie huffs and pokes his stomach. “You’re so annoying.”

He grins and drags her into him for a hug. “I’m a dad. It’s ninety-percent of the job description, princess.”

 

 

             It’s nearly an argument every morning just getting her into her school uniform. His socks, no matter how much she’d like to claim they do, do not look like your uniform, Ellie, go change.

He gets used to the grumpy car ride to school, the pouty huff of a kiss to his cheek in goodbye, like puberty all over again.

And when she comes home with a write-up at the end of the week for wearing a hoodie of his during class and arguing about it all the way to the Headmistresses office, all he can do is laugh.

Internally, because he’s a parent.

“It’s bullshit, I was still wearing the uniform. You have to sign the write-up,” she huffs, slumping on the kitchen stool, the write up folded and creased on the counter between them as he slices apples to dip in peanut butter. 

“You know the rules, sweetheart.”

“It was a hoodie, Dad. ” She scowls and crosses her arms and mumbles, “... there should be exceptions, anyway.”

“For what? For bratty girls who don’t want to follow the rules?”

She huffs and looks at him, and he can see it, beneath the irritation, the prickling anger, a faint dark circle beneath her eyes, a bruised-pink to her eyelids. 

Ellie doesn’t say anything before she looks away, twisting her fingers in the sleeve of his sweater, pulled on as soon as she got in the door. He can’t find it in himself to voice it, this thing they’re both so stubbornly, (selfishly) set to ignore.

He plates the apples and slides it over to her, ignoring the write-up as he grabs the two steaming ginger-lemon teas. “C’mon, grab the plate, we can watch some of The Crown before dinner.”

It only takes five minutes into the episode for her to edge closer to him, cross-legged on the seat, his arm over the back of the couch, watching as she fiddles with an apple, dipping it into the peanut butter before she takes a bite out of it. “I’m not going to apologize.”

“Baby,” he laughs and presses a kiss to her temple, pushing his fingers into her hair to tilt her head closer. “I don’t expect you to.”

Her smile twitches and the little, prickly-sour smell of her irritation fades quickly as she turns and buries her head into his neck, knees tilting into his lap, wrapping her arm around his waist to curl up against him.

 

 

         The next morning, the phone call he gets from her school is polite, carefully worded; it might be time to lay some boundaries, Mister Cordova. Set some rules, provide her with alternatives. All the things an omega needs as they come into maturity. 

She’s careful not to say it, exactly, that Ellie’s presentation is blooming under her skin, but it lingers in between words, comfort, familiarity, stubbornness.

It’s a polite, carefully worded reminder from him, who pays for the school’s security— and her salary bonuses— before agreeing that yes, it might be that time.

When he gets home that night, it’s to bussolai baking in the oven, a tray of the butter cookies already sugared, still warm, and a girl napping with her head on her folded arms on the kitchen island. The ache in his chest isn’t a new feeling but it’s caught, torn ragged in his ribs with the thought that one day he won’t come home to this. 

To her.

She smells like butter and vanilla and lemon zest when he tucks his head into her neck to breathe her in, and it’s there again, beneath the cookies, the sickly-sweet almost-fever under her skin. Her cheeks are flushed, a blotchy heat and a slight dampness on her neck and temples. 

But she smells like herself and him. And he knows, as he curves his arm around her and spreads his hand over her stomach to press a kiss to her cheek and a hello, baby girl into her ear, that he’s getting too used to it. That he enjoys it too much. That he’s selfish and greedy and possessive of the way she’s been the last two weeks; her smell, her softness, her neediness to be close to him, to wrap herself in his clothes… he wants it too much.

(It’s too much like ownership. Too much like possession. Too much like a should be. )

It’s comfort-seeking, he knows it is, but when she mumbles a hi, Daddy, and rubs her cheek against his… he gives into it, selfishly, greedily, just for a little while longer.

“I made you cookies.”

He knows.

Boundaries, the headmistress had said.

Stay my baby, he wants to say, but presses another kiss to her cheek and thanks her for the cookies instead.

 

 

 

      The shift of her smell stays faint enough he doesn’t think anyone else has or will catch it unless they’re looking for it. (Unless she’s angry and arguing about a hoodie that is clearly not her own and smells like him.) 

October slips by like leaves off the trees. They exist in some slow dance of careful avoidance and simultaneous indulgence. He lets her sleep with him when she wants, skip school when she needs to, lets her raid on his clothes continue— and won’t pretend he minds at all the way she needs him in a way she hasn’t really needed him since she was a child.

That spotting she had weeks ago hasn’t returned in the same fever-rush, but he’ll find traces of her changing smell sometimes in the damp crease of her elbows or the back of her knees when she’s doing her very best impression of a spider monkey or a limpet or—

 

      A little slug, he teases, a week later as she stretches out over him with her cheek soft and warm against his collarbone until she gives into whatever need or urge flickering under her skin and buries her face into his neck instead; a shifting squirm to tug herself closer until she can rub her cheek against his stubble and her nose against his pulse and… sighs, this little, soft sound into his skin. 

(It’s devastatingly familiar. A newborn’s full-bodied, sleepy little sigh.)

Her scent shifts, just beneath the newly-familiar, too-sweet edge of it wrapped in heat; turns just a little… sticky and wanting —like bubbling caramel and salt and hunger.

He reaches for the glass of whiskey on the low table in front of the couch, breathing in the smell of it when he lifts it to his mouth: sharp and strong, maple and oak and citrus. A burning swallow to drown out the low spike of heat in his gut as she presses her lips to the curve of his neck and shoulder. Not a kiss, just a touch, skin seeking skin. 

She brushes them there, a little back and forth rub, breathing him in just before he feels the soft, damp heat of her mouth opening. He cups the back of her head, spreading his fingers into her hair, and Ellie’s hand on his shoulder knots tightly into his shirt as her body goes stiff and her heart trips off-kilter against his chest.

Her heat and smell hums between them, buzzes along the back of his brain, drowns out the TV— until it's all he can hear— all he can smell— until Ellie sighs and turns her head, resting the fever-hot of her cheek against his collarbone again.

He’s not embarrassed or ashamed of the way his own want pools low in his gut or claws at the back of his ribs; it’s instinct, an animalistic, alpha-born urge in response to the smell and feel of her. 

They’re all just animals, after all.

There’s no shame in him, just awareness like an itch, like the prick of instinct, the beat of a pulse. He shifts Ellie’s hips a little more onto the couch and away from the thickening weight of his cock; burning his nose on the smell of his drink to drown out the smell of her leaking out around them.

 

       In the morning, he sets the first small white pill next to her plate at breakfast. 

Her smell is dulled, fresh from the shower, buried under scent-blocking soap. She’s flushed, and he isn’t sure if it’s embarrassment or just the pre-heat building under her skin. He’s a little annoyed by it, the way the soap blocks her smell, he’s so used to breathing her in and gauging her moods through it that it’s… grating to be denied it.

“I don’t like the soap.”

There’s coffee waiting for him, still steaming and under the nozzle of the coffee maker. Daddy and me, the mug says, a faded scribble in six-year-old Ellie’s hand, above a drawing of the two of them, stick-like and holding hands. 

He leans against the counter and breathes in the smell of the coffee, trying to ignore the soap and the lack of her smell in the kitchen that sets him on edge like a high-pitched noise in his ears. 

“We can try a different brand.”

Ellie picks at her oatmeal, her eyes downcast as she shrugs, not answering.

He makes his morning protein shake before leaning against the island next to her stool, pressing a kiss to the top of her head and soothing a hand over her forehead, tucking the spill of her hair behind her ear. She’s warm, warmer than she should be and it twists inside of him, a parental fear of fever and sickness… and a biological urge to comfort and protect and fuck.

One is easier to ignore than the others.

He cups the back of her neck, rubbing his thumb up along the soft skin and heat behind her ear. Her eyelashes flutter closed as she exhales, shoulders easing under his touch.

“Do you want to stay home?”

She nods and tilts sideways, pressing her head into his ribs.

He hopes, selfishly, that it’s just another spike of spotting.

 

 

But he knows it’s not.

 

 

 

 

    “Dad?”

He grunts and looks up from his laptop and the reports he’d been flipping through and adjusting, finding Ellie in the doorway, drowning in one of his button-ups, skinny little legs bare until the still-ridiculous bulk of his socks around her ankles.

She should have taken another pill and showered again, he realises a moment later when he catches the scent of her, and then glances at the clock on his screen; it’s later than he thought, nearly dinner.

He should have fed her and made sure she was— he pulls in a breath and lets it out, warring between knowing she’s more than capable of feeding herself and the instinct urged by the smell of her. 

Ellie looks at him, her calf flexing as she rolls the ball of her foot against the floor. Nervous or… self-conscious, he thinks.

She worries her bottom lip, looking away from him and then back. “Do you remember that tent I had? The pink one?” 

“Sure, baby girl. The one you had in your bedroom at the townhouse?”

She nods, quick and jerky, pushing her toes into the floor. “Do you know where it is?”

He does. Tucked away with all the other childhood things he could never bring himself to throw away when she outgrew them. 

He pushes up from his desk and leads her across the penthouse; in a closet near the laundry room he pulls down box after box until he finds it. Ellie glances over the things he pulls out, tugging off the lids of the plastic bins to peer inside; baby clothes, some toys and blankets, stuffed animals and school work. She pulls out a few stuffed animals, giving them a sniff before tucking three into her arms, her blush growing furiously bright in a way he doesn’t need to smell to know is embarrassment. 

It’s sweet; he tries to hide his smile when she glances up at him as he pulls out the tent from the third box.

The tent is princess-pink and ridiculously large; his chest aches at the sight of it, pain under his ribs as he runs his hand over the familiar feeling of the fabric as Ellie follows at his heels into her room.

He knows what she wants, why she’s asking for the tent… and every animal-urge that exists at the back of his brain and under his skin latches onto the idea of it— (fairy-lights, skin painted in pale pinks and golds, the flush on her cheeks spreading as a soft, familiar mouth gasps and begs—)

Christ, it cuts into every memory he has of her; every Daddy, come read to me. Daddy come nap with me, Daddy, come play with me— every afternoon spent under the canopy of it when she was— God, she still is, just his baby.

He cracks her balcony door open, letting in the cold November breeze and the sound of the city far below; it helps distract him, just enough for him to focus on setting up the tent instead the smell of Ellie now and the smell of the tent in his hands: a little stale, but full of her, his gap-toothed, baby-fat cheeked girl.

It kills him. Every twisted thought in his head, every memory the animal in his blood spins into a sick-edged now— skinny limbs and his own hands, too big, always too big against her— a terrifying thing from the start, just how small she was— is— the soft curve of her nape, his own teeth, a Daddy all fucking twisted.

Her smell, sickly-sweet and full of heat-fever; ambered-honey, raspberries and him beneath it all. Stuck to her blood and bones. 

Dimples and eyes and smiles.

Ellie lingers near him, her fingers curling into his shirt before pulling away to wander towards her bed, one of the soft chairs in her room, the balcony doors. Plucking at a stuffed elephant’s soft fur. Tucking an egg character he can’t remember the name of, in and out of its soft shell. Cross legged on the floor, perched on the end of her bed, back to standing, back to lingering at his side, hugging a stuffed llama to her chest.

Her nervousness is cute, he almost wants to tease her, but it’s wrapped in an itch on his spine, a little crackle in the air that makes him tense. 

A need to comfort her, reassure her, fix things in a way that only he can as her dad.

A need to comfort her, settle her, soothe her as only an alpha can.

Nesting isn’t really done anymore. An old instinct that’s nearly faded since humans took to houses and the well-defined walls of personal, individual spaces behind locked doors. He remembers his own lessons, remembers Ellie’s lessons, the homework from Health and Biology last year; the tone slightly changed, the inclusion of theys and thems, gammas and deltas, people who fall somewhere in between designations. 

Nothing new exactly, but it was interesting to see it all on a page. To see it all given names, this undercurrent of their life that exists all around them. 

No matter how advanced, how intelligent, humans are still, at their core, in their biology , just animals who stand up-right.

But nesting— it’s more of a talked-about thing than a taught-thing. A casual mention in the textbooks, a cursory line or two about first heats and ruts, and how habits and needs have changed from the time when heats and ruts were less controlled.

Still, nesting happens in smaller ways. Old clothes, extra pillows, layered blankets. Double and triple checking locks on doors. 

His father told him he’d bought two locks for his bedroom door on his first rut. And when Nico’s had come, he’d felt an urge to do the same; feeling exposed and weak in his needs, torn from his own restraint and self-control. He’d hated it. Even knowing that his growth spurt, the body he was growing into was partially owed to being an alpha, he’d hated the loss of control. He’d hated the weakness of being… needy. Wanting.

He locked himself in his bedroom and spent a weekend fucking his cock into his fist until he felt raw, biting his forearm or his pillow in the dim light of his bedroom at fourteen; everything around him cranked up to eleven. Every scent. Every sound. Sweating out pheromones and clenching newly-sharpened canines to stay silent. Angry and aching and violent with need.

And now… now he watches Ellie, in his clothes, flushed and smelling like heat and her— and thinks about boundaries, Mister Cordova. About the call he has to make. 

He tenses his hand and clenches his jaw to kill the ache in his gut, the itch along his spine… the half-hard length of his cock in his pants as Ellie rights the layers of pink and white silk and satin, the gauzy, still sparkly fabrics that make up the draping walls of the tent, fit for the princess she was and still is.

But still, his eyes track the crawling flush across her cheeks, the little snappish irritation he can see in her movements; jerky and embarrassed and unsteady in the grip of her own needs and wants as she fixes everything just right and still eyes the copious amount of pillows and throw blankets she has around her room.

He knows he should look away. 

It’s not something he’s supposed to see. 

Boundaries, rules. He sets them, teaches her them, helps her make them… and then—

Then he lets her go.

He knows he should look away. 

The books say it isn’t done anymore, but people talk about all the silly things they did right before their first heat or rut, and he knows she knows it. She isn’t a child, she isn’t a stupid girl, but when she’s done, when the tent looks the way she wants it to, she swallows and fiddles with the worn-soft ears of an old stuffed bunny, one of the few she’s kept on her bed in the years since she tucked away most of her childhood at thirteen… she tilts her chin in a determinedly proud way and it tears a smile out of him, the sight of her, embarrassed and needing but still his girl, still his girl.

“There were fairy lights, remember?”

He does. There’s not a moment of her he’s forgotten.

When he’s hung them, strung them along the inside, the string-lights glow in the same soft gold he remembers, he sinks down on the foot of her bed, her bunny on his lap, rubbing the worn-soft material of its ear in between his fingers as Ellie tucks a few pillows inside the tent as quickly as she can.

He’s caught between the memory of when it was brand new and the sight of it now. The memory of Ellie when she first got it and her now; her fingers trailing over a bit of fabric on the tent, her teeth worrying her bottom lip as she works through urges and instincts—a teenage girl against an omega’s need.

(He’d put money on the teenage girl. 

At least his girl.)

She turns away from it and sinks down beside him on the bed, even though he knows she wants to pull all the blankets and pillows in her room— and his —and tuck them inside… and then tuck herself inside.

He pulls her back onto the bed with him, pushing out a heavy breath as she curls up against his side, her leg sliding over his stomach, her nose buried in his neck, body half on top of his as she rubs her cheek against his skin and lets out a wounded noise in her throat.

She’s burning-hot between her legs, her cunt pressed up against his hip, just underwear and bare skin against his clothes. She’s not… she’s not wet or slick but the heat of her is enough to make his cock throb and his hands twitch towards her before he catches himself.

He closes his eyes and focuses on the cold air from the balcony. The city, all around them, a world away— and turns his mouth into her forehead, feeling the light sheen of sweat along her hairline, breathing in the smell of it, familiar and new and not his to taste. But his stomach growls all the same, a flare of want and need and hunger crawling up his spine and along his jaw; to open his jaw, to sink his teeth into her, to lick the taste of her heat from her skin. 

(To roll over her and hold her down and fuck her full the way her body needs. The way he knows he could fill her; a loving thing, an easing thing, that’s it baby girl, you’re being so good for Daddy.)

He’s never learned how to let her go, but he breathes out, slow and steady until his lungs empty, stretching out his hand until the bones and tendons ache— and then clenches his fist, focusing on the air, the city, Mister Bunny tucked between them, pressing soft against his ribs and her stomach.

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about, baby girl, if you want—”

She shakes her head, her hand clenching into his shirt on his shoulder, her body a tight, trembling little thing.

“I don’t want to.”

She does, but he doesn’t argue, letting her work through whatever she needs to work through against his side in silence, in whatever comfort she can take from his scent. From him. 

         He feeds her another pill. They make dinner and watch TV. Ellie curls up on the couch next to him, hugging her knees to her chest, tilted into his side, a tremor under her skin he can feel just as much as he can smell; that little electrical spark in the air.

When he catches the slow, heavy blinks and the easing of her body towards sleep, he presses his lips to her hairline.

“Time for bed, princess.”

She blinks and leans into, he strokes a hand over her cheek, keeping his lips against her forehead. “You okay?”

She nods, but when she pushes up and heads upstairs towards his bedroom instead of her own, he doesn’t argue it. He lets her steal a fresh shirt, more than half his bed,and then his body heat, when he settles in beside her.

It’s fine, he tells himself, as she curls up against him and tucks her head into his neck. It’s comfort and familiarity, his smell is a soft, old, blanket, a stuffed-animal she still clings to, no different than the ones she wanted to tuck into her tent a few hours ago.

It’s fine, he tells himself. 

It’s just comfort.

 

 

      It’s the little hitch of her breathing that wakes him up. 

It’s not the first time he’s woken up to Ellie having a nightmare or slipping into his bed after one— but then, he feels her, hot and wet and sticky against his side. 

Her hot little cunt, soaking through thin cotton and rubbing against the bare skin of his side, her breath hitching in his throat, her fingers white-knuckled on his shoulder, sharp little nails digging into him.

The fucking smell of her hits him in seconds, coats his tongue and his stomach and spine— a growl in his chest, along the back of his brain—every animal, alpha-urge in his body comes to life— 

It takes everything in him not to roll over her and wake her up with his teeth in her neck and his cock working inside of her. (He’d go slow, so slow, inch by inch because she’s his fucking baby and she’s always been so small her cunt would be no different. He’d shush her, lick her tears, tell her how good she is for him, how good she feels—)

And it’s the creeping, liquid-heat between his hips, licking up his spine and along the back of his brain that has him slipping out from his bed as careful as he can, shushing her whine, her sleepy whimper— before he’s in the bathroom, gripping cold marble, staring at himself in the mirror, the blown-black of his own pupils, breathing too hard and spitting blood into the sink from biting his tongue to keep himself in control. Fumbling a pill bottle, cracking a pill between his teeth all dry and bitter to chase the lingering taste of her smell before swallowing it down. 

His cock aches, hot and hard in his sweatpants. 

A fucking rut scratches at the back of his brain, burns along his skin in a sheen of sweat that has him stripping and stepping into the shower. Ice cold and it’s not enough.

He can feel the thick of his knot, a heavy heat just between his hips, an ache at the base of his cock. His head full of Ellie, his head full of her cunt, sticky and hot and his. The sounds she’d make, the sounds he’d work out of her; the smell of her slick and her skin and her, just her, wrapped in him. Made by him.

He spreads his hands on the cold marble wall and ducks his head, letting the cold water spray over his neck until the ache settles and the pill kicks in enough for him to trust himself to be near her again.

For the first time in his life, he wonders if he did the right thing all those years ago. Sole custody, an empty bank account, nine months of convincing a girl that hated him to go anywhere, take your family, start again, just let me have my daughter.

He can’t regret it. He doesn’t regret it. Not a day, not an hour, not a second since Loren cornered him in their highschool hallway and told him, angry and afraid, with a hand on her stomach that she didn’t know what to do, and his whole world became the slow growth of a little heartbeat.

 

He’d make the choice again, he knows. Even in the face of everything now. He’d make the same choice every fucking time.

 

 

 

 

    He makes the call in the morning. 

His mother is there three hours later, arms full of bags, pressing a cool-skinned kiss to his cheek before chiding him for waiting so long.

“How did you expect her to work through this alone?”

His gut tenses. Not alone, his instincts growl, with me. On my cock. On my knot. I’d be good to her, better than any new-alpha her age. Better than any toy or knot bulb. Better than her own fingers.

Not alone.

He rolls his head until his neck cracks. “It was just spotting. I thought we had some time.”

Illyana huffs and hands him the bags before peeling off her coat to hang over the back of a stool and taking the bags back. “Do you want me to take her—”

“No.”

She looks at him levelly. There’s nothing in her face or smell, even though the sharpness, the near growl of his voice sits between them, alpha-tinged. 

“Are you alright, Kolya?”

He laughs, it’s sharp and hard. “She’s my baby, Ma.”

Her face softens and she reaches up to cup his jaw. “She is. She always will be. The same as you’ll always be mine and your father’s.”

It’s not the same. He grunts and pulls away. “We built— she set up… you’ll see.”

    They make soup after; working together with familiar ease despite the tension in his spine, the medication-dulled hunger in his stomach; his mother’s voice low and comforting, telling him that Ellie’s alright, nervous, embarrassed— it’s all these new attitudes, she says as she slices carrots and ginger.

“They want us to be more than our instincts and urges, but there’s nothing wrong with them. It’s how we survive, hm?”

She looks at him, he can feel the weight of it as he cuts into the celery, focusing on the sharp snick of the knife against the cutting board. The bubble of stock on the stove behind him. 

“You know that, don’t you, Kolya? Some things are just… inevitable. God made us the way we are…in all the ways we are. There’s no shame in it.”

He grunts. 

She sighs, sliding the edge of the knife over the board, scraping the carrots and ginger into a bowl to add to the soup. The sound grates against the low-rolling headache behind his eyes. Too many pills, he thinks. Anti-rut meds aren’t meant to be taken long-term. Or so frequently.

“In any case, I gave her some more pills to take for now, stronger ones than the family doctor prescribed her, it’ll help settle the heat-fever, though I think she’s still a day or so off of the full thing. It’ll help her focus until she decides what she wants to do. I know she has a few friends…”

His hand tightens on the knife, jaw aching as he grits his teeth.

“Though, most omegas her age spend their first heats alone now, don’t they? I remember reading her health course work, remember? I think there’s been a push for that, the last few years.”

He does. There has been. He’d supported the idea at the time. Whole-fucking-heartedly. 

He scrapes the celery into the pot, focusing on the few hot splatters of stock that hits his hand. Trying not to think about Ellie in her tent, stuffed full on some knot bulb or fake cock, or worse, some young alpha from all the photos of her and her friends hanging in her room. He knows them all. None of them are—

(Him.)

Good enough.

“She’s a capable girl, Kolya. She’ll be okay on her own, if that’s what she decides.”

He knows she would be.

It doesn’t make it any easier.

    He takes the soup in a mug with him into Ellie’s room, a grilled cheese, still hot and melting on a plate. A water bottle in case she’s finished the ones she took in with her earlier. 

Her tent glows a gold-touched pink with the fairy lights. His chest aches and burns at the sight of it. He remembers the first day he bought it for her, the leap up into his arms, the kiss to his cheek, sharp little knees, sharp little feet kicking at his sides in excitement.

“Ellie?”

There’s nothing but silence as he sets her plate down on the floor before crouching down in front of the opening to the tent, reaching out for the fabric that covers it before stopping himself.

“Can I come in, El?”

There’s a beat of silence before a quiet huff. “You don’t need to ask, Dad.”

His lips twitch and he breathes a laugh that’s half relief and half fondness, pushing the fabric aside and sliding her plate in before ducking in himself.

He’s hit by memories as soon as he does, the fairy lights are soft and low, and exactly how he remembers it. It’s only her that’s different. And the same. Not different enough— or too different— it’s all a fucking mess in his chest and head.

She’s wearing a soft tank top and short set in white and pastel blue, a bunny character she’s always liked, Cinnamoroll, he remembers. But she’s still wrapped in his hoodie and his socks are on her feet. 

There’s two boxes tucked nearly behind a pillow and a stuffed animal. It’s not hard to figure out what they are, even if he couldn’t see the picture on them.

He’s glad he took another pill, glad he managed to keep his head empty enough after a heavy workout this morning to get off, short and hard and quick in the shower, gripping the swell of his knot at the base of his cock, because now— now the smell of her, even dulled by pills and soap and his mother’s lingering perfume, settles like a hum along his spine and brain and it’s a hungry, possessive thing.

“Hey, baby girl.”

“Hi,” she mumbles, twisting her fingers into the sleeve of his hoodie, her eyes flicking to his and then away and then back in quick, flushed-cheek glances. “Is Nana gone?”

He nods and then she does, her toes curling and uncurling in his socks as she swallows. 

Her eyes are wet when she meets his again. “Can you cuddle me or is it… is it too—” she pulls in a shaky breath, her voice wobbling. “I need a hug, Daddy.”

His heart breaks. 

“Baby,” he hushes, sliding forward to sink down beside her and pull her into his arms as her face twists and she barely gets her head into his neck before a sob cracks out of her chest.

“I don’t— I can’t—”

“Ellie,” he hushes, pressing his lips to her head and pulling her closer, ignoring the heat in her skin and the barely-dulled scent of her slick in the air. “Sweetheart.”

“I don’t want to— to be someone el—” She shakes her head and curls tighter around him; her cunt hot against his stomach, body a hot little tremble. He barely bites back the groan in his throat, his hand spasming against her back before he catches himself and buries it deeper in his chest.

He lets her cry herself out, exhausted and overwhelmed by all the things her body is putting her through, until she’s a limp little thing that he lifts and tucks into his lap— every bit of focus on what his girl needs and not what he wants.

He presses a kiss to her cheekbone and shoulder and neck, making sure she eats every bite of the grilled cheese, every spoonful of soup, until she’s full and sated. It feeds the alpha-need in him in a different way than the one growling in his gut to just… slip the thin of her shorts and underwear to the side and sink her down on his cock, just like this. A hand on her tummy to keep her full and ease the burn under her skin, to keep her stuffed and stretched the way she needs. 

The way he needs.

Another pill with some water and she’s boneless and lax, head drooping back against his shoulder, just slightly turned into his neck, her heartbeat steady and slow as her breathing slips into something nearing sleep.

Her scent changes slowly, the heady edge of her fever fades again, but he stays still, her hand in his, palm up, rubbing his thumb along the soft of her palm, up onto her fingers; thinking about every moment where he’s done the same.

The size difference in her hand and his, newborn to now.

She’s still the smallest fucking thing he’s ever touched.

He slides her out of his lap slowly; years of practice moving a sleepy Ellie around and it’s easy enough to tuck her into the mass of pillows and blankets in her tent. He smoothes a little frown with his lips when she blinks up at him, heavy-lidded, mumbly, don’t go.

He kisses her cheek, slow and soft. “I’m not, baby, it’s alright, go back to sleep.”

“Wanna stay, Daddy,” she mumbles into his jaw, her fingers digging into the nape of his neck as she pulls him closer until she can rub her cheek against his stubble and breathe him in as his hand slides over her side in slow, soothing circles, trying to ease her back into sleep as he hushes her with a soft, I am, baby. Don’t worry.

But she shakes her head, and her lips are hot, breath soft in a way that settles at the base of his spine. “Wanna stay your baby.”

His breath rips out of him over her cheek and he grips at the blanket beneath her so hard his hand aches. 

 

 

 

She used to cry on her birthdays.

 

 

 

She hated Happy Birthday whenever anyone sang it. Would cling to him and sob and cry about never growing up, that she just wanted to be his baby forever and he’d laugh and say of course, princess, you’ll always be my baby, huh? Doesn’t matter how old you are, does it?

You’re my baby.

He slips out hours later, the headache behind his eyes is dull-throb along the base of his skull; he cracks a tylenol and an anti-rut pill between his teeth and chugs half a bottle of water before finding his phone in the kitchen and texting his brother. 

 

 

 

That crew in Hunt’s Point giving Olin’s men some trouble, they still an issue?

 

He heads upstairs to shower, stripping his clothes when the vibration of his phone on the marble sink buzzes. 

 

 

That NC crew? I mean not really. Just shitheads.

But they’re still in my city

 

His phone rings and he lifts it to his ear. 

“Are you in a mood?”

He doesn’t answer, and after a beat of silence, Matteo laughs in his ear. Nico hangs up on him but his phone buzzes with a text a second later. 

 

 

 be there in thirty 

🥳🥳🎊🎉🎉🎈🎈

 

He snorts but doesn’t bother responding to it besides telling him to grab Liam and Sergei on his way.

He showers and doesn’t touch his cock; fighting the swelling, sweet-edged images that sit behind his eyelids in wait. The smell of her heat is still stuck to his skin. The memory of her slick, the heat of her cunt, the little breathy-hitch against his neck.

Her in his lap, full and sated and perfect.

Wanna stay your baby.

Her in his arms, crying about growing up.

 

 

        When he climbs in the front passenger seat, Sergei inches the front windows down without saying a word, but from the backseat there’s a beat of silence and a sniff.

“Fucking Jes— is that Ellie? No wonder you had to get out of the fucking house.”

Matteo smacks him across the backseat, hollow and hard against his chest. “You have less than zero fuckin’ tact.” He pauses, Nico can practically hear the chugging of his internal debate. “So… omega, huh?”

There’s a growl in his chest, he closes his eyes and breathes around it, his hand white-knuckled on the door handle.

More than our instincts and urges, his mother said, and he wants to laugh because no, no he’s fucking not and never will be.

 “She smells—”

“Liam. If you finish that fucking sentence.” His voice is rough and ragged, like teeth against bone, and the silence after is sharp and loud and consuming — just before the back window rolls down and he hears Liam breathing in.

There’s nothing but city noise to fill up the silence of the ride to Hunt’s Point. Matteo shoots Olin a polite heads up about them being in the territory he runs, and Olin answers quickly, that he’ll keep his men away from the house the North Carolina crew had taken root in.

He’d seen the reports from him, mostly thefts, boosted car parts. Small-time shit. But it’s as good an excuse as any. It’s a good enough excuse.

They park a street over, and Nico pulls the tire iron from the trunk, ignoring Matteo’s laughing, oh, fuck.

Base instincts, he thinks as he rolls the metal in his palm. 

 

 

   

    He comes back home to a city-lit penthouse and Ellie in his bed. Painted in moonlight, fever-damp, slick-thighed, leaking into his sheets.

She smells so fucking good he groans, crossing the room and burying his face into her neck before he can stop himself; one knee on the bed, hands white-knuckled in the sheets, still bloody-knuckled— still tinged with aggression and the hum of violence,  feeding his instincts in a way his bones know— gritting his teeth to keep his mouth fucking closed even as he drags his nose and lips over the sweat-damp line along her pulse. 

She mumbles and shifts, and under the muss of the sheets, the slope of his t-shirt slides off her shoulder and his eyes follow the line of her arm until it sinks between her legs. 

He doesn’t need to see it to know her fingers are still tucked in her underwear, still pressed slick-sticky against her cunt, that her underwear and sleep shorts are soaked.

He doesn’t need to see it, but his hand finds the edge of the sheets anyway and it takes everything in him to not peel them back. To stop himself, to remember boundaries, and that those who experience heats, often seek out comfort and safety in the familiar. 

I don’t want to, she’d said. 

Wanna stay your baby.

He presses his lips to the heat behind her ear and breathes her in before he pulls back, carrying a lungful of her into the shower, the taste of her fever on his lips; stripping in the moonlight, citylight, dark of his bathroom. Dry swallows pills and tylenol and then burns away everything on his skin before cranking the shower to cold and trying to freeze the rest of it out.

He spends two hours sitting in the dark in a soft chair in his room near the windows, looking at her in his bed, smelling her in his bed, before he feels in control enough to touch her again.

 

 

 

       He wakes the next morning with his face buried into her nape, his arm wrapped around her, weighing her down. His hand lax near her face where her breath puffs, damp and warm as she trembles in his arms, burning hot and reeking of heat-fever.

But it’s the little shift of her body, the hitchy little breaths, the dig of her nails into his wrist while her other hand— her other hand works between her legs, quick little rubs while she tries to keep herself still and quiet. He almost wants to laugh, because her feet and legs are pressing, digging into and sliding out over the bed in tiny little shifts she can’t stop.

But he can’t laugh. 

He can’t do anything but keep himself still and breathe her in, listening to every hitch of her breath, every little gasp, the fucking slick sound of her fingers rubbing desperately at her clit.

The world turns into a haze, a blood-soaked hum that vibrates under his skin. Pulse-beat, coated in red, as thick as honey, drowning out everything but smell and hunger, the ache in cock and jaw and gut. 

It’s only the lingering pills in his stomach that keep him together despite the throb of his cock and the rut he feels, burning away at his spine and eating at his restraint. It growls under his skin, rumbles in his chest, throbs at the base of his cock and roots through him like fire in his veins. 

Ellie turns her face into the bed, burying the hitching, breathy noise she makes as her body tenses up, legs stretching out in a little kick, her fingers still working as she comes, quivering apart with a ragged little gasp. 

She curls back up slowly, pulling in quick breaths; he knows she’s trying to keep quiet as her body trembles through the easing of her heat-fever, sated for a moment beneath her own fingers.

The smell doesn’t. Her slick is honey and sunlight, raspberries and this— fucking golden warm burning heat he can taste.

And him. Still. Even now. Even dripping, sticky-fingered, lost to heat-fever he can find himself in her scent. His heart and his cock and every fucking alpha-urge in him aches to bury himself inside of her. To open his mouth and sink his teeth into her neck, her inner thighs, her little fucking tits.

Mark her up, fuck her full on his cock, knot her until she’s so fucking full of cum even the size of him and his knot can’t stop it leaking out. Until it hurts. Until she cries. Until it burns away her heat and the rut-hunger in his bones.

Until she’s his in every fucking way he can claim her.

Ellie goes boneless beside him, her breathing evening as she slips back into sleep. He tucks his nose into her hair, rubs his thumb against the limp of her hand after it slides limply off his wrist, stealing a few minutes to breathe her in. 

A masochistic need he gives into before he pulls away as carefully as he can, tucking his sheets and duvet around her, soothing the line between her brows, the little grumble at the loss of his heat behind her. It feeds the alpha-need under his skin just enough for him to walk away.

He showers and dresses in silence, nearly all of his mind on the soft sound of her breathing,  no different than when she was a newborn and listening to her breathe was a comfort and a reassurance that she was still there. 

That she was real and perfect and his .

It still feeds the same need.

 

 

 

    The dinner meeting is almost a relief. 

The dinner meeting is a fucking weak excuse that scratches at every instinct and urge in his body— to go home, to be with Ellie, where he’s needed, where he should be right now.

He’d managed to get breakfast in her before he left, but she’d crawled to sitting up, still in his bed, wrapped in his sheets, eating with sticky, still shiny fingers and it had been all he could see , all he could smell —

All he’s been able to think about all day.

He’s never been this… affected . Unhinged from his restraint and self-control. And he knows, in his gut, in his bones, in the instincts that make him what he is— he can’t go home to her. 

Not yet.

When he’d called to check in on her, her voice had been grumpy, muffled, and then muffled and hitching and he knew she was still in his bed, still leaking into his sheets— still rubbing her little cunt in his bed and he’d nearly cracked a tooth holding in the urge to tell her how good she was, getting herself ready for him.

And Christ, when she’s through this—when they’re through this— he’s going to send her to his parents and sink into a rut into his own bed. Chase her smell across his sheets, every stain and spot she’s going to leave behind. He’ll lock the door and bite the sheets and fuck his cock into his fist in a way he hasn’t since he was fourteen.

He’s almost disgusted with how fucking eager he is to do it. 

Just a few days, a few hours even, to sink into fantasy and let himself think about her, to taste her, to grip his cock the way her cunt would grip him and let his instincts and urges and alpha brain take over.

Instead, he takes another pill and chases it with tylenol.

He’d showered again at work as soon as he’d gotten in, changed into the extra clothes he keeps in his office; a selfish, possessive thing in his chest, thinking about anyone smelling Ellie the way she is. About anyone getting a trail of her scent and imagining even a flicker of a fantasy of the things he can’t keep out of his own mind. The things he knows she’s doing. With her fingers, his bed, the toys his mother brought her.

The fucking idea of the toys makes him violently angry to the point he almost goes home just to check, to throw them out because the only fucking thing that should be inside of her is him.

Which is just—another fucking reason he can’t go home yet.

So, the dinner meeting is an excuse. A weak fucking excuse as he grapples with every instinct and urge the pill can’t dull enough. He takes another pill with a few fingers of whiskey before they need to leave, and Irina still rubs a finger under her nose and steps back a step before catching herself and lifting her chin despite the way he knows she wants to back away from him on instinct.

“ Nic," she says, barely breathing in. “Why are you so—” she huffs and shakes her head. “That would explain why no one wanted to come in here today. You better handle that anger before we get there.“

He knows.

He tilts his head and gives her a smile that’s more like baring his teeth.

 

 

    He gets home late.

A pleasant alcohol hum in his bloodstream, a stomach full of red meat— until he smells her— sees her, little plump mouth all tight with irritation, slick-thighed in a way he can smell and see—even across the front entranceway. It makes his head buzz and his hands twitch and his jaw ache, looking at her standing just outside the kitchen and breathing hard.

No, he thinks, not breathing hard, sniffing him.

Her chin wobbles, her jaw tightens and there’s a flash of anger and sadness and hate across her face as she winds her arm back and chucks something at him— his pills, he realises, as the lid pops open and they scatter over the floor, the bottle hitting him hollowly before rolling, nearly empty across the hardwood.

“You asshole! ”

It’s an apple next, and then an orange, and then the whole fucking bowl from the counter, and she yells at him, reeking of hurt and anger and heat.

“Where were you! You were supposed to be here! You’re supposed to–” a wounded sound that scratches at his insides. “You stink, Daddy!”

He’s angry at himself that the smell of her, and her slick little thighs, steal more of his focus than anything else, until a glass comes flying at him and he barely manages to duck it before it shatters against the wall. 

“Fucking— Ellie!”

“You stink! You smell like— like— No! Don’t touch me—” She dodges his first grab for her, sliding around the island, knocking over a stool and it’s— it’s not good to run from the thing clawing at his chest and spine, not good to deny it the only thing he’s fed it— touching her— holding her—

The snarl that breaks out of him is growling and rough and he lunges, hauling her up and off her feet, breathing hard into her ear and neck, inhaling as much of her as he can as he tries to force the urge— to shove her to the floor and knot her— to bite her— back into the deep of his mind where it belongs.

“Stop. Fucking stop, Ellie.”

She struggles against him, cursing and whining, let go— let go— you smell like— you’re a lying jerk—

He steps forward, hunches forward— and grips the counter with one hand, teeth clenched, breathing through the urge in his chest, his other arm wrapped tightly around her waist, keeping her against his chest.

He pulls in a breath against her nape. It helps. God, it helps. His eyes slide shut as the relief of her smell, her in his arms, flows through him.

“You need to stop fighting me.” When she struggles and whines, he tucks his face into her neck, his teeth right against her skin, voice rolling into her. “Ellie. You need to stop.”

There’s a clawing, pitching whine in her throat, her hands pushing at his arm with a last weak, squirmy protest before she stops, breathing hard, impossibly tense against him, like an animal caught in a trap.

He blinks and breathes deep, pressing his mouth against her pulse point, feeling the little searching-press of her feet digging into his shins, trying to find purchase outside of just being held up against his chest in one arm.

He can smell and feel the moment she feels his cock pressing heavy and hot against her ass. 

Ellie goes still and sucks in a breath, and then whimpers Daddy in her throat and squirms her ass back into his lap.

He grunts and holds her tighter, jaw aching as he grits his teeth to keep his mouth shut. “Ellie ” he grits out.

“I need you— Daddy," she gasps and squirms, toes digging into his shins. “I need— please— please —” It breaks into a sob, I need you.

He groans into her neck, clenching his eyes shut— he won’t— he can’t—

“Please, Daddy— ” she cries and twists in his arms, winding her hips back to feel more of him, her heart pounding, her heat— God, the fucking smell of her. “You were supposed to be with me.”

It cracks him open.  “Okay. Okay, baby.”

He hauls her up and carries her into her room, into the tent because he’s fucking sick in the head. His knees crack against the floor, even with the padding of all the blankets inside, but he barely notices as he leans forward and Ellie squirms under him, panting and twisting to face him as he lets her go into the nest of blankets and pillows and stuffed animals.

His mouth is at her neck before he can stop himself, licking a hot strip up her pulse that leaves her gasping and him nearly growling. He knots his fingers into the blankets, his restraint a sinew, a straining tether between animal and man, between alpha and father.

She’s flushed, wet-eyed, pupils blown as she looks up at him, breathing hard and shoving at his suit jacket. “You stink,” she pants, trembling with need. “Take it— Daddy, take it off.”

It’s hard to lean back, to put space between them, but he ducks his head and inhales along her jaw before leaning back and tugging off his jacket. Ellie follows him, reaching for his shirt, shaky fingers struggling with the buttons, a frustrated noise clawing in the back of her throat when she can’t get it undone quick enough.

He shushes her, hands closing over hers to take over, peeling his shirt off and enjoying the way her eyes move over his chest even though she’s seen him shirtless a thousand times.  

In a blink, Ellie yanks her shirt off over her head and tosses it away, leaving her naked but for the twisted, soaking wet cotton of her underwear that clings to her cunt.

His knot throbs. 

She reaches for him but he shoves her back down to the blankets, enjoying the cute little oof out of her chest and the little jiggle of her breasts when she hits the pillows. She whines for him, squirming against the blankets and pillows like a kitten; when she hooks her fingers under the hem of her underwear to pull it off, he stops her, his grip hard on her wrists.

“Christ, you’re — just— I just need a fucking second, Ellie.”

He’s fucking thankful he took another pill before he came home. Even though he can guess that’s part of what she’s smelling on him, medication and other people. Medication and other omegas.

He takes her in: the mess of her hair, the flush in her cheeks, the sheen of sweat on her temples and neck, the little tremble of her tits, little pink nipples. A quivering, flat little stomach. The curve of her hips that lead to the soaked white cotton that clings to her cunt and the shine on her inner thighs— 

And fuck, the way she fucking smells.

It’s consuming, scorching and thick around them on every inhale; the sweetest thing he’s ever smelled. Like a heat heavy hum sliding over the back of his brain, a pulse-beat throb of hunger and instinct and need.

He’ll remember this, he thinks, the sight of her like this— every day for the rest of his life. Through every rut, every night , every time he sets a hand to his cock.

This will be what he sees.

He touches her ankle, smooths his hand up her calf, fingers sinking into the sweat in the little curve behind her knee. “What do you need, baby?”

“I need— need you to touch me, Daddy. Please. Just…” she reaches for him and tugs him down, and they both groan at the first real press of skin on skin. They’re both burning up, hearts beating in tandem, heavy and hard beneath their chests. 

He kisses her cheek and jaw, bracing over her on his forearm as she hitches a breathy little sound and rubs their cheeks together to feel his stubble, her hand grabbing his and pushing it flat over her stomach. 

He strokes her skin on impulse. Even if he wanted to stop himself, he isn’t sure he could, not with the first real touch. Not with the sight of it: the spread of his hand covering her so easily, his skin a shade darker, swallowing up the tense little quiver of her belly beneath the length of his fingers and the heat of his palm. 

Ellie sighs, a full-bodied relief, a full-bodied pleasure that makes his cock ache, feeling her body easing, her toes curling, legs sliding out over the blankets as he shifts onto his side, stretching out beside her.

He lets himself touch her. Feeds his hunger with the bump of her ribs, the slope of her sides, the curve of her hips… the trembling tense of the flat of her stomach, the dip of her belly button, that little, soft swell of fat beneath it that makes his mouth water to bite it. An entirely female thing, that little protective layer before the slope between her hip bones and the little curve of her cunt beneath her underwear.

She’s bare beneath it, it’s impossible to miss with the way the cotton clings to her, sticky and nearly see-through, and he clenches his jaw as the urge to taste her nearly swallows him; his fingers dipping just under the elastic edge of her underwear, feeling the tremble of her body, the heat of her skin, the edges of her slick smeared all over the smoothness of her mound.

He pulls in a breath and bites her jaw, enjoying the pitch of her whine as he drags his hand back up over her stomach and she presses hers down over the back of his, trying to force it back down between her legs. 

He breathes a laugh into her jaw, nipping the heat of her cheek.  “Relax, baby girl.”

She huffs, petulant and annoyed, her hand staying on his as he strokes over her ribs, his thumb sliding along the little curve of the underside of her breast. Her nipples are pink and hard and perfect, and he wants to bite them, worry them between his teeth until they’re bitten-red and puffy, but he skims the little curve instead, just to feel it, to let her feel it. 

He takes his time touching her, drinking in the sight of her, of his hands on her, etching it all into his brain as she gets needier and needier, trying so hard to relax, to be good for him, but— but she whines and squirms, her legs stretching out in a needy kick.

“Daddy, please— ” she bites his jaw, presses hot lips right next to his, little kisses that are as familiar as they are new. A frustrated noise in her throat when he turns his head just enough to keep his lips from hers; her foot digs into his shin, hard and irritated as she pushes up, chasing the turn of his head.

He can’t kiss her no matter how much he wants to. He’ll give her what she needs, he’ll help her through her heat, he’ll remember every second of it— but he can’t— he can’t pretend it’s more than it is.

His fault. His selfishness. His fucking inability to let her fucking go.

He cups her cheek and tilts her head, ignoring the whine in her throat, drinking in the full-bodied hitch she gives when he nips down her cheek to her neck and then sucks at her pulse point, hard and full of anger and want and hunger.

She tastes like sunshine and heat and honey. Like salt and hunger. Like his.

His hand slides over her throat, down her chest, between her breasts, curving down her side, over the sweet swell of her hip to brush over her ass cheek, tugging her into him a little more. A selfish second to feel her skin against his again as he worries the hot, thin skin of her neck into a mark. A little claim, a not-enough claim that just sparks the hunger and the anger at himself even deeper.

He thinks about using the toys, about helping her, watching her— good girl, you can take it, just a little more— working a fake cock or knot inside of her, but when she grabs his wrist and shoves it towards her cunt, he knows he won’t.

“Daddy.” It’s hard and full of frustration; rips a wave of fondness out of him so strong it nearly chokes him.

He hushes her, letting her guide his hand where she wants it, just to feel the heat of her fingers trembling around his wrist, pushing until he’s cupping her cunt through her underwear.

He huffs into her neck, an animalistic grunt, his thumb stroking through the slick along the curve of inner thigh, along the burning hot, soaking wet side of her cunt. 

Ellie’s moan cracks out of her, twisting into a whimper, her spine arching as she wiggles herself a little higher. He sucks another mark into her neck and lets her squirm, pressing at his hand, his fingers, her palm damp, fingers shaky, desperate to get him to rub her little cunt on his own. 

Or maybe she’ll just… use his hand, he thinks, as her hips roll and she presses harder against the back of his hand and weighs it against herself, grinding against it in twitchy little rolls.      

Her head falls back, he licks over her neck, trailing another biting bruise over her skin, down towards her clavicle. He pulls in lungfuls of her, the shift of her heat, full of frustration and this…sparking edge of pleasure as she grinds against his hand. A thing he tastes, syrupy and sweet but still her, so much her it scrapes through his insides, pools in his gut, in his cock, the thickening of his knot already.

Ellie sobs in frustration. “Daddy, c’mon—I need— m’so empty—”

He grits his teeth and shoves at the animal prowling at his edges… and it’s a fucked up thought that he doesn’t know if it’s the Daddy in her mouth that keeps him sane enough to keep his rut at bay or the fact that she smells like him already. Underneath her heat and her slick, Ellie smells like him. Like she’s his already and it— it feeds the hunger in his blood and bones and gut just enough, just enough.

He shushes her and when he grinds his palm against her, pressing hard into her, she sobs in relief, her hand flying to grip his shoulder, a tugging urge like she wants him to roll over her.

Instead, he rubs his nose along her pulse, behind her ear, his voice rough and hot. “You want my fingers, baby? Hm?”

Ellie nods, quick and jerky, tripping out a little pleaseplease. He soothes her again, a rumble in his chest, letting her grind a little more against the heel of his palm before he tucks his fingers under the soaked seat of her underwear and tugs it to the side. 

The first, smooth, slick-sticky touch of her cunt is— he lurches over her, pinning her to the blankets with a growl in his throat as he opens his mouth in her neck— and Ellie— his fucking girl– just grips at the back of his neck, tilts her head and says pleaseDaddyplease—

Spreading her little legs wider, her knees trembling against his ribs, arching her spine to chase his skin as he grinds his hips against her. Grinds the weight of his cock against the slick little heat of her cunt. 

It’s only the flicker of pain, the little gasp of it, as his belt rubs and pinches into her inner thighs and lower stomach that stops him.

He sucks a hard mark into her neck, hard enough she whimpers and winces at the pain of it; it’s not a soft bruise, not a kind thing—worried deep, scraped by his teeth until there’s blood blooming beneath the surface of her skin.

He pulls back, breathing hard, his hair falling over his forehead as he looks down at her, tracing the sight of her, inhaling the smell of her… as he curls one hand into her hair and sinks the other between her legs.

She’s hot and sticky and so small as he rubs his thumb over her clit. It’s swollen and sweet and he grits his teeth, forcing back the buzz along his spine, the pure alpha instinct to sink his cock into her; watching her mouth open on a gasp, her eyelids flutter, her spine arc, little tits trembling as the feeling flickers through her.

He watches it all. Every shift of her scent, every flicker of pleasure in her face, the winding, squirmy thing she turns into as he rubs her clit beneath his thumb. She comes easily, quickly, with a little rush of slick and heat-fever wrapped in honey and sunshine, with Daddy in her mouth, turning her face into his forearm where it’s braced beside her head and still pins her other hand.

He bites at her cheek, his voice more gravel and rumble than sound. “My pretty little baby. That’s all you need, huh? Just Daddy’s fingers.”

She whines and shakes her head, trembling beneath him, her hand gripping at his wrist, pushing it lower. He strokes her with the pad of his fingers, feeling the clenching of her cunt, the working, needy pull for something inside of her.

The first slow, easy, fucking easy, slide of his middle finger into her leaves him groaning and Ellie arching, trembling, gasping for him as her legs stretch out in a flutter of a kick before she pushes herself up an inch, her hips rolling as she tries to work him deeper.

All he can feel is the heat of her. The silky, impossible fucking tight clench of her cunt around his finger, the way she squirms on just one. And he knows, as her muscles work and pulls at his finger, that there’s never been— will never be— a sweeter, prettier sight than this.

He twists his hand and gets his thumb on her clit; chokes a laugh into her cheek at her hitchy squeak, at the way her foot kicks into his thigh before she’s just a pinked-up mess of a girl, coming apart on his thumb and finger with another little gush of slick.

“Good girl,” he hums, and waits for the clenching of her cunt to slow before sliding his finger out and then back in, a little play at fucking, gauging how slick she is, how small she is… before tucking two fingers into her, just inside of her and inhaling the way she gasps and squirms, pushing back on them with a cute little grunt.

He watches her take them, watches the little wince, the swollen-lipped oh, Daddy that sighs out of her as her eyes fall shut and she turns her mouth into his arm. Her hips roll, searching, seeking little twitches, her chest trembling for air as she adjusts to them, long and thick inside of her. 

The only thing that’s ever really been inside of her.

“My perfect little girl,” he hums into her cheek, pushing them a little deeper, letting her rock her hips and chase her own pleasure, using him to sate the heat under her skin. “That’s it.”

She nods and sighs shakily, wet-eyed and a little delirious. Lost to her heat and pleasure, lost to the relief of his fingers, of him giving her something to clench around. “S’good, Daddy.”

He wrings out another two little orgasms just like that, just little pushes of his fingers, a greedy little stretch of them to feel her around them, (to take the memory of it into his rut with him) before he shifts over her, tugging her hips closer, tucking her thighs over his, spreading her open— holding her open more— and then curling his fingers, hooking them and rubbing against that little bundle of nerves inside of her.

She takes it so well, baby, look at this pretty little cunt.

It’s a selfish thing too, wanting to give her more than just relief. The want to see her taken apart by pleasure he gives her. The need to show her just what he can provide for her. 

It hums along the back of his brain, greedy and possessive, full of hunger to be the only man, only alpha she’ll ever need. The one she’ll compare everyone else to. 

That even when she claims someone else— even when she gets claimed—

His blood boils, and he lets her wrist go, leaning back to weigh his hand over her lower stomach and curl his fingers harder, quicker up inside of her. Ellie sobs and twists, griping at his wrist and the blankets, a squirming mess of need and too much.

You’re mine, rumbles in his chest, claws at his throat— it takes everything he has to choke it back down even as his mind spins the fantasy of it, leaning over her and sinking his teeth into her neck, drawing blood, swallowing her down, taking her, keeping her. 

The way he’s always wanted to. In the deepest, darkest part of him, he knows it’s true. 

She comes in a rush of slick, but he doesn’t give her time to relax, just stretches his fingers inside of her, works them deeper, knuckles bruising against her cunt before he curls them again. The beast in him enjoys the tears that clings to her lashes, the way she squirms away and then back onto his fingers, torn between need and the ache she must feel, new little cunt barely broken in.

Her body and her heat let him drag out another two, soaking wet orgasms out of her before she goes limp, her hips on his lap, her slick soaking his pants, his fingers still tucked inside of her to feel the flutter of her muscles before he drags them out and watches the thin, syrupy drip of her slick off his fingers and onto her mound and belly.

He groans and smears it over her belly, up over her chest, brushing her nipple just to see it shine before he leans over her and lets himself touch her. Taking his own little relief from it, feeding his own need in chasing the trembles in the drained, limp little body beneath his.

His cock aches beneath her, a half-formed knot throbbing at the base, but he breathes her in and touches her, wide-fingered, flat-palmed, burning the feeling and the memory of her into his brain.

Wrung out, Ellie’s nearly asleep before he curves up behind her, tucking her into his arms, dragging his mouth over the fever–sweat along her nape and thinking about the noises she’d make if he sunk his teeth into her.

She squirms, a tired, needy little shift against his cock and mumbles, pouty and demanding.  “Too empty, Daddy.”

He huffs into her neck and strokes his fingers over the sticky heat of her clit, along her cunt, enjoying the little curl of her toes against his legs, the little tensing gasp as he tucks his fingers back inside of her.

“Good?”

She nods and falls asleep on a little stretch and a sigh a moment later.

    He smells the next wave of her heat before he feels it, a working little tug of her cunt around his fingers, still buried inside of her.

It’s been an hour, maybe two.

He’d spent it wondering if he’ll ever get used to just how perfect she smells. (And if he has any spare pills tucked anywhere else around the house.)

(He does. In his office. He just has to get to them.)

Ellie wakes up slowly, a little stretch and grumble that’s familiar, pressing tighter into him before the thick of his fingers or her heat-fever drags her back into consciousness.

Or something close to consciousness as she reaches down to feel his hand between her legs; the slickness that dripped out of her, coating his knuckles and wrist where it presses against her clit.

It’s a breathy little moan, such a soft, quiet, little needy thing full of curiosity and happiness and contentment… just before her fever swallows her and she’s pressing her ass back into his lap, rocking herself on his fingers.

She comes easily, quickly, with his wrist against her clit to grind against. She reaches back to paw at his shoulder, turning more on her belly— and he groans into her neck, ducks his head into her shoulder, biting the back of it as every urge to mount her flickers through his veins. (Little knees tucked beneath her body, her head on the blankets, nape bared, marked with his teeth as he rocks his knot inside of her.)

He sinks forward just a little, pushing more of his weight on her. Her stomach soft and hot against his arm as she stretches out on her belly, grinding her sticky cunt into his wrist as he stretches and curls his fingers inside of her.

Neither one of them says anything through it, not through any of the orgasms she works out of her body or the ones he drags out of her when she’s too desperate and tired to do it herself.

He marks up her shoulder with his mouth, carefully avoiding her nape. Her nails scrape at his arm, twist into the blankets, pushing into him, pulling away. Grinding her ass against his stomach even when she’s overwhelmed and sobbing through the last.

He manages to fall asleep after that, pressing a final, hot-mouthed kiss to her neck before following her into exhaustion, his fingers still tucked inside of her.

 

 

    He wakes up to her fingers on his belt.

 An impossible heat burning through her and hanging thick in the air, damp on her skin as she squirms against him, mouthing at his neck and rubbing her cheek against his stubble as she tugs at his belt, slipping it open, trying to tug it off.

He groans and it’s all— it’s all so heedy, the smell of her, the feel of her; the rut burning along his spine— he rolls away from her, onto his back, but Ellie follows, trembling in need, clambering over his lap and tugging at his belt tugging it inches out at a time, a whine of frustration in her throat.

“Daddy, please— feel so empty.”

He closes his eyes and pulls in a breath, fighting himself, every instinct and need, grabbing her hands and holding them too tightly. “Stop.”

She whines and grinds against him instead, desperate and burning up over him, her cunt soaking his pants right over his cock. For a moment, he loses himself watching her, her head dropping back, gasping at the weight of his cock, grinding her cunt against it, searching rolls, little twitches when the thicker fabric over his zipper drags against her clit.

Her head lolls forward, and she’s flushed and delirious, and it’s the little weak Daddy, it hurts, that pulls him out of it. A reminder, a gut wound, his need to comfort and protect her cuts through the alpha need to give into her.

He rolls them, and it’s easy, so easy to tuck two fingers inside of her, biting at her jaw and pulse point, sucking another bruise into her skin. Breathing through the flare of heat, the ache in his cock as she gasps and squirms at the intrusion. At the flicker of pain of being stretched again.

“More— I need—” 

He shushes her, pushing his fingers deeper, thumb rolling over her clit, but she shakes her head and pushes at his hand. 

“No, no,” she sobs. “Daddy, I need— I need you—”

He grits his teeth and bites back a growl into her collarbone, stretching his fingers inside of her, ignoring what she wants, what he can’t give her— tucking in a third finger and revelling the way she seizes up under him, gripping at his back and nape, scraping her nails into him as he works them deep.

He isn’t kind or slow with it, sinking them deep, curling them, stretching her, feeling how wet she is, how hot she is…how much she needs that little bit of an ache to fill the need for a knot.

She comes with a sob, tensing up and then going limp… her forehead slick, cheeks damp with tears. But it only lasts a moment before she’s swallowed by need again, crying through it as he works her through another orgasm, his hand and fingers and wrist sticky with her slick as she clenches and quivers through another and he lets his fingers slide out to smear it over her belly, to look at it, shiny on her skin before sinking them back inside of her.

“Not enough —”

“It’s more than enough, baby.” He kisses her cheek and her nose, the blotchy heat under her eyes letting her squirm on his fingers. “You’re all stuffed already, huh? Your little cunt’s already full.”

She shakes her head, even though they can both feel the little strain in her body, even clenching around his fingers, her cunt is full. 

“I can— I can take it. I can—just a little, please, please, Daddy, I’ll be good— I’ll be—”

A little, he thinks, like there’s anything little about a cock and a knot… about his cock or knot.

“Baby,” he hushes, rubbing his nose against hers, his hand to brush the sweat-damp hair out of her face. “You’re already perfect.”

At the frustrated, rough-edged whine in her throat, Nico glances at the boxes, tucked nearly out of sight, under a spill of pillows to his left. 

The toys. A fake cock. A knot bulb in hot pink.

He should use them on her. He should show her how to fuck herself open and then work the bulb inside of herself, keep herself stuffed and sated until her heat passes. Every selfish, possessive urge in his body and head rages at the idea of it, and Ellie— his baby smells so good— so much like him—

He slips his fingers out of her, reaching for the knot bulb. 

At least, he thinks, he can enjoy watching her cunt stretch around it. That when her heat is done, he’ll have that sight to twist into fantasy.

But Ellie blinks up at him, at the box as he rips it open, until her heat-delirious brain makes sense of it— and then sucks in a breath and twists away from him, kicking out at him, an acrid spike of anger and sadness.

“No! I don’t want toys! I don’t—” A wounded noise breaks out of her and she twists away from him, slipping out of his arms and lap. 

It spikes in his gut and he tugs her back on instinct, but Ellie grits her teeth and fights him, squirming and twisting to pull away, feverish and trembling, but he’s too lost to the instinct in his bones and he hauls her back.

Her smell turns syrupy, fever-bright and it fucks with his head until his body is a hum and all there is is her smell, her skin beneath his, her body beneath his.

It’s a quick, slick-skinned, skinny-limbed little fight, her trying to squirm out from under him before he pins her down on a snarl, his voice hard in her ear, both of them breathless.

“Don’t. Pull. Away from me.” He inhales, trying to focus on her smell, on his smell, stuck to her skin, everything under her skin that makes her his. “You can’t.”

Ellie looks up at him, red-cheeked, bright-eyed and panting, a tremor under her skin, and then—

She tilts her head up and bites him. 

Sharp and hard. Little white teeth sinking above his clavicle, right at the curve of his throat. A noise in her throat as she breaks skin and bites harder.

Feel them, Dad? She’d said, with his finger on her canine, pushing the pad of it up against it, her hand wrapped around his index finger. Feels so weird.

It lances through him, pain and heat and need; he pulls her up onto his thighs and Ellie moans and licks at his throat, at the bite mark that throbs through him, burns along his spine and settles into a syrupy hum over his mind. 

A hum that drowns out everything but Ellie.

“Y’r mine, Daddy,” she mumbles before opening her mouth over the mark again and sinking her teeth in on a whine as she squirms in his lap. It stings and then fades into a pulse-beat of a throb and he’s— 

He’s lost to it, to her, the smell of her—

He tugs his pants open, tugs his cock out and Ellie— Ellie licks at his throat and grips at his shoulders, lifting herself in his arms, trembling with need, biting his jaw. Gasps with blood on her lips when he drags the head of his cock against her cunt.

She writhes in his arms, desperate and impatient, trying to sink herself down onto his cock.

He licks the blood off her lips and kisses her as his cock notches into her. Barely a kiss, she gasps and her lips slide hotly over his as she tries to squirm down onto his cock. He holds her there, his hand bruising on her ass cheek, watching her, his throat on fire, his blood on fire— letting her cunt drip over him, pull at him, just the tip of him.

“D-Daddy, ple-ease— ” 

A little, he thinks, asked for a little— but she’s soaked and sweet and sobbing for more and he gives in, the way he always has, the way he always will— 

And he tilts forward, sinks her into the blankets and works his cock into her. 

An inch, biting at her jaw, sucking a mark into the curve of her neck over all the others he’s already left in her skin.

An inch more. Ellie’s hands scramble at his back, body tense and quivering, toes curling into his hips. No words, no pretty little pleases or Daddys or mores— just gasping, chest jerking breaths. Just hitching, desperate little pants.

As she takes it. As her cunt grips at him. Every little inch is too tight and too hot and he can’t think around it, can’t think around the noises she makes, the way her scent and her slick coat him and soaks his cock.

The way she looks, wet-eyed and flushed and his.

He works into her, achingly slow, brutally slow, and when he’s finally, finally sunk, and she’s finally stretched, finally stuffed full of him, sitting right against his knot, he works her there, as her teeth draw blood and she moans into his skin, sobs into his neck, every time his cock bottoms out, every time his cock nudges her cervix, every time she can squirm against his knot just for a second before he pulls back again.

It’s slow and syrupy and she comes four times the same way, slow-rolling orgasms, her cunt gripping at him, pulsing around the thick of him inside her, each one feels like she knocks herself into the next just by the way her cunt quivers around him; her fever rolling hotter in a different way, quiet, soft, like it knows it’s being fed.

Little bursts of oxygen to a flame.

 The bite mark fades into a dull throb buried in his heartbeat, Ellie goes limp against him, nothing but a trembling sweet thing beneath him, her cheeks burning, lashes clumped, lips hot on the bite mark.

Throbbing inside of her, he ducks his head to kiss her, to slide his hands over her thighs and up her body as her cunt flutters and tenses, milking his cock, and she comes again just as he’s sliding his hands over hers, stretching them up and over her head, letting her curl her fingers around one of his, an easier grip for her hands— the way she always has— as she comes apart again, a little gasp into his mouth, a little shiver of pleasure and relief, rubbing her cheek over his as she sighs, mine, Daddy.

He is.

Right from the start. From the first little hiccup, the first little grip of her hand around his finger.

He eases her through another two as he rocks inside of her, shushing her, kissing her blotchy cheeks and red nose and pink eyelids rimmed in wet, clumped lashes. Her fever fades around them, but he’s too wrapped in her to stop. Too selfish to stop. Her cunt is too perfect, the feel of her body beneath his too right.

“My pretty girl,” he growls into her ear when he finally spills inside of her, a pained little noise in her throat, her body tensing as he thickens and pulses and his knot pushes against her cunt for her to squirm against. 

For him to feel. To imagine. Just a little more.

“My perfect little baby.”

 

 

 

 

    He’s always felt that being an alpha was like being a two-headed beast. Half-human, half-other. An other under his skin he was always aware of. Like being aware of the blood in your veins. The rush of your pulse in your eardrum. The thump of your heartbeat under your ribcage. All these moving parts that make up a body.

And then… then he’d had Ellie and he’d been more like a manticore. A thing made of three parts; man, alpha, father.  

They weren’t separate things, but he could feel all of them, shifting through his body and his mind at different times. Wants and needs, urges and instincts all tinged by one of three parts.

But he’s never felt more whole than he does right now. Half his cock buried inside her, his skin against hers, kissing tears and easing little cries as he works back inside of her and she takes it, begs for more, spreads her little legs wider and rolls her hips to take him deeper.

An alpha’s need to claim her, a father’s need to comfort her, and the man…

The man just wants her.

   

    It’s early afternoon by the time Nico carries her into the kitchen. A sleepy, worn-out girl in between fever-spikes.

He warms the rest of the soup and cuts the rest of the rosemary bread she made a few days ago into thick slices and toasts it in a pan. Settles her on his lap on one of the couches in the main room; November sunlight spilling in around them like a blanket. Feeds her and then himself, his thumb stroking over the cum-sticky, slick-damp of her upper inner thigh.

Ellie naps after, slumped against him, until the sun paints the penthouse in orange.

She shifts and wakes slowly, a sleepy sigh, a little hi, Daddy, lifting her fingers to touch the bite mark she left on his neck.

“When are you going to knot me?”

He pushes out a breath, tilting his head back against the couch. “In ten years.”

“Dad.”

He smiles at the ceiling, slow and lazy. “Fifteen.”

She pinches him. “Dad."

He huffs a laugh. “I’m not going to knot you, Ellie.”

“But— why not?”

His cock thickens, Ellie squirms, and he knows she can feel it. And by the way she sniffs, her senses are peaked enough to smell the shift in his scent as he thinks about it.

 “Little girls in the middle of heat-fever don’t get to decide when they’re ready to take a knot.” 

He pauses, closing his eyes and trying not to think about her beneath him, taking him.  “Their first heat-fever.”

After taking their first cock. (Onlyonlyonly.)

“I’m not just—” she sits straighter in his lap and he lifts his head to look at her, at the little frown on her face that’s dangerously near a pout. He smooths a hand over her hair and she shakes her head, knocking his hand away. “I’m not just deciding anything. I— I’ve been—”

She cuts off and pushes out a breath, sliding out of his lap and holding out her hand. He looks up at her, not up , not really, they’re just barely eye to eye with him sitting and her standing.

She likes it, too. He can see it in her face when her eyes sink over him and she licks her lips, pulling in a little breath.

“You dripping, baby girl?”

Her chest hitches and he slides his hand up her inner thigh, finding the little new fresh drip of slick against sticky skin. It’s thicker than normal and he knows with a rush of heat and ego and pride that it’s mixed with his cum. Still stuffed inside of her, tucked as deep as he could get it. 

Still slowly dripping out.

More cum than slick at this point, he thinks. (And yeah, that’s ego-feeding for sure. Like a monster takes root in his gut.)

He follows the drip up to the heat of her, soft and wet, swollen and sensitive from his cock. From his knot rubbing against her. But still, his fingers slip easily between her lips, rubbing over her clit, and he watches the flicker of pleasure roll through her body before he slides one finger, all easy and smooth, inside of her.

She grips his arm and sways, eyes closing as he pushes it deeper… before clambering back onto his lap in eager need. Her kiss is sloppy, inexperienced, and he loves it. Catching her by the throat and jaw to tilt her head and take over. 

A quick learner, his baby girl.

Ellie drops her head to his neck and mouths at the bite-mark she left in his skin, breathing him in as he tucks another finger inside of her and her hips roll. She winces and stiffens around the width, sore little cunt not used to being full, but still, she’s soaked and dripping into his palm and she makes the sweetest little sounds into his skin as she eases, stretches, as her heat drags her back into needy delirium.

“Need you, Daddy.”

He knows.

He peels her shirt off because he can, because he unashamedly loves having her naked in his lap. Because he wants to touch as much of her skin for as long as he can. See as much of her, burn the sight of her into his brain for as long as she lets him.

Gripping her hips and grunting at the first tight little inch he works inside of her, the feeling of her cunt splitting open, stretching in the shape of his cock, only for his cock.

(Something there, he thinks, about gods and mirror images, about creation. Spinning a universe around a hiccup.)

She cries, little hitches of her breathing because she’s sore and he’s 

Too big, Daddy.

“You can take it, baby girl, c’mon. You’re so pretty like this.” 

She can. She does. 

She smells like salt and pride when she finally bottoms out. Grinning into his neck and smearing tears against his skin as she trembles and sits all stiff, cunt fluttering at the width of him inside of her.

“Did it,” she slurs, scraping his neck with her teeth. “Ha.”

It tears a choked laugh out of him. It might be a little sick how proud of her he is. He kisses her, wipes the salt from her cheeks with his lips, telling her how good she is, how perfect… until her body eases enough and she works herself into a fever-touched orgasm on nothing but his cock and her own squirming, needy rolls.

She cries when his knot thickens outside of her body, a heat-desperate thing; pushing against it in futile little pulses, biting at the mark she already left, p-please, please, Daddy, I need it. I want it—

“You’re so me-eean.”

He knows.

But his rut itches along his spine and hums at the back of his brain and if he knots her, he’ll claim her. If he knots her, he’ll rut her.

If he ruts her… he’ll hurt her. 

 

 

    He knows what he’s like in a rut. 

 

 

    It’s late when her fever fades, belly full of a protein-packed smoothie and munching on chips, watching The Crown on her tablet, tucked in his lap in the tent while he holds a small ice pack wrapped in a towel between her legs because he has a stupid big dick, Dad.

Like, you know when people say, hey, is that a weapon in your pants or are you just happy to see me?  

It’s ‘is that a gun in your pocket,’ princess.

Whatever. It’s a weapon. It’s like, eight eggplant emojis.

She feeds him a chip over her shoulder before stuffing another in her mouth and chewing happily with a little hum. He can smell it, her happiness, and it’s not new exactly, it’s like sunshine and fresh water, a cool trickle down his back that makes everything in him just… relaxed.

It’s not new, but it’s wrapped in contentment and satisfaction, like coming home to warmth after a long, cold winter’s day. That shift in smell from metallic, steel-cold air and home. The unwinding of a scarf, heat eating at cold cheeks. (A cold nose, a little sniff, watching her shiver in ahead of him.)

“These are so salty now,” she says around another chip. “Everything tastes so— and the smells! It’s so weird!”

He laughs, pressing his lips to her nape. “Yeah, baby, I know. You’ll get used to it, and it’ll dull a bit, after your heat.”

“I can smell you, too, you know.”

He hums into her skin. “M’sure you can, baby girl.”

The towel and the ice pack have the added benefit of keeping his cum in her and he’s… pretty fucking happy about that.

 

 

 

    “We can just like… Uber some more ice packs.”

He huffs, pushing her head away from his neck and the bite she keeps reopening…or not letting close, would be more truthful. “Could we?”

It’s a quick way to get him to do what she wants and she knows it.

Little monster, he called her after they’d showered and he’d caught sight of it in the mirror, red and swollen, surrounded by little bites and hickeys. 

She’d only grinned, exactly like she does now, sitting straighter and bracing her hands on his stomach. Naked and shiny with slick and cum. Just as covered in bruises and hickeys. Just as marked up as he is by her, just… missing the bite mark he aches to leave on her neck. Or tits. Or thighs.

All of them, really.

“Yes. So can we? And I promise not to complain about your dick being too big.”

He laughs, stomach deep, before he rolls them, pinning her beneath him and nipping her jaw, his voice low and rough in her ear. “Oh, sweetheart, I like hearing you cry about my cock being too big.”

So easy, he thinks, breathing in the shift of her scent as her breath catches. Pressing a kiss to her cheek, he leans back, bracing on his hands above her. “And unless you can Uber yourself a bigger cunt, the answer’s still a no.”

She huffs, irritation flickering across her face, burning the edge of her smell. “So what, you’re just never going to knot me?”

“Never,” he snorts, dropping his head to bite at her nipple before sucking at it with a little pop and a kiss. “How many of your heats do you think you’re going to need me for before—”

He stops. Her scent sours , acrid right beneath his nose. 

“You think—” she shoves at his shoulders and he leans back, hands sliding to her hips as she props herself on her arms, anger sitting hot in her face and in the tension in her jaw. “I bit you!”

“Baby,” he laughs, fond and entertained by how innocent the claim is. How adorable her anger is, little body hickey and cum covered. “Everyone bites something on their first heat or rut. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Something flickers through her face and smell, like… like sadness and anger, wet earth and copper. She blinks at him, brows furrowed, mouth tight. Her breathing pitching heavier, shifting her chest in a little quiver. 

“You’re so… you’re so stupid, Nico. ”

Nico. That’s a name reserved for use only when she’s very angry at him.

“Ellie. Princess . First heats are—”

“No– no! You’re not—” a noise rips out of her throat and she twists to pull away from him. “You’re not listening! ”

He’s over her in a blink, a barely bitten back snarl turned into a huff of hot air pressed against her nape, hand anchoring her hip to the blankets, dragging her, belly-down, back underneath him.

Ellie’s laugh is sharp, her hair mussed and fraying out of the braid he’d plaited it into after their shower. “That’s not normal, Daddy.”

No, he knows it’s not. 

He closes his eyes and breathes out, pressing his forehead into the back of her head. There’d be an urge to keep a heat-partner close, to get territorial and… aggravated by them pulling away, but it shouldn’t be this… clawing thing he can’t think around.

“Let me up.”

He pulls back, shifting to sit back against the bulk of pillows and blankets; Ellie pushes up, and he grits his teeth watching her, naked and flushing with fever, smelling like everything good in the world.

Smelling like his world.

She sits on her knees for a stretch of a moment, breathing steady, leaking slick and cum and it’s… he has no idea how long he’s going to be able to hold back. The leak of his cum satisfies the man in him but aggravates the alpha.

He closes his eyes and rolls his head on his neck, rolls his shoulders, feeling the bulk and shift of his muscles, trying to ground himself as he pulls in a slow breath.

When he opens them, Ellie’s reaching under the edge of a blanket near the draping side of the pink canopy and pulling out a math textbook.

He frowns, watching as she flips it open and pulls out a few pieces of paper, dog-eared and folded.

Dropping the textbook, she slides back over to him, settling on her knees next to his thigh, facing him before she presses the papers into his chest with a little smack , her palm hot through them, irritation a little staticky bite in the air.

He looks at her as he presses his hand over hers, holding the papers until she pulls her hand back. “Hurry up. I don’t think I have long until… you know.”

Yeah, he can smell it. See it. 

Ellie’s hips twitch, seeking, before she pulls in a breath and lifts her chin. “You’re going to knot me.”

He meets her eyes, the sharpness in them even with the little tremor under her skin as her body heats. 

A sad truth. (A proud truth.) In a showdown of stubbornness, he isn’t sure he’d win.

Nico huffs a breath and looks down at the papers against his chest. Printer paper, plain-white A4. Obviously well-read and not new.

It’s printouts, he realises, from websites. WebMD, a psychiatrist’s page, the NYC laws site. USA government, a page full of bonding laws.

His heart rate quickens. He doesn’t need to read any of them, to know what they’re all about.

“It’s not illegal. I checked.” She swallows her fingers curling on her knees, a little tremble. “It’s not… it’s— it’s rare, Daddy, like… pretty rare. But it… it happens.”

Familial attractions after presentation, the WebMD printout reads. Blood-related bonding, the psychiatrist’s page is titled.

Consanguineal Bonds.

“And how many of them are are a father fucking his daughter?”

Ellie flinches, her mouth tightening. “Don’t be mean.”

Mean, he thinks and scrapes his tongue over his teeth. He already knows the answer, of course it happens. Humans are fucked up already, and that’s before a biological urge to mate and claim comes into the picture. Cousins, siblings, parents… take out designations and it would still happen.

Designations just make it easier to explain when you can wrap it all up into an easy box of genetic pre-fucking-disposition.

“How long have you had these?”

Ellie squirms, but not from heat, a little self-conscious shift. “A little while.”

“Ellie.”

“Like, a year. Maybe.”

He rubs a hand over his face, ignoring the thing in his blood that’s snarling to be let out. See, it says, see? She wants it too. The hum along his brain and spine that whispers, mineminemine.

“You presented a month ago, Ellie. How could you have— you had no fucking  idea what you were.”

“You’re an alpha,” she says, like it’s an explanation on its own. A statement. Full-stop. 

He’s an alpha.

She inches forward, bracing a hand on his thigh; his muscles tense, an urge to pin her, bite her, claim her.

Her chest shifts with too quick little breaths, her smell shifting into the heady syrup of her fever. She closes her eyes and pulls in a long, slow breath before opening them again… and leans forward to sink her teeth into the mark on his neck. 

It’s sharp, deep, her tongue strokes over it and her fingers tighten on his thigh, little nails digging in. Pain flickers through him, but it’s an odd pain; slices through his chest, pools hot in his gut, burns between his hips to gather in his cock.

Ellie leans back, licking blood from the corner of her mouth, and then leans forward again, to press her lips to his.

It’s soft. Sweet. Her tongue tastes like copper. Their eyes stay open for a breath before hers flutter shut, eyelids pinked from fatigue and fever and the tears he’s more than happy to pull out of her on his cock.

His love for her is a knife he’s learned to breathe around, but sometimes it slices sharper and deeper and it feels like he’s been gutted by it.

The kiss is slow, unsure, Ellie moans and clambers into his lap, body quivering as her fever pitches like a humming heatwave. He breathes her in and strokes his hands over her hips, up her sides, over the little shift of her spine as her hips roll and her smell turns syrupy. Ellie breaks the kiss and hitches a noise over his lips before rubbing her cheek against his jaw. 

“You’re mine, Daddy. And I– I always knew that I’d… I’d be yours, too.”

You’ve always been mine, he wants to say. From the first until the last. Beginning and end. Alpha and omega in the truest sense of the words.

He strokes his hand over her shoulder, looking at the marks he’s left, the hickeys and bruises… pressing a kiss to her cheek before sliding his hand over her neck and tilting her head up. His fingers fit all the way around her neck, but he slides his thumb along the hummingbird beat of her pulse.

“I knot you. I rut you.”

Her throat shifts as she swallows beneath his palm. He brushes his lips against hers, breathing in her little inhale.

“I won’t be nice. It’ll hurt. I’ll fuck you how I want. When I want. As often as I want.”

Ellie’s pupils swallow up her irises. Sweat shines on her skin and he strokes his hand down her neck, over her chest where her heart thumps, keeping his thumb on her pulse to feel it.

“I won’t be your dad, baby. You understand?”

Ellie pitches forward and her kiss is hungrier, sloppy and eager and full of a reedy whine as he drags his cock from his sweats. Legs trembling as she lifts herself a little higher as he drags the head of his cock over her, notching it in her quivering, dripping little cunt

“One more nice one, okay?” he says with a kiss to the corner of her mouth and jaw and the curve just under her ear. 

Ellie nods against his cheek, a quiet little hitch in his ear as his cock slips into her. A breathy sigh as she works herself down onto him, as he helps her, thumb stroking over her hip bone; her hand gripping at his index finger as his other hand tucks her feet over his thighs.

In his neck, her laugh is all air, almost a sob. “You’ll always be my dad.”

He will. Not an animal, a beast, three-headed: father, alpha, man.

When he’s rooted, and it’s just the half-swell of his knot left, he takes her hand in his and sinks it between them. Ellie shivers when her fingers brush her clit before bumping into his cock.

“You feel how much needs to fit, princess? How much more of my cock you need to take?”

Hm, he murmurs, dragging his lips over the little leak of tears at the edges of her eyes, you feel that?

Her hips roll, a searching little press as she trembles, syrupy with need, a little flicker of nerves, metallic-edged. “I can take it. I can…” 

Her forehead slides over his cheekbone, her moan full of Daddy, as his thumb finds her clit, and it’s easy, so fucking easy, baby, spilling her into another orgasm on just his thumb and her own little, nudging, needy rolls. 

Another, and he takes her down to the blankets, propping a pillow under her hips, drinking in her noises, drinking in her skin when he ducks his head licks over her nipple before taking it into his mouth.

Worrying it, sucking it, until it’s the way he wants it to be, oversensitive, all pretty and puffy and pink.

He laughs into her breast while her hands push at his shoulders, not used to the feeling of a tongue on her nipple, the suck and scrape of teeth— it’s a brain-eating, restraint-eating realization that he’s the first here, too. 

He groans into her skin, worrying her other nipple to match the first, listening to her whines, feeling her cunt clenching around his cock, muscles working, spilling herself towards another orgasm on nothing but the thick of his cock and the scrape of his mouth on her tits.

It’s adorable.

She’s soaked, pliant, a good little girl ready to take a knot; he kisses up her chest to her cheek, peeling her hands off his shoulders and pressing them to the blankets just above her head. Spreading his hands wide over hers, stroking down her arms and then back up as he kisses her and nudges the half-swell of his knot against her cunt a little harder.

In her fever, she slides from whines and sobs to a blurry bliss; a little sigh of a girl, wrapped in pleasure. 

Can take it, she mumbles as her toes curl against his hips; thighs spread wide, cunt already full, hips tilted up and still rolling, rocking against his knot. Her hands curl around his index fingers; familiar. Heartbreaking.

Right from the start.

“Please, Daddy.”

A kiss to her cheekbone, his voice low and calming, alpha-tinged, deep breath, baby girl.

He’s slow but relentless, rolling, nudging thrusts, using his hips to keep her open, his weight to sink his cock deeper, even as her body tenses, bottom to top, from toes to little, gripping hands.

He watches all of it flicker across her face.

His knot slips in. Ellie hiccups a breath, pain wrapped in pleasure and relief. Like love, he thinks, a gut-wound you learn to breathe around.

He rocks into her, watching her body relax, her head turning into his forearm, lips hot and soft, lashes tear-clumped, toes curling on his hips. Watching the way her pleasure rolls over her, the relief at being full of him, spills into a lip-biting, head-lolling need. 

“God, Daddy,” she sobs, “It’s so— ”

He grunts into her cheek, nipping at her jaw, rocking a little quicker, keeping his knot in her, her cunt stuffed full. His own pleasure wrapped around hers like a tether. 

Ellie falls apart around him; pitching, tremulous little cries, his cock bullying her cervix relentlessly, a gasp every time he rocks back and the half swollen thickness of his knot tugs at her rim, and her cunt clenches tighter to keep him from slipping out. 

She comes, a strained little arc, a little sob of his name before she tilts her head and sinks her teeth into the mark on his neck; cunt gripping at him tight enough it nearly hurts, pulling at his cock as he rocks her through it, as he pushes deep, a rumble in his chest as he roots himself, as his rut burns up his spine, as his knot swells and cock thickens, pulses, spills inside of her.

Ellie, he groans, as the world turns into a syrupy hum. A honey-covered thing wrapped in heat and his baby. All there is, is her. (And it’s no different, he thinks, it’s no different than every day of his life since he first held her.) But the clench of her, the tremble of her body, the feel of her, tense and quivering and gasping and fever-bright— 

It’s everything.  

Ellie squirms, hiccups little cries, strains beneath him. Too full, he knows, cunt stretching around the pulse of him and the swell of his knot. 

He hushes her, a rumbling sound in his chest and throat, rubbing his nose over her jaw. “Breathe, baby. You’re alright. You’re so good for me, Ellie.”

She shakes and pants, her knees digging into his ribs, the little tremble of her is… perfect, rut-feeding, jaw-aching. The need to bite her, breed her— nearly overwhelming.

“You take it so well, princess.”

She comes again, just on his knot swollen inside of her, the little shift of his hips spilling her towards a syrupy relief. Her body eases slowly, fatigue bearing down on her; the little quivering grips of her cunt slow and soften. 

He tracks the shift of her smell, the way she nuzzles him, rubs her cheek against his with a little sigh. Eyelids heavy and pink, tear stained cheeks, mouth swollen, hair mussed. The prettiest little thing he’s ever seen.

“Thank you, Daddy.”

He groans a laugh into her cheek, biting at the soft of it, the heat of it. Chest aching , the knife buried too deep. A lung punctured he chokes around. “So polite, baby.”

She nods, a breathy puff of a laugh. “Love you.”

She’s asleep before he can breathe enough to say it back.

 

 

 

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