Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warnings:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov

Additional Tags:

Smut, Shameless Smut, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Somnophilia, Riding, Knotting, Oral Sex, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha Ilya Rozanov, Omega Shane Hollander, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, Praise Kink, Coming Untouched, Sexual Overstimulation, Explicit Sexual Content, Mercenary Ilya Rozanov, Begging

Language:

English

Series:

Part 20 of Cross-Checked & Kissed (smut oneshots)

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-08 Words: 9,644 Chapters: 1/1

Mint and Candied Oranges

Summary

Three times Shane fucked himself on his foster father’s knot while he slept, and one time Ilya was awake for it.

The rules of their foster relationship were simple: don't ask about the blood, don't touch the guns, and definitely don't ride your alpha father's cock while he's blackout drunk.

Shane is very bad at following rules.

Notes

Shane presses his back against the hallway wall, clutching a throw pillow to his chest like a shield.

The apartment smells like bourbon and gunpowder. That means Ilya has come home from a job. That means the bottle of Maker’s Mark Shane spotted on the kitchen counter that morning—still sealed, amber liquid catching the early light—is now somewhere in the bedroom, empty.

Shane tightens his arms around the pillow and breathes through his mouth.

He’s been doing homework at the kitchen table when he heard the front door open and close, heard the heavy thud of boots being kicked off, the clink of a glass. He didn’t come out of his room. He never does, on nights like these. Ilya doesn’t want to be seen when he’s fresh off a contract—Shane knows that without ever being told. There is a ritual to it: the boots, the bourbon, the shower that runs for forty-five minutes, and then silence.

Shane waits two hours past the silence before creeping down the hall.

Now he stands just outside the bedroom door, which is cracked open enough to spill a sliver of warm lamplight across the hardwood. Ilya must have forgotten to turn it off. He always forgets when he drinks.

Shane shifts his weight from one socked foot to the other. The oversized sweater he wears—heather grey, fraying at the cuffs, a faded Cyrillic logo across the chest that he can’t read—hangs past his fingertips and halfway down his thighs. It was Ilya’s once, years ago, back when Shane first came to live with him at fourteen and couldn’t sleep without something that smelled like safety. Ilya tossed it at him without ceremony. Here. Stop crying. Shane stopped crying. He also never gave the sweater back.

He is twenty now, and the sweater still smells like Ilya. Cedar and black tea and something metallic underneath—copper, maybe. Iron.

Shane bites the inside of his cheek and peers through the crack in the door.

Ilya is sprawled across the bed on his back, one arm flung above his head, the other resting on his bare stomach. He is naked from the waist up, his chest rising and falling in the deep, even rhythm of someone profoundly unconscious. His dark hair is damp from the shower and pushed off his forehead, the sharp angles of his face softened in sleep. Below the waist, he wears a pair of black boxer briefs that ride low on his hips, and absolutely nothing else.

Shane’s mouth goes dry.

He presses his face into the pillow and squeezes his eyes shut. Go back to your room. Go back to your room. Go back to your—

But his body isn’t listening to him. His body hasn’t listened to him for months. Ever since his last heat, when Ilya locked him in the bedroom with water bottles and protein bars and stood guard outside the door for three days straight—Shane heard him pacing, heard the low rumble of his voice on the phone canceling a job, No. Can’t. My son needs me—something inside Shane cracks open and refuses to close.

It isn’t just gratitude. Shane knows what gratitude feels like. This is hungrier than that. Darker. It pools low in his belly and slicks between his thighs and makes his omega whine at the base of his skull every time Ilya walks past him smelling like alpha.

Shane opens his eyes.

Ilya hasn’t moved. His breathing is so deep it is almost a snore—not quite, just a heaviness at the bottom of each exhale. Shane knows that sound. It means Ilya is gone. Three, four hours minimum before he surfaces.

Shane’s fingers curl tighter around the pillow. He should leave. He should absolutely, categorically leave. He should go back to his room and lock the door and put his earbuds in and pretend the ache between his legs is anything other than what it is.

Instead, he pushes the bedroom door open another inch.

The hinges don’t creak. Shane oiled them himself two weeks ago, and if he lets himself think too hard about why he did that, his stomach clenches with something too close to premeditation.

The lamp on Ilya’s side casts the room in a low gold wash. Shane can see everything—the hard planes of Ilya’s torso, the dark trail of hair that starts below his navel and disappears beneath the waistband of his briefs, the thick cords of muscle in his forearms, the pale scars that map his ribs and shoulders like a language Shane has memorized without meaning to. There is a new one on his left side, still pink. Shane’s chest aches at the sight of it.

And lower. Shane’s gaze drops lower despite every screaming synapse telling him not to, and his lips part at the unmistakable shape pressed against the dark fabric of Ilya’s briefs.

Even soft—or mostly soft—the outline of Ilya’s cock is obscene. It lies thick and heavy along his left thigh, the fabric straining faintly around the girth. Shane has seen it before, glimpses in the mornings when Ilya walks to the bathroom in his underwear without thinking, or when he comes out of the shower with a towel slung too low. But never like this. Never when Shane can look.

A pulse of slick soaks through Shane’s underwear so abruptly that he flinches.

He presses the pillow harder against his stomach. His face is burning. He can feel the flush crawling down his neck and across his collarbones, disappearing beneath the stretched-out collar of Ilya’s sweater. His thighs are trembling.

Just looking, he tells himself. I’m just looking. That’s not—that’s not anything. People look.

People do not look at their foster fathers’ cocks. Shane is painfully aware of this.

He takes one step into the room. Then another. The carpet is soft under his socked feet, muffling his approach. He stops at the foot of the bed, the pillow still clutched to his chest, and watches Ilya’s face for any flicker of consciousness.

Nothing. Just that deep, bourbon-heavy breathing.

Shane sets the pillow down on the edge of the mattress. His hands are shaking. He wipes his palms on the hem of the sweater—Ilya’s sweater—and then stands there for a long, stupid moment, not doing anything at all except existing in the gravitational pull of his foster father’s sleeping body.

Go back to your room.

He climbs onto the bed.

The mattress dips under his weight and Shane freezes, one knee on the comforter, both hands braced on the sheets, his heart hammering so hard he can hear his own pulse. Ilya’s brow furrows. Shane stops breathing entirely.

Three seconds. Five. Ten.

Ilya’s expression smooths and he exhales—a long, slow gust that smells like bourbon even from here. Shane’s omega purrs at the scent, recognizing alpha, safe, home, and the sound of it vibrating inside his own chest makes Shane’s cheeks burn hotter.

He moves carefully, placing each knee with deliberate precision, until he is kneeling between Ilya’s spread thighs. Ilya sleeps like he fights—taking up every inch of available space, legs open, shoulders broad against the pillows, utterly unguarded. Shane has never seen anyone so dangerous look so vulnerable.

The proximity is devastating. This close, Shane can smell him properly—not just the bourbon but the cedar soap Ilya uses, and beneath it, the thick, heady musk of alpha pheromones that Shane’s suppressants are supposed to make irrelevant. They don’t. They never have. Not with Ilya.

Shane’s fingers find the hem of the sweater and he starts twisting the fabric, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. A nervous habit. Ilya always notices when he does it. Stop fidgeting, solnyshko. Whatever it is, just say it.

Shane can’t say this. Could never say this.

He glances up at Ilya’s face again. Still asleep. Still breathing deep. The lamp throws shadows into the hollows of his cheekbones and beneath his jaw, and Shane thinks, with a clarity that feels like being struck, You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen and I’m going to ruin everything.

His gaze drops back to Ilya’s briefs.

The fabric has shifted with Ilya’s sprawl, pulling tighter across his groin, and Shane can see the ridge of the head now, a distinct shape against the cotton. His mouth floods with saliva so fast he has to swallow twice.

Shane’s hands are still fidgeting with the sweater. He makes himself stop. Makes himself flatten his palms on his own thighs. The sweater has ridden up a few inches and he can feel the cool air on his skin above his knee-high socks.

Touch him.

Shane shakes his head faintly, arguing with his own instincts.

Touch him. He won’t wake up. You know he won’t.

Shane reaches forward.

His fingertips graze the elastic waistband of Ilya’s briefs and he yanks his hand back like he’s been burned, a soft, punched-out sound escaping his throat. He clamps his lips shut and stares at Ilya’s face.

No change. Deep breaths. Faint smell of bourbon.

Shane reaches out again. This time his fingers make contact with the fabric just below Ilya’s navel, and he leaves them there, barely touching, feeling the warmth radiating off his foster father’s skin. The muscles of Ilya’s stomach are firm even in relaxation, and Shane can feel them shift subtly with each breath.

He trails his fingers down. Over the waistband. Onto the cotton stretched over Ilya’s cock.

“Nnh—”

The strangled noise comes from Shane’s own mouth and he bites down on his lower lip hard enough to hurt. Beneath his fingers, Ilya’s cock is warm. Warm and impossibly thick, even through the fabric, and Shane can feel it twitch—just barely, a faint pulse of response to stimulation even in sleep.

Shane pulls the waistband down.

It takes some maneuvering. The elastic catches on the curve of Ilya’s length and Shane has to ease it over carefully, his fingers clumsy and trembling, until Ilya’s cock falls free against his stomach with a soft, heavy sound that makes Shane’s hole clench so hard a fresh wave of slick drips down the inside of his thigh.

He stares.

Ilya’s cock is—Shane doesn’t have the vocabulary. He doesn’t have the frame of reference. He’s been with one person, an omega his own age, fumbling and unsatisfying in the back of a car after a house party. Nothing in that experience prepares him for this. Ilya’s cock is thick and uncut, the foreskin partially retracted to reveal the dusky pink head, a prominent vein running the length of the underside. Even mostly soft it is longer than Shane’s hand. The base is wider, the suggestion of a knot barely perceptible in this state, and below it, his balls hang heavy and full.

Shane’s jaw aches with the need to put his mouth on it.

He wraps both hands around the shaft instead.

One isn’t enough—his fingers can’t close around the girth, not even close, and the realization sends a shudder racking through his whole body. He layers his second hand above the first and holds on, feeling the weight of it, the heat, the way it pulses against his palms like a second heartbeat.

“Oh god,” Shane whispers. His voice sounds wrecked already, thin and reedy and not his own. He glances up at Ilya. Still sleeping. Shane swallows and tightens his grip experimentally.

Ilya’s cock responds before Ilya does. It thickens in Shane’s hands, blood rushing to fill the tissue, and Shane watches with wide eyes as it grows—lengthening, hardening, the head darkening from dusky pink to a deep, flushed red. A bead of precum wells at the slit, catching the lamplight.

Shane’s hips rock forward involuntarily, seeking pressure that isn’t there. The motion makes the sweater ride higher, bunching around his waist, and the cool air hits the slick coating his inner thighs. He is soaked. His underwear—plain black briefs, nothing like the lace he’s caught himself looking at online—are plastered to his skin, and he can feel the wetness spreading, his body preparing itself for something his conscious mind hasn’t agreed to yet.

He strokes upward with both hands. Slow. Reverent. The foreskin glides smoothly and Shane watches the head emerge fully, the slit glistening. Another bead of precum gathers and begins to slide down the curve.

Shane leans in.

He doesn’t decide to. His body just tips forward,drawn by the scent—concentrated alpha musk, salt, something slightly bitter that makes his omega keen with want—and before he can stop himself, his tongue is touching the slit of Ilya’s cock.

The taste hits him like a slap.

Bitter and salt and Ilya, unmistakably, irreducibly Ilya, and Shane’s eyes flutter shut as a whimper crawls out of his throat. His toes curl inside his socks, the cotton bunching against the soles of his feet. His thighs are shaking. More slick gushes from his hole and he feels it run down past his briefs and pool against his inner thigh.

He licks again. A broader stroke this time, flattening his tongue against the sensitive underside of the head, tasting the salt-slick of precum. Ilya’s hips shift—a sleepy, unconscious roll—and the head of his cock pushes past Shane’s parted lips.

Shane’s eyes fly open. He looks up at Ilya’s face, the cock heavy on his tongue, his lips stretched around the crown. Ilya’s brow is furrowed faintly, the corners of his mouth twitching, but his eyes stay closed. His breathing has changed—slightly faster, slightly shallower—but he is still asleep.

Shane sucks.

He doesn’t mean to. Or maybe he does. The distinction stops mattering. The head of Ilya’s cock is in his mouth and Shane is sucking on it, his cheeks hollowed, his tongue working the sensitive ridge where the foreskin meets the glans, and the taste is flooding his senses, rewiring something fundamental in the architecture of his brain.

“Mmnh—” Shane moans around the cock in his mouth, a vibration that makes Ilya grunt in his sleep. Shane pulls off with a wet pop, a string of saliva connecting his lower lip to the tip, and presses his forehead against Ilya’s hip while he tries to breathe.

His hole is clenching rhythmically around nothing. Every pulse sends another trickle of slick down his thighs. The sweater is rucked up to his ribs now and he can feel the cool air on his lower back, on the curve of his ass where his briefs have ridden up.

Shane straightens. He looks at Ilya’s cock—fully hard now, standing thick and flushed and gleaming with Shane’s spit—and then at Ilya’s face.

This is the point of no return.

He recognizes it with crystalline precision. Everything up to this point can be—not excused, exactly, but compartmentalized. Filed away. Denied. But what Shane wants to do next can’t be taken back. There will be no pretending it is an accident, no rationalizing it as curiosity.

Shane hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs and drags them down.

The air hits his slick-soaked skin and he shivers violently, pulling the underwear down his thighs, past his knees, kicking one leg free and not bothering with the other. The briefs dangle from his left ankle as he shuffles forward on his knees, positioning himself over Ilya’s hips.

The sweater falls back down, draping over his thighs, hiding where their bodies are about to meet. Shane is almost grateful for it—the visual barrier between intention and act. He can feel Ilya’s cock nudging against the cleft of his ass, hot and insistent, and his whole body clenches in response.

Shane reaches behind himself with one trembling hand and grips the shaft, holding it steady. The head presses against his entrance—slick and hot and there—and he exhales a shaking breath.

He sinks down.

The stretch is immediate and blinding. Shane’s mouth falls open in a silent cry, his brows drawn up, his eyes squeezed shut. Ilya’s cock forces him open inch by merciless inch, his body resisting and yielding in alternating waves. The slick helps—god, the slick helps—but nothing could have fully prepared him for the sheer size of it, the way it fills spaces he doesn’t know exist, pressing against nerve endings that send white sparks cascading behind his eyelids.

Shane stops halfway, panting. Both hands planted on Ilya’s chest, the sweater pooling over his wrists. He can feel Ilya’s heartbeat under his palms—steady, undisturbed, oblivious. The contrast between Ilya’s calm and Shane’s chaos makes something hot and desperate twist in his stomach.

He lets himself slide down another inch. Then another. His thighs tremble with the effort of controlling the descent and his hole flutters wildly around the intrusion, trying to decide if it wants to expel or devour. Shane grits his teeth and bears down, and his body chooses for him—his muscles relaxing in one sudden, liquid release that drops him the rest of the way.

His ass meets Ilya’s hips and Shane chokes on air.

He is full. Full in a way that feels structural, like Ilya’s cock is holding him together rather than splitting him apart. He can feel it deep inside him—deeper than his fingers have ever reached, deeper than the slim silicone toy he keeps hidden in his sock drawer—pressing against a spot that makes his vision pulse white at the edges.

“F-fuck,” Shane gasps, barely a breath. His cock is leaking against the inside of the sweater, untouched, twitching with every micro-shift of Ilya’s hips. Because even unconscious, Ilya’s body knows what to do. His pelvis rolls in a slow, lazy grind that presses his cock into Shane’s deepest point, and Shane has to shove his fist against his mouth to keep from sobbing.

He sits there. Just sits there, impaled, feeling his pulse hammer in his throat and between his legs and around the thick shaft splitting him open. The sweater is hiked up around his waist now, his bare ass flush against Ilya’s groin, and if anyone walks in they’ll see exactly what this is.

Shane lifts his hips.

The drag of Ilya’s cock pulling out sends a full-body shiver through him—friction against every swollen, sensitized nerve. He rises until only the head remains inside, his hole clenching desperately around the flared ridge, and then he drops.

“Ah—!”

The moan punches out of him before he can stop it and he freezes, both hands clamped over his mouth, staring at Ilya with wild eyes. Ilya grunts. His head turns on the pillow, his brow creasing, and for three agonizing heartbeats Shane is certain he is going to open his eyes.

He doesn’t.

Shane exhales through his nose and lets his hands fall to Ilya’s chest. His palms are sweating. His thighs burn. He rises again, slower this time, and sinks down with more control—a long, deliberate glide that lights up every nerve in his body and drags a thin, high-pitched sound from between his clenched teeth.

Again.

He finds a rhythm. Slow, rolling, his hips describing tight circles at the bottom of each drop that press Ilya’s cock against his prostate and send pleasure crackling through him like static. The wet sounds of their joining fill the room—obscene, unmistakable—slick and spit and skin, and Shane can hear his own breathing, ragged and too-fast, and Ilya’s, deep and even, and the dissonance between them is doing something to his brain that he can’t name.

Shane braces his hands on Ilya’s stomach and leans back, changing the angle. The shift drives Ilya deeper and Shane’s back arches, the sweater slipping off one shoulder, exposing the pale, flushed skin of his collarbone. His mouth falls open. His eyes are glassy. He can see where they are connected—his pink, swollen hole stretched wide around the thick shaft, slick glossing the dark curls at Ilya’s base—and the sight rips something loose inside him.

“Da—” Shane’s mouth shapes the word before his brain can intercept it and he bites down on his lip so hard he tastes copper. No. He isn’t going to say that. He isn’t.

He bounces faster. The mattress springs groan beneath them and Shane’s cock slaps wetly against his belly with each rise and fall. Ilya is grinding up into him in his sleep now, his hips keeping a lazy counterpoint to Shane’s increasingly frantic pace. Every thrust punches the air from Shane’s lungs. He can feel the knot forming at Ilya’s base—thicker, firmer, catching at his rim each time he drops down.

“Nn—nnh—” Shane’s head falls forward, chin to chest, his damp hair sticking to his forehead. The sweater is barely hanging on, pooled around his elbows, and he is exposed from throat to thigh—flushed pink and sheened with sweat and trembling with every breath. His hole is making sounds he’s never heard before, wet and sucking and greedy, and he can feel himself tightening, the pleasure building into something massive and inescapable.

“Da— daddy—”

It slips out on a moan, quiet and broken, and Shane’s face goes crimson. He shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut, but his rhythm doesn’t falter—can’t falter—his body has seized the reins completely and his mind is just a passenger now, along for the devastating ride.

“Daddy, daddy, daddy—”

Each repetition comes easier, comes louder, comes more shattered than the last. Shane is bouncing hard enough that the headboard taps the wall, his thighs burning, his calves cramping inside his socks, and he can’t stop saying it, the word pouring out of him like a confession he’s been holding for years.

“Daddy, s’good, oh f-fuck, daddy, please—”

He doesn’t know what he is begging for. He doesn’t need to know. His body knows. The knot is catching harder now—pulling at his rim, stretching him obscenely wide before popping free with each upstroke. Shane sobs openly, tears streaming down his cheeks, and slams his hips down.

The knot catches. Holds. Swells.

Shane comes with a wail he can’t muffle in time—his cock pulsing untouched, painting white stripes up the inside of the sweater and across Ilya’s stomach, his hole clamping down in rhythmic spasms around the knot locked inside him. The pressure triggers Ilya’s release in turn; Shane feels the first pulse of heat flood him and his vision whites out, his body going rigid, every muscle drawn taut as a bowstring.

Ilya groans—a deep, rumbling sound from somewhere far below consciousness—and his hips jerk twice, three times, pumping Shane full while his hands remain slack at his sides.

Shane collapses forward onto Ilya’s chest.

He lies there, shaking, his cheek pressed to his foster father’s heartbeat, the sweater twisted around his torso, his socks slipping on the damp sheets. He can feel Ilya’s cum inside him—hot and thick and so much,filling him to aching—and his omega is purring so loudly he can feel it in his teeth.

Minutes pass. Shane listens to Ilya breathe. He feels the knot pulse inside him with each weakening jet and he presses his palm to his lower stomach, feeling the faintest swell beneath his skin.

I’m so fucked, Shane thinks, with no heat behind it. Just fact.

When the knot finally softens enough to slip free, the gush that follows makes Shane hiss through his teeth. He eases himself off Ilya’s body with excruciating care, pausing every time Ilya shifts or exhales differently, until he is kneeling beside him on the mattress.

The evidence is damning. Slick and cum smeared across Ilya’s hips and softening cock, drying on his stomach where Shane has come. Shane grabs the damp cloth from the nightstand—Ilya always leaves one there after his post-job showers—and cleans him up with hands that won’t stop trembling.

He pulls Ilya’s briefs back up. Tugs the sheet over his legs. Stands there for a long moment, watching Ilya sleep.

Then Shane peels off the ruined sweater, buries it at the bottom of the hamper, and takes a shower so hot it scalds.

In the morning, Ilya is leaning against the kitchen counter with a cup of black coffee when Shane shuffles in. Shane keeps his eyes on the floor, acutely aware of the ache between his legs, of the way he is walking slightly differently, of the bite mark he’s left on his own lip.

“You look like shit,” Ilya says, his accent thick and raspy with hangover. He takes a sip of coffee. “Bad sleep?”

Shane pours himself a glass of orange juice with steady hands. “Something like that.”

Ilya grunts. He is quiet for a moment, then: “Hm. Weird. Had best dream I’ve had in months.”

Shane chokes on the juice so hard he feels like his lungs are about to give out.

Two weeks.

Two weeks of Shane lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, replaying every moment in excruciating detail. The stretch. The fullness. The way Ilya's knot had locked them together like they were made for each other.

Two weeks of sitting across from his foster father at breakfast, making small talk about classes and groceries and whether the neighbors are too loud, while his hole clenched around phantom sensations.

Two weeks of jerking off in the shower with three fingers stuffed inside himself, trying to recreate even a fraction of how it felt to be split open on Ilya's cock.

It wasn't enough. Nothing was enough.

Shane had started watching Ilya with new eyes. Tracking his movements around their small apartment. Cataloguing the flex of muscle when he cleaned his guns, the way his forearms corded when he reached for something on a high shelf, the casual sprawl of his legs when he sat on the couch.

Every detail fed the hunger growing inside Shane. Every accidental brush of contact sent sparks racing across his skin.

And then, finally—finally—Ilya comes home smelling like vodka.

Shane is curled up on the couch with a textbook when he hears the key in the lock. It's past midnight. Ilya pushes through the door with a grunt, one hand pressed to his side, the other clutching a half-empty bottle.

"Bad job?" Shane asks carefully.

Ilya grunts again. He kicks off his boots and makes his way toward the bedroom, pausing only to take a long pull from the bottle. Shane watches the column of his throat work as he swallows, and heat pools low in his belly.

"Need to sleep," Ilya mutters. His accent is thick, words slurring at the edges. "Tomorrow is better."

Shane waits.

He waits until he hears the creak of bedsprings, until Ilya's breathing evens out into the slow rhythm of unconsciousness. He waits until his own heartbeat has settled into something that won't give him away.

Then he moves.

This time is different. This time Shane knows exactly what he's doing.

He finds Ilya sprawled face-up on the bed, still fully clothed. The bottle is on the nightstand, now empty. Shane takes a moment to just look—at the rise and fall of that broad chest, at the way Ilya's lashes fan dark against his cheekbones, at the slight furrow between his brows that never quite smooths out, even in sleep.

Mine, his omega whispers. Our alpha. Ours.

Shane's hands don't shake this time when he reaches for Ilya's belt.

He undresses his foster father with methodical efficiency, peeling away layers of blood-spattered clothing until Ilya is bare beneath him. There's a fresh wound on his ribs—a knife, maybe, already scabbed over—and bruises blooming purple across his hip. Shane should get the first aid kit.

Instead, he strips off his own clothes and straddles Ilya's thighs.

He's already wet. He's been wet since he heard Ilya's key in the lock, since he smelled the vodka, since he realized tonight was going to be the night. His body knows what's coming now, and it's been preparing for hours.

"Daddy," Shane breathes. The word tastes like honey and poison on his tongue. "Missed you so much."

He wraps his hand around Ilya's cock—soft and heavy, resting against his thigh—and strokes slowly. Blood fills the length in increments, hardening against Shane's palm, and a low groan rumbles in Ilya's chest.

"That's it." Shane's voice is barely a whisper. "Get hard for me. Gonna take such good care of you..."

By the time Ilya is fully erect, Shane is dripping onto the sheets, slick coating his thighs and perfuming the air with the scent of aroused omega. He rises onto his knees and positions himself, notching the blunt head of Ilya's cock against his entrance.

This time, he savors it.

Shane sinks down inch by agonizing inch, feeling every ridge and vein as they drag against his walls. The stretch is still intense—will probably always be intense, Ilya is just so fucking big—but his body remembers now. His body craves this.

"Hhhnnnh—" Shane's head falls back as he bottoms out, hips flush to Ilya's. "Oh god, daddy, you feel—you feel so—"

He can't finish the sentence. Words dissolve into whimpers as he grinds down, chasing the angle that made him see stars last time.

There.

There.

Shane rolls his hips in slow, deliberate circles, pressing Ilya's cock against that spot inside him over and over. Pleasure builds in waves, cresting and receding, never quite enough to tip him over. He keeps himself on the edge deliberately, drawing it out, making it last.

"Daddy," he babbles. "Daddy, daddy, daddy—been thinking about this—couldn't stop thinking about—wanted you so bad, wanted your cock, your knot—"

Ilya's hips twitch. Even unconscious, his body responds, fucking up into Shane in short, instinctive thrusts. Shane braces his hands on Ilya's chest and lets himself be used, matching the rhythm, taking everything his alpha gives him.

The wet sounds are obscene. Shane can hear himself—the slap of skin, the squelch of slick, the breathless moans he can't quite suppress. If anyone walked by their door right now, they'd know exactly what was happening. The thought should terrify him.

It doesn't.

Shane picks up the pace, bouncing faster, taking Ilya deeper. The knot is starting to swell, catching on his rim with every stroke, and Shane chases it with desperate hunger.

"Knot me," he gasps. "Please, daddy, wanna be—wanna be yours, wanna feel you fill me up—"

He drops his weight on the next downstroke, forcing the knot past his resistance.

"AAAHH—!"

Shane's vision whites out. The knot locks inside him with an almost audible pop, stretching him obscenely wide, and Ilya's hips jerk as he comes. Shane can feel it—the hot rush of seed flooding his channel, painting his insides, filling him until he feels ready to burst.

His own orgasm hits a second later. Shane comes with a sob, cock jerking between them, hole clamping down on the knot like it never wants to let go.

For a long moment, Shane just breathes.

He's trembling all over, aftershocks rippling through him, and his omega is purring so loudly he's surprised Ilya can't hear it. He slumps forward until his forehead rests against Ilya's collarbone, close enough to feel each exhale against his hair.

"Love you," Shane whispers. He's not even sure if he means it, or if it's just the hormones talking. "Love you so much, daddy."

Ilya sleeps on.

The morning after follows the same pattern as before. Shane cleans up, showers, pretends to be asleep on the couch when Ilya stumbles out of bed.

But this time, Ilya pauses in the kitchen doorway.

"Shane."

Shane looks up from his phone, careful to keep his expression neutral. "Yeah?"

Ilya is frowning. Not angry-frowning, but confused-frowning, like he's trying to piece together a puzzle with missing edges.

"These dreams I am having." Ilya sits heavily at the table, still staring at Shane. "They are very... specific."

Shane's blood runs cold. "Specific how?"

"Is always same thing. Someone is—" Ilya cuts himself off, shaking his head. "Is nothing. Doesn't matter."

But his eyes linger on Shane for a beat too long before he looks away.

Shane should stop.

He knows he should stop. Each morning after brings Ilya's gaze a little sharper, his silences a little longer. Whatever he's dreaming about, it's bleeding into his waking hours—Shane can see it in the way Ilya watches him now, like he's searching for something he can't quite name.

Shane should stop, but his omega has other ideas.

It's been ten days since the second time. Shane has been counting. He's been watching Ilya the way Ilya watches him, waiting for the telltale signs—the tension in his shoulders that means a job is coming, the clench of his jaw that means he'll need to drink afterward.

Tonight, both signs are present.

Ilya comes home looking like death warmed over. His shirt is soaked through with blood—not all of it his own—and there's a wild look in his eyes that Shane has only seen a handful of times before.

Bad job, Shane thinks. Really bad.

He should ask what happened. He should help Ilya to the bathroom, clean his wounds, make sure he eats something before passing out.

Instead, he waits.

Ilya drinks half a bottle of vodka before he even takes off his boots. By the time he makes it to the bedroom, he's swaying on his feet, barely conscious enough to collapse onto the mattress.

Shane gives it thirty minutes. Then forty. Then an hour, just to be safe.

By the time he creeps into the bedroom, Ilya is dead to the world.

This time, Shane doesn't bother undressing him first. He just shoves Ilya's blood-stained pants down far enough to free his cock, already half-hard from whatever dream is filtering through his unconscious mind. Shane strips himself quickly, efficiently, and climbs onto the bed.

He's too wound up for foreplay. Too desperate. He needs it now.

Shane impales himself in one smooth motion, swallowing Ilya's entire length in a single stroke. The burn rips a scream from his throat—too loud, way too loud—and he claps both hands over his mouth, freezing in place.

Ilya stirs.

Shane's heart stops. He watches, paralyzed, as Ilya's brows furrow and his head turns on the pillow. A low grumble escapes his lips—something in Russian, slurred and incomprehensible.

Wake up, Shane thinks wildly. Don't wake up. Please don't wake up please please please—

Ilya settles.

Shane releases a shaky breath. His legs are trembling, his hole fluttering around the intrusion, and he knows he should stop. Ilya almost woke up. That was too close. He should pull off, clean up, pretend this never happened.

Instead, Shane starts to move.

He rides Ilya harder than he ever has before, chasing his pleasure with reckless abandon. The bed creaks beneath them—loud, rhythmic, damning—and Shane can't bring himself to care. He's too far gone, too desperate, too hungry for his alpha's knot.

"Daddy—daddy—daddy—" The word falls from his lips like a prayer, like a plea, like the only thing keeping him tethered to reality. "Need you, need your cock, need—ah—need you to fill me up, please, please—"

Ilya groans. His hands twitch at his sides—reaching, grasping—and Shane wonders what he's dreaming about. If it's this. If somewhere in the vodka-soaked depths of his mind, Ilya knows exactly whose hole is milking his cock.

The thought makes Shane clench, and he grinds down harder, faster, chasing the edge.

"Gonna come," he gasps. "Gonna come on your cock, daddy, gonna—hnngh—"

The knot catches on his rim. Shane bears down viciously, and it pops inside with a wet, obscene sound. He comes instantly, untouched, painting Ilya's ruined shirt with streaks of white.

But something is different this time.

As Shane slumps forward, trembling through his aftershocks, Ilya's hand moves. It settles on Shane's hip—heavy, possessive, deliberate—and squeezes.

Shane freezes.

He stares at Ilya's face, heart pounding, searching for any sign of consciousness. But Ilya's eyes are still closed, his breathing still slow and even. The hand on Shane's hip is slack now, just resting there, like it moved on pure instinct.

He's still asleep, Shane tells himself. It doesn't mean anything.

But when he finally pulls off—when the knot deflates enough to let him go—Shane catches himself pressing a kiss to Ilya's knuckles before he climbs out of bed.

Morning brings another interrogation.

Shane is making coffee when Ilya appears in the kitchen doorway, shirtless and scowling. His eyes are bloodshot, his hair a mess, but there's something sharp in his gaze that wasn't there before.

"You were in my room last night."

It's not a question.

Shane's hands don't shake as he pours the coffee. Years of practice, suppressing every reaction Ilya might read as weakness. "You came home covered in blood. I wanted to make sure you didn't die in your sleep."

"Mmm." Ilya takes the mug Shane offers, but he doesn't drink. He just watches. "And that is all you did?"

Shane meets his eyes. "What else would I do?"

The silence stretches between them, taut as a wire. Shane's omega is whimpering, desperate to submit, to confess, to beg for forgiveness. Shane tells it to shut the fuck up.

Finally, Ilya looks away.

"Is nothing," he mutters. "These dreams are making me crazy."

Shane releases a breath he didn't realize he was holding. "Maybe you should drink less."

Ilya snorts. "You are sounding like a wife again."

I could be, Shane thinks. If you let me. If you wanted me.

But he doesn't say that. He just grabs his backpack and heads for the door, same as always.

"I have class. There's leftover borscht in the fridge."

He's halfway down the hall when Ilya calls after him.

"Shane."

Shane pauses. Doesn't turn around.

"These dreams I am having." Ilya's voice is rough, almost hesitant. "When I wake up... I can smell you. On my skin. In my bed."

Shane's heart stops.

"You're probably just smelling my laundry on the sheets," he says, and his voice doesn't waver. "We share a washing machine."

He doesn't wait for a response. He can't.

But as he walks to class, all Shane can think about is the look in Ilya's eyes.

And how, next time, he might not be able to explain it away.

Ilya is not a stupid man.

Stupid men don't survive twenty years in his line of work. Stupid men don't notice the inconsistencies, the small details that don't quite line up—the way the sheets smell different in the morning, the faint ache in muscles he didn't use the night before, the bruises on his hips that look suspiciously like fingerprints too small to be his own.

Stupid men don't wake up smelling like mint and candied oranges when they live with an omega who swears he uses scent neutralizers.

Ilya has been piecing it together for weeks.

The dreams were the first clue. Vivid, intense, achingly specific—tight wet heat swallowing him whole, a body moving above him, the echo of a voice whispering daddy like it was the only word it knew. He'd written them off at first. Stress. Loneliness. Too much vodka and not enough company.

But then he started noticing other things.

The way Shane wouldn't quite meet his eyes at breakfast. The way Shane's scent spiked whenever Ilya came home drunk. The way Shane flinched when Ilya mentioned the dreams—not with confusion, but with guilt.

And two nights ago, when Ilya had pressed his nose to the sheets after Shane left for class, he'd found it. Underneath the detergent, underneath his own stale sweat—the unmistakable, honeyed musk of omega slick.

Shane's slick.

So tonight, Ilya drinks.

Or rather, he pretends to.

He pours himself a glass of vodka when he gets home, making sure Shane sees the bottle. He staggers to the bedroom with exaggerated clumsiness, strips down to nothing, and collapses on the bed. He even leaves the empty glass on the nightstand for effect.

The vodka goes down the bathroom sink.

Ilya lies in the dark with his eyes closed, breathing slow and even, and waits.

It takes Shane exactly forty-seven minutes.

Ilya hears the soft pad of bare feet on carpet, the creak of the door hinges, the barely perceptible hitch in Shane's breathing when he sees Ilya on the bed. The scent reaches him a moment later—sweet and sharp and unmistakable, the smell of an omega in the grip of arousal so intense it borders on heat.

Bozhe moy.

Ilya keeps his breathing steady. Keeps his eyes closed. Keeps his body limp and relaxed even as his pulse kicks into overdrive, even as his cock stirs against his thigh at the proximity of omega-want-need-mine.

Shane moves closer. Ilya can feel the mattress dip as he kneels on the edge, can hear the rustle of clothing being removed. A shirt hitting the floor. The whisper of fabric sliding down thighs. Then nothing—just the sound of Shane's breathing, rapid and shallow, and the growing scent of slick perfuming the air between them.

Something warm and tentative brushes Ilya's cock.

Shane's fingers.

They curl around him—gentle, almost reverent—and begin to stroke. Ilya's jaw clenches behind closed lips. The touch is maddening, feather-light and deliberate, coaxing blood to rush southward until he's thickening against Shane's palm.

"There you go," Shane whispers. His voice is barely audible, husky and wrecked already, and the sound of it sends a bolt of heat straight through Ilya's core. "Get hard for me, daddy. That's it."

Fuck.

Ilya's cock surges to full hardness so fast it almost hurts. Shane makes a soft noise—pleased, hungry—and shifts his grip, thumb swiping through the bead of precum gathering at the tip.

Then Shane is moving, climbing over him, and Ilya can feel the wet heat of his foster son's thighs bracketing his hips. Slick drips onto his stomach—warm, copious, evidence of how badly Shane wants this. How badly he's always wanted this.

The blunt pressure of Ilya's cockhead nudging against Shane's entrance nearly breaks his composure. He has to force himself not to grab Shane's hips and slam him down, not to flip them over and bury himself to the root in one savage thrust.

Not yet. Wait.

Shane sinks down.

"Nnnnhh—oh fuck—"

The sound Shane makes is pornographic. A broken, keening whine that vibrates through Ilya's chest as Shane takes him inch by inch. Ilya can feel everything—the quiver of overstretched muscle, the clutch and flutter of Shane's walls as they struggle to accommodate his girth, the gush of fresh slick easing the way.

Shane bottoms out with a gasp, his full weight settling on Ilya's hips.

"Daddy," Shane breathes. "Oh god, daddy—"

He starts to move. Slow at first—tentative rolls of his hips, grinding Ilya's cock against his insides like he's searching for something. When he finds it, his whole body jerks.

"Ah—! Right there, there—daddy, daddy, daddy—"

The babbling starts, and it's the filthiest thing Ilya has ever heard. Shane is riding him with increasing desperation, bouncing on his cock, the wet slap of skin against skin filling the room. Every downstroke punches another broken daddy from his lips, the word dissolving into whimpers and moans.

"Daddy—feels so good—hhhnnh—can't stop, can't ever stop—need your cock, need it so bad—daddy, daddy, daddy—"

Ilya opens his eyes.

Shane doesn't notice at first. His head is thrown back, throat bared, eyes squeezed shut as he fucks himself on Ilya's cock with shameless abandon. His own cock bobs between them—flushed dark, dripping, untouched. Every inch of his skin is flushed pink, glistening with sweat, and the scent of his slick is so thick Ilya can taste it on every inhale.

He's gorgeous.

Ilya watches his foster son ride him for a long, indulgent moment. Watches the way Shane's thighs flex and tremble with each lift of his hips, the way his lips part around those desperate little sounds, the way his hole stretches obscenely around Ilya's shaft every time he pulls up.

Then Ilya reaches up and wraps both hands around Shane's hips.

Shane's eyes fly open.

For a frozen second, they stare at each other. Shane's pupils are blown so wide his eyes look black, and Ilya can see the exact moment comprehension hits—the flash of terror, the surge of shame, the desperate scramble to pull away.

"I—Ilya, I can—this isn't—"

"How many times?"

Shane's mouth snaps shut. His whole body is trembling, still impaled on Ilya's cock, and Ilya can feel the way his walls clench with panic.

"How many times, Shane?"

Shane's chin quivers. "T-Three. This is—this is the fourth."

"Four times," Ilya repeats. His grip tightens on Shane's hips. "Four times you have been riding my cock while I sleep. Four times you have used your daddy's body to get off like a desperate little whore."

Shane flinches. Tears spill over his lashes, tracking down his flushed cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I know it's—I know I'm fucked up, I know—"

"Did I say you could stop?"

Shane blinks. The tears keep falling, but confusion replaces the fear in his eyes. "Wh-what?"

Ilya rolls his hips upward—a single, devastating thrust that buries him to the hilt. Shane's mouth falls open in a silent scream, his back arching like a bow.

"I said," Ilya growls, "did I say you could stop."

Understanding dawns. Shane's expression shifts from terrified to stunned to something raw and trembling and hopeful, and Ilya watches every flicker of it with predatory attention.

"You—you want—"

"What I want," Ilya says, pulling Shane down by the hips and grinding up into him, "is for my omega to finish what he started. You wanted daddy's cock so badly you took it while I slept? Хорошо. Now you are going to take it while I am awake."

A sob breaks from Shane's chest—not from sadness, but from relief. His whole body sags, the tension draining from him, and when he looks at Ilya his eyes are swimming with something dangerously close to worship.

"Ride me," Ilya commands. "Show daddy how you do it."

Shane obeys.

He plants his hands on Ilya's chest for leverage and lifts his hips, pulling almost all the way off before dropping back down. The sound it makes is obscene—a wet, sucking squelch that reverberates through the quiet room.

"Aahh—! Daddy—"

"That's it. Good boy." Ilya's voice is a low rasp, barely controlled, and he can see the way the praise hits Shane like a physical blow. Shane's cock jumps, leaking a thick string of precum onto Ilya's stomach, and his rhythm falters.

"You like that?" Ilya murmurs. He drags his thumbs along the crease of Shane's hips, feeling the muscles quiver. "You like when daddy tells you you're being good?"

"Y-yes—" Shane's voice cracks. He's biting his lip so hard the flesh turns white, and his eyes are starting to lose focus, drifting and crossing as Ilya rocks up into him. "Please—please keep—"

"Keep what? Use your words, sweetheart."

"Keep telling me," Shane gasps. He drops down hard, taking Ilya to the root, and a high, reedy moan spills from behind his bitten lip. His eyes cross fully, lashes fluttering. "Tell me I'm good, tell me I'm—mmmnh—tell me I'm yours—"

"You are mine." Ilya thrusts upward, punctuating each word. "You have always been mine. Every time you took my cock while I slept, every time you made yourself come on daddy's knot—you were mine. My omega. мой."

"Yours," Shane sobs. "Yours, daddy, all yours, always—"

He's riding Ilya with abandon now, hips snapping in a frantic rhythm, slick squelching with every stroke. The bed is creaking beneath them—loud, rhythmic, damning—and neither of them cares. Shane's cock bounces between his thighs, flushed and neglected, dripping a steady stream onto Ilya's abs.

Ilya lets him have it for a while longer—lets Shane set the pace, watches the way his foster son's face contorts with pleasure, catalogues every gasp and whimper and broken daddy that falls from those swollen lips.

Then he flips them.

Shane yelps as Ilya surges upward, catching him around the waist and bearing him down onto the mattress in one fluid motion. The shift in position drives Ilya's cock even deeper, and Shane's yelp dissolves into a wail that Ilya swallows with his mouth.

The kiss is bruising, claiming—all teeth and tongue and the sharp taste of desperation. Shane melts into it, hands scrabbling at Ilya's shoulders, legs wrapping around his waist. When Ilya pulls back, Shane chases him, whimpering at the loss.

"Hands," Ilya orders.

Shane's brow furrows in confusion. Ilya doesn't wait for comprehension—he grabs both of Shane's wrists and pins them together above his head, holding them in one large hand. Shane's back arches off the bed at the restraint, and something primal and hungry flares in his eyes.

"Oh fuck—"

"Look at me."

Shane's gaze locks onto his. Ilya pulls his hips back until only the tip remains inside, feeling Shane's hole flutter and clench, trying to pull him back in.

"You have been such a needy little slut, sweetheart." Ilya's voice is low, almost conversational, at odds with the coiled tension in every muscle. "Sneaking into daddy's bed. Stuffing yourself full of cock you didn't ask for. Coming on my knot three times without permission."

"I'm sorry—I'm sorry, daddy, I couldn't help it, I needed—"

Ilya slams home.

Shane screams. His back bows off the mattress, wrists straining against Ilya's grip, and Ilya doesn't give him time to recover. He pulls back and drives in again—and again—and again—setting a pace so relentless the headboard cracks against the wall with every thrust.

"AAAHH—! AH—AH—AH—DADDY—"

"This is what you wanted, da?" Ilya grunts. His hips piston forward, each stroke bottoming out, cock hammering the spot inside Shane that makes his eyes roll and his legs shake. "Wanted daddy to fuck you like this? Wanted to get caught?"

"Yes—YES—wanted you to—hhnnngh—wanted you to know—to know I'm—"

"You are what?"

"Y-yours—" Shane is barely coherent now. His eyes have rolled back, lashes fluttering, and his tongue slides past his parted lips as his jaw goes slack. Cockdrunk. Completely, utterly wrecked. Every brutal thrust punches a high, broken moan from his chest, and his cock is leaking a steady stream of precum onto his stomach.

"Good boy," Ilya breathes. "Such a perfect omega. Taking daddy's cock so well. So tight, baby—тебе так хорошо, правда?"

Shane's only response is a garbled whine. His wrists twist in Ilya's grip, not trying to escape, just needingsomething to hold onto. Tears streak from the corners of his unseeing eyes, and his tongue lolls as Ilya fucks him dumb.

Ilya leans down, pressing his lips to Shane's jaw, his throat, the spot just below his ear that makes Shane keen and buck beneath him. He can smell the slick—God, it's everywhere, soaking the sheets beneath them, coating Ilya's cock and thighs—and it's the sweetest thing he's ever tasted when he drags his tongue over Shane's scent gland.

"DADDY—!" Shane convulses, his entire body seizing. His hole clenches so tight Ilya sees stars. "Oh god oh god oh god—please, please don't stop, don't ever stop—"

"Not going to stop," Ilya growls against his skin. "Not ever. You are mine now. You understand? No more sneaking. No more hiding."

He releases Shane's wrists. Shane's hands immediately fly to his shoulders, nails digging into muscle, clinging to him like he's the only solid thing in a spinning world. Ilya hooks his arms under Shane's knees and folds him nearly in half, the new angle letting him drive impossibly deeper.

"NNNNHH—! Ah—ahhhh—too deep, daddy, it's so—so deep—"

"You can take it." Ilya presses his forehead to Shane's. "You've taken it before. Three times, remember? My greedy little omega."

"Your omega," Shane babbles. "Your greedy—ah—your omega, daddy, only yours—"

"Damn right."

Ilya fucks him with long, devastating strokes, each one dragging the full length of his cock against Shane's prostate before slamming back in to the root. Shane is a mess beneath him—crying, moaning, eyes crossed and unfocused, babbling a constant stream of daddy daddy daddy that goes straight to Ilya's cock.

"So beautiful like this," Ilya murmurs, and he means it. Shane's flush has spread down his chest, turning his pale skin rosy, and his lips are swollen and bitten raw. He looks thoroughly debauched—claimed and used and loved in the most primal way possible. "My beautiful boy. мой красивый мальчик."

"Daddy—" Shane's voice breaks. His legs are trembling violently, heels digging into the small of Ilya's back. "Daddy, I need—I need your knot, please—"

"Yeah?" Ilya rolls his hips in a filthy grind that makes Shane's eyes flutter. "You want daddy to knot you? Want me to fill you up? Breed this pretty little hole?"

"Please please please—" Shane is crying openly now, face wet with tears and spit, every ounce of composure shattered. "Want it—want your cum inside me—want to be full of you—please, daddy, I'll be so good, I'll be so good—"

"You are already so good, baby." Ilya's knot is swelling, catching on Shane's rim with every thrust, and the drag of it makes them both groan. "Best omega I've ever had. So tight. So wet. So fucking perfect for daddy."

"Mmmmnh—mmmnhhh—" Shane's head thrashes on the pillow. His cock is twitching between them, angry red and leaking, and Ilya can tell he's right on the edge. "Gonna—I'm gonna come, daddy, I can't—I can't hold—"

"Then come." Ilya's voice drops to a snarl. He snaps his hips forward, forcing his knot past Shane's resistance, and the pop of it locking inside wrenches a scream from both of them. "Come for daddy. Now."

Shane shatters.

His whole body seizes, hole clamping down on Ilya's knot like a vice. His cock erupts between them—thick ropes of cum painting his chest, his chin, the underside of his jaw. His mouth opens in a silent scream, eyes rolled so far back only the whites show, and his walls ripple and pulse around Ilya's knot in waves.

The sensation drags Ilya over the edge with him. His vision whites out as his orgasm tears through him, cum flooding Shane's channel in hot, heavy bursts. He can feel himself emptying into his omega, filling him, claiming him, and Shane moans brokenly at each pulse.

"Daddy—oh—oh god—can feel it—so much—so warm—"

Ilya drops his forehead to Shane's shoulder and groans, hips still twitching, knot pulsing. Shane's hands come up to cradle the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair, holding him close as they ride out the aftershocks.

For a long time, the only sound is their ragged breathing.

Shane is the first to speak.

"Are you mad?"

His voice is small, uncertain, so different from the desperate, cock-drunk creature that was screaming daddy thirty seconds ago. Ilya lifts his head and looks at his foster son—flushed, tear-streaked, debauched, still pinned beneath him with a knot locked inside his body.

"Am I mad," Ilya repeats flatly.

Shane winces. "I know it was—I know I shouldn't have—"

"You fucked yourself on my cock three times while I was unconscious."

"...Yes."

"You rode me like a whore and called me daddy."

"...Also yes."

"And you did not think to simply ask?"

Shane blinks. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. "I—what?"

"You think I didn't know?" Ilya shifts, and the motion tugs on his knot. Shane gasps, fingers tightening in his hair. "You think I didn't notice the way you smell when I come home? The way you look at me? I have known for a long time what my omega wants."

"How—how long?"

"Long enough."

"Then why didn't you—"

"Because I am your foster father." Ilya's expression softens—just barely, just enough. "Because I wanted to be sure it was what you wanted. Not just your omega. You."

Shane stares at him. Fresh tears well in his eyes, and this time they have nothing to do with pleasure.

"It's what I want," Shane whispers. "It's always been what I want."

Ilya kisses him. Slow, this time—deep and thorough and achingly tender, the kind of kiss that makes promises neither of them are ready to say out loud. Shane melts into it with a sound that's half sigh, half sob, and his legs tighten around Ilya's waist.

When they break apart, Ilya brushes a strand of sweat-damp hair from Shane's forehead.

"Then you ask next time." His thumb traces the line of Shane's jaw. "No more sneaking. You want daddy's cock, you come to me. Understand?"

Shane nods. A smile pulls at his wrecked lips—trembling, fragile, radiant. "Yes, daddy."

"Good boy."

Another pulse of warmth floods Shane's belly as the knot gives a final throb. Shane shivers and presses closer, tucking his face into the crook of Ilya's neck.

"Daddy?"

"Mm."

"I'm going to want it again in about twenty minutes."

Ilya laughs—a real laugh, low and rough and startled out of him—and rolls them onto their sides, keeping Shane tucked against his chest. The knot holds them close, locked together, and Ilya presses his lips to Shane's damp hair.

"Then I will be ready in twenty minutes."