The Bully Alpha's Fake Alpha Mate (BL)-Chapter 74: MAKE LOVE TO ME

REED

I stared at Asher’s message for a full minute before my brain processed what I was reading.

I miss you. My body yearns for you. I want you to fuck me and make me forget everything your father said about us. Make me have hope that you wouldn’t leave. So please, just for today, make love to me. Not sex. Not the rough type. But the gentle type. I want to really feel you. I want your emotions to flow through me as we make love.

My thumb hovered over the screen. This was the last thing I’d expected after the way Asher had walked out of my room last night—after I’d told him about my father’s ultimatum and watched something die in his eyes—I’d assumed he’d never want to see me again and I wouldn’t have blamed him.

How could I? I’d basically told him I had to choose between him and my entire future. That my father would destroy him if I didn’t break the bond.

What was Asher supposed to do with that information except protect himself?

My fingers moved before my brain caught up.

Me: Tonight. My room. 10pm.

I hit send and immediately regretted it.

Why had Asher asked for this? Why now, after everything?

The questions spiraled through my head as I got up and started pacing.

What kind of life could I give Asher if I chose him? I’d lose the pack, lose my title and lose everything I’d worked for my entire life. I’d have nothing to offer him except a hardened heart and a future full of uncertainty.

Would Asher even want someone like that? Someone who’d spent months making his life hell? Someone too weak to stand up to his own father? And even if by some miracle Asher did want me—how could I ask him to give up everything for someone as fucked up as I was?

I couldn’t sleep

.

I lay in bed staring at the ceiling until 4 AM. Then I gave up and went running. Fifteen laps around campus in the dark. My lungs burning, and my legs screaming. Trying to outrun thoughts that wouldn’t leave me alone.

By the time I finished, the sun was coming up and I still had no answers. Just Asher’s message burned into my brain.

Make love to me.

Not fuck. Not sex. Love.

Asher had never asked for that before. I tried to find him all day between classes. In the cafeteria, the library and everywhere I thought he might be but Asher was avoiding me.

For the first time since this whole thing started, Asher was actually hiding from me successfully and it hurt more than it should have.

Why now? Why was Asher avoiding me now when he hadn’t avoided me all those times I’d made his life miserable? When I’d humiliated him and blackmailed him and used him?

What game was he playing?

I finally spotted him leaving Chemistry. I tried to catch up to him.

"Asher, wait—"

But by the time I made it to the hallway, he was gone. Like he’d never been there at all.

It made something in my chest ache.

The bond was quiet. Asher was blocking me out somehow. Keeping his emotions carefully shielded so I couldn’t feel what he was feeling and that hurt worse than anything.

At 9:55 PM, I was pacing my room. My hands were shaking,.my heart was pounding. The bond was singing with anticipation and dread in equal measure.

At exactly 10 PM, there was a knock on my door. I opened it before Asher could knock twice.

He stood there in the hallway, his eyes guarded, his expression carefully blank.

"Why are you avoiding me?" The question came out harsher than I meant it to.

Asher didn’t answer, he just stepped forward and kissed me.

The kiss caught me completely off guard. I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him back gently.

"Asher, what’s wrong? Why are you behaving this way?"

Asher smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

"I’m not avoiding you," Asher said. "I’ve just been too horny to face you. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to control myself."

The words should have been reassuring. But something about them felt wrong and rehearsed.

"I don’t believe you," I said.

Asher walked closer, took my hand and pressed it against the front of his jeans where he was hard.

"Do you believe me now?" Asher’s voice was low and challenging. "For the first time since we bonded, my body wants my mate without the heat forcing it. So are you going to make love to me like I asked? Or are you going to keep suspecting me?"

His hand stayed over mine. I could feel him through the denim. I could feel the bond humming with want that felt real even if the words felt fake.

"Either way," Asher continued, "I’m not going back to my room unsatisfied. So either you do it, or I’ll find another Alpha who will."

Every muscle in my body went rigid and rage flooded through me so fast it made my vision blur. I grabbed Asher and pulled him into a fierce kiss. All teeth and anger and possessiveness.

Then I pulled back just enough to growl against his mouth.

"Never say that again." My hands were shaking. "Never fucking say you’d let another Alpha touch you. Do you understand?"

Asher’s eyes were dark and unreadable. I pulled him back into another kiss. This time slower, and softer. Trying to pour everything I couldn’t say into the press of my mouth against his.

Asher kissed me back with a desperation that made my chest ache.

I walked him backward into my room and kicked the door closed. I kept kissing him while my hands found the hem of his shirt and pulled it over his head.

"I’m going to make love to you," I said against his skin. "The way you asked. Gentle and slow. I’m going to show you—"

I stopped and swallowed hard. What was I going to show him? That I cared? That he mattered? That choosing between him and my future was tearing me apart?

I couldn’t say any of that. So I just kissed him again and let my hands speak for me. I undressed him slowly. That was the first thing I promised myself. No rushing, no taking, just giving him exactly what he’d asked for.

I pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it somewhere behind me, then stood back just to look at him. The lamp on my desk threw warm light across his skin and I felt something tighten in my throat. I’d had Asher in my bed before—rough and urgent and driven by my rut and his heat but I’d never let myself just look at him like this. Like he was something I wanted to keep.

"Reed—"

"Shh." I pressed two fingers gently against his lips. "Let me."

I cupped his face in both hands and kissed him slowly, the way you kiss someone you’re terrified of losing. My thumbs traced his cheekbones and I felt him exhale shakily against my mouth.

I kissed his jaw, his throat and the curve of his shoulder. I worked my way down his chest with my lips, taking my time at every spot that made his breath hitch, marking each one like something precious and finite.

When I reached the waist of his jeans, I looked up at him. His eyes were already glassy, and his lips parted. He looked undone and I’d barely touched him.

I undid his jeans and drew them down carefully, along with his underwear, until he stood completely bare in front of me. I straightened up and he reached for the hem of my shirt without a word, tugged it over my head and let his hands flatten against my chest.

His palms were warm, his fingers pressed in slightly, like he was memorizing the feel of me. Neither of us said anything.

I walked him back to the bed and laid him down gently, then stripped out of the rest of my clothes and stretched out beside him. Not on top but beside just for a moment. My hand moved across his stomach in slow, unhurried strokes, feeling the way his muscles tensed and relaxed beneath my palm.

"Is this okay?" I asked quietly.

"Yes." His voice came out rough. "Don’t stop."

I kissed him again while my hand traveled lower, wrapping around his cock slowly, feeling him shudder against me. I stroked him with a measured, deliberate grip, watching his face instead of my hand. Watching every flicker of sensation move through him.

"Reed—" My name came out broken.

"I’ve got you," I said. "I’ve got you."

I worked him until he was trembling, until his hips were rocking helplessly into my fist and his fingers were twisted in my hair. Then I pulled back, reached for the nightstand, and took my time preparing him the way he deserved. Slow, careful pressure. Watching his face for discomfort, easing in one finger and then two, feeling him open around me while he pressed his face into my neck and breathed hard against my skin.

"Please," he finally whispered.

I positioned myself over him, settled my cock between his thighs, and met his eyes.

"Look at me," I said. "Keep looking at me."

I pushed my dick inside him slowly, inch by careful inch, and felt the breath leave my body at the feeling of him around me. Tight and warm and overwhelmingly intimate in a way none of the other times had ever been. Those times had been need and impulse and the heat driving us both. This was something else entirely.

When I was fully seated inside him, I stopped. Just held him there. His legs wrapped around my waist and his hands came up to grip my shoulders and we breathed together in the quiet.

"Reed—"

"I’ve got you," I whispered again. "I’ve got you, Asher."

I began to move.

Slowly and deeply. Each thrust was deliberate and unhurried, each withdrawal just as controlled, like I had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it. The headboard didn’t knock. The springs didn’t creak. There was just the soft rhythm of our bodies and the sound of Asher’s breathing going ragged against my ear.

Through the bond, I felt everything he was feeling.

Want, need and a desperate aching pleasure that mirrored my own and underneath all of it, running like a current beneath still water, something that felt unmistakably like grief.

"Look at me," I said again. My voice came out rougher than I intended. "Asher, look at me."

His eyes opened and found mine and what I saw there cracked something open in my chest.

Love, heartbreak and goodbye.

"Don’t," I whispered. "Whatever you’re thinking, don’t."

But Asher just pulled me down into a kiss and held on tighter. His ankles locked behind my back. His arms crossed around my shoulders, holding on like something was trying to take me from him.

I buried myself deeper and felt him gasp into my mouth.

We moved together like that. Slow and deep and completely undone. I pressed my forehead to his and kept my eyes open even when everything in me wanted to close them, because I needed to see him. I needed to keep him here, present, with me, and not already somewhere far away saying goodbye in his head.

"Stay with me," I murmured against his lips. I didn’t mean in my room. Asher’s fingers tightened in my hair.

The pleasure built between us like something inevitable. I felt it through the bond before I felt it in my own body—the way Asher’s whole frame began to tighten, the way his breath came in short, desperate pulls, the way he clenched hot and perfect around me.

"Reed—" His voice shattered on my name.

"I know," I breathed. "I know. Let go."

Asher came apart with a broken sound, spilling warm sperm between our bodies, his back arching off the mattress, his face turned into my shoulder and through the bond, his pleasure hit me like a wave—raw and overwhelming and devastating in its openness, every wall he’d built today crumbling in that single moment.

I followed seconds later, pressing deep and stilling completely, my face buried in the curve of his neck. I breathed him in through the whole of it. The smell of his skin. The warmth of him. The way his hands kept moving softly in my hair even as both of us came down.

I stayed inside him longer than I needed to. Neither of us moved to separate.

Afterwards, I held Asher close. My hand rubbed slow circles on his stomach. The bond was quiet, content and settled in a way it had never been before. This felt like home.

Asher in my arms. The smell of his skin. The weight of his body against mine.

This could be my home,.my future and everything I needed, that is if I was brave enough to choose it.

I pressed a kiss to Asher’s forehead. Pulled him even closer. Let my eyes start to drift closed.

Then Asher moved, he sat up quickly and pulled away from me.

"Asher?" I propped myself up on one elbow. "What’s wrong?"

Asher turned to face me. His expression was calm. Eerily calm. Like he’d made peace with something devastating.

"Let’s end this, Reed." Asher’s voice was steady. "Let me be the first to end this."

My blood went cold. "What?"

"I, Asher Scott, reject you, Reed Jackson, as my mate." The words came out formal, ritualistic and final. "And from today henceforth, nothing bonds us with each other."