#but consider...

Obi is heavy. Being a good half-head shorter at least-- and the most prone to trouble-- Shirayuki has never had the occasion to notice, but now that she’s the one responsible for fleeing the scene, it’s all she can think of. It’s a miracle they make it outside; one only achieved by his astounding ability to move under his own power even while hardly conscious. He leans on her, enough that her bones creak in her ear, but with her soft directions, he gets himself all the way out the door and down the stone steps before promptly collapsing on top of her.

Or well, not collapsing, more...becoming her coat. She can’t quite complain about it; there was certainly no time to stop off at the check on the way out. It is, however...distracting.

His musk rolls off of him in thick, heady waves, and oh, she understands why he hid it-- how could he not when even her own beta knees quiver at the scent? Even now she longs to wrap herself in it, to let woodsmoke and spice wash over her until it smothers her own. If an omega smelt him like this--

A soft growl breaks through the still air. Shirayuki’s shocked to find that it’s hers.

A footman lifts his head, alarm carefully concealed. “May I assist you, alpha?”

“No!”

It comes out much harsher than she means, but it’s hard enough to keep her cover normally, let alone while Obi has his nose pressed so tightly against her neck. It’s torturous how slowly he fills his lungs, and how quickly his breath scatters across her skin, sending shivers skittering down her spine.

“I mean, the carriage,” she tries again, embarrassingly breathless. “When is it coming?”

“Ah.” he squints out in the distance. “Just now, alpha.” His gaze lingers on the man plastered to her back. “Will you need help, ah...?”

“Um, no!” If an alpha in rut is trouble for her, the last thing she needs is an omega over here, making everything even more complicated. “He’s just...”

Inside, the servants had been drugged, docile; easy prey for alphas with particular tastes. But the men out here are bright-eyed and cogent, and-- and she can’t tell which is more unlikely: that these men would know of the goings-on inside and abandon their companions to it; or that they remained wholly obviously.

“...Drunk,” she settles on, lamely.

The footman nods, too knowing. “Of course, alpha. The lords who imbibe too much are often able to...ah...rally when it comes time to leave. Especially if they have--” he coughs, suddenly red-faced-- “ah...company.”

Shirayuki does not think he means that of friends, or even, graciously, a wife. Considering how...affectionately Obi is pressed to her, she can’t blame him for the assumption of their...affiliation. “I...see.”

He’s too busy pointedly not looking at her to see her flush. Instead he leans his head around the marble wolf guarding the stairs, staring down the darkened road.

When he gasps, it is with palpable relief. “Ah! It’s here. You carriage, alpha.”

She catches a glimpse of it, black lacquer shimmering in the night, and breathes easier.

“Good.” Obi insinuates his nose directly under her ear, driving up the octave of her ensuing, “Great!”

The footman still can’t bring himself to meet her eye; a boon, since she might otherwise have to explain the flush creeping up her neck, tenacious as any ivy. She idles, back settling into a subtle ache, a counterpoint to the one growing ever sharper between her legs. The carriage can’t be more than a moment away, the clip and clop of the horses’ hooves echoing ever closer, but still, Shirayuki shivers. If Obi were to rut, right here, right now--

Well, it wouldn’t matter how near the carriage came. The damage would already be done.

His fingers flex around her shoulders, dragging her close, his breath deepening until his mouth is practically pressed to her pulse--

And then the carriage draws up at their feet, unmarked and unknown. She squints up at the diver, trying to make out the features beneath his elegant tricorner, but it’s no good-- she had never taken a close look in the first place. The men who accompanied them were not from the palace or Lillias, but Oriold, sworn to Eisetsu himself, and she--

Well, she had been too busy to note them. The footman hurries to open the door, revealing the bleak, dark cab within, and oh, it would be so easy to arrange for two guests to leave and never be found again.

Shirayuki shies as they set the step in front of her. Obi would have remembered the driver’s face, his name-- and probably the names of all his children. But that does her no good when Obi--

Obi bolts upright, tearing himself from her side with a groan, and flings himself into the dim.

Shirayuki blinks. Well. That certainly makes the decision easy. She lifts her skirts, steeling herself with every step.

If only this ride promised to be so uneventful.

Obi is silent.

His musk hangs heavy in the air, rolling off of him in waves that ebb one moment and rage the next. Even to her beta nose, it’s pungent. It settles against her skin, pressing close as a lover, enveloping her, and yet--

There’s not one peep from him. Only a shadow, curled in on itself, pressed as far into the corner as a man his size can manage.

Shirayuki shifts in her own, the cushion beneath her creaking. Even with all her years in the pharmacy, her knowledge about-- about all this is theoretical, things she’s only read in treatise or, worse yet, taught only as emergency measures. An alpha’s rut simply does not happen in a civilized world, save behind closed doors, between two consenting parties. Or entirely by accident with a newly blooded omega, fresh in their first heat, in which case--

In which case, she knows at least four methods of incapacitation. But what she doesn’t understand...

Ah, well, the omega reaction is well-researched; a whole section of the university’s library is dedicated to treatises and refutations on that exact subject, like a collective argument held over hundreds of years. But a beta-- well, there’s no literature to explain why her skin has shrunk two times too small, or why her heart flutters in a breathless tattoo beneath her breast, or why with each breath, the heat between her thighs builds, threatening to drip right down her--

“We need to open a window.”

They’re hardly words, more like a groan given form, and Shirayuki startles. It’s hard to make out Obi’s form-- black hair and dress blacks makes a poor contrast against the dark of night-- but what she sees is turned away from her, every line tense, tortured.

“Please,” he manages, clearer.

Shirayuki blinks, mouth gaping as his plea settles between them, and-- ah, yes, a plea, meaning he’s asking her her to--

“Do you feel ill?” She’s all movement now, hands fluttering above her lap, unsure where to reach, whether she should call for the driver to stop. “Would you--? Should I--?”

“No.” It’s little more than a grunt, dislodged from deep in his chest. “I can...” He hesitates, breath rasping in the silence. “I can smell you.”

She crosses her legs, knee over knee, cheeks burning. “Oh! I--”

He laughs, and oh, that-- that’s not helping, the friction of her thighs and the caress of his voice-- “That’s not helping, Miss.”

The air leaves her in a huff. Short of stopping to wash all of-- of herself off herself, she can’t imagine what he thinks she can do. She isn’t the one with the alpha nose in this carriage. “Then tell me something that will!”

Silence falls between them, but it’s different this time. Not a lack meant to put a gulf between them, but a stillness, a hesitation. A moment before movement.

“Obi,” she sighs, and oh, it would be easier if it sounded more exasperated and less excited. “I want to-- to help. I can’t watch you suffer. Please.”

There’s too much pleading in her voice, too much whimper, and Obi--

Obi growls. Soft, a warning. “Don’t say that.”

Her mouth purses, annoyance spiking through the drone of her arousal. “Why? I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you--?”

“I want to take care of you,” he snaps, every word torn from the storm that brews in his chest. “That’s why.”

She stares, agape. “What does that have to do with--?”

“That’s what alphas like.” His voice rumbles from a register that makes her skin shiver, that makes staring at the floor beneath her a safer prospect than tracing his shadow in the dark. “Good alphas. We want to take care of our--” he swallows a word with an audible gulp-- “people.”

“Ah...” Her breath ebbs shallowly in her chest, hardly more controlled than a pant. “You want to...for me...?”

“I would do anything for you.”

She expects the words to be muffled, to be hesitant, a promise that he isn’t comfortable keeping, but instead-- instead her eyes snap up, and in the darkness, two gold coins stare back, unwavering.

“I would too.” It would be easier to speak if her heart wasn’t fluttering so madly at the base of her throat, if the scent of spice wasn’t so thick in her mouth, but still-- she manages, every word earnest. “But you have to tell me what to do.”

A noise rumbles from his throat, more laugh than a growl. Progress, at least. Shirayuki’s shoulders ease from her ears; she hadn’t even felt them raise, hadn’t even realized how tense she’d become. The danger isn’t over, but at least now he’s able to listen to rea--

“You could sit next to me.”

Her shoulder snap back up, bone brushing lobe. They aren’t touching, but never has a carriage felt so small, so stifling. “Sit...next to you?”

Obi’s scent has never been intrusive, only a faint sniff when she stood close-- she should have known it wasn’t his own, just from that-- but now smoke and spice envelops her, inescapable. He’s on a knife’s edge, about to rut, and now he’s asking her to come closer, to let her own scent tease him--

“I would feel better if I could keep you close.” He coughs, the outline of his back rounding in the dim. “It would help if I could...feel you were safe.”

Shirayuki’s fingers spread her lap, suddenly boneless. I couldn’t keep you safe, he’d said so long ago, beneath a tree twice the size of either of them. Smoke and sea clung thickly to his clothes, trembling against the dawn, and she’d thought there was something strange then, something more than an omega’s submission.

Silk slips between her fingers as she stands. “All right.”

His eyes are wide, disbelieving as she crosses the gulf between them. A good hand’s breadth remains on the bench when she settles, but it’s a small concession to ease his mind. A good compromise between his alpha anxiety and the threat of his rut; he might think it too close, but--

“Closer.”

She blinks. “I’m sorry?”

“I want you closer.” She’s near enough to see him, to see the way he stares down at his lap like he can’t believe he’s still speaking. “It would really be best if you...”

He bites his lip hard. Oh, that won’t do at all. “If I...?”

Those gold eyes cut toward her, pleading for mercy with every flutter of his lashes. “If you were...in my lap...”

Her jaw drops, agog. “You want me...in...?”

Shirayuki is no omega; she can’t suddenly go into a heat and drive him into a frenzy, but surely...

Well, if his rut has gotten her so bothered, it can’t be out of the realm of possibility that her scent, so close, so strong, could make him--

“I would feel nice to hold you,” he admits hesitantly, shoulders rounding shyly. “And maybe smell you.”

Medically, she’s opposed. All the literature agrees: an uncontrolled rut renders an alpha incapable of thought, all of their instincts bent on reproduction over reason, and to put herself in arm’s reach of a man under it’s thrall-- well, Lata would certainly have some unkind things to say about her own reasoning, should nature take its course.

But there’s no treatise on a situation like this: an alpha drugged into a rut and a beta incapable of sustaining it. He’d clung to her like cloak outside the manor, nose pressed tight behind her ear and breathing deep, and as far as she could tell, it calmed him.

“All right,” she decides, once again, and stands, gathering her skirts around her before she drops herself unceremoniously onto his thighs.

She expects hesitation, for Obi to start protesting his own request now that it’s been done, but instead--

Instead his arms wrap tight around her waist, drawing her back. Back, until her spine aligns with his sternum, every part of her touching every part of him. Having gotten her exactly as he wanted her, Obi drops his head, presses his nose to the divot behind her ear, and breathes.

Shirayuki can’t help the smirk that teases her lips. “I thought you were hot?”

His exhale is half-groan, half-question. “Why?”

She arches an eyebrow he cannot possibly see. “Weren’t you the one who asked to open a window?”

“Not because I was hot,” he murmurs, lips brushing against her skin. She swivels her neck to suppress a shiver, but he follows her, pulling her even closer. “Because I could smell you.”

A laugh bubbles out of her, incredulous. “And you don’t now?”

He growls against her throat, but it’s playful, the sort she’s used to from when Kirito and the other pups rope them into their games. “It’s different.”

Shirayuki huffs, smiling as she settles against him. “Oh, it is, alpha?”

His lips curl; she feels every inch of it against her skin. “Are you sure you’re a beta? I thought you were supposed to feel a natural deference--”

“Oh, that was disproved long ago,” she informs him loftily, “the new theory is that betas have to be properly trained into submission.”

“Oh, so the problem is that I haven’t done my job?” His hands burn hotly against her stomach, a distraction from the way his chest rumbles soothingly behind her. “I’ve let you had too much of a lead--”

“I think, technically, it’s Izana who should have taught me to come to heel,” she explains. “Traditionally, at least.”

“Now that,” Obi lilts, more like his usual self, “I would pay to see. Just what does this entail?”

“Oh, the usual.” She waves a hand, hoping he can’t see the way it trembles. “Inviting me places and leaving me there until he returns--” already done, she realizes with no little dismay-- “eating off my plate--” sure to come, if she was ever invited to dinner-- “nipping me--”

Teeth prick her, a playful puppy bite, and she should laugh, she should wave him off, but--

Heat floods between her legs, so liquid and heavy she nearly yelps. But that’s not the sound that’s wrung from her, oh no; that’s lower, throatier. A new scent blooms in the air, nearly blotting out Obi’s and-- it’s hers. Not her normal beta musk, no, but something sultry and sweet, coating her tongue as thickly as the slick that coats her thighs.

And still, she has enough blood to fuel a blush from forehead to chest. A thing to note for later, if she can bear to put this whole predicament to page.

Shirayuki springs to her feet with a weak laugh. “I should open that--”

Obi’s arm catches around her waist, lifting her off her feet with a firm yank, gathering her tight against him.

“I’m sorry,” he pants, the scent of his sweat stinging her nose. “Did you-- are you--?”

She squirms against him, blush burning so bright she’s half afraid she’ll glow. “It’s just-- it’s hot in here, isn’t it? I should really open the--”

Shirayuki makes to stand again, but this time she hardly moves an inch, his arm an iron band across her hips. His nose drags down her neck, pimpling her skin with gooseflesh in its wake, and with slow, agonizing intention, he bites her again.

There’s no use pretending now, not when her moan rattles the carriage, that liquid heat rolling out of her on a wave and saturating the air anew.

“Oh,” he hums, breath tickling her skin to shivers. “You like that, Miss.”

“I...” She’s the one panting now, fingers clenched around his wrists, heart pounding hard in her chest. “I...”

“You know.” Obi’s chest rumbles as he speaks, hands smoothing over the silk of her skirt. “I think I mentioned that alphas like to take care of their mates, Miss.”

It’s alarming how quick her body is to react to the word, every inch of her suddenly flushed and sweating, and-- and needy.

“Ah!” His legs widen beneath hers, just enough for her to feel his cock hard against his thigh. She swallows, hoping the sound isn’t audible. “I don’t think...you said it in quite that way.”

“It’s what I meant.” His hands gently arrange her thighs over his, her slippers dangling above the floor on either side. Even covered by her skirts, her scent grows thicker, more pronounced. “And it seems like you might...need taking care of.”

Long fingers clench in silk, edging her hem up, just enough to kiss her ankles. A question. Or maybe more like an invitation. “Ah-haah?”

“It might be soothing,” he hums, silk whispering up her shins, edging delicately over her knees, “if I could help you.”

“H-help me?” Her breath rasps shallowly in her chest, and oh, how she wishes she could squeeze her thighs shut, if only so that she might ease the way she aches. “What do you--?”

Shirayuki bites back a gasp as Obi slouches, boots hooked on the bench across from them. She tumbles with him, her spine curled in parallel with his, her legs--

Ah, at this angle, they’re spread indecently wide. Gravity finishes the work his hands won’t, her skirt tumbling down to the tops of her thighs. She whimpers as her slick heat is bared, the sweltering air caressing her folds, and her scent, her scent--

It’s everywhere.

“Obi.” She’s too aware of his hands, of how they’re hovering above her, not daring to touch. They tremble, the heat of his skin teasing the heat of hers. It’s both too much and not enough at all.

“To come.” His palms settle on the soft flesh of her thighs and burn.

Oh, oh. Long fingers trace swirling constellations between the sparse freckles of her thighs, edging ever closer to where her scent is thickest, to where she aches.

They dance down to the crease, sliding over the slickness there, coming so close to where she needs him. And then...hesitate.

“You want to.” Every muscle is tense beneath her, coiled with desperate anticipation. He’s at the edge of reason, but he’ll be his own collar, his own master, if she makes him. It is a question, and she is the only one who can say yes.

It makes her answer easy.

“Yes,” she moans, guiding his hand between her legs. Guiding it to where her cunt is practically dripping for him, clenching around nothing. “Please.”

He doesn’t need any more encouragement. With a pained groan, his fingers slip between hers, tracing over her folds as gently as he had her thighs. They slide across with an ease that makes her flush, dipping into her entrance with a squelch, and oh, she could burn up right there on the spot--

“Fuck.” His breath is ragged in her ear, his other hand flexing at her hip. He drags her against him, his cock rubbing against the round of her ass. “I didn’t-- you’re so wet--”

“Your scent,” she confirms, turning her head to get a stronger whiff of it, drowning out the embarrassment of her own. “Since I smelled it, I-- you--”

His fingers clench hard on her hip. “Mine?”

“Mm.” It’s hard to speak when he’s teasing her between her legs, skating up to brush her clit before dipping down to taste the nectar of what lies deeper. “I--” she whimpers as his finger sweep around where she aches, so empty-- “it smells so good.”

His breath rushes out of him on a rasp. “Miss,” he whines, “can I...?”

His fingers hesitate, right at her slit, so slick with her, and she--

She whimpers, hips bucking up, sliding him all the way to the last knuckle.

“Fuck, Miss,” he breathes, and then she can hardly hear anything at all. Nothing besides the way her cunt clutches at him, making the most embarrassingly slick noises as he plunges his fingers into her, thumb rubbing gently at her clit.

“Ah...” He stills, shifting beneath her. She whines, mortifyingly desperate, but it’s hard to care when it makes him growl, “Just-- I need a moment.”

His hand leaves her hip, knuckles poking into her back. It takes her a moment too long to realize that he’s pulling at the fall of his trousers, that the space he puts between them is to free his cock. With a quick jerk, that’s what he does, a heavy weight tamping against her backside

She should be shocked. Yes, it’s hardly the first she’s witnessed in her line of work, and with the way she’s angled she isn’t actually seeing it at all, but it’s the first that has been hard, an erect length that is meant to--

Well, that is meant for her. Her heart pounds louder in her ears, the cold drip of anxiety warring with the heat of desire. Obi reaches for her again, and she expected him to lift her, to pull her right over him and take her, as an alpha should.

But instead he sighs, guiding her back against him, trapping the rigid length between the small of her back and his stomach. A pang of disappointment confusingly stabs between her legs, ache growing ever more present, and then--

Then his fingers slide against her again, teasing her slit, and oh, the sensation twice as intense for the wait.

“Did you...?” she manages, turning her head into his shoulder. A safer question than the one that begins with are you, or won’t you.

“Ah.” He twitches hard against her back; it sends enough heat through her that it blooms in the air again, making them both groan. “Yeah, I...it was getting...uncomfortable.”

She squirms as he pulls his fingers from her, tracing her folds but also leaving her empty. The sort of empty that aches, that leaves her wanting to be filled, that makes her think about the hardness at her back and--

“Can I feel it?” she gasps, arching into him.

He hesitates, fumbling awkwardly against her as his cock jumps between them. “You mean...?”

“Not-- not in.” She’s half in heat, desperate, but even so-- it’s not safe, not with him so close to a rut. Easing the burden is fine enough, but to have him risk mating her, all because of Liera’s perfume--

“Just...feel it,” she concludes, heart pounding in her chest. It’s too much to ask, she knows, but she’s no longer in control of what comes out of her mouth.

Obi shifts, bringing her head up to rest on his shoulder, her nose pressed tight against his neck, right where his scent is the strongest. That in itself drags a groan out of her, so viscerally satisfying she’s half-tempted to bit him herself. But then his hand slips beneath them, lifting her just slightly up. His cock traces down her spine, a natural movement that ekes a dissatisfied grunt from him, his neck burning against her lips as the tip bobbles against the divot of her back, stuck on the curve of her ass.

He grips it then, guiding it down, between, until a hard ridge settles against her folds. It’s warm, not burning like she is, but present, and--

And she can’t be blamed, not when she can see it jutting, so long and flush between her legs. Not when it takes nothing at all to grind her hips down, coating him in her slick, marking him. She had thought she would know what this would feel like-- the human imagination is remarkably robust, and hers specifically was used to working in theoretical. But nothing prepares her for the sensation in actuality, for the tip of his head to rub against the tight big between her folds--

It doesn’t take any time at all after that.

She’s a mewling mess in his arms, cunt rubbing against his shaft with wild abandon. Every stroke is intense, her arousal sparking across every inch of skin, making her toes curl in the soft kid of her slippers.

There is no thought when she nips him; nothing other than her need for her mouth to do something, and his scent is right there, begging to be tasted. It fills her mouth, flooding her senses until she’s light headed, dizzy from the feel of him all around her, inescapable but not yet close enough--

And then she’s shuddering, keening as he twists her away, his own teeth sinking into her, and she--

She comes hard, her throat raw as she collapses against him, spent.

“There.” His breath comes hard behind her, painting her sensitive skin with heat. She could have him again, she thinks in one moment. She would never survive, her next breath brings.

At least, not until her muscles start working again. She’s limp against his chest; it’s Obi who has to drop his feet to the floor, arranging her skirts around her. She’s still clutching him when he gently places her on the bench across from him, untangling her fingers. “That’s enough for now.”

His cock is still hard, slick and shimmering with her, and she’s filled with a need to take it in her mouth, to taste the two of them mingled together as he comes, shuddering against her. It occurs to her, idly, that she could get to her knees now, that she would only have to lean forward--

His breath catches. “Miss--”

The carriage jerks to a stop.

Shirayuki is hardly stable where she sits, and she sprawls forward, skirts spilling out over his lap when he catches her, and-- and it wouldn’t be so bad to have him inside her, would it? His eyes are clear-- clearer than they were at the masque-- and he must have enough control not to--

The door swings open. “Sir Obi, my lady--”

Tsuruba Bergatt freezes, where he holds the door, eyes wide, dilated. Beta he might be, but he’d have to be scent-blind to miss what is on the air.

“Ah...” he hums, suddenly uncertain.

“Is something wrong?” Obi asks, so even, as if one simply is caught holding a woman in a carriage reeking of sex and rut every day.

THE CHARIOT: Ovo

upright: control, will power, victory, assertion, determination

reversed: lack of control and direction

On its most basic level, it implies war, a struggle, and an eventual, hard-won victory over enemies, obstacles, nature, the uncertainties inside you. The chariot is all about motion, and yet is often shown as stationary. (x)

THE TOWER: Pessima LX

upright: disaster, upheaval, sudden change, revelation

reversed: avoidance of disaster, fear of change

The Tower itself represents ambitions built on false premises. The lightning bolt breaks down existing forms in order to make room for new ones. It represents a sudden, momentary glimpse of truth, a flash of inspiration. (x) 

THE HANGED MAN: GTA 5 Titan

upright: suspension, restriction, letting go, sacrifice

reversed: martyrdom, indecision, delay