More smut? Why not. Plot continues after the dialogue, "You know..."

-21-

Somehow the shower ends, and before Rukia can contemplate the truly awful thought of having to get out and face what comes after, she's wrapped in the biggest bath towel she's ever seen, and ushered into Ichigo's room.

She feels suddenly shy; vulnerable, and alone for the first time since her heat began.

Though it isn't for long.

Ichigo follows her into his room soon after, his own towel wrapped around his waist as he dries his hair with another; the movement sending his scent – blocker free – everywhere; pollen in the spring. Like the sun come out, when he enters his room, it smells more like him than it did when they'd stepped in to get to the bathroom: like curling golden leaves and cinnamon.

Despite herself, her body squirms, apparently unsatisfied with three measly orgasms.

She resists the urge to present herself and beg for more.

Not that he'd be surprised.

The literature, while leaving out the ways omegas can non-sexually have their heats alone or otherwise, is clear enough about how heats "should be" spent: Getting knotted. A lot.

And while they haven't done that during her heat, the sex is apparently enough to have Rukia shaking for more, an addict in need of a hit.

Unaffected, Ichigo gives her his back as he sets aside the towel he used to dry his hair, the easy shift of muscles and the wink of his dimples on his lower back, sufficiently distracting her from the fact that she's been standing in his room just watching him like an idiot, and thinking of nothing else but wanting to climb his shoulders.

Internally huffing at her own perversion, heat or no heat, Rukia crosses her legs before Ichigo sends her collapsing onto the edge of the bed when he sets aside the towel at his waist.

She's not necessarily startled by the sight of his ass, but uhm – it's certainly distracting. She squeezes her legs tighter. It may give her some sense of control in keeping her slick from gushing down her legs, but it's not doing anything for the pheromones she's giving off.

"Again?"

Her cheeks flare. "Uh…"

Which makes him smirk, the bastard. "You know," he drawls, "I've read about this."

"Have you?" she tries for casual, hoping he can't hear the hysterical lilt of her voice. "Because I've actually experienced it."

"Have you?" he echoes, feigning surprise. "Have you ever had sex during your heat?"

She tries to be frosty, but doesn't quite make it as she answers, "No." Then, "But I've taken care of myself plenty."

At that he hums, the gold in his eyes darkening. "Really."

"You alphas aren't the only ones who've found ways to handle their mating cycles," Rukia huffs with an annoyance she just barely feels beneath the burning of her cheeks, the slick gathering at her inner thighs.

"And what did you think about? You know, to take care of yourself?" Ichigo asks in a way that isn't a question, not when he's prowled forward, dick already thickening as he approaches the bed where she's stubbornly held her ground at the edge of it.

"You're shameless," she accuses over her blush.

"I'm learning from you," he teases, then, musingly he adds, "I do have many things to learn from you, after all."

Her brows twitch in curious surprise. "Like what?"

"A lot of things," he says, casual as anything as he traces the outside of her legs. "Like what foods you prefer, or what genre of movies and music you favor. What does Kuchiki Rukia like." Lifting them so that she lays back, his smirk returns at her squeak of surprise, made to watch him from between her splayed thighs. "What gets Kuchiki Rukia off."

She feels winded with the way he's looking at her – like he wants to devour every inch of her – put his mouth to her and feast.

Rukia watches him, attention rapt, as he skims the outside of her legs as he lowers himself.

"You know I don't actually have a kink for seeing you on your knees?" she tries to tease as he tugs her a little closer to the edge of the bed so that from where he's kneeling, he's just – right there.

"No," he allows, his exhales tickling the soft skin of her thighs making her shudder as the corner of his mouth flicks up in a smirk. "But I told you I wanted to eat you out during this heat, and I don't make it a habit to say things I don't mean."

Maddeningly, he doesn't just do it.

Ichigo takes his time, humming at the way her thighs tremble as he mouths his way from the outside of her thighs inwards. He spreads her leg as he kisses along the limb; higher, and higher, and higher.

Her heart skitters.

His gaze flicks up to meet hers; his pupils blown out with lust. She feels his murmur more than she hears it as he asks, "Any objections, Rukia?"

She swallows, trembling from the force of his owning, and replies, "None at all." Then, with a voice quivering with anticipation, she asks, "Are you gonna ruin me?"

Eyes fluttering shut, Ichigo's sigh against her skin makes her shiver, and heady with her scent in his lungs and her wet lips before him, he purrs, "Absolutely."

Ichigo, she has realized, does not take anything he says lightly.

After the quick succession of her first orgasms, Rukia thought she knew what she'd been in for during this heat.

Apparently, Ichigo had other plans.

He has her on the edge for what feels like hours, and when he does make her come, he does it again and again and again.

Evidently, he has a theory he wants to test about how often women can do it consecutively, and then how it's affected by a mating cycle.

She has no evidence that this is what he's actually doing given that his mouth is occupied with other more important matters, but it's a fleeting thought that sticks to the roof of her mouth when she's too wrung out to come anymore, asking, out of breath and trying to blink her vision back, "Are you trying to go for a record here because I'm pretty sure we bypassed it."

He grunts, and when she feels like her body's returned from the astral plane he's sent her to, she finds Ichigo fisting his dick desperately, the head of him practically purple from how hard he is.

With shaky limbs, Rukia rises to reach for him, making a soft noise of apology.

"You don't have to I'm –"

Looking up at him with dazed eyes, she parts her lips in invitation.

The sound he makes is practically a whimper.

Ichigo's trembling, trying to stave his own orgasm off, but he takes the time to cup her jaw, tracing his thumb across her lips, sliding it in easily for her to suck. He watches her, transfixed as she kitten-licks the offered digit, her gaze never leaving his. Adam's Apple bobbing, he gently retracts his thumb from her mouth, and she lets it go with a wet pop, already parting her lips again.

Pushing her gently back against the bed, he crawls over her, his breath hitching as his hard cock caresses the welcoming give of her skin.

There's something fevered in his eyes, in the way his mouth moves, "Can I…fuck, can I?"

Rukia nods, and at the hand he's cradling her cheek with, she presses a kiss at the heart of it, and murmurs, "Trust you."

His inhale is labored, his body quivers, and with a final caress of his knuckles down her cheek, he moves.

Straddling her chest, careful not to put any actual weight on it, with his knees on either side of her head; Ichigo slides his cock between her waiting lips.

Her neck arches, eyes fluttering closed as the world darkens around it until she adjusts her breathing. Only once her eyes have opened again and she's staring up at him, does he move.

He can't touch her at this angle, but he strips at his dick as he feeds himself into her; the head of him drooling pre along her tongue until she's sucking him in earnest, palming at his ass and tugging him forward for more, more, more.

The groan he makes has his whole body shuddering.

Ichigo hasn't had a knot yet, careful to keep himself off that ledge since Rukia hadn't said anything about wanting it, and Ichigo is nothing but accommodating. But she entertains the thought of him knotting her mouth and wonders how it would feel. As good as this, Rukia wonders? As Ichigo murmurs and moans, helpless to the onslaught; she almost chokes a little when he gets too far down her throat, but his thighs won't stop trembling so she ignores the prickle of tears at the corner of her eyes, licks him sloppy and sucks.

The only thing that matters is Ichigo and the sounds of his rapture when he finally – finally – comes.

She can't swallow every drop, much as she tries.

He spills down her lips, her throat, her chest; wet and sticky. He tips off to the side so he doesn't crush her, and though he's just as uncoordinated, Ichigo manages to pull her to him.

Shaky from the lack of oxygen, he grasps her easily, nosing into her hair and pressing needless, careless lips to anything he can reach, accidentally spreading the evidence of his spent between them.

Her voice hoarse, Rukia sighs, "So much for the shower."

Ichigo's laugh is helpless. "Fuck, you're perfect."

And that rouses a laugh from her in return. "Are you kidding me? I think you spent at least an hour eating me out."

"Worth every second, and every drop," he declares, a kiss on each cheek to punctuate his statement before he's got his lips against hers.

He tastes strange, but then, so must she.

They taste like each other. They smell like one another. It's a heady thought. They're so beyond just bonding, and it's probably just the afterglow talking, but the idea doesn't alarm her even without the distraction of sex.

The next two days of her heat have Ichigo between her thighs in some variation, and if he isn't, he's wrapped around her, cuddling her on his lap or on their sides in his bed or on the couch.

When they aren't physically together – either because he's out getting whatever food she's craving or they're individually using the bathroom – Ichigo sacrifices his closet to the cause by providing her with all his clothing to make a nest out of.

It isn't as nice as having him around to hold her in the half an hour that they're apart, but all his clothes smell like her now, and she can't be angry about it.

With the way he looks at her in his shirts – because while it would make sense not to wear any clothes at all, Rukia likes the way his clothes fit her – she doesn't think Ichigo has any complaints whatsoever.

"You know," Rukia says, her chin pillowed on his chest. "I could get used to this."

She thinks it's almost five in the morning, or something equally ridiculous. It's still dark out, streetlights on outside of Ichigo's apartment windows, walls drenched in the navy-blue hue of twilight; the sun has broken from the horizon, slicing the skies in narrow beams of bright golden light.

He hums, running his fingers through her hair. "You need to stop saying things like that as a threat."

"Isn't it though?" she teases. "You literally just got a girlfriend, and I'm already making myself at home. Do you even remember what your life was like before you met me?"

Ichigo shrugs. "It was a life. I didn't know any different. Now I do, and this is my life now."

"You're so casual about this," she complains, poking at his cheek as she teases, "What I'm getting from your behavior is that I could move in, right now, and you're telling me you won't even say anything?"

At that, he looks considering, then, "We're not getting a dog."

She pouts. "But."

Snickering, he guides her gently to kiss her lips, and with their noses still brushing against one another, her smile soft and content, he says, "What's the point of having this with you, if the goal isn't to give you a reason to stay?"

There's a sense of inevitability to it; like an uncontrollable chemical reaction, and whatever this is: them, right here, in each other's arms is the product. It's enough. It's good. It's theirs.

But then there's a knock on the door.

And Inoue behind it.

And things suddenly aren't so certain anymore.