Chapter 20 #2
“What’s there to be mad about? Like you said, JP found a rapist.” Taylor pushed out his bottom lip. “Even if it was through sheer fucking idiocy. Honestly, he’s meant to be the sensible one.”
Pember nodded, following him across the living room.
“Do you still visit him, Pem?” Taylor continued. “In prison?”
Pember’s mouth cracked open, his eyes flitting across Taylor’s face. “I didn’t… How do you know about that?”
“JP and Blake talk. He said he was worried about you going. But please don’t tell him I told you that because I don’t need that lanky fucker coming round here all moody and shit.”
“He isn’t lanky,” Pember said, gripping the front door handle. “He’s very well proportioned, thank you very much.”
Taylor smirked, because Blake was a good five inches taller than him and Johnny, so if he was ‘perfectly proportioned’ then his cock must be fucking huge. Then he imagined Blake with a micro-penis, which made him feel a little better. “Uh-huh. Sure he is.”
A blush edged up Pember’s neck.
“Anyway,” Taylor said. “Tell him to collect the coffee machine because I ain’t hauling that shit over to your place.”
Pember laughed. “Sure.” He hung in the doorway for a moment. “But… there’s something else.”
Taylor raised his eyebrows. “Jesus, what now?”
“When word gets out about there being another alpha suspect in Ru’s case, people might… Omegas might not be so kind towards alphas. With the new laws being looked at, it’s kind of a perfect storm. Just be careful, okay?”
A bitter taste flooded Taylor’s mouth, and he shot Pember a smile that was entirely too wide. A horrible, sick sense of satisfaction washed over him as Pember’s eyes dropped to his fangs and he started to back away.
Taylor followed.
“You gonna murder me, Pem? Slit my throat like Sam?”
Pember gasped, stepping back even further. “W-what? No! No! I would never!”
“You sure? Might get you in Ru’s good books.”
Pember’s eyes widened. “H-he isn’t… He isn’t like that, Tay. I would never—”
Taylor immediately dropped the smile when he realised what he was doing, retreating back into the house. “Sorry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Shit, I’m really sorry, Pem. I’m in a weird fucking mood. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Pember let out a breath, but carried on backing away until he was all the way out of the house. “You’re overwhelmed,” he said, hopping back over the garden wall with the two dogs.
“Yeah, but—”
“Think about what I said, and get some sleep. You look like you need it.”
Taylor felt like a piece of shit as he shut the door, locking it again. Perhaps he was overwhelmed. Maybe that was the word normal people used when their whole body hurt and their head felt like it was going to explode.
He downed another can of Coke before stalking upstairs and getting into the shower.
He used Johnny’s shower gel. Spicy and fruity, like Christmas, kind of, but without the last-minute stress shop on Christmas Eve followed by the inevitable eye-roll from Johnny when he received a pair of novelty socks for the tenth year in a row. Taylor was nothing if not consistent.
That was a lie. Taylor had never been consistent except when it came to his guns, but now they were gone, and Johnny was in the hospital, and if he’d just been a little bit faster maybe—
He thumped his head against the tiles, letting the water run over his shoulders and down his chin. “Stop it,” he whispered, squeezing his eyes shut.
Johnny was alive. He was getting the help he needed, so why didn’t that make Taylor feel any better?
Letting out a breath, he opened his eyes and finished washing.
After cleaning his teeth he padded to his bedroom without drying himself, leaving wet footprints across the landing.
It drove Johnny absolutely insane, but Taylor found he just didn’t have the energy for it as he lay down on top of his sheets.
He stayed there for a few seconds, the feeling of the pillow against his cheek so inexplicably alien. Without even thinking he rolled off the bed, strode to Johnny’s room, yanked open his drawers and pulled out a pair of his boxers and a T-shirt.
He ignored the three vibrators that he already knew were there—Johnny usually pulled them out in the middle of the night when he thought Taylor was asleep—and put the clothes on. Lying on Johnny’s bed, he stared up at the ceiling.
Taylor’s skin itched, making him squirm violently like a bear with fleas.
He kicked his feet and pulled Johnny’s T-shirt over his face by the collar.
Pressing his nose up into the fabric, he inhaled, long and hard.
Groaning, he let the T-shirt slide back down as he turned over and buried his head in the pillow.
The scent of Johnny’s hair was buried in the fabric, and Taylor couldn’t help but rub his face all over it like it was goddamned crack. He opened his mouth, letting his tongue drag over the cotton until it left a wet patch against his cheek.
His hips were already rocking into the bed, and he slipped a hand beneath his stomach to grip his cock. His knot was already hot, pulsing eagerly, making him rut forwards as all his nerve endings crackled to life.
“Fuck,” he breathed.
He pressed the balls of his feet into the mattress, rocking onto his knees to get a better grip on his dick. Swiping his fingers through the fluid gathering at his slit, he dragged the slippery wetness up and down his shaft.
There were some seriously strange noises coming out of his mouth—breathy, needy ones that he didn’t recognise.
They were smothered by Johnny’s pillow, and as he worked his cock his other hand slipped to the edge of the mattress.
He gripped it, his brain conjuring images of Johnny’s thick thigh against his palm, squeezed and bruised to within an inch of its life as Taylor held it and pushed it open.
He imagined Johnny’s smooth, dark chest rising and falling as he panted, how his lips would be wet as they parted. How his body would feel against Taylor’s, around it as Taylor sank his cock inside him over and over again.
Taylor growled as he jerked his cock faster, his balls drawing up against his body as the heat of his knot pulsed through them.
He was rutting hard, and somewhere along the way his brain began to get foggy, his imagination taking him places he’d never been.
Johnny on top of him, looking down at him with those black eyes that were impossibly warm and full of patience.
Taylor’s legs buckled at the thought of Johnny fucking him.
On his back. On his front. Lying on his side with Johnny pushing into him from behind.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He was into it. All of it.
Alpha, beta, omega, it didn’t fucking matter, because he’d been so fucking stupid to think that anyone other than John-Paul Ephraim Ateba was the man for him.
His mate.
His fucking mate who had stayed silent for over a decade just to protect Taylor’s stupid feelings. His mate who wasn’t there.
Taylor snarled as he came. It wasn’t pleasurable. How could it be when pure desperation soured his blood? Not being able to talk to Johnny, to see him, to touch him and tell him how fucking sorry he was for making him wait.
Taylor howled, the pillow catching most of the sound but the rest bouncing around the room like it did inside his head every day.
“Fuck!” he cried, thumping the pillow before realising he had ripped it with his fangs.
He lay on his front, breathing heavily. He didn’t need to be told how pathetic he looked, the ripped, wet pillow against his cheek and the cold semen roped across his belly were doing a grand job of that.
But as his eyes slowly closed and the tension left his body, he dropped like a stone into sleep.