Chapter 7 #2
“All right, Arden?” Jack said.
“Yes. Yes, I’m—sorry. Sorry. I forgot where I was for a moment.” He patted Beckett’s thigh awkwardly. “I was startled, that’s all. Um. Good morning. Good morning, Jack. Good m-morning, B-Beckett.”
Beckett rubbed his chin over the top of the duch’s head and widened his eyes at Jack.
Jack smiled at him, then down at the duch.
Beckett guessed that the duch smiled back. Going on Jack’s sigh, it wasn’t very convincing.
“We have some talking to do, haven’t we?” Jack said, flicking his gaze up to include Beckett.
Beckett heaved a sigh and hitched his cock absently against the duch’s arse. It was scorching hot, Beckett noticed smugly.
What with all the pounding it got during the night.
The duch had orgasmed gods only knew how many times.
Beckett, too. The duch had been out of his mind with it, and it was good that Jack had been here, because the noise the little thing made had to be heard to be believed.
Wailing and screeching and carrying on. If Jack hadn’t been in here, Marl would for sure have broken the door down and stormed the chamber with all the betas he could rustle up, thinking Beckett was hurting him.
Beckett splayed his fingers wide over the duch’s soft stomach and pressed the pads into the delicate flesh. He’d have fought with everything in him to stay with the duch if anyone had tried to get between them.
“Yes, I suppose we have,” the duch said.
Beckett grinned at the raspiness of his refined voice.
Jack gave him a look, which made him grin all the more.
Jack laughed, reached over the duch and kissed Beckett quickly, then ducked down and kissed the duch’s cheek.
Beckett allowed it. The way the duch twitched awkwardly made Beckett frown. He blinked, thinking back to the night before. “Was I his first proper kiss as well?” he demanded.
Jack lifted his brows at the duch, who said quietly, “Yes. Um. Thank you.”
That didn’t sit well with Beckett, not at all. “But you’re—” He broke off before he came out and said it.
“Old?” the duch supplied for him.
Well, yes. That wasn’t all, though. “Pretty,” he said.
“Oh.” The duch squirmed around to lie on his back and look up into Beckett’s face.
His cheeks were pink, his eyelids were puffy, and his nose was red. His lips were swollen and the stubble rash around his mouth extended down to his chin, his neck, and his chest.
He met Beckett’s eyes shyly. “That is very kind of you,” he said. “Thank you.”
“Not kind. The truth.” He gripped the duch’s chin and lifted it, holding him steady as he rested his mouth against the duch’s and murmured, “Want to see how I’d have done it if I knew you hadn’t even had a proper kiss before?”
“Yes?”
Beckett sighed. That wasn’t a yes, that was a question.
He went to pull away, and grunted softly in surprise when the duch grabbed his shoulders and used them to haul himself up and press a clumsy kiss to Beckett’s mouth.
Jack sighed. Beckett and the duch turned to look at him.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. “I’m just enjoying the view.”
The duch hunched down and put his hands over his face.
“Arden,” Jack said, laughingly. Cajolingly. “Come out.”
The duch shook his head.
His body was strung tight with tension again. Beckett marvelled at him. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to live like this. The little thing had swung from shy to bold to panicked to relaxed and whatever else, all in the few minutes he’d been awake.
In that time, Beckett had experienced one mood only. He liked to call it: morning.
Meant he was ready for sex, he was resigned to getting up and going to work instead, and his body was thrumming with energy.
Maybe that was an alpha trait. Maybe all omegas were as unstable as this one. Although unstable seemed an unkind way of thinking about it. Needing? Did that sound better? Yes. Needing structure. Support. Someone big and strong—like Beckett—to keep them safe. Tell them what to do.
He flashed back to the two omegas he’d had before, and…no. Neither of them had been in heat, and they’d known full well what they wanted from Beckett. They’d demanded it, they’d got it, and when they were done, they’d told him not to let the door hit him on the way out.
This wasn’t an omega trait.
This was a duch trait.
“Shall we leave you to rest then, sweetheart?” Jack said.
He’d never called Beckett sweetheart. Probably because Beckett would have laughed at him for it. He called…
He called Beckett my love, and Beckett held that close to his heart. He didn’t quite believe it. But he held it.
The duch parted his fingers enough to peek out, and Beckett cocked his head. “Come out,” he ordered.
The duch hesitated and then, to Beckett’s amusement, he did as he was told.
Wouldn’t obey his husband, but the footman told him to do something and he snapped to it.
Hmm.
Beckett filed that one away to examine later. Now, he moved over the duch, straddling him on all fours and caging him in.
The duch’s eyes grew even wider as they tracked down Beckett’s body to his cock, which was up and raring to go.
“Ah-ah,” Beckett said, recalling the duch’s attention. He tapped his own mouth with a forefinger, and raised his brows.
The duch obediently lifted up and pressed an awkward buss to his lips.
Beckett was tempted to open up and suck on the duch’s tongue just to see what kind of noise he’d make at that, but he didn’t. The duch pulled away and they stared at each other for a long moment.
Beckett gave an abrupt nod and climbed off.
“Wait for me, please,” Jack said before he could make a clean exit.
Beckett grabbed his discarded breeches, hauled them on, and stalked out.
He’d intended to ignore Jack’s demand, go back to his own little room, and sleep the day away. He’d earned it, hadn’t he?
But when he strode down the corridor in his breeches and bare feet, absolutely fine to scandalise anyone he passed with his state of undress, seeing as by now there wasn’t a soul on the estate who didn’t know what he’d spent the night doing, he couldn’t quite manage it.
He set his teeth, tried again, and found himself turning on his heel and striding right back to the duch’s bedchamber, where he loitered outside like he’d been told to, seething about it the whole time.
Was it Jack who’d drawn him back? Beckett’s need to see him, touch him, talk to him? Properly, that is, not while balls deep in his husband, or else being used as a pillow.
Or was it…?
Beckett sagged with his back to the cool wall, and rubbed his hands over his face. His stubble rasped harshly and he thought of the roughened, red skin around the duch’s pouty mouth.
It was the duch he couldn’t bring himself to leave, wasn’t it? And didn’t that feel like a betrayal? He’d have made Jack come and find him, but it was the duch he wouldn’t leave?
Perhaps the duch needed him again.
Something fired up low in Beckett’s belly, and he caught himself turning to open the door. Before he barged on in and instructed the duch to roll over and Jack to settle in for another show, Jack opened the door from the other side.
Beckett couldn’t help it. He made a sound of relief and reached out to Jack, gripping his upper arms even as Jack did the same.
Jack walked him backwards, the door swung shut behind them, and they were alone.
Beckett heard himself breathing heavily. He couldn’t understand the look on Jack’s face. He opened his mouth to say something, and then Jack was on him.
You’d think, after the night Beckett had spent, that the dead last thing he wanted to do right now was kiss. He melted for it.
Jack wrapped his arms around Beckett, and Beckett’s arms went around Jack’s waist, hauling him impossibly closer. He growled into Jack’s mouth in demand. And Jack? He growled back. He bit back.
This was what Beckett knew. This was his safe place, his firm ground and his foundation, everything he wanted. Not…not sipping kisses from a mouth as tender as a bruised plum.
You can want both, a small voice whispered at the back of his mind.
Beckett jeered at it.
It was a miracle he’d ever had either. The duch was a one-off. As for Jack? Well. Beckett was a pragmatist. Now the duch was here, his time with Jack was no doubt running out.
It wasn’t over yet, though, and he wasn’t about to give ground until he had to.
They fought for dominance in the darkness of the corridor, until Beckett finally yielded. Because he was exhausted, he told himself, and not for any other reason.
He let Jack take his mouth however he liked. Probably searching for a taste of his husband. Beckett yelped when Jack gripped his sore cock and squeezed it.
“Uhn,” Beckett said, his forehead falling onto Jack’s shoulder.
Jack yanked Beckett’s breeches open and palmed his shaft, dragging down the stiff length.
Beckett made a half-hearted attempt to twitch his hips away but who was he fooling? He wanted it.
He’d wanted Jack from the second he laid eyes on the man. He’d want him to the day he died. Damn it.
Jack stroked him firmly, demandingly, whispering into Beckett’s ear. “I know, I know,” he said, soothing and wicked. “Hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Fucking yes,” Beckett muttered, pushing his hips greedily into Jack’s hand, wanting more and more and more.
“You need it, though. You’ll come for me anyway. Won’t you, my love?”
Beckett laughed, a little wildly. “Fucking yes,” he said again.
“Do it now,” Jack said, and Beckett did.
When it was over, he slumped in Jack’s arms. He hadn’t noticed that Jack had walked them all the way backwards to press Beckett up against the wall, and now Beckett blinked sleepily into Jack’s lovely black eyes.
Jack kissed him lightly. “Couldn’t help it,” he said. “I’m not apologising, but that was mean and I know it.”
“Nah. ’S nice,” Beckett slurred.
“I like you like this,” Jack said.
“Mm?” Beckett managed to open his eyes—when had he shut them?—but just barely.
“You’re never cuddly with me,” Jack said.
Because that wasn’t what Jack wanted from his alpha lover, Beckett had always assumed.
“Come along.”
Beckett was moving. His vision was blurry, and he realised with shock that Jack was holding his hand. Like a child. Or a sweetheart.
“Where?” he mumbled, staggering a bit.
“To bed,” Jack said, and Beckett was so knocked out by that last orgasm that he didn’t even realise Jack was walking him deeper into the ducal apartments and to his own bedchamber rather than taking him to the servants’ wing.
He didn’t even register where he was until his hot, raw-feeling skin was soothed by cool silken sheets and Jack was standing over him, a tender expression on his face that made Beckett frown.
“Close your eyes,” Jack said, and Beckett did. Jack rested a gentle hand on his cheek, touching him as gently as if he was touching the duch. “Sleep.”
Beckett did.