Chapter 10
JACK
Jack’s smile grew sharp edges. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t even try to stop it.
Arden was his. He was safe.
Finally.
Jack made a soft sound and reached out to touch Arden’s lovely face. Arden stiffened. His cheek was hot, his watchful eyes bright. He was uncomfortable, but not unhappy.
“Are you afraid of me?” Jack said quietly.
“No,” he whispered. “Never of you, Jack.”
Jack’s heart ached at it.
“But I am afraid of…” he trailed off into silence.
Because Arden didn’t seem to mind being touched and, going on the way he subtly snuggled his face into Jack’s palm, he was enjoying it, Jack slipped his fingers beneath Arden’s chin and held him. “What, sweetheart?”
Arden dropped his gaze and tightened the arms he had wrapped around his legs, scooting his knees even closer to his body.
Jack shoved down the animal appreciation of how flexible his little husband was, and did his best to keep his expression calm and inquiring. Not hungry at all.
“I am afraid of this,” Arden said.
“The bath?” Jack deliberately misunderstood him. He was crouching beside the tub, balancing on the balls of his feet, and he released Arden to dip a hand into the steaming hot water and flip it playfully at him. “I know you are short, but it’s not dangerously deep.”
Arden huffed a small laugh. His hair had fallen over his face again, but Jack caught the bright gleam of an eye through the frizzy russet strands.
Until a few weeks ago, Jack hadn’t seen him for a long time. It had been longer still since he’d teased him like this, as he used to when they were children.
He didn’t think he’d ever forgive himself for staying away, even though it had been for the best.
Well. He couldn’t change the past. The future, though?
That was in his control, and he planned to exert every ounce of that control to make this man as happy as he intended to make Beckett.
He had quite a job ahead of him, Jack knew, with egos (mostly Beckett’s) and sensitive feelings (definitely Arden’s) to juggle. He’d do it. He had no doubt whatsoever.
“No,” Arden said, keeping a wary eye on where Jack was swirling his hand idly in the water, not quite grazing Arden’s thigh, but coming close to it. “I adore baths. And I am not that short!”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I’m afraid of being a terrible husband. Of ruining things between you and Beckett.”
“You couldn’t be a terrible husband if you tried, so you can set that aside at once, and as for—”
Arden cut him off, sloshing about to face him and say urgently, “I am so sorry. Jack, you have no idea.”
He really didn’t. “For what?” he murmured.
Arden’s face was tight with anxiety, and he knotted his hands together at his chest. “That you had to marry me. It’s not fair, and you are too good and noble to have done it, and now you’re stuck with me!
I will talk to B-Beckett as soon as possible—” he looked green at the idea, “—and assure him that I have no intention of getting in between you.”
Jack waited to make sure he’d finished before he said with a small smile, “I think Beckett would be very disappointed to hear that.” He leaned in and added, as if they were sharing confidences, “I think Beckett would very, very much like to have you in between us. I know I would.”
Arden sat up straight in rigid disapproval. “What?” he said indignantly.
Jack flashed him a grin. He didn’t even try to hide the hunger in it.
“What?” Arden said again, faintly this time.
Jack curled a hand around the back of his neck and tugged him in for a quick, firm buss on his surprised mouth.
He’d hardly intended to bring it up to Arden today, but he didn’t see any point in prevaricating, now that Arden had been the one to bring it up.
More or less. “I can’t think of anything I want more than having you tucked safely between us,” he said.
“You…?”
“I...?” he prompted.
“But—oh. Mmm.”
Jack was nibbling on his lips now. Something else he hadn’t intended to do just yet but also didn’t see any reason to stop.
It was just that Arden’s mouth was so sweet and soft beneath his. Hot, swollen, and yielding. “You don’t like omegas,” Arden mumbled, clearly not as distracted by the almost-kiss as Jack was.
“That isn’t true at all.” Jack released his mouth with reluctance and rocked his knees to the floor, unable to balance for long in a crouch with the suppressant-induced nausea rising inside him, hand in hand with desire.
“Yes, it is,” Arden said, firmly and with such authority that Jack laughed out loud. “Everyone knows it. And I heard you say it!”
“What a memory you have,” Jack said.
“Not always a good thing.” Arden gave Jack a wry smile.
It was true that ‘everyone’ knew it. Jack had made damn sure they did.
The first couple of years after he came of age had been beyond trying. He’d gained something of a reputation for his coldness and plain speaking when it came to turning down the relentless offers of marriage.
Even the most hopeful or scheming parent had given up after ten solid years of Jack never interacting with omegas beyond the social niceties, and of having well-publicised and outrageous affairs with alphas.
Only ever alphas.
What had cinched it was when he’d publicly named his cousin’s firstborn as his heir.
Hester had cursed him for pointing the horde in her direction, but she handled it better than he ever could, anyway. And she had thanked him for making her son the next Duke of Avendene, so. She wasn’t too angry.
As for Arden’s memory—Jack knew exactly what he was referring to. Jack really hadn’t had a choice, though.
He’d gone to Dalbryn that day to meet with Arden’s father, at the earl’s request.
Lassit wasn’t supposed to have been there.
It was the very worst of luck that Arden had been rushing headlong down the stairs to say hello when Lassit had made that casual, crass comment about omegas and—well.
Jack couldn’t have let Lassit suspect for even a moment that he was interested in Arden.
He’d laughed scornfully, and swore in a loud, carrying voice that he’d never let a mewling omega crawl into his bed. That if one ever had the nerve to try, he’d have the footman collect them and turn them out.
Lassit had clapped him on the back in laughing agreement, hooked his arm companionably through Jack’s, and led the way to the library.
There, Lassit proceeded to get roaring drunk while Jack pretended to, and in Jack’s pocket was a piece of paper bearing Dalbryn’s crest and the earl’s thrice-witnessed signature.
Upon the earl’s death, that piece of paper would give Arden to Jack.
He’d wondered, in the years since then, what it was that made him pause and look back.
It was Arden’s light, fast breathing, he’d eventually concluded, there on the very edge of Jack’s alpha-sharp hearing. Short and desperate, like the frantic beat of a butterfly’s wings as it threw itself against a window.
He’d known even before he turned that the moment would haunt him.
He turned anyway.
Arden was frozen halfway down the stairs, the hand he’d no doubt been skimming along the banister as he ran down the steps to greet Jack now locked around it and holding him in place.
Holding him up. His delicate knuckles were as stark and white as his face.
His eyes as they met Jack’s were wide and wounded. His chest rose and fell rapidly.
And what had Jack done, when their eyes met?
He’d looked away, followed Lassit, and closed the library door between them.
He’d felt Arden’s gaze on him the whole way.
“You must know by now that I didn’t mean a word of it,” Jack said to Arden as he sat there in his tub, slowly unfurling in the warmth and utterly, delightfully, unaware of it. The slender arms he’d had locked around his knees had loosened, and one of his legs had straightened.
If Jack glanced down, he’d get a look at Arden’s sweet little cock.
He manfully resisted the urge.
“I…no, Jack. I don’t know that at all. What I know is, you bound yourself to me out of some noble, heroic impulse to—why on earth are you laughing?”
Oh, Jack liked him indignant. He loved that little snap and spark that Arden had learned to hide over the years. He pinched Arden’s chin and grinned down at him. “Heroic?” he said. “Me?”
Arden primly lifted his chin from Jack’s fingers and put his nose in the air. “Yes,” he said. “You.”
“I assure you, there is nothing heroic about me. The impulse was entirely self-serving.”
Arden shifted in the water, straightening his other leg out and turning on a hip so he could scoot up to the side and rest his arms on the lip of the tub.
He sent a wary glance down at his lap to make sure his groin was concealed, and had no idea that Jack’s greater height meant that he could, in fact, see the pert mound of Arden’s arse over his shoulder.
Jack felt no heroic impulse to inform him of the fact.
“How could it possibly be self-serving?” Arden said.
“Hmm.” Jack tucked a wild curl behind his ear, and let his fingers linger there, stroking. “Because now I have you, Arden. Completely.”
Arden blinked those big grey eyes at him. “What a prize,” he said flatly.
“Indeed. One beyond compare.”
“There’s no need to be cruel.”
“I can be a hard man. I can be ruthless. I am never deliberately cruel.”
“Whether or not you intended—”
“Arden,” Jack cut him off. “I’ve wanted you almost as long as I’ve known you.”
Arden pressed his lips together. “Bollocks,” he said.
Jack burst out laughing.
After a moment, despite his anger, Arden joined in.
“You don’t believe me,” Jack said.
“Of course I don’t believe you! How could someone who has a lover as magnificent as Beckett even see me, let alone want me?”
“Magnificent, hmm? I’m going to tell him you said that.”
Arden paled. “Please don’t. That poor boy.”
“That…?” Jack stared at him. “Poor boy?”
“Yes!” Arden said passionately. “He must hate me. First you are obliged to marry me, meaning you can’t marry him—”
“That poor boy wouldn’t have agreed to be my duch if I’d held him at sword’s point,” Jack said.