Chapter 12
JACK
Jack felt Beckett’s withdrawal but he didn’t stop him.
Later, once he’d talked to Arden, he’d find Beckett and then it would be their turn to talk.
He didn’t know if he dreaded it or looked forward to it.
Dreaded it because Beckett was a stubborn, prideful young man, as Jack had once been, and there was no guarantee that Jack could get through to him.
Looked forward to it because Beckett was a stubborn, prideful young man as Jack had once been, and his stubbornness more often than not took the form of an energetic tussle.
Quite frankly, Jack could do with the stress relief of a drawn-out physical encounter. These suppressants were hurting like all seven hells, and he hoped he never had to take them again.
Aching, grinding nausea aside, he didn’t regret it. If he wasn’t on them right this moment, poor Arden would be on the floor and Jack would have mounted him.
As it was, even feeling like death, he still had to struggle to control his urges.
Arden was so, so sweetly terrible at kissing.
Jack laughed quietly into another clumsy press.
Somehow, Arden managed to miss his target and land off-centre, and he did it with an eager force that must hurt his already-tender lips.
Jack took hold of his jaw and eased him away.
Arden stared up at him, lips damp and swollen. His grey eyes were all pupil and he was vibrating with excitement. It lasted until he glanced over his shoulder and saw that Beckett had gone. “Oh no,” he said, and drew in on himself.
“It’s all right,” Jack said. “He needs some space, I think. Come along.” Jack led him over to the chair behind his desk, sat, and pulled Arden onto his lap.
That distracted him nicely.
Jack tugged him closer and dropped a quick peck on the tip of his nose. “How did you like kissing your husband, then?”
Arden’s lashes swept down. “Very much.” He stroked Jack’s chest. “I’ll get better at it.”
“I’m sure you will,” Jack said, “considering all the practice you’re going to get.
With me. With Beckett, if you want.” Jack touched Arden’s hot mouth with a light brush of fingertips.
Arden trembled but didn’t pull away. “I’ll have to ask Mrs Foley to make sure you have plenty of salve, or you’ll end up quite chapped. ”
Humming in agreement, Arden stopped stroking Jack’s chest and rested a palm over his heart. He immediately looked up with an alarmed frown.
Jack sighed. “Yes, I know,” he said. “It’s beating too fast. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“And yet I am worried. Jack! That is unnatural. Even at my most afraid, my heart has never gone that fast.” He tried to scramble off Jack’s lap. “Something is wrong. Stay there. I’m going to send for a physician.”
“And the physician would find himself in a terrible moral dilemma,” Jack said, banding an arm around Arden’s waist and hauling him back onto Jack’s lap, where he belonged.
“He’ll know what’s causing it at once. He’ll know it’s from rut suppressants, and he knows as well as I do that they’re illegal.
He’d be obliged to report me to the authorities for using them, and Dr Fairfax has treated me for everything from birth onward, so.
I rather think I’d like to spare him the agonies. ”
Arden gasped. “You drugged yourself?” His eyes were enormous. “Illegally?”
“Yes.”
“On rut suppressants?”
“Mhm.”
And hadn’t Nolan, who’d been the one tasked with hunting them down, given him an earful about it.
Jack ran his hands down Arden’s sides, and was startled when, instead of leaning into it as he’d leaned into every other touch, Arden flinched and squirmed away, face starkly pale.
“You shouldn’t have. Oh, Jack, you shouldn’t have.”
“I should,” Jack said, forcing himself to let Arden go. Keeping him in place would mean holding hard enough to bruise. “I might have gone into rut and fought Beckett for the right to fuck you otherwise. I didn’t want that.”
Arden slid off his lap. “But you shouldn’t have risked yourself!
I’m sorry. I never expected to have a heat.
Ever. It all seems so ridiculous. And me so old.
Oh, it’s too much. No. You shouldn’t have to make yourself sick for me.
” He darted in and touched cold fingertips to Jack’s throat, unthinkingly.
“You should have stayed away. I’d have got through it. ”
Jack knew full well that Arden was seeking a pulse, but he was an alpha who was violently aroused by his husband, and by his lover, and sick to his bones with suppressants. None of that was any excuse for frightening Arden.
Unfortunately, that’s what he did.
He shot out a hand and locked it around Arden’s slender wrist. The low, warning growl came out of his throat unbidden.
Arden froze.
Everything suspended for a long, horrible moment.
Jack took a deep breath, loosened his punishing hold—he didn’t, couldn’t, let go now—and sighed. “Arden,” he said softly. “Sweetheart, please look at me.”
Arden did, immediately and without fuss. Not because he wanted to. Because he was told to. He smiled, but his chest rose and fell quickly.
“I have messed this up terribly,” Jack said.
“No, of course you haven’t,” Arden said at once.
Jack’s lips tightened at the immediate, thoughtless platitude spoken in an appeasing tone. He dropped his hold on Arden’s wrist to palm the backs of his thighs instead and draw him forwards, tucking him between his own spread legs.
And then he showed Arden a degree of surrender that no one, not even Beckett, had ever got out of him.
He allowed his shoulders to bow as he tipped forwards and pressed his forehead lightly against Arden’s chest, exposing his vulnerable nape to the man standing over him.
After a moment, tentative, gentle fingers combed through his hair.
Jack pressed a lingering kiss to Arden’s sternum and looked up. He kept hold of Arden’s narrow hips, contemplating his tense face in silence.
He wanted Arden back on his lap and over his cock. Perhaps, though, it was best not. There was time. They had time. He was an impatient man, and this was a test of character he refused to fail. He wouldn’t enjoy it, but he would not fail.
“Why do you think that I didn’t want to go into rut?” he asked.
“You just said. You didn’t want to fight Beckett.”
“And?”
Arden looked at him as if he was trying to work out whether or not Jack was setting a trap for him. Slowly, he said, “And because you didn’t want to fuck me.”
“That’s right,” Jack said, regretting the flash of pain that crossed Arden’s expressive face even as he nodded stoically.
Jack couldn’t help it. He slid his hands around to Arden’s pert backside and indulged himself in the feel of those buttocks filling his palms. “I didn’t want that last night, Arden.
Not during your first heat. One day, however?
” He allowed his hunger to show on his face, and even Arden couldn’t mistake it for something else.
Now that he’d seen the exact same expression on Beckett’s face as he pinned Arden down and fucked him silly, there was no way that he could mistake it.
“I am very, very much looking forward to it.” He kneaded Arden’s buttocks playfully, trying to lighten the moment.
“But—”
“Even if I’d been here with you from the start, I’d have asked Beckett to take you for your first heat.
And I would have liked the two of you to know each other beforehand.
He is far more experienced with other genders than I am.
I’ve only ever been with alpha men. When we’re together, sweetheart, you will be my first.”
Arden liked that. He touched Jack’s cheek shyly. “I will?”
“Yes.”
A small flicker of that spirit Arden had spent the better part of two decades hiding sparked in his pretty grey eyes. “I’ll be very gentle,” he said. “You mustn’t worry.”
Even though he was joking, Jack took it seriously. “I know you will. I can hardly wait.”
Arden shifted restlessly between Jack’s hands, and licked his lips. “You don’t…you don’t have to wait,” he offered.
Jack tipped forwards and rested his forehead against Arden’s chest again. His teasing groan was muffled. “I do! The suppressants are brutally efficient. If I try to take you as I want to, things will quickly turn unpleasant.”
“What does that mean?” Arden said, worried.
“I shall vomit.”
Arden sucked in a short breath. “That…does not sound very romantic.”
“No, it doesn’t. Suppressants are designed to overrule the urge to rut. The stronger the urge, the stronger the effect they have. I want you so, so desperately, my Arden, that it would be truly revolting. And then I’d black out.”
Arden gave a horrified giggle.
Jack laughed up at him and caught his breath when Arden smiled back. He had no idea how transparent he was, had he? Gods, his face was suffused with the love he felt for Jack. He glowed with it.
Confusion quickly dimmed the light, but Jack would put it back there soon enough. He ignored the stabbing, roiling pain in his gut.
“How could you possibly want me when you’re only attracted to alphas?” Arden said.
This wasn’t the moment for a passionate confession that Arden wouldn’t allow himself to believe.
Jack forced the words back. Arden had been through enough for now, and even though he seemed no more aware of his rising heat than he had by all accounts been in the first phase, he was definitely going back under, and in the next few hours would be lost to it once more.
“I won’t argue that I’ve only ever been attracted to alphas,” he said. “Now and for some time, I have only been attracted to one alpha. And to you.”
Arden looked skeptical.
Jack tugged him closer. “Is it so unbelievable that I’d want you? To know you is to admire you, Arden. I have known you for a very long time, after all.”
“It does sound unbelievable. I don’t see how how you can want both of us. We are so different.”
“Perhaps it is because you are so different. My big, strong, practical Beckett. My sweet, delicate, sensitive Arden.” He exhaled a deep, satisfied breath. “I am the luckiest man in the world.”