Chapter 24 #2
Arden had blurted it without thinking, but he was glad he did. A fierce expression sharpened all of Jack’s harsh features and his eyes bored into Arden’s.
It was almost too much. “And,” Arden added in a small voice, “and Beckett.”
“Just us.” Jack gripped Arden’s hips, sliding him down Jack’s thighs, closer to his body, until he had Arden sitting right on top of his hardness. He flexed up into Arden. “Just us.”
“Y-yes,” Arden said.
“I’ll make you happy, Arden. We will. I swear it.”
“I’m already happy. I’m happier now than I have ever been. I hope the same can be said for Clarke.” He hadn’t thought of Clarke for years.
“I assume your father sent him away from Dalbryn.”
“He went to work at one of my mother’s estates. He wrote to me.”
“Oh?” Jack frowned.
Arden leaned in to peck him playfully on the tip of his lovely big nose. Jack blinked, startled. “It was only once, to apologise. He was a very nice boy.”
“I’m sure he was,” Jack said.
“Don’t say it like that, Jack. He was.”
“I’m jealous,” Jack said. “That’s all. Ignore me.”
Arden gazed at him. He didn’t know where the confidence to keep challenging this large, powerful alpha had come from, but he rather liked it. “I don’t believe you’re jealous.”
“No?”
Jack arched a brow and Arden absently reached up to trace the shape of it. Straight, winging at the corner. Velvety black. “You didn’t want to marry me.”
“That’s not entirely true. I said I wasn’t going to marry you, not that I didn’t want to. Arden. I have spent a very large portion of my adult life trying very hard not to want you. I love you. You know I do.”
Instead of kissing him, Arden grabbed his hand and squeezed it. “Thank you. I love you.”
“Arden.”
Sometimes, Jack said his name in the strangest way.
“So if you love me, why…?”
“Because I am not at all the best choice for a man like you. I didn’t think you wanted physical intimacy.” He smiled apologetically. “I am a very physical man.”
“I do want it. Want you.” Arden did his best to maintain eye contact, but in the end, he had to look away.
“I know that now.” Jack stroked his back in long, soothing sweeps. Arden arched into his touch with a happy hum. “I never got a hint of it from you before.”
“How could you? You barely saw me! Once we put our childhood behind us, I don’t think we were ever alone.”
“The point is, Arden, I never looked at you that way. This way.” He rolled his hips beneath Arden, making Arden gasp and rock clumsily back.
“I did not permit myself. I thought that your sexuality was as sweet and quiet as you are, and I wanted someone to respect and value that as it should be respected and valued. Shall I tell you what I wanted?”
Arden nodded, even though he was finding the whole thing astoundingly high-handed.
“I wanted a beta for you. A steady, calm, admirable man who’d put you at the centre of his life.
Who would cherish you, and make sure you never needed for anything.
I wanted you to live comfortably and quietly, fulfilled with your husband and your garden and your art, and whatever other society you did or didn’t want. ”
“Oh.” Arden sighed. “That’s lovely.”
Jack looked at him wistfully. “You can have that here, if you’d like. You can live at Greylag permanently. And, if I may, I’ll visit you. Perhaps stay for a while.”
“Oh. No, it’s lovely. Like a story, one from a nice little book for children.
The thing is, I’m thirty-one years old and that nice, admirable beta never did get around to finding me.
I’d have felt rather sorry for him if he had.
I’ve still never been attracted to anyone but you.
” And now Beckett. “It’s a lovely fantasy, Jack, but it’s yours. Not mine.”
Jack seemed a little taken aback.
Arden shrugged.
“Well, then,” Jack said. “What is your fantasy?”
Arden held his gaze. “I’m living it,” he said.
“More or less. I’m in your arms. I’m yours, and you are mine.
None of the little details matter. This is all I ever wanted.
Although I do understand. I tried very hard not to want it, too.
You worried that you’d be too much for me?
I’ve always known that I wouldn’t be enough for you. ”
“No, Arden, that’s—”
Arden clapped his hand over Jack’s mouth, and his husband snorted in astonishment. Arden smiled. “A man who commits himself to an alpha like Beckett could not possibly be fulfilled by me.”
Jack frowned.
“Please don’t insult me by denying it.”
Jack drew Arden’s hand away, pausing to kiss his palm before setting it on his chest. Arden’s fingers flexed into the solid muscle. “I wasn’t going to deny it,” Jack said. “The fact of it is, I want things in bed that I think you’ll be upset by. I am…vigorous.”
“So is Beckett.”
“He is indeed. But he wasn’t with you.”
Arden’s eyes widened. “He…w-wasn’t? That wasn’t vigorous?”
Pinching his lips together to hold back his smile, Jack shook his head slowly, black eyes gleaming.
“Are you…? You are joking with me. You’re not? Jack. I got a stitch, he was so…stop laughing!”
“He was sweet with you. Sweeter than he’s ever been for me.”
Beckett had knocked the breath clean out of him with his powerful thrusts. He’d pinned Arden, overwhelmed him, scraped stubble rash over his thighs, left fingerprint-bruises on his hips.
Arden had loved it. But…
“That was sweet?”
“Oh, yes.”
Again, he flashed back to that night—the first one, when the anger and that horrible distance hadn’t been there.
The first night, Beckett’s strong, glittering body had moved over his, pushed and shoved against his, rubbing. The muscles of his big arms had bulged beside Arden’s head as he held himself over Arden. Arden had been surrounded. Mastered.
Sweet?
“And you…ah. You…?”
“Have never been sweet like that.”
“Oh,” Arden said in a small voice.
“I won’t risk you, Arden.”
“Well, what risk even is there?”
Jack gazed at him sombrely. “I like to fight my bed partners,” he said, and nodded when Arden’s eyes rounded. “You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
Arden’s gaze flitted from Jack’s face to his biceps, his hands, and back to his face. He swallowed hard. “I don’t think any fight between us would would last long,” he said. “Two, perhaps three seconds.”
“I don’t suppose it would.” He stroked back Arden’s hair off his hot face. “I like to fight for dominance. I like to strain for it. It is a battle. There is, I am sorry to say, very little tenderness in me.”
Arden wrapped his fingers around Jack’s wrist and held him. He was cupping Arden’s cheek.
Tenderly.
His thumb was brushing back and forth along Arden’s jaw.
Also tenderly.
Arden didn’t point it out.
“The thought of looking down into your face, of pinning you beneath me, and seeing your fear…no. No.” Jack shook his head sharply.
“I understand,” Arden said.
“But now…”
Arden perked up, and didn’t even care when Jack got amused all over again.
He liked amusing Jack, he decided. No one had ever found him entertaining. He could get used to it.
“Now,” Jack said, “things are different. We are married. I stole you away from Dalbryn.”
Arden leaned forward and kissed him quickly for that.
“You peeked at Beckett like…how did you phrase it? Ah yes, a voyeuristic rodent—”
“Jack!”
“—and awakened for for him, and now that you’ve had your first heat, you’ll have another one, and—what is wrong?”
Arden had gone rigid in his lap. “I will if you want me to, Jack, but I’d rather not. It was very overwhelming.” Now it was his turn to ask, “What?”
“Arden. Did no one ever talk to you about being an omega?”
“Not to me, no. I overheard some things, though. I heard the maids talking about knots. They were wrong, by the way. Nothing ripped.”
Jack flinched. “You thought you’d...? Oh, Arden.”
He traced patterns over Jack’s broad chest and twisted his lips to the side. “That time I overheard you and Lassit was hardly the first or the last time that I heard Lassit talking about omegas. And Aloys was—well. You know Aloys. He dislikes me even more than Lassit does. I don’t know why.”
“Because he doesn’t want you.”
“Lassit made it quite clear he didn’t want an omega brother, either.”
“I meant—” Jack broke off, made a rough noise, and slipped a hand to the middle of Arden’s back, encouraging him to lean in closer until their chests were pressed together and Arden felt Jack’s steady heart beat into his.
Arden tried to meet Jack’s gaze but doing so at such a close distance made his eyes begin to cross. He laughed, and struggled back. Jack let him. “Over the years, I’ve heard plenty about what it means to be an omega.”
A burden. A disappointment. Useful only to marry off and get a large settlement in return. Otherwise, useless.
“It sounds to me as if what you heard was plenty of other peoples’ opinions about omegas. Did no one ever talk to you about the intimate realities of actually being one?”
“No.” Arden squirmed in discomfort. “Except for, um. Marl.”
“You can’t control when you go into heat.”
Arden stared at him. “What?” he screeched.
“Could you control it last time?” Jack asked sensibly.
“Well, no, but that was…? Isn’t that something that happens when you encounter a compatible alpha?”
“It is.”
“I’ve already encountered him!”
“Sweetheart. The first time ever that you encounter a compatible alpha, you’ll go into heat for them.
After an omega has had their first heat, it can happen any time.
It is a beginning, not a one-off occurrence.
Think of it as the opening of a door that you cannot close.
Omegas who bear children tend to have a regular and predictable heat cycle.
For omegas like you, it’s much more unpredictable. ”
Arden glanced away. “Omegas like me?” he said quietly.
“Those who don’t bear children.”
“Ah, yes.” He’d heard plenty about his type from Aloys. “The ones who make good whor—”
“Arden.”
Arden glared at his knotted hands, then lifted his chin and glared at Jack. “Aloys,” he said, “is an idiot.”