Chapter 26
BECKETT
Arden had drifted closer again, Beckett saw with amusement.
He held out his hand. This time, Arden took it with half the hesitation.
Beckett was about to launch into his apology—still didn’t quite know what to say, though he had no doubt that once he got going, he’d come up with something—only Arden cut him off before he even started, surprising him with a gentle tug.
“Would you come over to the bench and sit with me?” he said, gesturing behind him. “The ground must be hard on your knees.”
“That it is,” Beckett agreed. “Think it’s best I stay where I am for a moment, though.” On your knees was the right place for a penitent, after all. “Arden, I’m sorry for how it went between us.”
Arden’s cheeks turned a dull, ugly red.
Beckett tightened his grasp on the now-slack fingers.
“I was a proper arsehole,” he said. Arden choked out a shocked little laugh, and Beckett smiled.
That was the right direction. Keep him off balance.
“I was worried about Jack,” he continued, “and took it out on you. There weren’t no call for it, and I shouldn’t have. I apologise.”
“I understand,” Arden said.
“I’m sure you do. In fact, I’m sure there’s no hard feelings, and you don’t blame me a bit.”
“Yes,” Arden said with relief, and swayed a tiny bit closer. “Exactly.”
Beckett took advantage and reached for Arden’s other hand, rising to a high kneel as he did.
Arden’s breathing picked up. Because Beckett couldn’t help himself, and because he was a controlling bastard and he liked what it did to the little omega, he drew Arden’s hands slowly behind his back and held them there firmly.
“Do you understand it weren’t right for me to do it, though? ”
Arden didn’t reply. He was staring down into Beckett’s face as if fascinated. He twisted his wrists in Beckett’s grasp but didn’t attempt to pull away. He was feeling it out.
Beckett obligingly tightened his grip. “Arden?” he prompted. “Tell me you know it wasn’t all right.”
“I…no.”
“No?” Beckett arched a brow, exaggerating his disapproval.
Arden quailed. Just a little. Beckett had to swallow down the pleased growl. “No. I don’t agree. Jack is your lover. You had every right to be angry.”
Beckett studied his face. “No one gets to treat you like shit, Arden.” He watched it bounce clean off.
“But I deserved—”
He dragged Arden in until they were pressed together. He was tall. Arden was short. Arden was looking down at Beckett, but not by much. “You deserve respect. Consideration. Kindness.”
“I’m just—”
“Arden.”
“Beckett, I—”
Arden had a little squirm. Oh, Beckett loved this. “I was wrong to do it,” he said firmly.
“You—”
“Say it.”
“I don’t want—”
“Ah-ah.”
Arden sucked in an annoyed breath, eyes bright. “Beckett—”
“Arden. Say it.”
Arden broke free of Beckett’s grip, because Beckett let him, only instead of backing up, he took hold of Beckett’s face and leaned down to say, “You were wrong to do it. You scared me. You were cruel.”
“Good,” Beckett said hoarsely, every word landing like a knockout hit.
“Now it’s my turn. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that Jack had to marry me.
I’m sorry that he had to s-send me to Avendene ahead of him and I was a horrible surprise.
I’m sorry that I went into heat for you.
I didn’t know that was how it worked. If I had, then I wouldn’t have peeked so much.
Or I’d have tried not to. I promise. I’m sorry I’ve spoiled your relationship with Jack.
That I’ve wedged myself in the middle of it.
I never would have. I’d have stayed away if I’d known, and… and I’m sorry.”
“Are you finished?”
“Yes!”
“Then kiss me.”
He hesitated for all of a second before he ducked down and mashed his mouth to Beckett’s.
Beckett wanted to pull him in, pull him down, roll him on the lawn. Kiss him madly, wildly, make him wild for it.
He eased him away after the smallest peck.
“Seems to me,” he said, “that we’ve both got things we’re sorry for.”
Arden panted lightly.
“Difference is, Arden, the things you’re sorry for were all out of your control. What I did, I did on purpose.”
He watched Arden’s eyes, dark with full and shining pupils. He watched that sink in.
Then Arden said, “Because you’re an arsehole.”
Beckett laughed. “I am.”
Swallowing hard, going shy again, Arden said offhand, “It is a good thing that I rather like arseholes.”
Beckett gave him a feral grin. “Me too, sweetheart. Me, too.”
Arden didn’t work it out until Beckett gave his bum a frisky squeeze, and then he made an indignant little noise that had Beckett laughing again.
“Forgive me?” Beckett said.
“Yes,” he said at once, and then ruined it by adding, “If you forgive m—”
“Arden,” he said sharply.
Arden sighed. “Yes.”
“Good.” Beckett got to his feet slowly, holding Arden’s hips. He kept his hands on Arden as he did it, but the instant Arden tried to pull away, he let him slip out of his grasp.
Arden fussed with his curls, touched his throat lightly, and hummed. “Shall we…?”
“Yes,” Jack called from where he was waiting at the end of the path, leaning against the gate with his arms over his chest and his ankles crossed. Where he’d been watching and listening to the whole thing. “We shall! Or I won’t get to spend time with either of you before I have to leave.”
Arden turned to Jack at once, and hurried off. He paused and waved at Beckett, who obligingly strolled after him.
All in all, Beckett thought as he walked beside Jack along a sunken lane with fern-covered shady banks as high as his head, it had worked out better than he’d dared hope.
He’d known that an apology was more than in order. He hadn’t once thought about getting on his knees for it, though.
Beckett could do a lot of interesting things to Arden from his knees.
He filed that away for future consideration.
Arden walked a few paces ahead of them. Jack had taken his hand in the garden, and for most of the ten minutes it had taken them to cross the fields and reach the lane, Arden had held on. Then, just as he’d slipped free from Beckett, he’d pulled away from Jack.
Jack had reeled him back in, making Arden laugh. They had an ease between them, a familiarity, that Arden and Beckett didn’t. Jack knew Arden in a way that Beckett didn’t.
‘Course, Beckett thought smugly, remembering the clutch of Arden’s body, the squeeze of his lovely thighs against Beckett’s sides, the pulse of him beneath Beckett, he knew Arden in a way that Jack didn’t.
It would all equalise soon enough. Right now, he could admit that he felt a twinge of jealousy at their ease. That Jack could haul Arden in like that, move him around physically, and Arden wasn’t afraid of it.
He enjoyed it.
Jack let go and Arden rushed off, shooting Beckett a shy glance as he did.
“He’s giving us some time together,” Jack said, knocking his shoulder into Beckett’s.
“I got that,” Beckett said.
“So.” Jack kept his eyes forward and on Arden as the omega all but sprinted down the lane. “What brought you from Avendene to Sevennis to Greylag?”
“You know well enough what brought me,” Beckett said.
“You missed me desperately.”
He said it in a teasing tone. Instead of scoffing and making a fuss about it, Beckett simply said, “Yeah.” He lifted his brows at Jack’s startled expression. “What? You think I don’t miss you when we’re apart?”
“I know you do. You miss me as much as I miss you. I thought you’d rather die than admit it.”
Beckett shrugged. Things had changed. “Sorry for barging in on the pair of you. I wasn’t going to let the duch know I was here. I wanted to see you.” Needed it.
“And?” Jack prompted.
“And I decided it’s time to start fixing this nonsense with Arden, so we can all stop agonising about it and apologising to each other. We’re ending up together anyway.”
At the look on Jack’s handsome face, you’d think Beckett had dropped onto his knees again, only this time to lift up a ring and solemnly ask Jack to marry him.
Jack gripped Beckett’s upper arm, swung him around and hauled him in for a harsh, claiming kiss.
He ran his hand up the back of Beckett’s neck, fisted his hair briefly as he rested their foreheads together, then let go.
Arden glanced back and they both started walking again, as if nothing had happened.
“Marl reckoned on flowers and poetry,” Beckett offered, to break the tension that was throbbing between them. Gods, he wanted a fuck. What were the odds of him getting one today? Not good, most like. “To go wooing the duch.”
“While I think Arden would be thrilled to get either, you don’t need to woo him, Beckett. He’s already ours.” They both watched Arden stop at the end of the lane and, inexplicably, start hopping on one foot as he wrestled a boot off. “I suspect he knows it, deep down.”
“What’s he doing?” Beckett asked. Arden had one boot off and in his hand. He disappeared around the side of the honeysuckle-draped hedgerow, which was low enough to show his russet head going up and down as he presumably hopped about and took the other boot off.
“He loves the beach. We came down yesterday when it was cold and had only just stopped raining, and he still took his boots and stockings off to go barefoot on the sand.”
They turned the corner around the hedgerow themselves, and there it was; the beach, flung out wide in a dark-gold arc of sand, and a silken, gently rolling sea.
And Arden, in a flat-out sprint down to the waves.
He’d left his boots and coat up in the low dunes where the grass stopped and the beach began. He ran all the way up to the lacy edge of the water, screeched loudly when it curled around his ankles and splashed up his calves, and skipped out of its reach.
Beckett eyed Jack.
Jack shook his head. “He loves it.”
Sometimes, Beckett wondered about these fine folk. He really did.
“Are you fully recovered from the suppressants now?” Beckett asked, digging his hands in his breeches pocket and turning to face Jack, walking backwards. “Don’t lie to me.”
“Yes.”