Chapter 39
BECKETT
Jack made another of those deep rumbling sounds. Beckett and Arden both shivered with it, and didn’t that have Jack looking smug? Beckett flashed him a grin. He wasn’t sure Jack noticed—he was almost as dazed as Arden at this point.
Beckett’s grin faded. Yeah, he’d have to wrangle Jack through this. To a greater extent than he or Jack had first thought, he reckoned.
He was up for it.
Jack rocked over Arden once, twice, three times.
Arden blinked at Beckett, and he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out to rub gently over Arden’s hot mouth. If he wasn’t already gone for this sweet man, the little kiss Arden gave to the tip of Beckett’s thumb would have done it.
Jack pushed his upper body up and off Arden, exposing his slender back and quivering shoulders as Jack took hold of his cock and notched it between Arden’s cheeks. Arden’s eyes flared wide and he held his breath.
Head hanging, attention locked on Arden’s arse, Jack slid through the snug channel of Arden’s tight cheeks a few times. Suddenly, he took hold of his cock and angled it down, drawing his hips back.
“Easy,” Beckett said at once.
“Yeah.” It was barely more than a grunt.
“Jack.”
“Yeah.”
Jack’s hips fidgeted about and Arden caught his breath as Jack got himself notched. He held still for a moment, then began to enter Arden in soft little pulses. His hips curled back and forward, back and forward. Slow, controlled.
“Good,” Beckett said.
Jack’s jaw was tense. He tightened his buttocks and pushed a little harder. Still slow, but firmer now. Making demands.
An omega was built different from an alpha, which Jack was about to find out. You didn’t have to fight your way in. Arden’s arousal and the way Jack was leaking would have him slipping in—
“Uhn.”
Beckett smiled. Yeah. Easy, like that.
Arden hummed and squirmed a bit.
Beckett checked Jack’s expression. “Hold on,” he said, sliding a quick hand over Jack’s abdomen, pressing flat under his navel.
Jack grunted but did as Beckett said.
“You still got to go slow-like.”
Jack grunted again, his eyes fixed on the back of Arden’s neck. Arden pressed his forehead into the mattress, arching up slightly. Unconsciously begging for Jack’s grip.
“Keep it easy,” Beckett said.
Shaking with the effort it was taking him not to slam in as he would if he had a growling, mastered alpha beneath him, like he’d done to Beckett often enough, though that had been between Beckett’s thighs or his cheeks and not in his hole, Jack pushed forward, and in, and in, and…
“Ahhhhh,” Jack said, the decadent moan lifting all the hairs on Beckett’s arms. And, he noticed with amusement, Arden’s.
Jack glanced at Beckett as if to say, Can you believe this?
Beckett nodded, and turned Arden’s face back to his. He made a soft, comforting sound, and thumbed the glittering moisture from his lashes. “Are you ready?”
“Please,” Arden said. “Oh, please, please.”
Jack drew his hips back and rolled gently forward.
Beckett smiled at the noise the pair of them made.
Jack curled over Arden and covered him again, sliding his knees wider to give him leverage to rock in and out.
He caught Arden’s hands and pulled them straight over his head.
He was much too tall to be able to bite the back of Arden’s neck and grip him while they fucked, but he hunched down and gave it a quick nip before he got to business.
He held Arden’s wrists to the mattress and he moved over him. Slow and easy soon turned bossy and demanding, and Arden’s quiet, pleased moans turned into loud gasps.
When the loud gasps became shocked little pants as the pace of Jack’s thrusts picked up, Beckett murmured Jack’s name and settled a hand on his bunching thigh.
Jack slowed it down, face tight with concentration and wonder.
Had this powerful, control-hungry alpha ever had to temper himself for anyone else’s pleasure, Beckett wondered? He let his hand fall away.
“Beckett,” Jack said, his voice a dark rasp. “Uhn.” He was picking up speed again, pressing Arden hard into the mattress. Arden’s pants began to sound a little panicked. Jack slowed with visible effort for a few gliding thrusts, but a few only before he picked up again.
Beckett slid closer to Arden. “You all right, pet?” he whispered.
“Mmmm. Mm-hmmm. It’s…it’s…oh. It’s good. I…” Arden twisted his head to look at Beckett. His lids fluttered and he gasped as he came. He kept his eyes squeezed shut.
“Too much?” Beckett asked sympathetically, waving a hand sharply at Jack, who didn’t stop fucking but did manage to slow down again with an agonised moan.
“N-no?”
That made Jack stop. His big arms either side of Arden’s head bunched and he leaned down, kissed the rosy tip of Arden’s ear. “Did you come for me, sweetheart?” he asked. His voice was soft and warm. His eyes were wild.
Gods, Beckett was glad that Arden couldn’t see his face right now. He’d run, not in a playful way, and they’d be in real trouble.
“Yes,” Arden said.
“So perfect for me,” Jack said.
“Really?” Arden could hardly get the word out. He squirmed under Jack, and squeaked when it caused Jack to lose control and thrust into him hard a few times.
Beckett grabbed Jack’s bunching arse cheek to stop him so fucking hard Jack would have bruises in the thick muscle tomorrow.
The damp, hot skin shivered under his touch.
Beckett bit his lip. Gods.
“Are you sore?” Jack asked. Again, Beckett marvelled at how calm his voice was.
“Um. A little, perhaps? But I want you to…you haven’t yet, have you?”
“No, not yet.”
Arden arched his back, pushing his sore arse up and offering more.
“I don’t have to—” Jack started.
Arden cut him off. “Oh, but…don’t you want…?”
Lingeringly, and with impressive control, Jack pulled out. He scooped Arden face up and settled his shaking body over Arden’s limp, satisfied one. He framed Arden’s face between his hands and gazed at him before lowering his head and kissing him.
For all the gentleness he was showing Arden, Beckett heard Jack’s body screaming for release.
“I do want,” Jack said. “But I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” Arden said. The hectic colour in his cheeks splashed all the way down his chest. He looked like a little strawberry. “I trust you.”
Jack swallowed with difficulty. “Do you mean that, Arden?”
Arden’s brows pinched together. “Of course. With everything that I am.”
Jack sighed. “I don’t want to finish in you,” he said.
Arden didn’t even flinch. “All right.”
“Do you know why?” Jack asked.
Arden linked his arms around Jack’s neck and pecked a little kiss on his mouth. “Because you’ll bounce me right off the bed if you let go the way you need to?”
Jack gave a short laugh, and nodded. “Something like that.”
Arden stroked the nape of his neck, not knowing that he was the only person in existence who could do it without getting his hand bitten off.
“I’d like to try one day,” he said. “But I understand.” He shot Beckett a cheeky, conspiratorial look before saying seriously to Jack, “It’s your first time, after all, and I understand that your control might not be up to—eeee! ”
Jack growled and fell on him, playful at first, but he was on the edge. His playfulness tipped over to a hard thrust, and he threaded his fingers through Arden’s hair, pulled his head to the side and bit.
Arden slapped at him. His laugh was high and bright. “Beckett!” he cried happily. “Help!”
“As you wish, Your Grace,” Beckett said promptly, and tackled Jack before he bit again and Arden panicked.
He wrapped his arms around Jack’s chest and heaved, shoving him clean off Arden.
Arden scooted himself out of the way and up to the top of the bed, and that was all Beckett saw before Jack growled and fought back.
Beckett’s attack had pushed Jack over onto his side, and Beckett did his best to continue the momentum and get the man flat. He managed it, despite Jack’s furious counter-heave, but couldn’t keep the advantage for long.
He was still grappling to pin Jack’s shoulders down and swing his leg over Jack’s hips when Jack blocked Beckett’s leg with his own, thrust up with a twist of his muscular body, and rolled Beckett clean over.
And so it went, the pair of them writhing against each other, pulling up the bedsheets as always, grunting and snapping at each other, snatching biting kisses before another attempt to pin and dominate.
It was all so instinctive to Beckett, falling back into the vigour of it compared to the soft lovemaking that Arden needed, that it took him a few minutes to remember that he was supposed to be letting Jack have his way.
To his absolute astonishment, it…it wasn’t hard to yield.
Before Arden came into their relationship, Beckett fought Jack as if he was fighting for his life. It was what Jack wanted and expected. It was what Beckett expected and wanted from Jack.
Except now…
Now it was different.
He felt the shift. Gods, he felt it, deep inside him. He would never, ever fully submit but for Jack, for Arden, he thought he could yield. Now and then. Just a little.
Just enough.
Instead of having to grimly force himself to allow Jack to win, he goaded Jack to earn it. And yet the hard, twisting grapple didn’t increase. It turned slow. Lingering. He blinked into Jack’s face. Jack looked as surprised at it as he did.
Beckett unlocked the grip of his thighs around Jack’s hips and set his feet on the mattress, bucking up into Jack. It wasn’t as sensuous as the way Arden did it, with that supple , quicksilver way he had of working his lithe muscles, but for Beckett? Yeah. It was.
Pretty fucking sensuous.
He did it again, with a taunting smirk. Couldn’t quite bring himself to let go of Jack completely. Kept a hand in his thick hair. But the other hand, he ran down Jack’s chest teasingly.
Jack sucked in a sharp breath through his nose, his stomach hollowing under Beckett’s touch.
Beckett caught a brief glimpse of Arden’s wide eyes and that aroused flush, at the way Arden was quivering towards them. Good.
He bucked his hips again, made as if to throw Jack off, and Jack shoved himself down, their pelvises crashing together in a way that would have scared Arden. Beckett loved it, though. He loved the way that Jack covered him, fought for his wrists, went for his hip to try and flip him.
Beckett leaned up and bit at Jack’s jaw. “You ain’t getting me on my belly tonight,” he said. “Gonna have to take it best you can on top.”
Jack had a preference for rutting himself to completion between Beckett’s thighs or, if Beckett permitted it, his cheeks. Beckett liked the latter far too much, in his own estimation.
“Fine by me,” Jack said.
It was a preference, but like Beckett, Jack would take anything. So long as he was straining to get it.
He rested his weight hard onto Beckett, trying to force him clean through the bed to the floor, it felt like, and kissed Beckett hard on the mouth.
He smiled, waiting until Beckett’s lips curved against his in response before he lifted his head, held Beckett’s gaze with his black, fiery eyes for a shivery second, then looked up at Arden.
“Come on down here,” Jack said. “If you want.”
“No, no,” Arden said. “I like the view from up here, thank you. It’s lovely.”
“Hasn’t got his sketchbook out, has he?” Beckett asked, grabbing a double handful of Jack’s arse and squeezing hard enough to make Jack jolt.
“Not today,” Arden said. “What a good idea, though.”
Jack was shaking faintly. Trying to control it, but he must be at the very edge of his limits and yet here he was, checking in with Arden.
Maybe Arden would like this for himself. Maybe he’d just like to watch.
They had time to work it all out, to find out and explore.
But now, it was time to get things moving.
He slid his hands lasciviously over Jack’s round arse, lifted the cheeks, separated them, and—
There we go.
Jack snarled and fucked against him, hard. His cock dragged forcefully over Beckett’s groin and stomach.
That was all it took. First pump of his hips set him right off.
He pressed his chest to Beckett’s, pushing him down. He shoved his arms up and under Beckett’s shoulders, curling over the tops for better leverage to pull him in even as he thrust down. He stared down at Beckett unblinkingly, hips working fast and furious.
Beckett grunted as the air was shoved out of his chest. He struggled about a bit, and not only for show. Jack wasn’t the only one who needed to get off here. He managed to shift himself about to get his own cock closer to Jack’s, then he pushed at Jack’s thigh.
“Lift,” he choked out. “Get up a bit, come on, Jack, let me—yeah. Yeah.” He got his hand between them, got their cocks snugged up nice and tight to each other, and…
and that wasn’t a gasp when Jack snatched his hand out and slammed it beside his head, leaning his weight into the wrist and immobilising it.
Sounded like a gasp.
Wasn’t.
Jack drew his hips back and fucked against him again and oh. Oh. That was it. That was what he needed. What Jack needed.
Arden was panting lightly somewhere behind him, his breath pitching quicker and higher, telling Beckett that he liked what he saw well enough, even before Jack flicked his gaze up, stared at Arden for a second, and gave a filthy smile when Arden choked and made a sound like he was coming again.
It was a blur after that. Of being pinned and fighting against it without the fury he was used to, without the grim determination to win. Fighting for the enjoyment of it, the pulse and slide of it. For Jack, who was staring down at him with love. With pride.
Beckett looked away and got his head turned back and a hard bite on his mouth. Jack’s thrusts sped up, Beckett locked the one arm he had free around Jack’s waist, and leaned up to bite Jack’s ear and say, “Come for me.”
Jack did. Loudly, fiercely, and comprehensively.
The bastard even pushed back and straddled Beckett at the very end of it, marking him deliberately from chin to cock before getting his hand on Beckett, and that was it.