Chapter 19
Levi didn’t bring Elm inside.
Instead, he carried him around the side of the front of the house, onto a mostly hidden stone path that wrapped its way toward the back. Elm hung over his shoulder, trying not to throw up on the alpha’s back, head swinging dizzily.
The second he was set down, he swayed, needing Levi’s help to steady himself. In the time it took him to regain his bearings, the alpha stripped him out of the coat and his boots.
“Get in.” Levi helped him take a single step forward, and the second Elm’s feet touched water, he snapped out of it enough to take in his surroundings.
“What is this?”
They were somewhere on the side of the main part of the lodge.
A pool built into the ground filled with clear teal water greeted him, whisps of steam twirling across the surface.
Outdoor lights outlined the perimeter, and there were a couple pieces of furniture on the patio, though it was covered in snow.
“A natural hot spring,” Levi told him. He’d cleared off a chair and set both of their coats over it, and was in the process of removing his boots. As soon as he was done, he reached for Elm’s hand, stepping in after him.
There were stones around the edge, like the one Elm was standing on. Levi moved off of it first, dropping into the pool so the water ended up at his waist, then he reached for Elm and helped him down the rest of the way, leading them to the other side where a longer stone served as a bench.
“Sit.” He eased Elm down and started massaging his hands beneath the water.
Elm sighed as he was engulfed by warmth, the water over his shoulders now, so he was mostly submerged. His eyes grew heavy and he let them close, resting his head back against heated stone as the alpha worked feeling back into his limbs.
Maybe he shouldn’t have gone outside.
“Building a snow rabbit in this weather,” he clicked his tongue and chuckled. “Not my brightest idea.”
The alpha hummed in acknowledgement, but that was it.
Elm peeled his eyes open and stared at the alpha.
He seemed hyper focused on his task, as though he actually thought there was a chance Elm would suffer cold damage, even though he’d been wearing gloves and not out for all that long.
“Why do you like rabbits so much?” Maybe if he distracted him, Levi would lose that weirdly intense expression.
“I had one once,” the alpha said. “I spent all my time looking after it.” His tone turned bitter. “More time than my parents spent with me.”
“Did you secretly want to be cared for, Levi?” Elm didn’t know much about the Morningstars, other than that they were a crime family, and had been for generations.
The White Frost was apparently older than the Eumia even, a pillar of the underworld that even the Imperials who legally ruled the planet couldn’t knock down.
He couldn’t imagine people like that, ones raised in bloodshed and spoiled with the dirty kind of wealth, would make parent of the year.
“Hardly,” Levi replied. “I wanted to do the caring. And I wanted to prove I could do it the right way.”
“There is no right way to care for someone.”
The corner of Levi’s mouth tipped upward, the only sign he gave that he didn’t agree. “Still drunk?”
“Definitely tipsy.” He hummed and then corrected, “Nope. Yeah. Still drunk.”
“Warm up here for a bit. It’ll help with the sore muscles you mentioned at dinner as well.”
“What about you?” The alpha had left Elm’s pajamas on, but had taken off his silk robe.
He searched his chest and arms for any signs of damage, but couldn’t find any.
There were a couple of mostly faded scars, but they were too old, nothing that had happened in the past few days.
“What happened? Why’d you show up bleeding? ”
“Ambush,” Levi said. Like it was no big deal.
“That happen a lot?”
“Enough.” He shrugged. “There’s no need to worry. No one knows about this place. You’re safe here.”
“Alpha, you’re forgetting that the only one I need to be worried about is you.”
“That so?” Levi finished with his massage but didn’t move away.
Instead of taking the spot next to him, he rested his palms over Elm’s knees and met his gaze.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m not the one who stole you from Glyph and brought you here.
I’m also not responsible for the dose of Rebirth that’s messing with your system. ”
“Maybe not,” he agreed, “but you stole me all the same.”
He smiled. “Have I?”
“Don’t.” Elm reached up and covered the alpha’s mouth. “When you smirk like that, I get nervous.” He inhaled slowly, taking in the scent of frost and pine and minerals from the water. “When will this end?”
Levi grasped his wrist and eased his hand away. “When will what end?”
“The experiments.”
“When I get what I want.”
“What’s that?” Elm frowned. “A completed data set? You said you had files on the drug already.”
“Everyone reacts to it a bit differently,” Levi told him. “I know another synthetic. He was altered from alpha to omega. It took him a full year to stabilize.”
Elm sucked in a sharp breath.
“You’re different,” he reminded.
“That only makes this make less sense. Why bother with any of this if you won’t get clear answers from it anyway? There’s no guarantee that the next person you give this drug to will react to it the same way I have.”
“No, but there hasn’t been a single documented dominant omega to come about from any of the initial testing either. You’re the first. The chemists who created Rebirth even wrote in their notes that creating a synthetic dominant would be impossible. Yet here you are.”
Elm scoffed. “Yeah. Here I am. In the middle of a forest, in a natural hot tub with the scariest alpha on the planet. Hooray.”
Levi chuckled. “You’re kind of adorable when wasted. Except for the escaping part.”
“When did I do that?” He rolled his eyes when he realized what the alpha was referring to. “I went outside. That’s it. I wasn’t trying to run away.”
“No?”
“You literally told me there’s nothing for miles and miles. Where would I go?”
“Exactly. Nowhere. You’ll stay right here. With me.”
“Aren’t you the CEO of like several major corporations? Not to mention being the Dominus of a mafia has to keep you busy.”
“I’ll be working from home for the foreseeable future. Baal can handle things in my stead,” Levi said. “If something comes up and I absolutely have to leave, I’ll make the drive to the city. I don’t anticipate that happening, but if it does, you’ll still be safe here.”
“Let me guess,” he drawled, “the doors also lock from the inside?”
“Most doors do.”
Elm splashed him, stiffening when the alpha caught his hand and pulled it up to his mouth.
Levi pressed his lips lightly against Elm’s pulse point, maintaining eye contact as he did.
“What are you doing?”
“You ask that a lot,” the alpha pointed out.
“Yeah, because you’ve been acting weird all day.” His free hand came up between them when the alpha shifted closer, slamming against his chest in a poor attempt to maintain some distance.
Levi covered that hand with his other palm and stepped flush between Elm’s thighs.
“I’m serious.” Was it the alcohol or the steam making him lightheaded all of a sudden? His heart fluttered uncomfortably as well. “What are you trying to do, Levi?”
“I’m going to kiss you,” he announced.
“Why?” Memories of the last time they’d kissed in the kitchen at the manor flashed through his mind. “Because I came outside without permission?”
“It’s not a punishment, omega.”
“Then what is it? Why do it?”
“To see how it feels.”
Elm’s hand pressed against his chest harder, but the alpha’s strength was superior and he leaned in close with ease. “Don’t most kisses feel the same?”
“I’m not most alphas.” Levi released his wrist to capture him by the nape instead, tipping Elm’s head back to give him better access to his lips. “And you are definitely not most omegas.”
“Still, I don’t see why you’d want to—” Elm didn’t get to finish his rebuff, the rest of his sentence swallowed up by the alpha’s lips as he dropped them over his.
The kiss was aggressive, charged. The alpha claimed his mouth with rough strokes of his tongue and hard sucks.
He bit Elm’s upper lip and tugged lightly, careful not to break skin, then drove his tongue in deep.
The harried pace was a far cry from the man’s usual icy demeanor, and before long, Elm’s head was spinning, his lungs burning as he struggled to breathe through the assault.
Had he ever been kissed like this? He’d lost count of how many people he’d shared a bed with, had considered his youth a time to fool around and have fun.
But no one had ever come at him with such fervor, as though Levi’s sole purpose in life had narrowed down to learning all the ins and outs of Elm’s mouth.
As though he was trying to commit him to memory and using his tongue to do it.
Elm felt his dick begin to lengthen, his ass clench, and he tore his mouth away, turning his face when the alpha tried to recapture his lips.
“Stop.” Elm’s heart was beating a mile a minute, pheromones prickling off his skin.
His own. Not the alpha’s. Lust pheromones trickled past his defenses, and he struggled to rein them in, his body fighting with itself to regain equilibrium.
Any lingering effects of the alcohol were burned away, leaving him painfully aware of what he was and what he’d been doing. “I’ll go into heat.”
Levi hushed him but thankfully didn’t force the issue. He didn’t pull away, but his lips ghosted over the rise of Elm’s cheek, then onto his exposed shoulder, his touches gentle again, as though he hadn’t just made out with him like the world was burning down around them.
“Come inside,” the alpha commanded, meeting his gaze when Elm shook his head.
“No.” He’d stay right here. Calm down.
Levi seemed to pick up on the source of his anxiety and reached up to pet his head. “I’m not going to fuck you, treasure. The storm has picked up. It’s too cold out here, even in the hot spring.”
As though in response, a fat flake drifted down and landed in Levi’s hair.
Shit.
He was right.
“I’m not hard,” the alpha added. “Check.”
Damn it. Elm did.
They both may as well be naked considering how see-through the white silk had become, but Levi was telling the truth there as well. His cock was soft. Visible as all hell. But soft.
Elm didn’t like how he instantly felt upset that he was the only one who’d been turned on enough by the kiss to pop a semi.
“Come inside,” Levi insisted, voice firming at the end. “Or I’ll have to use soothing pheromones and make you obey.”
The fact he wanted to ask for those pheromones gave Elm pause, and he ended up agreeing and sliding off the stone bench. He allowed the alpha to lead him out of the pool, gasping when his feet only touched the cold stone for a second before he found himself swept up in the alpha’s arms.
Levi carried him to the side entrance, abandoning their outerwear and their boots. The device on his wrist connected with the lock and the door beeped and slid open on its own at their approach. They entered next to the tiny table tucked beneath the stairs, but he didn’t put him down or pause.
“We’re getting water everywhere,” Elm noted as the alpha took them upstairs.
“I’ll clean it after.” He bypassed the second level and continued up.
“I’m cold.”
“Almost there.” Levi picked up the pace, entering the bedroom Elm had woken in earlier, and making a beeline for the attached master bath. He set Elm down in a large glass shower stall, reaching around him to operate the system.
A moment later, a stream of water cascaded down from the showerhead, a few inches from where Elm stood.
After the alpha adjusted the temperature and was satisfied with it, he nudged Elm closer. “Get under and then take off your clothes.”
Elm hesitated even as the alpha dragged his own wet pants down his legs and tossed them into the corner of the stall.
“Do you need help?” Levi reached for him, and Elm got into motion, quickly undoing the buttons. The material got stuck on his shoulders though, and he struggled until the alpha chuckled and opted to help him after all.
Within moments they were both naked and under the spray. It was amazing how cold Elm had managed to get just from the short distance, but he sighed as warmth reentered his bones, then again when the alpha’s hands came around his head, fingers massaging the base of his skull.
Elm swayed toward him, catching himself by grabbing onto Levi’s forearms, but he didn’t stop him.
“Are you sleepy?” Levi asked quietly. “Would you like to rest after?”
As amazing as the king-sized bed he’d woken up in sounded, Elm made a sound of disagreement.
“I want to see the studio.” He’d left the sketchpad on the basement floor of his cage. Would the alpha have remembered to bring it? The thought alone had him frowning, and Levi, of course, noticed.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?”
“There’s no reason for me not to be nice to you.”
Elm blinked at him. “That’s not a good enough answer.”
“It’s the only answer you’re getting, omega.” Levi released him and stepped back. “Stay. I’ll go get fresh clothes.”
Elm slumped back against the tile, watching the alpha walk out of the room naked and wet. As a precaution, he pinched his cheek, wincing when it hurt. This wasn’t a dream, and he’d been the one who drank too much.
Something was different though.
Something had been different for a while.
But for the life of him, he still couldn’t explain what that something was.