Chapter Five
Seth
Our last night at the old stable together was supposed to be our last night together at all. From our first kiss, it was understood that we had only hours before we would have to say goodbye to this aspect of our lives.
We walked inside together, arms wrapped around one another, hips brushing with every step.
After so many nights here, I’d taken it for granted, for a bit, able to pretend we’d always be able to come here together.
But our fathers had put an end date to our love.
Had they consulted with one another before bringing the hammer down on the same day?
“Can you stay until morning?” he asked, his breath warm on my ear as we approached the stairs to the loft.
“I am going to.” Nobody would take this last night from us if I had a say. “You?”
“Try and stop me.” He turned the key in the door then, before I knew what he had in mind, he’d scooped me up in his arms. I flung my arms around his neck, hoping not to take us both into a tumble.
We were much of the same size and weight, but my fated carried me a good three or four steps before letting me back on my feet. “Romantic?”
“Indy, you’re out of your mind. Did you hurt yourself?”
“What do you think?” His lips crashed onto mine, and I kissed him back, trying to remember every second of our last night together. Indy had his own home, while I had stayed in the alpha house in one of my gambits to buy time.
Moving toward the king-sized bed that took up the center of the loft space, I suddenly became aware of delicious scents.
Not as delicious as my mate, of course, and I would have noticed sooner if we hadn’t been all tangled up in each other as we came in the door.
I spun around to face him. “Indy, you brought dinner?”
He grinned, and it almost-but-not-quite reached his eyes. “Not dinner, exactly, but appetizers and sparkling wine.”
“And dessert!” On the small table in front of the back windows, the spread was laid out. “All my favorites in miniature.”
“Yeah.” He came to my side. “It’s kind of an anti-celebration, but I was hoping you’d need your strength.”
“I hope I know what you have in mind.” I sat down in the right-hand chair, the one I’d used every time we came here. “Mmm. Quiches, potato skins, stuffed mushrooms, crostini…”
“How is it that everything you love is from the 1980s?” He took his regular seat opposite me, the view of open fields glowing under moonlight before us. “Were you a yuppie in a former life?”
I picked up a mushroom and popped it into my mouth. “Crab,” I mumbled around it. “The very best stuffing.”
He helped himself to a potato skin, not willing to admit how good it all was, but always eating it just the same. “I love you, you know?”
I stopped, a mini quiche halfway to my lips.
“I will always love you.” My appetite dissipated, but I didn’t want to disappoint my mate after the effort he went to.
We often had snacks here, but they were usually more along the lines of chips and salsa or maybe fried chicken boxes.
But we’d been out once to a retro night at a local restaurant and had all of these foods.
It wasn’t something on their regular menu, so I wasn’t sure how he’d managed to find these things in his town or mine, but I would darned well eat it right down to the last mini cheesecake bite.
“Seth?”
I paused, reaching for another mushroom. “Yes?”
“Why don’t we leave this for later and go to bed.”
Drawing my hand back, I nodded. “I want you more than cheesecake.”
He burst into laughter. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”
“I should have said it sooner.” Rising, we moved toward the center of the room, bringing the bottle of wine and our glasses with us.
We left them on the nightstand and undressed one another with a new tenderness.
We should have appreciated our nights together more.
Not that we didn’t…but they were all we had left.
Tonight and the memories. His skin was warm satin, his chest and arms and legs lightly dusted with hair.
And the light nest between his legs, neatly trimmed, that cradled his cock.
Dropping to my knees, I closed my fist around his shaft and held him steady while taking him into my mouth.
Indy’s hands clamped onto my shoulders, his breath rasping out. “I didn’t see that coming.”
Lifting my face, I released him long enough to say, “Then hang on a few minutes, and you will.”
He guided me back into place, legs braced wide apart like a sailor on a ship in a storm. “Show me, alpha.”
Taking him deep, I fulfilled that promise, and when I’d swallowed the last droplet, he fell back onto the bed and pulled his knees up to his chest.
“Indy, you don’t have to…”
“I want you to. Go in my jeans pocket and you’ll find what we need.”
Still, I hesitated. “Sure?” We’d only done this a couple of times with one another, more of an experiment than anything.
“Seth!”
“Yes, alpha.” Wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, I rose from my knees and found his pants on a chair nearby.
As promised, the pocket held what we’d need.
A tube of lube—something that would not be required with our omegas—and my throat swelled nearly closed at the thought. “Did I tell you I love you?”
“You don’t have to say that just to get in my ass. I’m easy.”
Squeezing out a glob onto my fingers, I slicked up my cock before I went to work on his hole. “That’s not true, or I’d have been in here a lot more often.” He was tight, the ring of muscles closing around my fingers as I prepared him. “I’ll be gentle.”
“No.”
“What?” I stopped, three fingers inside him to the second knuckle.
“You can be rough. Mark me any way you can, from the inside out.”
Because we couldn’t mark one another the way we wanted to. As I fitted the head of my cock into him, still a squeeze, I sniffed back the tears that his words and my thoughts brought forward. Damn the whole shimmer leadership rules anyway. Who needed them? I needed this male.
I was not gentle.
And I knotted him. It wasn’t supposed to work that way with another alpha, but it did with him.
Hours later, as we prepared to leave, I grabbed him and hugged him as hard as I could. “This can’t be our last time.”
“It has to be,” he said, kissing me and easing me away. “There’s no way out.”
“I have an idea. Let’s take a trip. We can go somewhere nobody knows us, where we won’t have to hide. Just be us for a whole weekend before everything good ends.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know…San Diego? We do business there sometimes and I can make up an excuse if you can.”
“We’ll have to go separately,” he mused. “Now, why do I need to go there?”