REN
Ren
My hands were shoved deep in my pockets.
Hands that had just been covered in his slick.
I was too afraid they’d shake. I should put on that seasickness bracelet again, the way my brain was sloshing around in my skull, making me nauseous. I spun the ring on my thumb with my index finger. A self soothing habit. Or a way to keep my hands to myself so I didn’t reach out and grab him again as we took the long way back down to the gangway.
I’d fucked a lot of people in my life. None that I cared about, not really. Except for Justice.
Fuck. Now Theo.
On the bright side, if I wasn’t dead or in jail at the end of this trip, I’d have another person to obsess over and stalk to fill up my day with. I needed to find myself a fucking hobby. Interior design or some shit. Maybe renovate my loft instead of endlessly searching “#Twill” on social media. It wouldn’t take much. Some drywall and 2-by-4s to build space for a nest…
Fuck me.
Why couldn’t I be smart and keep my dick to myself? My aura to myself? Having him so close, I could almost pretend his aura was mine.
Touch-starved? Could alphas be touch-starved?
Theo stopped and spun around so suddenly, I almost ran into him. He was way too close, but I couldn’t step away.
“I’m sorry.” His face was earnest, but he didn’t seem upset.
“What could you possibly be sorry for?”
“You were on your best behavior and I,” he shrugged, “basically jumped your bones.”
“I started it. So the apology should be mine to give.”
He fought to hide a smile. “You can make it up to me by sucking my dick again.”
“Theo…”
“Could we not be weird about this? Live in denial for a week? And I don’t know, cry about it when we get home?”
“Good news for you. I excel at suppressing my heart’s desires.”
His breath caught. He turned his face away and blew out a short breath.
“Promise me one thing.”
“Anything.”
“When you leave, don’t make me hate you.”
Great. Now it was my turn to curl into the fetal position and bawl. I didn’t even have a nest to make myself feel better.
I grabbed his face and kissed him fiercely. He met me, matched me, equally. He was the one who stepped away, sliding out of my hold. He only made it five steps before he looked over his shoulder for me, knowing I’d follow.
“How do you steal a car?” Theo said casually. A remarkable feat given, well, everything.
“What?”
“Do you use that long skinny thing you see in the movies? You know, you jam it in the window?”
“Thinking of making a career change?”
“Well, I tried doing an internet search but,” he made air quotes, “‘long skinny thing used to steal cars’ didn’t return any results.”
I turned and walked backward for a few paces just to get a read on his face.
“What?” He threw up his hands. “I’ve been thinking about it for days. I’ve never met a car thief before. My only frame of reference is that Guiness McFearson movie. What was it called? ‘Hot Rods’”
“Fair enough.” I turned back around and let my shoulder graze his. “You can’t steal a car like that these days. They’re basically computers. Manual locks don’t work that way anymore.”
“So, how do you do it?”
“You steal the keys.”
“But people keep their keys in their pockets…”
“It’s not that hard when their clothes are on the floor.” I shrugged.
“You fuck…” Theo stopped himself and looked around, like it only now occurred to him that we were in public. He continued in a whisper. “You fuck people just to get their keys?”
“I have, yes,” I sidestepped a pack in matching t-shirts coming back on board the ship. It was crowded. I tugged at Theo’s sleeve to pull him into a ‘staff only’ doorway and out of foot traffic. He had wanted to come down here to see if he could catch Mackenzie and Justice.
“It’s easier to drop an antihistamine in their drink and let them get sleepy and then lift the keys. Or break into their gym locker.” I shrugged absently.
“Smart,” Theo nodded, scanning the crowd. “You don’t have to worry about being overpowered or barked at.”
That fiery alpha rage twisted my insides. The world was not a safe space for omegas.
Theo popped up on his toes and craned his neck. Mackenzie’s beautiful face dotted in and out of the crowd. She dragged Justice behind her.
“Theo!”
Fear drained everything from me.
“Hey! How were the ATVs?”
Justice was not okay.
“We’re late.”
It was his eyes. Black and bottomless.
“We have to go.”
A death grip on her hand.
“It’s first come, first served, remember?”
She turned back to Justice, kissed him on the cheek. The connection only broke when the distance between them got too great.
Then Justice snapped.
“Just.”
I knew he heard me say his name, but he wasn’t even hyperventilating. I didn’t think he was breathing. I tugged him through the staff door and down the hallway Tommy and I had cased earlier.
A CEO having a panic attack in public was one thing. Justice’s ego would survive that. An alpha having a panic attack was something else.
He staggered, spun his head in all directions, and then reached up to touch the ceiling. His fingers barely grazed it.
Shit. This was a bad idea.
“Just. Can you come back to me?” His breathing was so shallow, I didn’t even know if he was breathing.
I caressed the back of his hand with my knuckle. He looked down at our hands and then back up at me and punched me in both shoulders. I flew back a dozen feet.
He turned to get away from me and wrenched the first door he saw.
Fuck. That was worse.
We had thirty seconds before he realized he’d just walked into a closet.
I tossed his back against the wall and pinned him with my body. That forced air out of him and he gasped for breath. He fought me blindly, with normal strength, no alpha weight behind it. I leaned into him and wrapped my hand around his neck. My hold was light, not at all restricting, but he clawed at my hand and fought to breathe. Breathing was the point here. Focusing on not being in a closet was the point here.
I lightly smacked his head into the wall. “Say it, Justice.” I did it again, and a third time. On the last, he heard me. He kept his eyes down, unblinking as logical thought fought the panic to come upstream.
We had done this a hundred times, a million, before either one of us was old enough to know what a panic attack or CPTSD was. The first time we were hiding in the closet of the music room. He couldn’t reach the ceiling then. I had full bodied him, wrapping my arms and legs around him and covering his mouth until he stopped screaming. The last time was at a Lunar Rift concert. The mosh pit turned into a riot. Crowd control had us wedged up by the stage. I had to use other methods that time.
“Say it.”
He remembered the game, the rules of it all. His fingers stilled, and he nodded once.
“Fell. Blood everywhere. My fault.” It came out staccato and rough.
Blood? Fuck. She hadn’t looked hurt. I locked down my emotions right damn quick. My alpha protectiveness for an omega I could never have was not a value add right now.
“Again.” I gave his head another gentle thud.
I never knew what triggered it or the train of thoughts that would lead him to his own personal hell. I knew the cause. Parents too dumb and poor to understand that locking a child in a closet as babysitting would cause damage. I had realized early on that if I could get him to focus on what happened, the events that actually took place, his logical brain would kick in long enough for the adrenaline and cortisol to wash out of his system. And then he could hold himself together with his impeccable control.
“She fell. Into a ravine. Scraped her knee. My fault.”
Okay. Scraped knee wasn’t a mortal injury. I knew who Justice was at his core, his very being. I didn’t know the exact flavor all those alpha instincts would take for him, what kind of alpha it would shape him into. I stroked my thumb along his jugular. His eyes fluttered but didn’t shut.
“She fell into a ravine and scraped her knee. It was my fault.” He closed his eyes tight. “All I could smell was her blood.”
That would do it. We didn’t like to acknowledge how controlled we were by scent and pheromones. And for Justice, who blamed himself for everything, to be cut off from the scent of someone he was starting to see as his? That would have melted his brain. It was probably her scent that had held him together long enough to get back. Or her aura.
I took a deep, audible breath and blew it out. Justice followed me as always.
“Ah, complete sentences. Good boy.”
His eyes narrowed.
Well, shit.
“Fuck you.” He pushed at my shoulders again. He brushed by me and grabbed the door handle. It turned, but the door did not open. His eyes flew around the room.
“Too small,” he muttered. He reached for the ceiling again. He could lay his palm flat against it.
And now we were in real trouble. He growled, low in his gut. He wedged his fingers in the crack of the door and pulled. His aura surged. The metal creaked.
I slammed him, face first, into the wall this time. I forced my aura to eat up all the space around us. I held him down with my body weight and my forearm across the back of his neck. I was counting, hoping, really, that he wouldn’t tap into his alpha strength against me. But he might actually hate me.
I planted my hand next to his face and rhythmically tapped my thumb ring against the metal wall. I kicked his legs wider, unbalancing him. The only thing keeping him upright was me. And I kept up with the tap, tap, tap, tap.
After a bit, he shook his head like he was trying to shake off the constant tinny thud of my ring. It was incongruous, out of place, and annoying. All the things that would capture his attention. He still fought me as freeze blew right past flight to get to fight . Justice was never one to fawn. But he was distracted, now. Tap, tap, tap.
I slid my hand across his stomach, making sure my pinky got under the waistband of his shorts.
And we were right back to freeze. Which, all things considered, was the best option.
I tapped the ring rapidly to bring his focus back.
“Remember Lunar Rift.”
We had been cornered. There had been no way out. I had even been freaked out, and I didn’t have parents who stuffed me in a broken chest freezer when I cried, leaving me crippled. He hadn’t been able to logic his way out that night. It had been too loud to talk him down. The only other option had been to drop into his body and so that he could feel something.
“This,” I tapped the ring again, a little more gently, “is technically yours. That’s what I was doing at the mall that day.” He knew which day I was talking about it. “Buying it for you. It’s just like Griffen’s.”
Lunar Rift had released a new song just before the concert. The cover was Griffen’s hands clasped together with just a thumb ring. We had had a running joke about using rings as cock rings and what Griffin’s thumb ring might feel like.
“After that day, what I did, I needed something of you on my body.”
Justice shook his head and tried to push off the wall. I slid my hand between his legs. His cock instantly responded.
“Fuck off.” He wanted that to sound angry, but it didn’t.
I leaned into him hard and put both hands on the button of his jeans.
“Tell me to leave, Just.” I kept my voice neutral, or as neutral as I could now that I was desperate for him.
I’d wrestle with the morality of this later. It was a pretty shitty thing to do to use his unwanted lust to beat back a panic attack and steal something for myself in the process. Especially since Theo’s scent was all over me still.
He banged his head against the wall. He didn’t want to want this. He didn’t want to want me. But he needed this.
I needed this. I was going to be dead or in jail, or worse, when this little adventure was over. I was taking another piece of him with me.
I popped the button on his jeans and slid both hands in, one palming his shaft, the other circling his swelling knot.
He brought his arms up above his head, like he was trying to cover it, hide. Not fighting anymore, but not giving into it. I knew it was a confusing mix. Just like at the concert, pleasure mixing with panic. One trying to overtake the other. The difference was he was angry now.
“I’m taking this.” I stroked him faster and circled my hand around his knot. “It’s been 15 years, Just. I can’t go more than two or three months without parking in front of your building, hoping for a glimpse of you. You have always been my life. And I’m taking this from you.”
I was going to need more than childhood memories. I spun him around and dropped to my knees, taking the head of his cock into my mouth.
“Don’t,” he whispered as he threaded his fingers into my short hair and pushed deeper into my mouth.
He didn’t want this, and he wanted it with everything screaming in him. I stilled, filling my very soul with the feel of him, the taste of him on my tongue mixing with memories of Theo. He sagged against the wall. I looked up, hoping he’d give me his eyes, too. But no. He’d let me take from him, but he would not give. His head hung. The fingers of the panic still caressed his edges, but he was the one who moved.
He thrust his hips, pushing deeper and deeper into my mouth, setting a slow, agonizing pace. I felt rather than saw his logical brain kick in. I took control back then and used my mouth and hands to yank what I wanted from him. I pushed his legs apart as far as his jeans would allow, teasing his knot, memorizing its shape so I could properly torture myself with what he felt like in me and around me.
He stiffened and made a half-hearted attempt to pull away. I moved faster. Took him deeper. Used my tongue, my hands, my teeth until his cum ripped out of him. I held him to the wall with my mouth and will alone. Then I stood and pressed against him. It wasn’t enough. I needed more of him. I would never have enough of him.
I sought out his mouth. He turned his face away. A kiss was too much for him. That he would deny me, too. I backed up, putting space back between us. My whole body hurt from the loss of contact, but I could give him that. Space and escape.
I reached up and popped the door latch and twisted the handle, opening it a crack. I settled against the opposite wall. Justice raked fingers through his hair and buttoned himself up. He didn’t look at me. The panic had been beaten back just enough, but he was not back to himself. He’d probably go have a drink. He always had some sort of grief and guilt after a panic attack. He did after the concert. He wouldn’t speak to me for three days. It was like he saw all of this as some sort of weakness in him that I had to fix for him, and he didn’t deserve that.
Once he decided to move, he didn’t stop. There was no hesitation. No longing looks over his shoulder. No “how could you do this to me?” None of that. I didn’t even get a “fuck you.” He opened the door wide and left.
I licked my lips and banged my head against the wall.