5. Caleb
Irealized the mistake I’d made the second the door shut behind me, closing us into the cramped backseat of the car.
Nick’s scent hung in the air in a thick fog, not helped by the pheromones baked into the fabric of the seats from all the time he’d spent cooped up in here.
It was so strong that it could be considered cloying, but I found it quite…
mouth-watering. A complex mix of florals and bright orange that was almost irresistible.
Except, I had no choice but to resist it.
Nick’s friendship was too important to me to screw up over a fucking scent match.
That’s what this was, wasn’t it? I didn’t even know alphas could be a match for each other, but here we were, Nick sporting a hard-on so long it could’ve been mistaken for a fucking garden hose, and me panting after him like a freshly presented omega.
I glanced over at the other alpha, my tongue darting out to wet my dry lips as much as to steal a small taste of him from what lingered of our kiss on my mouth.
He looked way too fucking good for someone in rut, closer to a cover model than a man on the edge of his self-control.
And that kiss. My brain couldn’t stop replaying it. At first, I was shocked. Though admittedly, I had—very briefly—in the past considered what it’d be like to kiss Nick because, like, who didn’t have that thought about their friends sometimes, right? I never imagined it would actually happen.
Or that it would feel as good as it did. Why did it feel that… intense?
And now we were stuck here, and I could do nothing but stare at him.
Nick had always been lean, but a couple years of steady work at the autobody shop had filled his frame with a base of muscle that thickened his arms and chest. Something I’d become intimately aware of thanks to his infrequent but heavily anticipated updates on Instagram.
There was just something about knowing that his body was built through manual labor, the practical effects of shoulders that needed to lift tires or crack a jack, instead of time spent in a weight room that made his physique feel even more enticing.
Rugged.
His fingers tapped without rhythm against his thigh, head tipped back against the seat, revealing the sweat-slick column of his throat in the warm streetlights.
His eyes were closed, knees so far apart that he would’ve ended up on a Bluechat shame board for alpha-manspreading if he was anywhere else as he tried to distract himself, throat bobbing with a heavy swallow.
I was perfuming like a fucking omega.
Nick’s nose twitched, but that wasn’t the movement that drew my attention—it was the rigid press of his cock against the zipper of his jeans. The fabric strained to contain the thickened length of him, precum creating a slowly growing wet patch in the dark denim.
My face heated just looking at it, mind running away with the desire to bury my face into his lap for a deep inhale.
Would he smell different up close?
Whoa! Caleb! Come on, man?!
Get a fucking grip!
The plastic of the door creaked under my weight as I shifted, making me realize that somewhere between Nick getting into the backseat with me, fantasizing about sniffing the slick precum wetting his pants, and my own rapidly growing cock that I’d pressed myself so flat against it that I probably should’ve bought it dinner first.
“You can get out if I’m making you uncomfortable,” Nick mumbled, the barest hint of a growl lacing his tone. His hands gripped his knees, foot taking up the tapping in their place.
Out the window, fat drops of rain made it difficult to see past where they hammered against the glass.
“It’s raining,” I complained, motioning to my shoes. “And these are new. Michael Kars.”
Nick huffed, and if I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought the sound was a laugh, using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe away a bead of sweat that’d started a steady descent from his temple down his cheek. “Stuck between a rut and a hard place, huh?”
I laughed, but the inhale that followed came with a heavy dose of orange blossom that made my tongue feel heavy.
What would his sweat taste like?
Like his scent, or would it be salty?
Rain pelted the top of the car with renewed vigor, the roof's worn insulation making it sound even louder. Almost loud enough to miss the quiet groan that escaped Nick’s lips as he adjusted himself.
But not quite.
The sound drew a line from my ears directly to my cock, so stiff I wondered if one alpha’s rut could trigger another's.
Stupid, really.
Probably it wouldn’t work for every alpha, but with Nick? I was hanging by a thread.
I wracked my sluggish, overly horny brain to come up with something to say, eager to provide a distraction, but nothing came to mind.
And with nowhere close to buy suppressants, and me about as hopeless at driving stick as I would be trying to recreate The Kiss we were more than fucking stuck. We were stranded.
I’d love to call our driver, but Torrin was too green for me to know if he could keep a secret, and I wasn’t exactly keen to relay the story about how I bratted Nick into rut to my dad.
“Talk to me,” Nick said, his voice tight as he shifted again on the seat.
“W-what?”
“Talk to me,” he parroted, the growly edge to his voice deleting any thought that didn’t involve me landing in the alpha’s lap.
“About what?”
His sigh, signaling my failure, was loud. “Anything. Distract me, Caleb.”
“R-right—” I stammered, clearing my throat. But as soon as the broken word left my lips, every thought left my mind; the silence between us seemed to stretch for miles.
Come on, Caleb! Talk about anything. What’s on the top of your mind?
“You suck at this,” Nick complained, shifting again.
Before I could get caught up in staring at him again, I said the first thing that came to me.
“I can’t believe Dad is moving another fucking rando into my house. It’s like I’m being punished because your dad couldn’t keep it in his pants.”
I regretted the way I said it, but it didn’t mean I meant it any less.
Luckily, even while he was white knuckling his knees to keep control over himself, Nick had a sense of humor. A small, dry laugh left him, the massive alpha shaking his head with clear disapproval.
“They really fucked us, hey?”
“Yeah!” I said, unable to stop myself now that I started, the words tumbling out of me so fast that I even surprised myself.
“He’s out of his mind wanting to play happy family!
Newsflash, old man, moving some fucking girl into my house isn’t going to fix things with Mom.
Honestly, it's probably just making this whole thing worse—”
“You think he should forgive her?”
“I don’t fucking know!” I half-shouted, still too loud for the cramped interior of the car.
“I don’t care, I just want my life to go back to normal.
And that’s not going to happen if he keeps doing this shit.
A fucking step-sister? Come on! I’m a grown-ass man!
Her room will probably be right across from mine, too, so avoiding her is going to be fucking impossible.
These money-grubbing sluts are worse than goddamn bedbugs.
I just wanted to enjoy my break, spend some time with you—”
“Sorry, I know I said anything,” Nick interrupted with a roll of his sweat-shiny shoulders. “But can we avoid talking about a hot omega while I’m in rut?”
“She’s not hot,” I snapped, glaring at him.
“She is,” Nick insisted. “And if you weren’t so fuckin’ blinded by hatred, you’d see that.”
Irritation crackled through me in sharp bursts, like Pop-Rocks. Nick was my best friend. He was supposed to be on my side.
“You need to get fucking laid, man,” I seethed. “Your judgement is starting to deteriorate.”
“You don’t say,” he growled, using a hand to press against his stiff erection.
I averted my gaze, or at least I tried to, looking out the window beside him toward the palm trees, swaying in the wind. The sky was so dark that you could hardly make out the ocean anymore. Somehow it looked like the rain was pouring up and down, with no signs of letting up any time soon.
But what I could see was Nick reflected in the glass, palming his cock with subtle presses as he attempted to relieve some of the pressure.
“I-I-I thought you hooked up with that girl a couple of weeks ago,” I said, my heart lurching into my throat, making the words come out thick. Or maybe that was the nearly all-encompassing need that was brewing in the base of my spine.
“Girl?” Nick asked, his dark eyes moving to mine curiously. “What girl?”
Of course he was going to play stupid, like I hadn’t seen them together.
I’d dropped by the shop with the intention to try and get this awkward not-talking shit behind us to find some bitch with pushed-up tits and her hip resting against the open hood of a commuter car, leaning way too close to Nick for my liking.
“At the shop.”
“What’re you on about? The shop? You haven’t even called me since you’ve been back.”
I wasn’t sure if I imagined the bitter note to his voice, but I didn’t have long to dwell on it. It would cost me something to admit this next part, and I didn’t love the idea of being vulnerable with Nick when I was struggling with keeping the drool in my mouth from his pheromones.
“Red head, big tits, white car?”
“You didn’t stay to say hello.” It wasn’t a question, Nick's sharp gaze making me shift under the intensity of it.
“See!” I said, victory in my tone. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
He raised a dark eyebrow. “Not that it matters, but I didn’t fuck her, Cal. She was trying to flirt her way into a discount, but I wasn’t interested.”
“Why not? She was—” Fine, I guess.
Hot.
It pissed me off.
Nick laughed, wiping the sweat dampening his hair from his forehead with his forearm. “Not my type.”
“Big tits aren’t your type? Since when?”
“I like brunettes,” he said, catching my eye in a way that made my pulse race. “Why do you care so much anyway? You jealous, Braye?”
Heat flamed up the back of my neck, and I forced out a choked, entirely unconvincing scoff. “You wish, man.”