Chapter 10
A Key to Courting
CORIN
Johanna’s whimpers wake me. High-pitched but soft, she utters a stream of “no-no-no-no.” Even in the dark, the tension in her body is obvious.
Her head hangs back, spine arching and her hands clenching.
Her arm brushes my bare chest as her lungs heave, fighting for breath.
The air grows heavy with the pungent tang of souring cranberries.
“Shh, you’re safe, sweetheart.” I roll her into my arms and cradle her head against my chest. Her silky nightgown slithers under my fingers as I stroke her back. “Easy does—you’re safe.”
She shivers, but her whining eases, then vanishes into uneven panting.
Her head turns back and forth, nosing my pecs.
Scenting me, perhaps, or leaving her scent on me, a sign of instinctive possessiveness that warms me, despite her chilly nose.
Even betas instinctively scent mark, whether or not they realize it, especially betas raised as she was, in large packs.
Between us, her hands pressed between us are also cold.
The covers have fallen to our waists, so I yank the soft sheet and comforter back up and tuck them around her shoulders.
Suddenly, a stiffness betrays her waking. Her palms turn to press against my chest.
I pull back, putting a gap between us, which lets in a thin stream of cool air until the covers sag to block most of it. The sour edge to her scent remains, and this close, I can’t miss the glitter of tears trickling along her cheeks.
“Bad dream?” I ask, daring to brush moisture from her soft skin.
“Memories.”
I grimace, air whistling as I draw in a breath. I’ve lived my own nightmares in the dark so many times, though not for quite a while. “Want to talk about it? Might help.”
“Are you a therapist now?” She aims for a light tone, but her voice crackles.
“No, just the father of one, and someone who’s sat through hours of counseling to keep from falling to pieces.
” Solo and joint counseling, before, during, and after the divorce to sort out the mess of regret over how everything went sour so fast—that, and deal with anger flares over how much damage my ex-wife did to my eldest daughter that I couldn’t prevent.
She’d turned anger at me on our child, all because Anamaria presented as an omega and my beta ex-wife turned out to be a wanna-be omega.
Not someone convinced she really was an omega—that I could have sympathized with—but a bitter person riddled with envy.
I also wanted to figure out how I’d wound up with a woman filled with resentment, so as to avoid repeating the mistake.
I try to hide my bitterness from my girls—the only good things to come from her—and not lay blame, no matter how tough. Caity still sometimes talks to her mother; she tells me up front before she does, and shares afterward how little her mother has changed. Bebe hints at calls on occasion, too.
Anamaria swings back and forth between blocking her mother and talking to her. None of us have in any doubt as to why she’s pursuing counseling as a career: the better to heal herself and help avoid or mitigate similar hurts in others.
“Been there, done that.” Johanna sniffs and shivers at the same time, bringing me back to the present.
As I tuck the covers closer around her shoulders, vague memories pop up of seeing private meetings on her calendar off and on over the years—coinciding with the few instances she and Max had been at odds, and after her parents’ deaths.
“It’s not necessarily a one-and-done thing.” Which she knows as well as I, but the easy, trite words slip out rather than anything deeper.
“Yeah.”
Her body’s still tight next to mine, practically vibrating.
“Are you willing to share what you dreamed about?” I ask, stroking her arms. “Maybe I can shed some light.”
She doesn’t answer for long enough that I guess she won’t, but then, a shuddering breath escapes her.
“Max’s last heat.”
I hadn’t been around for that, of course.
I always left the house to them. When my girls were younger, I turned the occasions into special trips, exploring different neighborhoods in the city if they were in school or going farther afield when they weren’t.
Now that they’re grown, I get a short-term rental.
That last heat was not quite a year ago, maybe nine months? Thinking back, there was an odd tension in the house when I returned, but no one said anything. As so often happened, it was easier to not rock the boat, letting Max and Johanna decide whether or not to bring things up.
They usually didn’t.
After another long moment, she sniffs again. “I should have known something was wrong … it was so strange and awful.”
Her scent turns so sour that even she surely smells it. I breathe through my mouth, trying to parse out the underlying emotions. Guilt, definitely, but I can’t figure out the rest except that the memory hurts.
Some injuries don’t heal easy, but others are better for being shared, opened so that bad emotions can drain out. I’m not a counselor, but I’m here in the moment. “Tell me about it?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Whatever you’re willing to share.” I stroke her back, her skin warmer under the slippery layer of silk. She shivers as she leans back into the caress. “Was it strange from the start?”
“No, not then, the planning went like clockwork as usual.” Her voice is quieter, but I don’t miss a word. “Max picked a couple of possible candidates to help with the heat and I made an offer to the first. He took a weekend to decide, but I knew he’d accept.”
“Wait, you asked an alpha to assist?” Somehow, I hadn’t picked up on that nuance of their relationship.
“Yeah, we figured out years ago that if he handled the arrangements—especially meeting and inviting alphas or packs to help us—they tended to ignore me or treat me as hired help, then got pissy when I told them what not to do with him.” She snorts, and I pity the fools who tried that.
“So we worked out a better way. He chose people who smelled good to him. Acquaintances only, so he didn’t have to run into them often, if at all, afterward. I met them and made the offer if I thought I could work with them.”
That’s so quintessentially Johanna: taking on more work to make things run smoother in personal life, as she so often does in business.
She has a deep service orientation. We’ve talked over the years about the need for her to delegate work rather than taking it all on herself.
Max deserved that measure of devotion, yet learning about this leaves me wondering what else I missed between them despite working and living side by side, what other nuances to their relationship, how they adjusted to each others’ needs.
“Was there a problem with the alpha?”
“No,” she snaps, then stops and makes a pitiful sound. “Well, yes, but not what you’re thinking.”
I had no idea what she thought I was thinking, except that so many things could go wrong during heats.
I’d helped friends and acquaintances out a few times when I was young and stupidly fearless.
Merely coordinating multiple bodies in the narrow confines of nests could get very complicated very fast, quite apart from juggling all the various protective instincts, and different layers of dominance, and comfort with accidental body contact.
There were also the complex logistics of knotting and locking, dealing with bodies stuck together for lengthy periods of time.
Add in sexual preferences—or the lack thereof—and things get even more fraught.
Since Max was my cousin, I stayed away for Max’s heats.
Even my assistance as an outside aide, providing food and drink was turned down, so I’d never seen him acting in a sexual way.
Sensual, yes; he loved fine fabrics and food and, given the public gifts he exchanged with Johanna over the years, adored dressing her up.
Romantic, definitely, not least the way he cuddled with Johanna. But sexual? No.
I had a hard time imagining him as an omega in heat. Lost in the sexual haze that overtook omegas for days on end. A writhing body desperately seeking knots or locks to relieve the unrelenting, intense drive for intercourse.
“So the alpha was and wasn’t a problem?” I ask.
“Nnn.” She wiggles against me, a dangerous move that has me angling my torso to the side so she doesn’t brush my half-hard erection. “I probably shouldn’t name him. We made him sign a non-disclosure agreement as a precaution, and anonymity cuts both ways.”
“Call him the alpha.” My inner alpha sniffs at that—I’m the alpha, thank you very much—but is too interested in her sharing and the way her body lines up with mine to growl.
“The alpha, then. He arrived on time, which is more than I could say for Max, who always pushed the limit of when to head home.” She’s smiling, which warms her voice, and for a moment seems to relax.
“Max got on his high horse, but the alpha handled it very well, making it clear that, while Max might call most of the shots during the heat, he wasn’t a passive follower. ”
A rill of envy runs through me at the admiration in her voice, but I quash it.
“When Max’s heat started, he fit right in.” She sits up, covers pooling around her waist. The woman gazing down at me is the capable chief operating officer I deal with on a daily basis, glorious in her surety of competence.
A burst of sweetness wafts from her. “I’ve been doing this long enough that I know how to ensure Max gets the minimum sex required to make it through.
Basically, pack in orgasms and knots and lock toys fast and hard to sate his omega so he crashes, stay away during his lucid periods so he can ignore or deny what’s happening as much as possible, and wait until his omega emerges ready for the next round. ”