Chapter 6
Leo
“So, you’ll sleep now? In your nest?” I ask Addie again. Dawn light threatens from the high windows in Addie’s room. The brothel closes in two minutes.
“Yes,” Addie reassures me again.
My hands hold him close by his hips. I have my singlet back on, and my pants are wrecked with my own come and his slick.
I don’t even fucking care. I’m not even going to wash them.
My boots never came off and neither did our pants—I spent the night worshipping Addie’s mouth, his nipples, his chest, throat, and rubbing off against him.
“And no one else will come in here?” I ask as evenly as I can.
“No one but the people who work here are in this place during the day,” Addie says.
I nod, reluctantly. I don’t want to leave. I want to sleep here with him. But Addie says I can’t, says it’s against the rules. And if I were thinking with my right mind, I’d recognise how fucking obviously that’s the case.
I slide my hand up to his neck and squeeze. Then I lean down and press my lips to his in another kiss. It’s deep and I try to tell him everything with it—I love you, please come with me, please.
Addie meets me, his own lips desperate on mine as he goes up on his toes. I haul him closer and lift him. His tongue tangles with mine, and I slip my hands down to his perfect ass to drag him in impossibly further.
I break the kiss to tell him to leave with me, but he speaks before I can.
“You have to go.”
I pant against his lips, swallow down my impulsive reply. I can’t accidentally force something on him again, but the prospect of walking out of here without him is driving me dangerously close to the edge.
So I say, “Promise me you’ll see me tonight. You won’t … you won’t …”
Thankfully, Addie gets it, but not without shame spiking in his scent when he says, “I won’t, and I promise.”
“No, Addie, I don’t mean it like—”
But he cuts me off before I can explain that I don’t mean it in the way that he should be ashamed.
I don’t like him being here. I’m catatonic with rage at the thought of other alphas touching him, but I don’t blame him for this.
He’s done nothing wrong. I’m the one who fucked up by letting this happen.
“You have to go.”
He drops his hands from behind my head and I let him go, my hands trailing down his back and arms as slowly as I can get away with.
I stare at him for another moment, his wide eyes, the way they’re shining up at me.
I’ve known those eyes all my life, so familiar, and yet so strange now with their mix of longing and wistfulness. It’s in his scent too.
“I’ll be back,” I repeat firmly.
“Have a shower first.” He smiles, a playful thing. And there’s my Addie.
“No,” I tell him and grin. “I want to smell like you.”
Addie’s lips part as if I’ve shocked him. What’s so shocking? Am I still not being obvious enough?
The sound of chairs scraping on the floor downstairs cuts between us.
“You really have to go now,” Addie says apologetically.
“Okay.”
Now I just have to get my feet to move.
Addie drops his gaze to the floor, and his scent is nothing but sadness. How in the fuck am I supposed to leave him?
“Please,” he says softly.
A pained sound rips out of me before I can stop it.
I step close, grip him by the nape and tilt his face to mine.
I press my lips against his in a punishing kiss before I tear myself away.
I don’t look back as I scramble past his curtain and down the hall.
But his scent, jumbled with desire and heartbreak, chases me out onto the street.
My alpha, my father, is up and presumably waiting for me when I get home. It’s an hour’s drive from Celo to Hollow Point, but he looks like he’s been waiting at the kitchen table since last night. He meets my eyes, inhales obviously, and exhales with a deep, accusing frown.
I hold myself rigidly, and use all of my admittedly limited self-control to not explode at him.
I have to play my hand very carefully here—he can command me not to see Addie again.
And until I bond with Addie and become my own alpha, an alpha with the beginnings of his own pack, I fall under the command of my father.
What I want to do is tear his throat out for lying to me. For telling me Addie had gone out of state to stay with some uncle after his father died, implying with very little room for doubt that I’d be able to find him when I got back and bond with him then.
“No need to drop out and rush home,” he’d said gruffly on the phone when I’d called in desperation because Addie wasn’t answering my messages, nor was he replying to any of our friends.
No one had seen him. My dad told me what’d happened—Alpha Cunningham had a heart attack, and Addie was with his uncle.
I would have needed to be home for months—waiting for Addie to go into heat, then staying with him for months while the bond solidified.
Dropping out would have been the only option.
Of course I was prepared to do it, fuck the Air Force.
I’d have done something else once Addie and I were settled.
But my dad assured me Addie would still be around, with his uncle.
He’d talked me out of coming home when he’d known where Addie had really gone.
And when I got home, he kept that lie alive. He watched me texting non-stop, never stopped me from driving all over the fucking country looking for him whenever I got leave, on every off day when I was on a home rotation. And then he lied about a bond, refused to tell me how he knew.
I’m so furious I’m scared of the anger welling inside me.
But getting Addie out is more important than making myself feel better by exploding at my alpha. My best play now is to say nothing.
“I’m going to bed,” I say quickly.
“Not so fast,” he says, unmoving from his seat at the kitchen table. His nostrils are flaring—no doubt scenting Addie all over me—and his clasped hands on the wood might be mistaken for calm, but I know better.
“Where have you been?”
Why is he bothering to ask? Is he trying to bait me?
“Out with the guys,” I say, trying to sound calm, but I know my expression is barely concealing my rage. Also, there’s no way he can’t smell it.
He sighs, runs a hand down his face and looks away from me.
“So you found him, then,” he says into the empty kitchen.
The tap drips, the clock ticks. My omega, my mother, is not up yet—it’s barely eight a.m. on a Sunday, the only day she sleeps in.
Usually it’d be her in here, bustling around, cooking for us, imbuing the room with her warmth in an effort to make up for the coldness of her bond with my father.
A tireless parade that’s made me uncomfortable since before I was even able to give rise to the word for it.
I don’t answer. Carefully, hoping he doesn’t notice, I unclench my fists. I didn’t even realise they were tightened to the point of being ready to swing.
“You’ve got three months here at Fort Sanguis and then you’ll be gone again,” he says, as if I need the reminder of my own fucking job.
He meets my eyes. I’m paralysed, terrified he’s about to turn the next statement into a command, but he doesn’t.
“You’re not ready to bond yet. You know that.
And you also know you can do much better than him. ”
Rage, all-consuming, descends. A red haze over my vision. There is no better than Addie. And my father’s casual remarks about Addie over the years have always sent me into a bout of impotent fury.
“He’s a nice boy, but he’s not one of us. Alcoholic alpha, an omega who took off … unheard of! He’s a beach bum with no prospects. No, my boy will make a better bond than that.”
I never even bothered to argue with him about the fated nature of our scents—what would be the point?
He’d eschewed his own fated mate to bond with my mother because his omega was some young guy he knew in high school and determined as beneath him.
I didn’t know much about the omega, but had heard the words, “A fucking geek. Too skinny to breed and white trash to boot,” thrown around when my dad was drunk with his workmates.
His voice had been jovial, slurred, but there was a nastiness under it that as I got older, I suspected had very little to do with the omega and more to do with his own regret.
“Nothing to say?” he asks when I just stand there, breathing audibly through my nose.
“I’m going to bed,” I reiterate. I turn to flee, but he stops me.
“Leonard.” A hint of command creeps into his voice, but not enough that I can’t shake it off yet. I don’t turn back when he continues. “Have a shower before your mother gets up, for Christ’s sake.”
I jerk my chin and then bolt out of the room.
My hands are shaking when I get to my bedroom, and I shut the door and lock it. I tuck my chin into my shoulder and inhale deeply—long, deep pulls of Addie’s scent to ground me, to calm me.
I’ll hide in here until I hear him leave—he always golfs on Sundays—then I’ll have a quick meal with my mother before I head back to the brothel.
Addie promised no one would be coming while the place was closed, and while I’m not completely reassured by this, I have to trust he’s going to be okay for the day.
It dawns on me, as I strip out of my clothes and hide them under my bed so my mother won’t wash them, that the alphas who run that place will still be at the brothel during the day.
Will one of them try something with Addie?
Benji—I spit the name in my head—does he touch Addie when the brothel is closed?
I fall back on my ass and grip my scalp. Breathe, just breathe. Addie said, “I won’t, I promise.” So he won’t let anyone else touch him. It’s okay, everything’s okay.
I’ve got a new plan. If I buy every night with Addie, he’ll eventually go into heat, then I’ll claim him, challenge the alpha he’s contracted to if he tries to stop me from leaving with my bondmate, and then I’ll take Addie south, start a new life.
Somewhere on the beach. Addie will like that.
It means I’ll have to court him after I bond him, which is just fucking wrong, on so many levels, but I can’t think of any way around it. I can’t think.
Breathe, one step and then the next. And the next step is sleep. I need to be strong for this. Here’s the plan: rest, eat, go back to Addie. And maybe tonight he’ll let me taste his slick.
My cock hardens so fast I have to clench my hand around it over my crusted pants.
New plan: jerk off thinking about Addie, rest, eat, go back to Addie.