Betting On His Angel (Heaven's Ballroom Book 3)

by Aiden Bates

  Finally reaching the door to my apartment felt like seeing land for the first time after spending months lost at sea. My keys clattered to the floor the first time I tried to force them into the lock. When I stooped to pick them up again, Duncan took them from me, shoving them into place as he pinned me against my door.

  Living room, kitchen, hallway—they were all a blur. I lost my boots at some point, and my shirt. Duncan’s suit jacket wound up discarded on the back of an armchair, the buttons of his shirt half-undone already by the time we tumbled together into my bed.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked, his fingers peeling my belt out of its loop.

  “God, no,” I rasped, my heart beating so hard I could hear it echoing around in my skull.

  “Do you want me to keep going?” My belt clanked, undone, as he tugged at the buttons of my jeans.

  “God, yes.”

  We rolled together, my thighs hugging him tight, legs writhing as we untangled ourselves from our pants. I tore his shirt open as his hand slid from my stomach to my thighs, revealing a thick coat of dark hair over the stony mountains and ravines of his chest. His fingertips found my cock, and there was that smirk of his against my lips—but this time, I didn’t hate it.

  This time, I only wanted more.

  12

  Duncan

  He was hard for me before we even conquered the stairs up to his room. I could feel it against my thigh, the thickness of his cock thrusting demandingly as it swelled with need. The whole way up, I was playing out a dozen different ways I’d like to take him in my head. Suck him off until he ached for release. Stroke him to the point of orgasm, then pull away until he was gasping for more. I wanted to make Kieran whimper my name. Make him shake and coo and moan.

  But there on his bed, feeling his hardness bulging against my palm through his boxer briefs, for a moment I could only breathe in and stare in awe.

  He was gorgeous. Headstrong. His lips were curled in a sensual kind of sneer, the one that told me how bad I’d gotten to him without saying a single word. I clenched my fingers around him, taking his cock in my fist through the stretch of his boxers, and raised my fingertips to his cheek.

  “You hate me,” I said. Not a question. Just a fact.

  His eyes closed at the accusation, head tilting to place his cheek firmly in the palm of my hand. “I do.”

  I grinned. “And you love it.”

  His eyes opened, bright and sharp with that keen intelligence I’d loved about him from the start. He lowered his lips to mine, pausing an inch away from a kiss. I felt the heat of his exhale, a ragged breath he released just for me to breathe back in.

  “I do,” he admitted, then our lips were locked all over again.

  I shoved his boxers down, my fingertips grappling with the thickness of his cock as I finished undressing him. A strand of precum smeared down my hand as I stroked him, hot and slick as he pinned my hips down with his. My own cock was on fire, throbbing against him and begging to be freed. He clawed my boxers down, grinding himself against me. His tongue danced against mine, pulling me into his mouth while our bodies worked in perfectly heated syncopation.

  The first time should have been fumbling. It should have been awkward, hot but complicated. With a new partner, it always was. But we both knew what we needed, and we knew how to get it. I reached around him, cupping his ass then digging my fingertips into the muscle there so hard, I imagined it might bruise. When they delved deeper, slipping between the cheeks of his ass to press my thumb against the tight ring of his hole, I found that he was already wet for me. Dripping, in fact. Exquisitely lubricated, completely coated in sopping wet need.

  “You fucking want me,” I growled.

  He laughed, a harsh little bark as he sank his teeth into my lower lip. “I fucking want you.”

  Then, there was no more preamble to be had. No more room for wordplay or foreplay or play of any other kind. We weren’t playing anymore. This was no longer a game. Now, it was just my body and his, both of us aching to take and be taken. To give and to get.

  His back arched for me as I took my cock in my free fist, positioning it against him. At first, I was sure he was so tight, I wouldn’t fucking fit at all. But I was big and hard and unyielding, and he was so wet that penetration was an inevitability. I coated my tip in his honey. He pressed down on my swollen, thick glans, taking me just as much as I planned on taking him. Suddenly, something slipped just right. His ass swallowed up the head of my cock, and I stretched him to fit the rest of me. Inch by inch, I forced my way into him, and inch by inch, he helped me do it, his lips falling open in ecstasy, his eyes closed.

  Kieran Drake, enjoying himself on the end of my cock. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

  At least, until I grabbed his hips and plunged him down the rest of my shaft, watching his eyes roll back and hearing the low, ragged moan escape his lips. After that, every most beautiful moment was only there to be replaced by the next.

  “Christ,” I swore, bucking my hips against him as his fingertips raked down my chest. “You’re so fucking tight.”

  “You’re so fucking big,” he whimpered, teeth cutting into his lower lip.

  “Do you want me to stop?” I asked it again, knowing good and well what the answer was this time.

  He met the question with a little buck of his own hips, slowly regaining control of his body as he grew accustomed to my size. A little smile of his own spread across his lips. “What do you think?”

  Drawing in a torn breath, he began rocking over me, easing my cock deeper, inching it toward his core. He was mesmerizing like this—so controlled, knowing exactly what he wanted from me, but so uninhibited too, so obviously caught up in how completely fucking good I made his body feel. We matched each other’s paces for a while, my balls tense but not yet ready to let loose inside him. At some point, it struck me that I should have been wearing a condom—but then Kieran dipped his teeth to my neck, scraping them against the thin skin there, and I lost the thought immediately.

  Instead, I grabbed hold of him, rolling him over and pinning him against the mattress instead. His lips tasted delicious, like the drink at the steakhouse he hadn’t even finished and the apple pie we’d split for dessert. I ran my tongue down his neck, enjoying him further—the scent of his cologne, the salt of his sweat—before grabbing onto his thighs, spreading his legs wide and claiming him deeper still with every thrust of my hips.

  To think that this had all started as a bet was insane now. In such a short time, he’d managed to wind himself into my every thought, every feeling, every hour of every day. I’d never felt like that about anyone before—to the point where it felt like I must have belonged to him in some way that I still didn’t have the words for yet. The fact that he’d been the one to surrender to me seemed ridiculous—I’d surrendered to him on that night we first met. When I offered to woo him. When I promised I’d fuck him just like this—hard and fast and unrelenting, until he was half-dumb with pleasure and half-mad with need for more of it.

  Still, knowing the terms he’s surrendered on—actually watching him surrender now, with his fingers curled into fists against my chest and my cock deep in his ass, penetrating him to his fucking soul—that made it a little less ridiculous, and much more enjoyable. I’d given myself up to him so long ago now, it seemed.

  It was about damn time he was finally doing the same.

  “Touch me,” he begged, a painful longing in his eyes that only intensified as I quickened my pace.

  I looked down at his cock, bouncing stiff and dripping with precum against his stomach, and knew exactly what he meant. If I’d been that hard with no release, I would’ve lost my fucking mind. I wrapped my fingers around him immediately, squeezing tight and stroking him at the same speed I was thrusting with my own cock.

  If Kieran was going to lose his mind, it wouldn’t be out of longing. Kieran didn’t do longing. When he saw something he liked, he took it. He was handsome enough, charmi
ng enough. He didn’t have to deny himself—and I wouldn’t deny him either. Not now that he’d given in to me. Not anymore. No, if Kieran lost his mind, it would be because I made him come so hard, so intensely, that he’d never want anyone else at all. No more one-night stands. No more bullshit flirting with bullshit people who wouldn’t deserve him in the first place.

  If I had it my way, I’d fuck him so good he’d never be able to look at another goddamn Alpha again.

  “Mine,” I declared, feeling the dark sense of possession surge through me as I milked him with my fist and he let out a raw moan. “You’re mine. Say it, Kieran.”

  His lips curled back, baring his teeth at me. There was that same darkness in his own eyes, a storm caught up in his seafoam irises, while he grappled with the idea of being owned by me one last time.

  “Yours,” he finally gasped, shoulders tense, head thrown back in a pleasure so intense, I might’ve mistaken it for pain if I couldn’t see his balls tensing up, feel his cock throbbing in my fist. “I’m yours, Duncan.”

  Part of me had already known that. The possessive part of me, the part of me that had always wanted to claim an Omega for my own but had never found one that had seemed quite so worth my time. It was the other part of me that was surprised by it—the part of me that was still reeling with disbelief that he’d given me this ultimate gift of himself, the pleasure of sharing his bed, the delicious delight of taking his body.

  It was that part of me, the second part, that his words sent roaring to life. Suddenly, it was colliding into the sense of possession that marked the core of my being, pushing me over the edge as he made me whole again.

  I opened my mouth, snarling, and a real roar tore out of my throat. My balls tensed so hard, it left me dizzy. Breathless. Completely lost to him as I pumped rope after rope of hot, thick cum into Kieran’s ass. Even more lost still as I collapsed on top of him and felt the stickiness of his cum spread all over his own chest. I must have gone blind and deaf while I came for him—so deaf that I hadn’t heard the cries of his own passion, so blind I hadn’t even realized he’d come for me, too.

  “Fuck,” I spat, ears ringing and body spent.

  A little laugh sounded from Kieran’s lips into my ear as I felt him uncurl my fingers from his cock. “Fuck indeed. That just about sums it up.”

  I pulled away from him a little, raising my cum-soaked fingers to my lips. I sucked them clean as I looked down at him, seeing the way his eyes sparkled beneath me. Like he’d stolen the stars from the sky outside and slipped them under his eyelids while I’d been pounding away at him. He was still laughing as I cleaned my fingers off with my tongue, relishing the salt of him. The heat of his seed in my mouth.

  “What’s so funny?” I finally asked, smiling a little myself as I enjoyed the way his chest shook with laughter beneath me.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all, honestly. Just, god…that felt good.”

  “Maybe I’ve fucked you silly,” I suggested, smirking as I shifted to keep from crushing him with my weight.

  “Maybe you have,” he purred back. “God…is that what it’s normally like, do you think? All that waiting, the build-up then the release?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted, feeling my cock throb within him. Christ—I was still impossibly hard, even as my cum leaked back down my shaft and onto my balls. “I don’t normally do this either.”

  “Maybe…” He bit his lip, looking up at me with interest as a clever idea lit up his eyes. “Maybe we ought to try it again. You know. Just to make sure.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him playfully, like I was actually having to consider it when we both knew that my cock was still hungry for more of him—obviously, it wasn’t about to go down anytime soon.

  “Maybe we ought to,” I finally agreed.

  “Condom this time?” he suggested, inclining his head toward his bedside table. “I didn’t think about it earlier, but it just hit me that…”

  “Probably ought to,” I agreed, reaching for the drawer. “Better safe than sorry, right.”

  “Oh, I’ll make you sorry,” he said with an impish grin.

  Another growl rose up from my chest as I dipped down to claim his lips again, the taste of him still on my tongue. Something told me that sorry was the last thing I was going to feel by the end of the night.

  13

  Kieran

  Waking up with a strange man in my bed would have been strange enough for me. I didn’t do morning-afters. No sly smiles shared over cups of coffee. No awkward kisses as we went off to work and went our separate ways. My trysts had short-term expiration dates. An hour together, maybe two or three if they were especially good with their tongue, then I tossed them their jeans and pointed them toward the door.

  Waking up with a man I actually knew sprawled out beside me?

  I’d never even dreamed of doing that before.

  Duncan slept like he was dead. So dead, that I nearly reached up so check his pulse. But my cold fingertips might have woken him, and he was handsome when he slept. Completely still, completely spent, and somehow still smiling his way through whatever visions his subconscious was swirling through his head.

  I raised my lips to his instead, hovering over him until I felt his slow, steady exhale. We’d fucked each other half to death the night before, but somehow, we’d both lived through the night. And though every inch of my body ached deliciously, like rigor mortis had already started to set in while I slept, I found myself smiling too.

  At least now I knew he didn’t snore.

  The floor was cool beneath my feet as I padded out into the kitchen, feeling so bow-legged now that Duncan’d had his way with me that John Wayne himself would’ve been proud. I put my coffee through my French press with the sense that I should’ve been making it over an open fire instead. With my cowboy boots still on the floor in the hall and my ass sore like I’d spent a whole night riding a bucking bronco—because in a way, I actually had—Duncan had left me feeling like a real bona fide vaquero. The only difference, really, was that the wild bull I’d spent the night taming was still asleep on my mattress.

  Didn’t mean that all that hard work I’d put in was leaving me any less satisfied.

  I drank my morning brew naked on the radiator by the window in my room, feeling it warm up slowly beneath me as I stared down to the street below. The morning sun was still working its way through all the high-rises and office buildings to the east, streaming in thin and wan between the cracks in the skyline.

  “Mm,” Duncan growled, shifting beneath my sheets. “Do I smell coffee?”

  His eyes were still closed, so he couldn’t catch the way I was staring. Duncan was bare-chested still, burly and hairy as a grizzly. I smirked at the way the sheets pooled around his waist were already tenting. That cock of his was a wonder—I’d gotten him off three times last night, and somehow, he was still waking up hard.

  “In the kitchen,” I told him, watching him stir.

  He stole my sheets, wrapping them around his hips in a way that felt cruel, considering how much I would’ve liked to look at him in his naked glory again. He ambled toward me, casting a sleepy glance down at me as he helped himself to my mug.

  “That can’t be safe,” he pointed out, nodding at the radiator beneath my thighs and inhaling the steam rising up from the cup.

  “I woke up cold,” I explained, “And it heats up slow.”

  “Mm. Some jackass must’ve hogged the blankets all night.”

  “Robbed me of my morning coffee, too.”

  He laughed, slurping from the mug then cringing as the sugar hit his lips. “Christ—is there even any coffee in this?”

  “Mostly sugar and milk.” I reclaimed my mug, fingertips brushing against his. “You know how I like it.”

  A wicked glint caught in his eyes. “I do now.”

  It was so perfect, watching him lurch out the door with a flash of his well-muscled ass where the sheets didn’t quite come together right, that fo
r a moment, it didn’t feel real. I’d given into him. Finally done exactly what I said I wouldn’t do. Fucked him, fell prey to his dark desires, even enacted a few of my own. There were nail marks down his back as he went, slightly raised and hot pink against his tanned skin.

  I’d given into him, and I’d enjoyed it.

  The real question was…where did that leave us now?

  Pulling on a t-shirt and some sweats, I followed him into the kitchen. For a moment, I thought he was going to drink the rest of my coffee straight out of the press I’d brewed it in—but then, he must’ve thought better of it, rifling through the cabinets to find a mug instead.

  “Cupboard on the left,” I said helpfully, relishing the messy tangle of his dark waves. Knowing that it was my fingers running through his hair, tugging and teasing and pulling, that had left it that way.

  “Thanks.” He dumped the rest of the pot into the biggest mug he could find, the words WORLD’S BEST FUCK scrawled across the ceramic. It had been a gag gift from someone at the Ballroom one Christmas. Knowing what I knew about Duncan now, I couldn’t imagine it being held in more worthy hands.

  But as we sipped at our drinks, an awful thought brewed in the back of my mind in the silence that caffeinating had left us in.

  Where did that leave us, now? The bet was over. The battle had been won. Duncan had gotten what he wanted. Emerged victorious from the knotted mass of my sheets and wrapped him around his waist like a gladiator in the pelt of whatever beast he’d just killed.

  And now, as the loser, my stomach was left churning with confusion and worry. He’d been good. Just as good as I’d known he’d be. Better than anything I’d ever had.

  We both knew the standard protocol. We kept the exact same kind. One night only, no reprisals of our roles. We’d drink our coffee, then he’d be out the door, just like the last one.