by Grey, Aspen
“It will go away in time,” I told him, stroking his cheek. “At least with Arnold.”
“I hope so.”
“It will,” I said firmly. “I know we don’t know everything about him yet, but I get the sense that he’s been through a lot too, just like us. I think he’s wounded too.”
“You got that feeling too?” Jace smiled. “So I’m not just crazy. I feel like we types can just sense that sort of thing in others.”
“It’s because we’re different,” I said. “At least that’s my theory. And I’m sticking with it!”
“It’s not a bad theory,” he smiled, flopping down on the bed beside me. “Gosh, these sweatpants are comfortable.”
I lay down beside him. “And they smell like him!”
“How’s your shoulder feeling, by the way?” Jace asked me.
“To be honest, I hadn’t even thought about it until just now!” I laughed. “But now that you mention it, it’s doing a lot better. Thank God we’re not human, right?”
“Thank God is right!” Jace laughed.
“And your ankle?”
“Oh, no big deal,” he said like the tough guy he was. “Won’t keep me off my feet. I’m surprised you didn’t tear your stitches with that run across town!”
“So am I,” I replied, realizing I hadn’t even thought about that while I was racing through the city. I’d been so focused on my emotional state that I’d completely neglected my physical one. But the stitches on my arm had held fast. I guess the ER had the world’s greatest doctor working or something.
“I’ve got a question, Sasha,” Jace asked. I looked over to him.
“Yes, babe?”
“Are you…feeling it?” he asked.
“It?”
“It,” he repeated, raising his eyebrows. “You know what I mean.”
I did. The heat.
Both of us had managed to suppress our heats while working on the streets. It was a simple result of being emotionally closed off like we were, not wanting to ever give the impression to any of the Johns that we were looking to mate.
On top of that, with the kind of alphas we sometimes ran into during the night, neither of us trusted going out in heat and running into some unsavory characters who didn’t understand the concept of consent.
Sure, I liked a guy to take me and be in control, but he had to know how to do it and know when I wanted it. I didn’t trust those sickos out there, but for the last hour or so, I’d been feeling something changing inside my body, and obviously Jace was feeling it too.
“Yes, I do,” I replied. “I feel it.”
It really was heat. I felt as though furnace, long dormant, had been ignited within me by a spark only Arnold knew. There was a yearning now, beyond just wanting to be dick down into oblivion, for something more, and we both knew what that was.
A child.
Our scents had led him to us, and his scent had driven us into his arms, and now our bodies were crying out for the bond to be solidified—permanent.
“It feels…weird,” Jace observed. “After pushing it down for so long.”
“I know, right?”
“I like it, but I don’t like it,” Jace said.
“Makes you feel a bit out of control?” I asked, knowing the answer. He nodded.
“Now that it’s started, I don’t think I can stop it.”
“Do you really want to?” I asked. “I mean—this is Arnold we’re talking about. Not that douchebag in the Lamborghini!”
“Can you imagine what our babies would be like?” he moaned. “Yours would have your cute, shaggy brown hair—”
“And yours could have a fauxhawk like you!”
“Oh, stop!” Jace squealed, poking me in the side. “You’re going to make me go crazy with baby fever! A little fauxhawk on a little baby boy? How cute!”
“Do you want boys?” I asked. “Or girls?”
“Boys,” he replied immediately.
“Why?” I laughed. “So you can play catch? Throw the ball around? Have some brewskies?”
“I don’t know,” Jace chuckled. “I guess I just know boys better. I feel like I wouldn’t know what to do with a girl.”
“Listen to us,” I said, shaking my head. “Not even pregnant and we’re speculating on sexes!”
“Hey, that’s half the fun, right?” Jace smiled.
“I just hope Arnold gets home soon,” I said, feeling the urge to be bred growing stronger and stronger. “Because I need that alpha seed.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Arnold
They’re safe. They’re home sleeping.
North Park by day and North Park by night were two very different beasts, and I didn’t expect to find much in the way of clues while the sun was up. On top of that, the working boys weren’t out yet, so as I wandered the streets on foot, I couldn’t help but think about Jace and Sasha back at the house.
My angels.
I’d seen them, I’d watched them, I’d protected them and now they were mine. All I had to do was finish up this case and take a long-deserved vacation with the both of them.
I’d felt the itch when I left the house, but now I understood just how undeniable it was.
The urge to breed.
I couldn’t stop picturing them both with my cubs inside them, stomachs swelling as the babies grew, their bodies changing and developing into the fathers they would become. My house would be filled with life, warmth and happiness, something I’d been searching for as long as I could remember. My children would have their fathers and they would never leave them.
I’d share everything with Sasha and Jace, including the reason I was a cop, something I hadn’t told them yet. I suspected that Jace knew there was something different, something off about me. There was something off about all of us. We’d each been hurt before and that was why life had brought us together now. At least, that’s what I believed.
I recognized Little Billy, a working boy who was usually up in Hillcrest at night, coming out of a coffee shop with a couple of lattes. He recognized me too and tried to hide his face as he passed.
“Little Billy,” I said as loudly as I could without yelling, stepping in his way as he came out onto the sidewalk.
“Oh…uh…hey, officer,” he replied uncomfortably.
“It’s detective, Billy. You know that.”
“Hi, Detective,” he replied. “What uh…what can I do for you?”
“Relax, Billy,” I told him. “I’m not here to shake you up or bust you. Just looking for some information.”
“Information?”
“On the killer,” I replied. “I know he’s been targeting the working boys and I know there was an attack last night. What can you tell me about it?”
Billy had a baby face and an innocent look about him, but he’d been around, working the streets for at least four years that I knew about. He’d been in and out of rehab and always swore he’d get clean, and from the looks of it, he was now, having replaced whatever he’d been using before with coffee. My gut told me it was only a matter of time before he was back on the stuff, but I hoped I was wrong.
“Listen, man. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Trouble’s what you’re gonna have if you don’t give me something,” I told him. “Because if I’m not out chasing down a lead, I’m gonna be on your ass all night, and not in the way you’d like it. I’ll make sure you don’t make a dime this evening—you or the other boys you roll with. So, if that’s what you want, by all means, keep your mouth shut. But if you want to actually do something to help get this crazy bastard off the streets, tell me something worth listening to and I’ll leave you alone.”
Little Billy sighed and looked around the street. Being seen with a cop wasn’t a good look for a working boy, and he knew that. He nodded towards the coffee shop.
“Inside.”
I followed him back inside and he led me to the back hall by the bathroom and handed me one of the lattes, making sure his back w
as to the main room of the shop so no one passing by could recognize him.
“Just don’t go tellin’ people I been talkin’ to you, all right?”
“Spill it, kid,” I replied.
Little Billy sighed and sipped his latte, grimacing at how hot it was. “The boy who went down last night—called him Juicy Jim—he was over behind that new bar they’re building by the old arcade. You know what I’m talking about?”
“Sure do.”
“They said this guy came out of nowhere with a pipe, hit him on the head and just ran for it.”
“A pipe?” I replied. That was him all right, but it didn’t add up. “Why wasn’t he just shifted?”
Little Billy was an omega, one of the smaller subset of shifter working boys in San Diego, so it was safe to speak to him in this way.
“Beats me, pops,” he shrugged. “Why’s a guy randomly attack people with a pipe? He’s a fucking nutjob.”
“The old arcade, huh?” I replied. “Anything else, Billy?”
“I dunno…”
“Spill it, Billy.”
“No, I really don’t know—it just—one of the boys said the maniac seemed like he was looking for something.”
“Looking for something?” I asked. “What would he be looking for?”
“Hey, you’re the detective,” he scoffed. “You figure it out.”
I scowled at him. “Anything else, Billy?”
“That’s it, pops,” he said anxiously. “Now, if you don’t mind?”
“Yeah, get outta here,” I told him. “And stay off the streets until I catch the guy, will ya?”
“Hey, some of us don’t get vacation time,” he replied as he brushed passed me and took the back exit to the alley.
Running into Little Billy always rattled me a bit. I’d busted him once but had given him a pass ever since. He’d snitched on a real terror of a dealer who was flooding the streets with tainted heroin and helped us put him behind bars. He’d never betray the other boys he worked with, but he helped me keep a close ear to the real nasty shit going on in the streets. I always got the feeling that there was more to him than what he was doing, and hoped that one day he’d find a way to get his life back in order.
But that was a thought for another time. Right now, I had work to do, so I set off in the direction of the construction site near the old arcade to see what I could find out about the most recent attack.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jace
We were doing our best to sleep, as we’d gotten none the night before, but it just wasn’t happening. Curled up together in Arnold’s bed, overwhelmed by his scent which was embedded in every fiber of the mattress and blankets, both of us feeling our heats coming on, it was impossible to keep our minds from wandering into that place.
“This is impossible,” Sasha groaned, twisting around beside me, one of his hands between his legs, nursing what I guessed was a pretty hard erection. Mine was there for sure, making it even harder to sleep, as I was a stomach sleeper. “He needs to just retire from the force and come back and take care of us!”
“That would be ideal,” I agreed with a smile, rubbing my cock through the pair of Arnold’s sweatpants I was wearing. The feelings of lust in the room were almost tangible. I felt hot and threw the blankets off me and peeled off my shirt and tossed it aside. I took a deep breath and looked over at Sasha.
He had his back to me, but was curled up in a way that showed off his nice round ass. I always knew he was hot and had a great body, but ever since the wall had come down between us, I was noticing it more and more.
“What do you think it will be like?” he asked.
“What do I think what will be like?”
“When he breeds us,” he replied, his voice a whisper lost in a fantasy.
I closed my eyes and imagined Arnold back on top of me, maybe pinning me down as I lay on my stomach on the bed, my butt arched up just high enough to make room for my hand beneath me as I stroked my cock.
What would it feel like when he knotted?
What would that enormous explosion of cum feel like inside of me?
I can’t wait.
“It will be incredible,” I told him, reaching out and cupping his ass with one hand.
“Mmmm,” he moaned, pressing back against me. If you’d have asked me even two days ago if Sasha and me hooking up was a possibility, I would have said no—absolutely not. We were working boys living together to survive. We were friends, the best kind of friends. But then we’d met Arnold and everything changed.
He’d swept us off the street and out of that life. That wall we’d had up between us no longer had any meaning to us and the feelings we’d had for each other came spilling out as he helped us dismantle it brick by brick. Now, there was nothing between us but love.
Sasha arched his back, causing his sweatpants to pull down ever so slightly, exposing the crack of his ass. I slid my fingers beneath the waistband and pulled down, exposing all of him. He moaned, encouraging me, and I pulled them down the rest of the way to his knees and tossed the blankets off of him.
Neither of us spoke. We simply communicated with body language, each of our subtle movements communicating volumes to each other. He rolled ever so slightly onto his side, which allowed me to slip a finger between his cheeks and play with his hole, which was beginning to drip with slick.
Like I’m the alpha, I thought with a smile.
But that wasn’t it. Sasha didn’t want me to breed him—he wanted Arnold, just like I did. But Arnold wasn’t here now, and two omegas in heat, both turned on by each other—well, let’s just say we couldn’t be stopped.
Roll over, I told him by gently tugging on his shoulder. He did, and he twisted onto his back, exposing himself to me.
He was nice and hard, and so was I. I slid out of my sweatpants and moved closer to him, close enough that our cocks were touching. Neither of us was circumcised, and I wrapped a hand around both of our cocks and pulled the foreskins back and began jerking us both off at the same time.
Sasha was breathing heavily and hid his face in the crux of my neck, his lips gently open as though he was giving me one long kiss. I held our cocks together and began thrusting as though I was fucking him, and with my free hand, reached around and inserted my index finger in his hole. He gasped and finally broke the silence.
“Fuck, baby,” he whispered. “I can’t stop thinking about what it’s going to be like.”
“Neither can I,” I told him. “He’s going to be bigger than this finger.”
“Mmmm…” he moaned.
“I’ll suck you as he enters you,” I explained, playing the fantasy of my mind out for him to hear.
“Yes…”
“And it will hurt when he puts it in, but just a little, because then you’ll be so overwhelmed by pleasure that you won’t know what to do with yourself.”
Sasha moaned again and pushed even closer to me. I was one knuckle deep in him, but pressed another inside. Our cocks slid against each other in a way that felt like we were almost fucking. Sasha reached up and grasped the back of my head as I started to thrust faster. It wasn’t going to take much to get us both there. We were both so unbelievably turned on already by the power of our heat.
“And then?” Sasha asked.
“And then he’ll knot,” I told him.
“Fuck, yes!”
“He’ll knot inside you and it’ll feel like you couldn’t possibly take any more inside of you,” I told him. “And you’ll feel the bond that you couldn’t escape even if you wanted to. And then he’ll explode inside of you and claim you as his forever.”
“I can’t wait…”
“And then, once his knot subsides, he’ll do the same to me.”
“And we’ll all be together,” he said softly as our orgasms swelled together like two pieces of an orchestra meeting for the finale.
“I’m gonna come, Jace,” he told me.
“So am I!”
Our lips m
et at the same time as our orgasms. I felt his cum spray out of my hand and mix together with mine. I pushed my tongue into his mouth as we kept coming, the sounds of his moans like beautiful music in my ears as we both shared a beautiful moment of fantasy with each other, dreaming of what was to come with our alpha.
Sasha slowly pulled his lips from mine. “I love you, Jace.” My heart filled with warmth and I smiled.
“I love you too, Sasha.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Arnold
The construction site by the arcade was spilling over onto the sidewalk in a way that shocked me. I couldn’t believe San Diego would let the company get away with driving pedestrian traffic into the street, as there weren’t any sidewalks close by and nobody was going all the way up the block to cross legally. Not to mention the place looked like it had become a night spot for the homeless, as there were several blankets and sleeping bags strewn about, as well as a couple of needles.
As I approached, I saw the old police tape cordoning off the site of the crime. There was still a decent amount of blood staining the rough ground of broken concrete and dirt. There were no uniforms, though, which surprised me. I stepped over a low plastic divider fence and examined the scene. I wouldn’t find anything the boys missed, of course, but as a shifter, I had different methods of detection.
I inhaled, searching through the smells of the city: the smoke, the booze, the homeless, the smells of piss and shit that went along with this part of town, but then I found it—the scent of the killer.
It sparked an anger within me that I’d pushed away until now so I could focus on other things, but as I smelled it, images of the horrible attack on my angels came rushing back to me. I saw them, both in mortal danger, and my resolve strengthened inside me.
I’m going to catch you, you son of a bitch!
The scent led off down the street towards a residential neighborhood. Of course he wasn’t living in the area—a maniac like that would stand out if he tried to rent a home—but on the other side of that neighborhood was a park. At night, that park was filled with unsavory individuals, crazy people and worse, and someone like the killer might manage to go unnoticed lurking in the shadows.
