by Leta Blake
Xan twisted to gaze back over his shoulder. Urho’s cock rose to full hardness as he caught Xan’s worried, blue gaze. “Is it all right?” Xan’s voice trembled slightly, and Urho wanted to grip him by the hips, tug him close, and kiss the puffy, red flesh in front of him. He wanted to keep that tender hole safe forever.
Urho shook his head hard, trying to gain sanity again.
Xan’s eyes went wide with fear. “How bad is it?”
Urho cleared his throat. Blood roared in his ears, dots swirled in his vision, and his cock pulsed pre-come in his pants. He shuddered, gripped by a crazy urge to lean forward and not only kiss, but lick the puffy, damaged flesh. He shook it off with great effort, forcing his focus back on the task at hand. “You’re swollen there. There are small tears.”
“But it’s not ruined?”
“Ruined?” Urho repeated, his brain sending up fireworks, his cock straining. “It’s going to be fine.” He took a deep breath, still scenting the underlying hint of infection. He should check inside for fissures. After picking up the lube he’d set aside, he slipped on a thin plastic medical glove made from the same material as alpha condoms. “Spread your legs a little wider for me. I need to feel you internally.”
Xan moaned pitifully, and his cock twitched and swelled to rise against his stomach. His balls shifted up tight to the base of his shaft, and his thighs trembled.
Urho’s own dick throbbed so hard he felt the echo of it behind his eyes. “Wolf-god,” he whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Xan murmured, redness running up his back and flushing his face. “I can’t help it. But I promise, I won’t come.”
Urho growled, trying to block out the visual that popped into his mind: Xan, back arched, asshole wrapped around Urho’s dick as he streaked the daybed beneath him with copious wads of alpha semen.
“He hates it when I come,” Xan whispered, and Urho nearly blacked out as rage rocked him. He sat back on his heels, breathing hard, cock jerking within his pants. He sucked in a jagged breath.
Xan spread his legs wider and hid his face on his forearms. His cock hung there before Urho’s eyes, long and thick, bigger than any omega’s, and growing harder by the second. Urho poured lube onto one gloved finger, closing his eyes and trying to get a hold of himself.
He must be getting sick, spiking a fever, or perhaps going insane, because as he swiped over Xan’s abused asshole, he wanted nothing more than to rise up and plunge his own cock into it. He bit down on his lower lip and shivered.
Xan arched his back into the lordosis position, presenting himself like an omega would. Urho’s balls drew up hard. His breath pushed through him greedily, a rough susurration he could hear echoing around the room. He pushed his finger in and tried to clear his mind of the screaming, possessive lust that swamped him, but it was no good.
It didn’t matter that it was wrong, or that the Holy Book of Wolf condemned these feelings, or that as a doctor he should not be touching a patient when he was aroused in this manner—this confusing and wrong manner. It didn’t alter anything.
He closed his eyes, taking slow breaths, and focused on his duties as a doctor. He felt inside, pretending Xan was a patient in the Calitan district, an older beta who’d been taken anally by an alpha, perhaps. It didn’t matter, so long as whoever he was touching was not, and never could be Xan Heelies.
But the pungent scent of Xan’s arousal filtered into his lungs, uniquely his and beyond delicious, until Urho couldn’t pretend any longer. He wanted to press his face closer to Xan’s skin, to breathe it in more fully, to wallow in it, and then fuck it.
What the wolf-hell is wrong with you?
When he was sure he could control himself, he pulled his finger free, removed the glove, and sat back on his heels. “You’re going to be fine.” His voice broke and he cleared his throat, trying again. “There are no fissures and the small tears will heal. The infection I scented earlier has barely started. I’ll leave medicine for you.”
He stood slowly, his cock not easing, and turned around to hide the evidence from Xan as best he could. He counted out tablets into a small pillbox for Xan’s medication, and tried to think around the wild panic ransacking his mind. He’d never wanted to fuck another alpha before. No matter how handsome or pretty, no matter how small or tight-bodied. Not until Xan.
“Can I get dressed now?” Xan asked, his voice small.
“Please.”
Urho kept his back turned as the rustling behind him indicated Xan’s eagerness to cover himself. He tried to think of something—anything—that would make his own arousal dissipate before the moment came when he must turn around to face the boy.
Instead, an image of Xan the day they met, four years younger and pretty as the day was long, bloomed in his mind. Xan had stood in the summer sun in nothing but his swim trunks, his compact body shimmering with sweat and the drying water from a romp in the waves. Urho’s breath had caught, and he’d stopped dead in his tracks, pinned in place by the sight of the boy.
Something similar had only ever happened once before in his life, on that beautiful day he’d first seen Riki. Right after seeing his mate and stopping mid-sentence, silenced by Riki’s beauty, he’d scented Riki’s perfection and imprinted on him in a wild and violent way. They’d been Erosgapé from that moment on, forever, and even now.
Obviously, imprinting had not followed that awestruck moment of seeing Xan on the beach; it couldn’t have physiologically. But now with the musky, strong scent of Xan’s arousal still flooding his nose, Urho’s brain and body itched with lust and a demented sense of proprietary ownership—mine—that he couldn’t explain or begin to understand.
Xan was an alpha. Urho was an alpha. The Holy Book of Wolf and the law of the land made it plain—never could two alphas share a bond of that nature, not without paying a terrible price. Until that very moment, Urho had always believed in the rightness of the strictures.
But now…
“I smell you,” Xan whispered, the air between them crackling with energy. “Your arousal is heaven to me.”
Urho could barely restrain himself from pulling Xan into his arms and making him submit to the protective, insistent urges rising up inside him. He didn’t recognize himself with all these feelings. He didn’t know where to put them.
“Stop,” Urho gritted out, instead. “That’s disgusting.”
The air sucked out of the room and Urho struggled to breathe through his shame.
“I’ll give Caleb your regards,” Xan said from behind him, his voice cold now and threaded with hurt. “And I’ll pass on your opinion that I’ll be fine. You can leave the pills and your instructions with my doorman. Then I trust you to find your own way out and spare us both any further humiliation and discomfort.”
Urho opened his mouth, turning to issue orders for care, to demand another promise that Xan would never again seek out whatever monster had done this to him—or possibly to drag him into a violent kiss—but Xan was gone, the door left barely open and the sound of his footsteps dissolving down the hallway.
Urho’s knees gave way and he dropped to the too-small chair, his heart lurching. He struggled to hold himself back from charging after Xan as shame and bewilderment made him their bitch. He sat there long enough to hear the echo of Xan and Caleb’s voices moving through the house toward the upper levels. And then even longer, until a beta servant came and suggested that he’d be happy to show Urho out.
Confused, the world a popping, fizzing, spinning, insane place now, Urho handed over the pills, gave instructions for Xan to take them, and then allowed the servant to show him out into this new and nightmarish unknown.
The sun was setting when Urho parked his car on the curb outside of his home. His stomach still ached and his hands shook from the ordeal at Xan’s house that morning. Because that is what it had been, he told himself firmly—an ordeal and nothing more.
It seemed callous and wrong to be more distraught by the events of the morning than he was over a
stillbirth in the Calitan district that afternoon. And yet he couldn’t shake the sensation that his very bones still rattled from the minutes he and Xan had shared in the old nursery together.
He’d tried to put it behind him, driving out to the clinic with determination to lose himself in his work. He’d found the staff buzzing with worry over an omega who’d come in well ahead of his expected laboring time. Things had gone downhill from there for both omega and babe.
Urho had been lucky to save the man, and he’d had the sad job of holding the man’s hand as he’d sobbed over his lost child. Where the alpha was who’d impregnated him, there was no one to say. Not all omegas were lucky enough to be Érosgápe, or even contracted, and not all were contracted to a man who cared for their well-being.
But after the pitiless stillbirth, Urho had tried to unwind by sorting through files in his office. It hadn’t worked. Then he’d dealt with a few drop-in patients. They’d gotten his mind off Xan, but only temporarily. He’d finally given up when he realized he was replaying his conversation with Xan over and over, rather than listening attentively to a young omega presenting with continued bleeding following a tough birth the prior week. He’d managed to focus long enough to put the man’s mind at ease, prescribe some herbal tablets to help with clotting and healing, and schedule another consult in a few days time.
After that, he’d driven past Xan’s house again, peering up at the windows and ransacking his mind for a reason to ring the bell. He’d eventually forced himself to drive on home, confused by the urgent, restless sensation beneath his skin.
He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t think straight. He kept returning to Xan as he’d last seen him, ass up on the daybed, and the swirl of pubic hair around his swollen asshole—used and yet beautiful. Somehow beckoning to Urho with his red pucker.
And now, still dazed, he sat squirming in his car, staring up at his own three-story, faded red brick house. The home he’d shared with Riki before he’d died.
A bolt of need rocked him hard, and he slid from his car with his jaw set and a fresh certainty in his step. Riki always brought him clarity, in death just as he had in life. Just being in his presence would soothe Urho and bring him to his senses.
He rushed through the front and side gardens, past the rose bushes his Erosgapé had once cherished, and into his house through the library entrance. He took the back stairs up to the hallway leading to a suite of rooms he claimed as his own. He let out a long breath when he successfully avoided any beta servants, especially the nosy—though incredibly talented—cook, Mako, who would undoubtedly be worried about the state of dinner if Urho didn’t make his appearance soon.
He passed through into the bedroom. It was cool and dark there. The space held only a large bed with a light blue canopy that matched the drapes and a chest of medications that he kept for emergencies.
Riki had chosen the décor the year before he died, and Urho still remembered the sweet smile on his beloved’s face when he’d stood in the room, surveying his choices. Urho had agreed with him when Riki had proclaimed it perfection.
One wall was dominated by a large painting of the ocean—crashing waves, blue skies, and soft-looking white sand—another of Riki’s choices. The other wall was entirely mirrored, making the dark room look even bigger and affording them both a beautiful view of their lovemaking. Riki had been quiet and unassuming for the most part, but he’d loved to watch himself as Urho had fucked him silly. He’d said it helped him believe that his life was true, that the beautiful happiness they shared was real, and that Urho was sincerely his in every single way.
Urho sat on the bed, undoing his tie and shuffling off his jacket. He stared at the blue curtains floating over the wide windows, and then turned to gaze at himself in the mirror. Haggard was the only description for his face at the moment. He’d shaved that morning, but already his afternoon shadow was creeping up, making the dark circles under his eyes look even deeper. He kicked off his shoes and raked his hands through his hair.
“Riki,” he whispered, standing up and heading into the small, interior room that used to be Riki’s study.
The décor still consisted of wallpaper showing soft, blooming roses that Riki had chosen, and his light, maple desk. But the walls were now lined with the old photos Urho hadn’t been able to bear leaving out and about in the house.
Everything from a picture of them on the courthouse steps on the day they signed their contract, to their first trip to the seaside together—Riki’s blond hair tousled in the ocean breeze, a pipe clenched in his white teeth, and his green eyes glinting with joy. Next to him, a younger version of Urho gazed at the camera, too, with pure pleasure, not a glimmer of sorrow yet in his dark eyes or in the creases of his smile.
Those had been the days when he’d believed he and Riki would grow old together and raise a passel of young, brown babies who’d look like him in skin tone but be like their pater in temperament—gentle, good, thoughtful, and kind. All the things Urho now aspired to be, when, back then he’d simply allowed Riki to be all those things for him.
Above the mantel of the fireplace where no fire had burned since the day of Riki’s death, there was a large, painted portrait of Riki, standing proud and wearing a shy grin. His hand rested on the bulge where their baby grew.
Urho had insisted on the portrait, one of the few things he ever made Riki do against his will, because he’d wanted to always remember the way Riki’s cheeks had glowed and his own heart had stuttered at the sheer beauty of his Erosgapé carrying his child.
He stared up at it now, old roaring, conflicted emotions battering inside him. He knelt on the floor across from the desk where a lock of Riki’s hair sat beneath a glass dome. It was the only bit of him that resided here in the house now. His young body had been retired to the Chase lot in the Zimmermon graveyard on the edge of town. Six feet down he rested, along with their child.
Yes, Urho had buried them together. The small, tiny babe lay folded into Riki’s loving arms eternally. Just the way Riki would have wanted it, had he lived to hear their child’s pitiful first and only wail.
He gulped against the salty tears that started now. He hadn’t cried in this room in years, and yet for some reason, today he needed Riki more than he had in a long time. Needed him, bone deep. Wanted his soothing fingers in his hair, and his soft voice telling him that everything was all right. He craved his calm acceptance of whatever life brought.
And he desperately wanted to hear him say, “I love you, just as you are, even if you want to fuck Xan Heelies, even if you want to love him, and even if you want him as your own. Because you’re perfect, Urho. Wolf-god’s gift to me, and there’s nothing you could want that I wouldn’t want you to have.”
He wiped the heel of his hand over his eyes and shook his head. “Really, Riki?” he asked the air. “Could you forgive me this strange lust? These wolf-damned desires?”
He stared up at the portrait of his omega, his beautiful, shyly smiling man, and lowered his head. Exhaustion swamped him, and he sat on his ass, burying his face in his forearms and riding out the waves of revulsion and self-loathing, the weird jittery want, and the anxiety he just couldn’t shake for Xan’s well-being. And Caleb’s, too, as an extension of Xan.
Eventually, he rose on shaky legs and lit several sticks of incense, chanting the prayer for lost Erosgapé with a trembling voice, and then turned back to his bedroom. He rang down to let Mako know that he wouldn’t be taking dinner, helped himself to a calming tablet, and fell into restless tossing and turning beneath his blue covers.
The sun rose and he hadn’t slept a wink.
CHAPTER FIVE
“So you’re sure he’ll keep our secret?” Caleb asked out of the blue, as though they’d been talking about Urho yet again, when, in fact, Xan had been trying to retire that subject once and for all since the mortifying examination two mornings prior.
“Like I’ve said, he’ll keep my secret. He still knows nothing about yours.” Xan
gazed into the mirror over the ornate vanity in his bedroom, dabbing the stage makeup against his cheek. “Let’s forget it ever happened.”
Caleb made a noncommittal sound and opened the windows to the cold, foggy morning outside. The air smelled like wet pavement and the sounds of the morning commute drifted in. “Do you truly have to go?”
“You know I do.”
Xan would have preferred to stay home, but his father had summoned him to the office. “Flu or no flu,” Doxan Heelies had barked over the phone, and that, unfortunately, was that.
And it would definitely be unfortunate when he arrived obviously beaten and not at all sick. He hoped the bruises underneath the makeup would give him a pallor that might be mistaken for illness, and perhaps he could fake a convincing cough. Though just breathing hurt his bruised ribs.
In the mirror, Caleb watched him carefully, his eyes knowing in a way that Xan usually found calming. But this week, with so many humiliating incidents stacking on top of each other, that gaze crawled beneath his skin.
“What?” he demanded, patting more makeup over the lumpy bruise on his cheekbone. There was no way to hide the distortion even if he managed to cover up the livid colors.
“Dr. Chase has handled heats for widowed and uncontracted omegas, hasn’t he?”
“Yes. And he used to handle Vale’s before Jason.”
“Right, I recall you telling me about that.” Caleb pushed his soft, chin-length hair behind his ear. “But he handles others too, doesn’t he? Men he doesn’t know quite so well? I believe I’ve heard Vale and Jason talking to him about the intense heats of his gardener’s brother? The young man he helps regularly?”
Xan put the makeup down, his cheek half-covered, so that the still exposed purple-red glared even more brightly against the cover-up. He turned to face Caleb, watching him closely. Envy burned in him over the gardener’s brother who had the priviledge of having Urho service his needs.
Caleb lifted a brow. “Well?”
