by Aiden Bates
Cuddling wasn’t right because that was something that couples did, and cuddling wasn’t right because if he let me put my hands on him again, then I was going to want to go again. I wanted to go again right now. He seemed like he’d want to go again, too, but he wasn’t saying anything. I could understand that. I didn’t feel guilty about what we had just done, exactly. Charlie himself had told me he needed me to stay so I had stayed. But I couldn’t deny I felt a little strange about doing this with Charlie, and I would have completely understood if he had rolled over and told me to leave. Maybe it still felt too soon for him, even if it was just supposed to be a reaction to an emergency and nothing more.
Nothing more, right? Yeah, I thought I could live with that. I had met Charlie as Jason’s fiancé first and foremost, and I was all for respecting that going forward, if that’s how he wanted to move forward. It didn’t have to be any more than a favor for a friend, now that we’d gotten through the worst of it.
Was that the worst of it?
“W-w-w-we…uh…” I said, not really sure of where I was going with my sentence, not really sure what anyone was supposed to say in this kind of situation, or how often “this kind” of situation came up nowadays.
I cleared my throat and tried again.
“Is this…um…it?” I asked, cutting my eyes over to steal another glance at Charlie.
“It?”
“Yeah, I mean… Is your heat usually done by now? I mean, is this as bad as it gets? Not that it was bad, I mean. I’m not trying to say—”
Charlie chuckled. “No, no, it’s fine. I get you. I don’t know, actually.”
“You don’t know?”
“Yeah, it’s not usually like this. I mean, heat isn’t ever comfortable, necessarily. But it doesn’t usually feel as, um, uncontrollable? I don’t think I’ve felt like that since I was a teenager. Definitely not since I’ve been on the pill, anyway. It feels almost like I wasn’t on anything.”
I blinked. I clearly had no concept of what his heat felt like for him on the pill or off the pill. I mean, I remembered being a horny teenager, of course, but there wasn’t any pill to suppress me, it was just an effect of growing out of that phase. The risk of an omega’s pill just randomly not suppressing him and then making him feel like he’s suddenly fifteen again was kind of mind-blowing.
“So, this isn’t…a thing that happens every so often?” I asked, carefully trying to make sure I understood him.
“What?” Charlie asked, shifting over to his side to look at me straight-on. “No! Of course not! How would anyone get anything done, like, ever? No. The pill’s obviously not working. To be honest, my heat has never been this bad. Horny teenager aside, I’ve never felt so…desperate. Maybe it’s interacting with something I ate? No, this isn’t normal.”
“Oh,” I said, dumbly. I blinked again, thought about the pill, thought about what he’d just said, thought about what we just did and blinked slowly for the third time.
“Wait, does that mean… If the pill isn’t working, I mean…uh…” I said, not sure how to express my rising panic at the moment. “We didn’t use a condom!”
“I know,” Charlie said, quickly, also sounding like he was trying to hide nerves. “But you know there’s two parts to the pill, right? There’s the suppressant part and there’s the birth control part. Maybe the birth control part is still alright? And, I haven’t… I mean, I haven’t with anyone since…”
“No, no, no! I wasn’t bringing it up because I thought you had anything! I know you haven’t—”
“You know I haven’t?” Charlie asked, raising an eyebrow.
“No, I mean, I don’t know you haven’t. I just figured you hadn’t because…” Every end to that sentence I could possibly think of involved Jason in some way, and that felt particularly wrong to bring up with Charlie naked in bed next to me. “I haven’t either, you know?”
“Yeah,” Charlie said with a smirk. “In your case, I actually do know you haven’t. Not in years, anyway.”
Okay. Fair point.
I found myself chuckling along with him, and it broke the awkwardness that was threatening to build between us.
“What, you don’t think any of the nurses or doctors might have…” I asked, raising an eyebrow down at him.
“No,” Charlie said, definitively. “I really, really don’t. Marcos hardly ever left, remember?”
“Remember? No. Not really.”
Charlie elbowed me in the ribs, and I shoved him gently with my arm.
“So, we’re good, then?” I asked. I was asking if we were all good about the pill, but on some other level, I was also asking whether we were all good about what we had just finished doing, whether we were all good to keep on living together after this, whether we could still be friends.
“Yeah,” Charlie answered in a softer tone than he’d been using throughout the conversation, clearly understanding all the things I had meant to ask. “Yeah, I think we’re all good.”
A weird, warm feeling started in my belly at the gentleness of his tone and the softness of his eyes as Charlie looked up at me. We held each other’s gaze for a moment before Charlie shook his head suddenly.
“I mean, I think so, anyway. Are you? All good, I mean?” he asked.
“Me?” I was surprised he would even think to ask if I was alright. I wasn’t the one who had lost anyone. I wasn’t the one having to deal with my body acting in unexpected, unpredictable ways. I wasn’t the one who had just been pushed to make a decision because of this weird, uncontrollable biological need. Yeah, of course I was good. All things considered, I was great.
“Yeah, no. Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Well, sometimes you limp a little if you’ve been on your feet for a while, and you definitely weren’t planning this when you walked in here with the coffee. I thought you might be sore or something now things have calmed down some.”
Oh. True. Again, fair point.
“Yeah. I’m totally fine. I’m perfect. In fact, if you’re not…you know… If you’re not good. If you’re not through, I mean, I could always…”
“If I’m not through?” Charlie mockingly emphasized “through.”
“Yeah, you know. If you still needed me to take the edge off, I could definitely go again.” My suggestion was real. I was genuinely offering to help him if he still needed me to. But as I heard the words come out of my mouth I realized how ridiculous it sounded. It more or less came out in the same way I might have offered to change a friend’s tires if they didn’t know how.
“You know,” I said, breaking into a grin. “As a favor.”
“A favor?” Charlie arched an eyebrow but was unable to contain the sly little smirk that was spreading on his lips. “Is that so? You could just bring yourself to do it again for my sake, purely out of altruism, right?”
“Yeah, dude,” I said, forcing my face into a serious, earnest expression for a moment. “It’d be like…my good deed for the day, you know?”
“Oh, yeah,” Charlie said, in a sarcastically naïve tone of voice. Like, he was really buying the stupid line I was pretending to try to feed him. “Yeah, like a Boy Scout. Or like a really, really good friend.”
“Yeah.” I shrugged, slowly coming back to breathing heavy as Charlie got more playful and suggestive. “I can definitely be a good friend.”
Charlie pointedly looked down at where my cock was still half-hard and starting to tent the sheet over my legs, and then looked back up at me. This time, when his eyes met mine, they were a little darker, a little more knowing, like he had thought of a terrible idea and was determined to do it, anyway.
Was this a bad decision? This was a bad decision. I definitely didn’t want to bring it up to Charlie, but deep down, as happy as I was in that moment, it still felt like Jason might come bursting in through the door to catch us. This was definitely a bad decision. The first time could have been justified with how we’d both been caught off-guard by Charlie’s heat. But I didn’t
feel so foggy-headed now. In fact, despite all my teasing and talking about going a second time, for as much as I was straining to go again, I knew we shouldn’t.
But then, Charlie bit his lip, shrugged again and slowly peeled the sheet off of us. Without waiting for my reaction, he lifted himself onto his arms and slowly crawled on top of me, still wearing that wicked look on his face. As he balanced himself on all fours and looked down, I found myself staring at the corner of his lip he had bitten earlier. I wanted to bite it, too. But I just lay flat on my back, waiting to take my cues from Charlie.
Charlie huffed softly, apparently finding how paralyzed I was funny, and then he leaned down and kissed me. Seeing as how he was obviously okay with seeing it through once again, as soon as our lips made contact, I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him down and onto my chest.
Oh man. My leg, brain, conscience—heart?—protested. This was a bad call. This was the kind of decision you regret afterward.
Charlie pulled back, and I thought he’d finally realized the same thing, but he wrapped his hand around my cock, and suddenly…
It was fine. It was a bad decision, yeah, but we could make a bad decision, just, like…one more time, right?
And then, whether it was a bad decision or not flew right out the window because Charlie looked down at me, gave me self-satisfied smirk, and then took me in hand and sank down onto my cock. He was still loose from earlier, and slick hot. He took me in all at once, and I groaned at the incredible sensation.
“Holy shit. Holy shit. Fuck, Charlie. M-move,” I urged.
Charlie stayed stubbornly still. “Oh, come on, now. You can do better than that,” he said.
I felt like I was going to explode. What I wanted to do was flip us over and drive into him. But Charlie was calling the shots here, and honestly? It wasn’t such a bad thing. He was sprawled over me, his pale body completely on display. His cock was so hard it was straining toward his stomach. Despite the teasing, his cheeks were flushed, and it spread all the way down his neck and to his chest.
“Come on, Charlie. Please move.”
Maybe he thought I was desperate. He wasn’t wrong. I didn’t mind begging. But more than wanting to chase my own pleasure, I wanted to watch Charlie unravel. I wanted to watch him lose control.
Charlie started rocking his hips, gently at first and then with more and more force. I put my hands on his hips, but I let Charlie control the depth and tempo.
“Pedro… Feels so good,” Charlie moaned. I could smell him, his arousal spiking as he impaled himself on me over and over again. “So good.”
“You, too,” I groaned. I couldn’t take it anymore, and on the next downstroke, I thrust up to meet him.
“Yes, Pedro. Just like that. Oh, god. Just like that,” Charlie urged. He groped for one of my hands and guided it to his weeping cock. I palmed him before tracing my thumb over the head of his cock and then bringing my thumb to my mouth.
“What?” Charlie asked confusedly, the contact with his cock not nearly enough to bring him off. He glanced down and whined instead, his eyes glued to my mouth.
“Oh, angel. You taste so good. Sweet,” I said before wrapping my hand around his dribbling cock and giving him a firm pump. Charlie started trembling, his thighs shaking in his attempt to keep up the tempo he’d set.
I leaned forward and he leaned down, and our mouths smeared together in sloppy kisses. Charlie groaned at tasting himself in my mouth. His hips were quickly falling out of rhythm and a few strokes later he was tightening, vice-like, around me and coming. I pulled back from his mouth just enough to watch him come in ribbons all over my hand and his stomach. And then I exploded, my vision graying out at the edges as I emptied inside him.
“Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Look at you. So fucking gorgeous.”
Charlie curled himself down onto my chest, his breathing heavy in my ear. “That was…”
“Holy-shit-fucking-amazing? A bad decision? The best?”
Charlie snorted. “Yes.”
11
Charlie
I didn’t know who, but someone was about to get a piece of my mind. It took a whole lot to get me angry. A lot of the time I just didn’t see the point in the things that seemed to irritate other people. My therapist said a lot about “trauma responses” and “minimizing” when I’d told her that. But it wasn’t really something I’d grown into after Jason. No, I’d always been easy-going.
But this? No way.
I’d left Pedro passed out face down in my bed. I’d run a soft hand through his hair and told him I was going out. He’d grunted and promptly resumed snoring. Stupid alphas. It’s not like they had to deal with any of this. Ever. Why did we have to be responsible for all the reproductive health? Sure, I was the one who could get pregnant, but I was fairly certain it took two to tango.
“That’s just how it is, babe. Besides. You’re the responsible one. Can you imagine if I was in charge of that? You’d be knocked up in no time.”
That’d been Jason’s response the one time I’d ever ranted to him about it.
Still, it wasn’t really Pedro’s fault what had happened. I’d told him I had all of this under control, that he didn’t have to worry about me and my heats.
I was a little bit mortified about what we’d done, but I’d wanted it, Pedro had wanted it. I certainly wouldn’t have let him near me if I didn’t, but what bothered me was that it had somehow felt out of our abilities to control. I didn’t know what the fallout from that could be, but I was nervous. Pedro was my friend, he was my roommate, and I wanted us to get along. We ran in too many of the same circles to avoid each other if being roommates didn’t work out. Besides, having sex with him wasn’t supposed to happen at all.
And that, more than anything, was why I was hot under the collar. Well, that and because I’d decided to cover myself in a thick winter coat and scarf in addition to the huge sunglasses for my outing to the pharmacist. In June. In South Carolina. I didn’t need any town busybody wagging their tongues to my Papa about this. I’d never hear the end of it.
As I marched inside the corner pharmacy, silently thankful for the cold, conditioned air, I stopped in my tracks. Apparently, I wasn’t the only pissed off omega digging out his winter wear in the middle of summer. In the far corner I could see a congregation of sheepish looking men, keeping to themselves—ah, the alphas. Wisely they stayed silent, only occasionally peeping over their shoulders at the scene in front of the pharmacy counter.
Before I could get any closer, my phone pinged. I looked down to see Bennet’s name.
Hey! Probably want to cool it on the new meds. I was talking to Mitch and he said it screwed his heat all the way up…if you know what I mean. ;)
I snorted. There was nothing to do now but laugh. Well, laugh and take a picture of the throng in front of me.
I sent it back to him with a message. Too late for that.
The pharmacist, an omega himself, looked frazzled, and as I got closer, I could hear the exasperation in his voice.
“Listen, if everyone could form a line, this would be a whole lot—”
“I swear to god, if you say easier, I’m going to scream. What would have been easier is me not being out of my mind for days now with my fucking heat,” one blond omega said, waving around a very familiar blister pack of half-taken medication. “What the hell is going on?”
“Yeah,” said another omega in glasses. “What are you going to do about it?”
Blondie gave an assuring nod to Glasses before turning back to look at the pharmacist. “If everyone would get in line, I’ve got the old heat suppressors and birth control packs,” the pharmacist said.
He was wasting his time. As soon as he gestured down to the boxes of pills in front of himself, there was a rush for the counter.
“This is insane,” I overheard Glasses say to another omega.
“Absolutely,” the other omega agreed. “I was out with my friends for a bachelor party. It was supposed to be fun. One minut
e I was dancing my ass off with my friends and the next, I was dragging some random alpha back into the alley instead.”
I could hear others around me as well, telling their stories.
“Well, what was I supposed to do, Reggie? I was in a grocery store for crying out loud…” one voice said, exasperated.
“And I know it wasn’t right. I mean, he’s my brother-in-law, but Jesus, he smelled so good…” another miserably explained.
“Like hell I’m responding to his text messages. We fucked. It’s not like I married him or anything,” a voice argued.
“And then, I told Jeremy, and do you know what he told me? ‘What’s so bad about it?’ That’s what he said. ‘What’s so bad about it?’ And I know what he’s thinking, what’s so bad about crazy, hot sex. Stupid alpha. He had no idea how excruciating this heat was. No idea. He’s lucky he’s so cute,” still another complained.
“I don’t know. If it didn’t make my heat so bad it wouldn’t be a half-bad drug. My alpha gave me one hell of a ride,” a smug omega replied.
Finally, I got up to the front, and in between the pharmacist handing out packet after packet of pills, I took my chance.
“Why didn’t anyone warn us about the side effects of this?” I asked.
Whether it was because I was the only person here not actively screaming at him or because no one else had yet asked him that question, the harried pharmacist looked up and gave me his attention.
“We didn’t know. Well… There’d been a complaint here or there, but nothing like this. Nothing at all like this. And now? All of it. All at once.” He shook his head as he handed me the medication. I moved out of the way quickly. I definitely didn’t want to catch someone else’s anger for not getting out of the way fast enough.
