“Cute?”
“When you aren’t talking!”
Houston laughed and suddenly dropped the hand that was supporting Mickey from beneath, catching him again on the way down but only after his finger had slipped almost all the way inside the omega. “You like it when I shut my mouth, huh?”
Mickey giggled but it turned into a moan. His hips worked in restless circles. His movements were uncontrolled.
“Maybe I should shut my mouth right now? Make it so I can’t talk?’ Houston wiggled his finger slightly in Mickey’s ass, eliciting more fierce moans. The omega shook all over, the muscles deep in his rear tensing and loosening in rhythm with his breathing. Houston loved it. He wanted more. He loved the feel of the other’s innermost places, the ridged textures against his finger.
He lowered his voice. “Maybe I should bite you. Claim you. That would make me shut up.” For emphasis, he bit at Mickey’s lip. “Or I should put your dick in my mouth. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Naughty omega.”
The taboo of what he suggested, of an alpha sucking an omega’s dick, made Mickey scream out softly. “Shit! Houston! I...”
“My tongue on your dick, licking you... I bet you taste real good, baby. I bet you would feel great going down my throat...”
Mickey shook like an earthquake. His dick shuddered of its own accord. Precum drizzled from the tip of his dick, oozing down the length of his shaft, and Houston knew the rest wasn’t far behind.
“Cum for me,” Houston whispered. He bit and sucked at Mickey’s ear lobe. “Cum for me. Give it to me. Now.”
He crooked his finger inside Mickey.
Immediately, he felt the omega tense up like no one else ever had before. He became a knot of steel in only a single moment, and earthquake spasms rocked his body. Burning spurts of heat shot against Houston’s cock, scorching him and making him gasp. His own body trembled, on the verge of letting loose.
He didn’t want to just let go though. He wanted this first time to be at least somewhat proper. Grabbing the spent omega in his hands, he turned Mickey over and then replaced his finger with his cock. Mickey let out an exhausted squeal from beneath him, but lifted up his ass to accept Houston’s cock anyway. They were a perfect fit for each other, with Houston able to bury himself up to the hilt immediately.
I want to go slow.
It didn’t matter what he wanted. His body took over. He slammed his hips against Mickey’s ass, thrusting hard inside him, hands hard on the omega’s hips to hold him in place. Mickey grunted beneath him with the impacts.
The loose textures deep inside Mickey’s ass glided over Houston’s cock. He shuddered and groaned, pressure building.
He didn’t even last thirty seconds. His whole body jerked and his eyes rolled back in his head, seeing nothing but fast pulses of color behind his eyelids. He bit his lip to keep from biting Mickey, and it was a long time before his load was fully spent.
I don’t think this is really going to be very cuddly.
Reluctantly, Houston slid out of Mickey and took a few shaky steps away.
The omega murmured, “I didn’t say you could cum inside.”
“Sorry,” Houston grunted. He wasn’t sorry at all. He felt satisfied and complete, the way a man might feel after enjoying an expensive steak dinner.
“Go away.”
“So, that’s it, then? I come in and relieve the pressure for you, and then I go away again? Are you at least paying me?”
“Your pay is that I’m letting you stay here. Now, please, go away. I... uh...”
Houston stared at the omega leaning back on the broken futon. Mickey looked like a horse that had been ridden hard and put away wet. He was clearly exhausted in the aftermath of orgasming, and there were red handprints outlined on his hips from where Houston gripped him. This was the time when the real bonding should have happened. Cuddling and talking about what they did, caring for one another and kissing more. Everything inside him ached to ignore what the omega was asking, to push through with those things anyway instead of walking out the door and leaving him alone.
In the end, all he did was nod and put his jeans back on, and walk out. He couldn’t force Mickey to admit what he really wanted. All he could do was hope that the omega warmed up to him eventually, and someday they would be able to do those special, tender things.
Someday, Mickey would figure out that it was a good thing to be taken care of every once in a while.
I can wait.
Houston spotted the she-wolf in the distance and headed toward her. As far as he could see, the best thing to do to win Mickey over was to do a whole damn lot of good for his pack.
Chapter Ten
A week passed quickly. At the same time, it was the longest week of Mickey’s entire life. It was bad enough when everything around him reminded him of the mate he didn’t want, but he had no idea how to cope when the mate he didn’t want was actually part of everything around him.
After cleaning himself up from their sex, Mickey went into his room and lay down on the thin mattress that was all he had as a bed. Pulling a thin scrap of covers up over his head, he blushed hard and squirmed around in the warm darkness while replaying what had been done and said. It was the first time he’d done anything before, except for kissing. And, well, after that, he might as well not have been kissed before either. He hadn’t had any idea what to expect, and he still had his mind blown.
“But it doesn’t mean anything,” he whispered softly to himself. His breath caught beneath the blanket, warming his cheeks even further. “It was just sex.”
He should have given the alpha a harder time about cumming inside, and definitely for not using any protection, but it wasn’t like there had been time to lay out any ground rules. Mickey went to it like... well, like a wolf in heat. He dreaded to think what would happen when he actually went into a real heat. That had been temporary, but his regret wouldn’t be. That was permanent.
Yet, as he lay there and tried to take a nap, to put what happened behind him. He found that he really couldn’t convince himself that he regretted it. Sex with Houston had been just too good. He was almost looking forward to doing it again!
Frustrated with himself, Mickey sought escape through sleep. He went into his dreams growling, and woke up again an hour later with the same growl pulsing in his chest. He growled to lie to himself that he wasn’t curious.
Pushing up from the mattress, he licked his fingertips and raked them around through his hair to try and restore some order to what felt like a rat’s nest. He gave up on it pretty quickly and went to poke around in the kitchen, glancing over his shelves.
“What’s this?” he murmured softly to himself, crouching down to pick up a box that hadn’t been there when he’d gone to sleep. The box contained eight individually-wrapped chocolate peanut butter granola bars. Shaking his head, Mickey unwrapped one and ate it quickly. The sweetness was cloying for someone who was used to meals thrown together from scraps found in dumpsters, but he reveled in it and then washed the taste away with a few mouthfuls of water. Someone must have gotten lucky with a haul and slipped in here while he slept to share it with him.
I appreciate the thought but I think the kids would enjoy these more than I would.
Holding the open package in one hand, Mickey pushed his way out of his home and stepped out into the half-dark city. It was still only early evening but everyone was starting to wind down, with fewer shifters out and about. The children were still at play, as busy as ever with scuffling around with one another. The children never changed, always eager to grab a few last minutes of joyful motion before being forced into the terrible punishment of stillness that was sleep.
Glancing around, he saw the slender rabbit shapeshifter. “Bernie,” he called out, using his name to get his attention.
Bernie jumped almost two feet in the air, eyes going wild and ringed with anxious white. He stared around himself before catching sight of Mickey and relaxing immensely. “You scared me,�
�� he scowled, heading over to Mickey with his usual walk that resembled a cross between jogging and skipping.
“Sorry,” Mickey said. “But you don’t have to be jumpy down here. No one’s going to hurt you here.”
Bernie glanced around again, anxiety flashing on his thin face again. “It doesn’t hurt to be cautious. Especially when there’s someone new in the group. I still don’t trust ‘im.”
“Him?” Mickey prodded.
“That big wolf guy you brought here. He’s back again. Is he here to stay?”
“Uh...” Quickly, Mickey made a decision. It was definitely in everyone’s best interest if they didn’t know who Houston really was or why he was actually here. “He might be. It’s a trial run kind of thing, you know?”
Bernie snorted. “A trial run for being homeless?”
Mickey curled his lip with irritation, but he held it back and away from his voice as he explained patiently. “You know as well as I do that this isn’t an overnight thing. I don’t ask questions. Maybe he can see it coming and wants to know if this is the place for him.”
The rabbit didn’t look convinced. He shook his head and twitched his sensitive nose. “I think it’s more like he’s here to take advantage of us. Big alpha like that? What if he just wants to have a whole bunch of omegas all to himself?”
“Not everyone here is an omega,” Mickey said. He looked around now, wanting to be done with this ridiculous conversation. Already he could see that this was going to be difficult. Conversations that he knew were ridiculous were going to be very important to others who didn’t know the truth, and somehow he had to find the patience to deal with all of it. “And aren’t you an alpha yourself?”
The rabbit turned his head away and looked embarrassed. “Yeah, but I couldn’t take down even one omega if I tried. That’s not what I’m made for and you know it.”
“So just because Houston is an alpha doesn’t mean that he was made to take advantage of people.”
When did I start believing what I’m saying?
“I guess you’re right,” Bernie muttered. He looked down at his large feet and seemed to notice for the first time that Mickey was carrying something. “Oh, so you found your present?”
“Present?”
And now Bernie stared even harder down at his feet, almost as if he was ashamed of something. Long brown tangles of hair flopped over his face like the ears of a Holland Lop. “Okay, I did say some bad stuff about... that guy, but I have to admit that he was pretty generous when he came.”
“So, this ‘present’ is from him?”
“That’s what Beth says. She says he came with two huge bags of nothing but food and supplies, and that all he wanted to keep from it were his clothes. We parceled it out. There wasn’t much that could go in the actual store for the whole pack, but everyone got an extra item or two. And now we have Band-aids for when the kids get scraped up.”
That explained where the granola bars came from, at least. “Well, these aren’t really doing it for me, so I figured I’d give them to the kids. They’ll enjoy it more than I would.”
“Sure. Hey, you know how that big guy of yours got beat up so bad? He had to have Beth go into his home with him and fix all his bandages. Guess he knocked them around getting here.”
They already gave Houston a place to stay... and Beth was inside it with him, alone?
Jealousy sprang up in his throat, even though he knew he had no right to feel jealous at all. He gritted his teeth to try and hold it back, but that was the last straw on what he could handle. He snapped, “If you’re so curious about Houston, maybe you should ask him all this stuff yourself. It’s rude to talk about people behind their backs!”
And then he stormed away, already feeling guilty as fear scents poured off the poor little rabbit. That outburst was just the wolf in him, he reasoned, throwing a fit that his alpha had been in the presence of another wolf without him. It was a dumb outburst, sure, but at least there was a reason behind it.
Slowly, he remembered the reason he came out here in the first place and turned around to head back in the direction of the children.
For the first time, he noticed there was someone else playing with them.
A huge wolf with normal grey-and-brown coloration pranced around in the small circle of children, racing around and letting them chase him. He waved his tail for them to catch, and let them pile onto his back for a ride. His fur was fluffed up, and his white teeth flashed but, although he sometimes bumped into the kids or caught their hands in his mouth, he never hurt them. Blood was never drawn.
Mickey froze.
The play of dim, flickering lights from the hanging street lanterns cast waving beams over Houston’s coat, turning him into a creature of flame. He was a thing of orange and silver, a joyful sprite with shining eyes; he was not at all what one would call “normal.” At least, not in that moment.
Then, someone else appeared around the corner of the nearby building where the children played. The spell broke. It was a woman, heading towards Houston.
She won’t like that.
Mickey moved forward, prepared to intervene if things got ugly. Instead, he watched as the wolf mother calmly picked her child out of the crowd, thanked Houston for keeping him entertained, and then walked away as if this was an ordinary daycare setting.
Houston had shapeshifted back into a human to talk to the approaching wolf mother. He was turning back to the children, to resume their game, when he noticed Mickey.
“Hey!” he growled, brightly. “Kids, go play by yourselves for a bit. I need to talk to your leader really quick.”
The pups, all of whom were young wolves who never obeyed anyone or ever did what they were asked, scampered a short distance away.
“I’m not their leader,” Mickey said, instead of actually thanking the alpha for being helpful.
Houston shrugged. “And we aren’t mates. I see the way you do things, Mickey. Everything is opposite if you want it to be.”
Mickey blushed hard but let out a soft snarl. “I really just came over here to thank you. I heard about all the stuff you brought and you really didn’t have to do that.”
“Sure I did. I didn’t need that stuff.”
“You’re going to need it later on, when you return to your job and your real life,” Mickey pointed out.
“I can buy more. Right now, I’m here. Did you like those?”
After a few moments of deliberation, Mickey realized Houston was referring to the granola bars. “Uh, not really. Too sweet. They’re more like something that kids would enjoy. So I came to hand them out.”
An almost unbearable sort of sadness crossed Houston’s face. He leaned in very close to Mickey, who couldn’t help but to snuggle in close. It was automatic. The call of warmth and the other’s comforting scent was too much to resist. “Mickey,” he said gently, “you really are just a kid yourself. Really young.”
“Thanks, Grandpa,” Mickey said, sarcastically. He folded his arms across his chest. Houston laughed, but that sadness didn’t fade from his face. It still lived in the downward slant of his mouth, the troubled creases at the corners of his eyes. “Sometimes you just have to grow up fast. Anyway. I want to pass these out and then I have stuff to do. Just try to make yourself useful and don’t cause any trouble.”
Mickey finally did what he set about to do, and then he reluctantly pulled himself away to go find something to do.
Day after day, Houston remained helpful. He worked tirelessly, often taking whatever project one of the pack was working on right out of their hands and finishing it himself. Though the others were initially wary of him, not a single one was left with a doubt as to his intentions by the end of the third day. He was good with the children, and he seemed to always know just what to say or how to address someone to win them over to his side.
Mickey did the best he could to avoid Houston but sometimes it was a necessity to talk to him. On one such occasion, he looked over at the alpha and asked,
“How do you do that?”
Houston glanced over at him, although the look didn’t last long before he went back to observing the children. “Do what?”
“Everything,” Mickey sighed. “But right now, I’m specifically talking about how you always know what to say? It comes so easy for you.”
Houston shook his head. His hair had grown longer since they first met. His military cut was patchy, beginning to droop across his forehead and creep down toward his ears. It made him look like one of those mischievous boys with a cowlick that just never cooperates. “It’s not easy. It’s learned. I think sometimes you forget that I’m a lot older than you are.”
“And yet, so immature.”
Houston flashed a grin. “You know it. It’s good for the soul. But, you don’t become a cop and then not figure out how to talk to people. What you have to say to the mugger so he doesn’t shoot you, and what you say to calm down a witness so you can get their side of the story, are two very different things. And what works for some, doesn’t work for others. It helps when you’re a shifter. Extra senses help.”
Mickey murmured his agreement. “And what about kids?”
“What about them?”
“How the hell do you manage to deal with kids? I feel so awkward around them. I don’t know what to say.”
“Oh.” Houston paused and tilted his head for a long moment to think about that one. Mickey could practically see the wheels turning in his brain, and it was adorable. How could such a thickheaded jerk of an alpha manage to be cute? “I don’t think that’s something I learned. I’ve just always kind of been good with kids. Might have to do with growing up in an orphanage or something. Not sure.”
Right. I almost forgot about that.
“Do you think we might have kids someday?” the alpha suddenly whispered.
Mickey spun around, surprised and a little shocked. “Don’t say that!” he hissed. “No one knows we’re mates, okay? No one knows... whatever is going on between us, so why don’t you just keep your mouth shut, okay?”
Wild Ride: An M/M Shifter Mpreg Romance Bundle Page 25
