by Aspen Grey
The possibilities were endless.
I played out my mental porno all the way down to the beach and by the time I got there, I knew I was just too fucking horny to see straight. My dick was about to burst the seam on my jeans—I had to do something about it and I had to do it now.
I glanced around. There weren’t too many people around. In fact, aside from a tiny group of friends down the beach to my lift, it was pretty empty and with the sun down and the street lamps behind me, I was covered in shadow.
Should I? I thought as images of Paul’s body swam through my mind. I imagined him naked, his face twisted in pleasure, his lips wrapped around my cock as he struggled to swallow it all.
He was just so cute and so sexy at the same time and the fact that he was untouched and we could explore our sexuality with each other had me reeling. I could feel the cum beginning to swirl in my tight balls and was aching to feel them slap against his while I drilled him from behind.
I kept walking up the beach until I found a secluded area with no one around where the sand sloped down and formed a little alcove where I’d been hidden from prying eyes. Then, unable to resist my urges any longer, I unzipped my pants.
My cock sprang out and made a slapping noise as it struck my palm, and a long line of pre-cum arced out and landed on my ankle.
“Holy shit,” I laughed as I twisted my palm around my swollen head and coated my cock with the slippery juices to give myself some lube to pleasure myself with. This was fucking naughty, but I didn’t care. My incredible, sexy fated mate had me head over heels and foaming at the mouth for him, and if I was going to take him home tonight and slide inside of him, I had to rub one out if I had even a chance in Hell at not being a two-pump-chump.
I groaned and closed my eyes, playing out a mental porno on the backs of my lids as I twisted my hand around my cock and began to slowly stroke it. I’d start first by kissing him and then working my hands around his body. I yearned to feel the soft skin of his lower back and then his ass. I’d cup it and pull him close to me and press our cocks together, grab them both with my large hands and stroke them at the same time. He’d moan and I would growl as I tore his pants from his body and threw him down on my bed.
Hell yes…
My body shuddered as the fantasy seized me. I gripped my balls with my other hand and pulled them down, which caused the skin on my dick to tighten, heightening the sensations. I was already right there, which was fucking insane. My hand slid up and down my thick, swollen cock, coated in my pre-cum, the closest thing I could get to what it would feel to be in his slick covered hole while his body rocked back against mine.
“Shit,” I growled, clenching my teeth as my orgasm began to rise within me. I opened my eyes for a quick second, just to be sure that no one else had wandered up the beach to look at me, but I didn’t see anyone, so I shut them again.
Time to finish…
I pictured Paul’s gorgeous face glancing back at me from over his shoulder as I fucked him from behind, his ass bouncing back against me each time my thighs slapped into him. I could still smell his wonderful scent and focused on that as I got closer.
Here it comes…I thought. I’d reached the point of no return. There was no going back. I was going to come and it was going to be a lot.
But just as I was about to burst, a scent swept across me. It was an omega, but it wasn’t Paul’s.
Oh, shit! I thought. My eyes snapped open, and just as the first thick rope of cum sprayed out of my dick like water being shot from a Super Soaker water gun, I saw an omega standing not ten feet away from me with his eyes glued on me.
I couldn’t conceal my groan as my orgasm walloped me, but I also couldn’t do anything to hide it from him. My dick shot over and over and over again, hot ropes of my baby batter spraying into the sand, the whole time with his eyes on me.
“Holy fucking shit,” he said as I slowly began to come down and quickly got to my knees and turned away from him. I squeezed my cock and milked the remaining cum from it and flung it aside before stuffing my dick back into my pants. “Look at you, big boy. That was a healthy load!”
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” I replied. I was actually fucking blushing. How had he snuck up on me like that? I must have been really wrapped up in my fantasy.
Goddamn it.
“Oh, I know,” he chuckled. “I saw you sneaking around back here and wondered what you were up to. Guess I was right. I could have helped you with that, you know? You only had to ask.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” I replied. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“Boyfriend, eh?”
“Sort of,” I said, doing my best to smile.
“Lucky guy,” he replied with a shrug. “If it doesn’t work out, come to Eight Equals D sometime and ask for Benji.”
Eight Equals D, one of the seedier gay clubs in Miami.
“Thanks, but it’ll work out.”
“With a dick like that, I’m sure it will!”
With a smile and another glance at my cock, Benji headed off down the beach leaving me with my pants unbuttoned around my hard cock which was still throbbing from the orgasm that had just hit me like a truck.
After I was sure he was gone, I burst out laughing.
How did that happen!?
That was a story to not tell the grandkids. I took a deep breath and walked out of my little pervy alcove and back up the beach to where the slushy stand was located. When Paul came, there would be no missing me, even if he somehow wasn’t able to track my scent.
I waited for him. I waited and waited, going over and over in my head what I would say when he arrived.
But Paul never came.
I sat there for hours, checking my phone again and again, finally getting up and walking around to make sure he hadn’t gone to a different spot on the beach. But I didn’t pick up his scent anywhere—not one bit. He simply wasn’t there.
I tried not to panic. He was my fated mate. Of course he wanted to come. He wasn’t just saying that back there. We had a connection, an undeniable connection. If he wasn’t here, it was because he couldn’t be. His family meeting or whatever must have gone long, or his parents had found a way to keep him inside for the night.
Either way, I knew where he lived, so it wasn’t like I would never see him again! Even if something had come up tonight, we always had tomorrow.
So, I retraced my steps back to his place, doing my best to keep my attitude positive and not let my imagination run away with me and come up with terrible reasons why he hadn’t come to see me like he said he was.
“It’ll be fine,” I told myself as I rounded the corner and saw his window. The sun was just beginning to come up behind me and Paul’s incredible scent was still there, right where I’d left him. I breathed deep and smiled as I walked up to his window, stood on one of the trashcans and peeked inside, expecting to see him there in bed or sitting in his chair awake, thinking of me.
But what I saw was nothing like that. What I saw made my heart drop.
Paul’s room was empty. And when I say empty, I mean empty. The only thing there was a bedframe and a mattress. No sheets. No pillows. Nothing on the walls. The drawers of the dressers were open and empty, the closet was empty—if I hadn’t seen him here earlier I wouldn’t have believed anybody actually lived there.
Panic flooded through me like a specter. What the fuck was going on?
The window was closed, but unlocked and I managed to pry it open with my fingers. I expected to be greeted with an intense dose of Paul’s scent, but to my complete shock, it was simply not there.
“The fuck…”
What was going on? Was I losing my fucking mind? Had I come to the wrong place?
I looked back outside and sniffed the air. Paul’s scent still lingered in the alley, but here, in his room…it was gone, along with everything else.
Pheromone blockers…
The room had been absolutely doused with them. That was the only expla
nation. I listened for sounds in the rest of the apartment, but heard nothing. No T.V., no music, no conversation. Nothing. I quickly tugged open the bedroom door and stepped into an empty hallway. The door at the end of the hall was open, showing another empty bedroom. I moved quickly into the living room to see nothing but a couch and coffee table and a T.V.
The kitchen looked like a family had just finished up dinner and then left. There were dishes in the sink and the faint smell of a pot roast. But as far as scents of other shifters…
There just wasn’t anything.
They’d left, pheromone blocked and covered their tracks. They were gone. Paul…was gone.
Chapter Six
Alec
Now…
As I drove back to my apartment from The Heavy Load, doing my best to get the obnoxious omega out of my mind and out of my nose, I couldn’t keep Paul out of my mind.
For the last four years, I’d done a good job keeping myself from thinking about him in a way that affected my life too much. After coming back to his place and finding it empty, I’d had to. There was no other choice.
I’d gone out to the street to search for his scent, and spent the next two days scouring the city for him and his family. But in the end I had to accept the reality; he was gone.
A week later I quit my job at Frank’s and came to Maine. I’d thought I’d be able to go about my regular life in Miami, but everywhere I went I thought I saw him. The beach was the worst—where we had planned on meeting after his “family meeting.” Every time I went there, saw the slushy stand and the waves breaking beyond it, my heart just ached.
Every time I rounded a corner I expected to see him walking towards me, smiling and waving, telling me that it had all been a big mistake, a prank or a random family vacation and that he was back and we were now going to be together. Eventually it got to be too much and I found myself right on the edge or a nervous breakdown all the time. I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I told Frank I was quitting, picked a spot as far away from Miami as I could go—which ended up being Maine—bought a crappy truck and packed up the few belongings I had and hit the road.
The plan was to forget about him—push him out of my mind, start my own woodworking business, get rich and distract myself with as many omegas as I could get my hands on. Two of those things had come true.
I’d managed to start my own woodworking business in Cliffside, but I wasn’t rich from it—not by a long shot. But I had managed to distract myself relatively well and push Paul from my mind with a long line of short relationships and casual hookups. It wasn’t what I wanted and I knew that, but what else was I supposed to do? Keep waiting for my mate to come find me after he’d already left me?
Even if he had to leave Miami unexpectedly, for whatever reason, he hadn’t even left me a note or a single hint as to where he was headed. That meant one thing: he didn’t want to be found. And if he didn’t want to be found, then neither did I.
Fuck him, I told myself, day after day as I did my best to forget him. At first it was easy, ironically enough. I was so determined to push the hurt away that I somehow managed to convince myself that he simply did not exist, that our time together had just been a dream that was never meant to last.
But as time went on, it became harder to convince myself that I wasn’t still in love with him.
When I met another alpha, Trevor, and saw him with his mate, Owen, I felt my walls beginning to crumble. Their love was undeniable, so strong that you could feel it when you were in the room with them. And then when my buddy Damon and Jordan got together…well, that got me to where I am now, hating myself for what I chose to do, but not seeing another alternative.
Maybe he’ll come and find me, I thought as I pulled up to my apartment and got it.
“Yeah, right,” I grunted as I let myself inside and slumped down on the couch. “You fucking idiot, Alec.”
I wasn’t even horny after my night out. In fact, I was the opposite of horny. I was longing.
Longing for him. Paul, my fated mate. I’d only spent a tiny amount of time with him—minutes in fact—but they were the most incredible minutes of my life and they’d been snatched away from me without explanation and I’d spent four years trying to forget that it had ever happened. But I couldn’t.
For some reason, as I lay there staring at my ceiling, I thought back to that night at the beach when I was waiting for him. It was late, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. I grunted and got up off the couch and headed back outside. I could take my truck, but just like that night, I decided to walk to the beach.
I lived up the slopes before the mountains of Cliffside, and instead of shifting and running down to the ocean, I remained in human form and took my time. My heart was pounding the whole way, despite me taking deep breaths and doing my best to calm down. My memories of Paul were so intense that I could practically smell him all over again and my heart was alive as I yearned for him.
It just wasn’t fucking fair. Most shifters don’t even find their fated mates and never know what they’re missing. I found mine, but he’d been cruelly taken away from me. As I reached the road that led down to the water, I wondered where Paul was at that exact moment. Was he back in Florida? Maybe even Miami, looking for me like I’d done for that week before I left?
Maybe I’d left the city too early. It was one thing to think like that now, but that week had been absolute torture. I don’t think I could have stayed for another day without having a breakdown. I thought I saw him everywhere and felt like I was going insane.
Maybe he and his family were in Europe or Asia for some reason or maybe he was in sunny California staring at the Pacific while I looked out at the Atlantic.
Or maybe he was dead…
Don’t think that!
I roared inside as my feet crunched down on the tiny pebbles of the Maine beach. The water was pretty gentle tonight and I sat down against a long log of driftwood and tried to relax. The stars were brighter here than Miami as there was basically zero light pollution. As I looked up at them, my feelings amplified. Gazing out at the universe, the countless stars overhead, simply made me more aware of the fact that I’d found my mate, my destiny, and that there was more out there than hitting the clubs and shallow “relationships.”
Could I ever find a true love like Trevor and Owen or Damon and Jordan if I couldn’t be with my fated mate? Was I doomed to be alone for the rest of my life? I’d reached a tipping point in my life and knew I couldn’t continue on as I had been doing, so where did that leave me?
A car rambled past behind me, which was rare for Cliffside at this time of night. It was a small, sleepy town, not like Portland, but I couldn’t be bothered to even turn and look to see if it was someone I knew. I’d come here to be alone with my thoughts and that’s what I was going to do.
After a while, I realized I hadn’t even brought my phone with me. That was rare. I, like most people these days, was addicted to the damn thing, but I guess my mind had been so focused on Paul that I had just left it at home, so I had no idea how long I’d been at the beach, but I knew I still didn’t feel like going home.
I heard that car behind me again coming up the road. This time, it slowed behind me and this time I turned to see a small sedan parking just up the street where people parked when they were going to come down to the beach.
“Great,” I thought. My solitary moment was about to be ruined by some tourist who’d probably come into town late at night and couldn’t sleep and wanted to come down and take a look at the stars. I thought about leaving for a moment, but decided against it.
Why should I have to go? I live here!
I sat there as the car turned off its engine and groaned as the door opened. Hopefully they’d just stand where they were and look out at the beach and then, when they realized it was too dark to really see the water, would get back in their car and leave. But that’s not what happened. In fact, something so insane happened that I almost thought I was dreaming.
A scent drifted over me like a ghost. A scent that simply could not be there.
That scent was Paul’s.
Chapter Seven
Alec
It was the greatest shock to my system that you could imagine. My mind burst and my heart almost exploded at the same time. The rest of my body began to tingle and a pulse of adrenaline rippled through me like a lightning strike as I went into full fight or flight mode, thinking that some kind of cruel trick was being played on me.
I rocketed to my feet and stared up at the lot above me where the car had parked. There was a figure standing there looking down at me, and when I saw it, my heart skipped a beat.
Can…can it be? I thought.
He was the right shape to be Paul. But it wasn’t possible, was it? Paul was gone. He’d left me back in Miami. He couldn’t be here now.
But still—the scent was undeniable.
We stood there staring at each other for a long time, my body tense and on high alert. Then, the figure finally spoke.
“Hi, Alec.”
My legs almost came out from under me. It was him. It was Paul.
“It—it can’t be,” I stammered, taking a step back. “It’s not possible…”
The figure moved, began to walk towards me. I backed away again as he came down the slope, his face still hidden in darkness. He moved like Paul. He smelled like Paul…but he couldn’t be Paul.
Could he?
Stones crunched beneath his feet as he walked towards me, his scent strong, on the verge of overpowering. I was reeling, my body responding like it should have, but my brain spinning like a fan that had lost one of its blades.
Closer and closer and closer he came, and I was powerless to do anything. After all, what could I do?
