by Amy Bellows
8
Tatum
It wasn’t real. I know that. He isn’t going to take care of me or spoil me. He wasn’t inside of me. But I can’t stop the tears streaming down my cheeks. For a moment, I allowed myself to believe someone wanted me.
I forgot what that felt like.
In the back of my mind I’m aware that I need to get back online and apologize to my subscribers. Stopping a show mid-stream might cost me clients, and my mom is counting on me. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m still too raw.
Slowly, I remove the nipple clamps. Even after I massage the skin, my nipples throb. I toss the clamps into the waste bin because there’s no way I’m ever going to wear them again. They’ll always remind me of Professor Ringdal.
I wipe my eyes and let out a long breath, then turn the camera back on.
“Hey, guys. Sorry about that.” I force a smile to my face. “See you on Thursday. I have something fun planned.” It’s a lie. I haven’t planned anything yet. But I’ll figure something out.
The Blooms always land on their feet.
I turn off the camera a second time.
After pulling on my clothes, I head back into the house. My mother is sitting in front of the TV. When she sees my face, she covers her mouth with her hand.
“Oh, sweetie. What happened? Is it your alpha?”
Maybe it’s a lie to say yes, but it doesn’t feel like a lie. It feels like the closest thing to the truth she’ll understand.
“Yeah. He… doesn’t want me,” I tell her. At least that part is true.
She stands up and rushes toward me, wrapping me in her long arms. I’m a twenty-two-year-old man. I should keep it together. And yet I fall apart in my mother’s arms anyway. She doesn’t tell me to suck it up or be strong, she simply hugs me tighter.
“He doesn’t deserve you.”
If only that were true.
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough, Mom.” The confession feels like a betrayal. I shouldn’t let her know how hard it is to take care of her. None of this is her fault.
“Nonsense. You’re my son, aren’t you? Are you trying to say we Blooms aren’t strong?”
I cry into her shoulder. Ever since I was a kid, I thought there was something innate about us that would weather the toughest storm. But when Damien offered to take care of me, the idea of giving up the overwhelming stress and responsibility for a few minutes to a man who could kiss all my worries away was so sweet, I got stupid over it.
In reality, what are we Blooms, other than washed-up trailer trash living paycheck to paycheck? Is that strength?
I’m not sure anymore.
“What do you do when you get lonely, Mom?” I ask.
She pulls away from me and looks me directly in the eye. “I hug my son. There’s no way I can be lonely when I have you.”
I rest my head on her shoulder. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you too. Everything’s going to be okay.”
The problem is she thinks that because she can’t remember how bad things are. If she only knew, maybe she’d be crying with me.
If she only knew, maybe I wouldn’t have to do this alone.
9
Damien
When you’ve lost sight of who you are, sometimes it’s best to go home.
I sit there and stare at the blank computer screen for a long time before I finally close my laptop and find my car keys. I knew I had a heat latch. I knew I was out of control. But instead of getting help, I took advantage of a student. And not just any student—Tatum.
The drive to my mothers’ house isn’t long. After I finished my doctorate at Stanford, I got a teaching position close to home, so I still live in the neighborhood where I grew up. My childhood home is an old two-story Tudor with bookshelves in every room. My older sister and I spent our childhood playing in my omega mother’s organic garden and reading in the hammock on the back deck. During our entire childhood, we were the best of friends.
Everything changed when we got older. My sister presented as an alpha early at fifteen and became obsessed with her schoolwork. She went on to become a surgeon like my alpha mother. My mothers are very proud of her.
I didn’t present until the summer before college. My alpha mother wanted me to study medicine too, and initially I was pre-med. But my freshman year I was doing homework with an omega, and he went into heat quite suddenly. In an instant, the alphas in my dorm room started an argument about who “got to have him.” They were clearly out of their minds with lust. I knew if I didn’t get the omega to a safe place right away, he was going to end up in an orgy he didn’t want.
With a strength I didn’t know I had, I threw him over my shoulder and bolted for my bedroom. In the beginning, I didn’t understand the situation we were in. I figured I’d stay in the room until the alphas left the dorms, and I could sneak back into the dining room to grab the omega’s phone. At that point, he could call whoever he needed to. But the alphas didn’t leave. Then the omega took off his clothes, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees. The first time he asked me to take him, it was nothing more than a whisper. I could see how embarrassed he was. As the hours dragged on and his heat took hold, he whined for me, begged for me, screamed for me with a heart-wrenching desperation.
I still remember how good he smelled. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to give him everything he begged for.
The alphas behind the door clearly smelled him too because they started pounding on it and demanding to be let inside. They were so strong I wasn’t sure the door would keep them out. I remembered reading somewhere that an omega’s scent mellowed out once they were claimed by an alpha during their heat, so I crawled onto the bed and asked the omega if he wanted my fingers. I wasn’t sure if that would be enough to change his scent, but I didn’t have another plan.
As it turns out, it worked.
During the next five days, I helped the omega as well as I could with my fingers and fist. It was too late to move him, so he had to stay in my room. It should have been hell. I was unbearably horny and got hardly any sleep. I’m sure it wasn’t the most comfortable heat for the omega either because I couldn’t penetrate him with my dick without risking a pregnancy. But through it all I felt a sense of purpose I’d never experienced before.
Immediately afterward, I researched the option of becoming a heat companion. I didn’t tell my mothers at first because I wasn’t sure what they would think. I wasn’t even sure what I thought about it, other than I wanted to do it. That summer, I was busy almost every week with my new work. My clients took suppressants so their heat would come on the week they booked with me, which allowed me to work all through the summer. After the fourth time I came home exhausted and happy, my alpha mother asked me what was going on. I was so high on the residual heat pheromones of my last client, I told her.
The horror in her eyes made me feel ashamed.
It wasn’t until the following semester that I started researching the history of sex work. I found comfort in learning about other people who sold sex—especially those who enjoyed it. And not just for the sex itself, but for the connection they felt to their clients. Some called it a form of therapy. Others maintained that sexual pleasure shouldn’t be shameful, and paying for it wasn’t wrong. The longer I continued my research, the more I knew I couldn’t walk away from being a heat companion. Going to medical school was something my mothers wanted for me, not something I wanted for myself. This was the work I wanted to do, no matter what people thought.
My omega mother has always been more open-minded than my alpha mother, so that Christmas I sat her down and told her I wanted to pursue a career as a heat companion. I also told her I was switching my major to history in an effort to change the stigma surrounding sex work. She didn’t respond right away. The seconds that ticked by after my confession felt like years. Eventually, she sat back in her chair and said, “Have you ever wondered why I never told you my pen name, Damien?”
“Yes.” Her secrecy drove my sister and I crazy while we were growing up. I thought she would tell me once I turned eighteen, but she still kept it a secret.
She flashed me a devious smile. “Well, let’s just say that I once wrote a book about a heat companion. In detail. That’s the kind of thing I write, and I’m very good at it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. My mother wrote naughty books my whole childhood, and I had no idea? “Does Mama know?”
She nods. “It was hard for her at first. But I need you to listen to me, son. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with making people feel good for a living. If you’re going to be a heat companion, be the best damn heat companion out there. And don’t let anyone give you shit for it. Not even that stodgy lady upstairs.”
What is my omega mother going to say when she finds out what I did tonight?
I take slow steps to their front door. The lights are still on, even though it’s past nine o’clock. My alpha mother rises early every morning, so she’s usually in bed by now.
I unlock the front door.
“Hello?”
The living room is empty, with the exception of their fat gray cat named Shakespeare who eyes me warily from his place on the couch. He doesn’t like anyone except my omega mother, and even then, it isn’t a sure thing.
A loud, deep bark sounds, and paws skitter against the hardwood floor. Hemingway, their huge, black puppy, bounds at me with a force his awkward puppy reflexes won’t be able to control. My omega mother fosters dogs for a local pet rescue, and Hemingway is the puppy she didn’t have the heart to give up.
He jumps up and knocks me square in the shoulders, covering my face with slobbery kisses. “Buddy, you’re getting too big to do this. One of these days I’m going to fall over.”
Of course, he has no idea what I’m saying.
My omega mother rushes after him. “Don’t give him attention when he does that. No, Hemmy. We don’t attack guests.”
Hemingway slides back down to the ground and nuzzles my hand.
“Mom, I’m not a guest.”
She tilts her head and gives me a sarcastic smile. “So you live here now?”
“No, I just—”
“Stop, Hemmy. Leave him alone.” She looks up at me. “Don’t give him any attention. He’s being naughty.”
I lift my hand up, even though it’s hard to say no to Hemingway. He stares up at me with these big, adorable black eyes.
“Is there a reason why you’re here late on a Sunday night? We usually only see you on Mondays.”
She doesn’t mean it as a criticism, but she’s right. I don’t see them enough. Normally when I come, she’s still in her sweatpants. She once told me that her favorite part of being a writer is working in her pajamas. Tonight, she’s wearing a black dress. She likes to get dressed up to go to church, even though half of the congregation shows up in jeans these days.
“I need to talk to you—”
My alpha mother walks down the stairs, still in her Sunday best too: a suit with a matching vest and tie. “Damien? Is everything all right?”
I need to visit more if they’re worried about me when I show up at their house unannounced.
“I was hoping to get some advice from Mom.”
My alpha mother looks back and forth between us. “I’ll take the dog upstairs. I need to head to bed anyway.” She calls for Hemingway, and he follows her up the staircase.
“Let’s go make some tea,” my omega mother says.
Throughout my life this is the way she’s had the hard conversations with me. When my omega grandpa died, she made tea. When I didn’t get into Yale, she made tea. Each and every disappointment or moment of my grief has been punctuated by a stiff cup of Earl Grey. It’s probably why I only drink coffee now.
As always, we don’t talk while she pours water into the kettle and fills the mesh tea diffusers with the loose leaves. My omega mother is as serious about her tea as she is about her writing, and she’s a bestselling author. Once the kettle screams and she pours the hot water into two matching white mugs, the conversation can begin.
We sit down at the eat-in table right next to the kitchen with a cup in front of each of us.
“You wanted some advice?” she asks.
I pull the chain of my diffuser up and down, as if it was a tea bag. “I’ve done something terrible.” The images play through my head again. The way he said, “But I thought it was good” when I told him I was sorry. His trembling lip before he turned the camera off.
With as few details as possible, I tell her about the heat latch and my growing fixation with Tatum. I don’t mention Tatum’s a camboy. That isn’t my secret to divulge.
“I’ve… done things with him that I shouldn’t. Sexual things.” Saying the words out loud makes them more real. I rest my head in my hands. If only the floor would swallow me whole so I don’t have to see my omega mother’s reaction.
“Well, you know that it’s an abuse of power to sleep with your students.” Her words are soft and careful. I lower my hands and meet her gaze. I don’t see judgement, only concern.
“Yes. What I did was horrible—”
“How does Tatum feel about it?”
I open my mouth, but no sound comes out. How do I adequately describe the anguish on his face?
“He’s devastated.”
Her eyebrows furrow. “You mean he didn’t want to have sex with you?”
“No, he did. But after I told him I regretted it—”
“When did you tell him you regretted it?”
I almost ask why it matters. Then I stop myself. Of course it matters. God, I’m such an idiot.
“I told him right after it was over.” While the dildo was still inside him.
My omega mother reaches out and grasps my hand. She doesn’t need to tell me I should have waited. Tatum was horribly vulnerable in that moment. Has a decade of sex work taught me nothing about how to treat an omega?
“Son, when we make a mistake, we have two choices. We can either face it, or we can run from it.”
She’s right. I’ll need to tell the dean I’ve had an inappropriate relationship with a student. I’ll also need to tell Abbie I’ve done inappropriate things with our intern.
“Do you think the dean will require me to tell him who the student was? I don’t want Tatum to lose face because of me.”
She releases my hand and lifts the cup of tea to her lips. “I understand why you’d want to tell the dean, but I was referring to how you plan to handle things with Tatum. Out of all the people in this situation, he was the one who was hurt the worst.”
“Wouldn’t it be best for him if I never spoke to him again?”
She sets her cup down. “Will you describe Tatum for me?”
Why is she talking in riddles? Tatum’s personality is irrelevant.
“He’s very intelligent. His essays are always carefully crafted and his comments in class are thoughtful. He also has highly developed interpersonal skills. He’s… well, charming. Not to mention beautiful.”
She smiles. “Isn’t it funny that you didn’t mention how beautiful he was until after you went on and on about his mind? Does that sound like someone who is lust-crazed or a man who’s in love?”
I don’t know what to say. Have I allowed myself to fall in love with Tatum?
“It doesn’t matter. He’s my student—”
“I imagine it matters to Tatum. I’m not saying the two of you should be together. All I’m saying is that he deserves to know what happened. Have you told him about your heat latch?”
I shake my head.
“If you feel like you owe an explanation to the dean, don’t you also owe an explanation to Tatum? Not all alphas are as kind as you. A lot of them charm their way into an omega’s bed, only to lose interest once they get what they want. I think it would be comforting for him to know your feelings for him were genuine and that you lost control of them because of a medical condition. That’s what I would want, if I we
re him.”
Maybe I could email him an explanation. I have the email addresses of all my students. Or I could go to the SLASW to get his phone number. Talking about this over the phone would be more personal and reduce the risk of things getting out of control again.
Of course, I’ve always refused to sign a contract with s client until I’ve met with them in person. There’s so much you miss in a conversation over email or the phone. Wouldn’t I be able to communicate with him better if I went to his house?
Is that my heat latch or my brain talking?
“You think I should talk to him?” I ask.
She pauses. “I think he deserves an explanation.”
The image of his trembling lip flashes through my mind again. Would heartbroken Tatum rather hear my explanation over the phone or in person?
“Thanks, Mom. I think I know what I have to do.”
10
Damien
After stopping by the SLASW for Tatum’s address, I go on a journey guided by my GPS. When I’m told to turn into a trailer park, I’m a little surprised. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this. The yards are well-kept, and everyone’s porches are neat. As trailer parks go, it’s a nice one. His house is at the very end of the street.
At this point, I’m certain the reason I want to speak to him in person is because of my heat latch. I feel the same loss of control I did earlier tonight. But unlike an omega who’s lost himself in his heat, that loss of control isn’t dangerous to myself. It’s dangerous to Tatum.
It’s scary when an alpha becomes a slave to his sexual desires.
Tatum’s home is small and white with rust along the edges. The snow is finally melting, and underneath the frost is a buildup of leaves from the fall that were never cleared away. Maybe he lives here with a bunch of other students, and they never figured out who was responsible for the yard work. Or perhaps they have an irresponsible landlord. I ring the doorbell.
