by Bates, Aiden
“Hey,” he called out from the sidewalk as soon as he saw me.
“Hey,” I said back softly—and even though I didn’t want to, I couldn’t help but stare.
It wasn’t just that he looked good—even though, fuck, he did. It wasn’t the tan, or the lines of his suit, or that intense look in the green of his eyes that had me gawking like a tourist at the Empire State Building, either.
No, it was what he had tucked beneath his arms that did it. Beneath one, Lady, looking grumpy as ever—even though she seemed to light up a little bit when she saw me, sticking her tongue out and panting a smile. And beneath the other—
“Is that my cat?” I blurted out before I could stop myself.
“Mreow,” Cleo Catra answered, her squashed, fluffy face looking even pudgier than ever as Nathan held her in the crook of his arm.
“Yeah,” Nathan answered, looking down at her like he’d nearly forgotten she was there. Maybe because he was staring too—not at the surprise return of a stolen animal, but at me. “Yeah…yeah, it is.”
“You…you stole…” I began, just as Nathan started to say something as well.
“Why won’t you just fucking like me?!” The words burst from his mouth like the cork from a bottle of shaken champagne.
Then, for a moment, neither of seemed to know what to say.
“It…seems like we might have a lot to talk about,” I finally replied, rubbing the back of my neck and feeling it turn red. Not with embarrassment, though. For once, I wasn’t blushing. This was a different kind of warmth, spreading through my body like the wash of heat from a warm fire built to see me through the night.
He snorted as he pressed the cat to my chest, a tinge of indignation to his voice. “Yeah. Seems like we might.”
19
Nathan
“You stole my fucking cat.”
Out of all of the words that I’d expected to come out of Damon’s mouth, those hadn’t exactly made the list. Nathan, I’ve missed you, maybe, or Nathan, I hate you for leaving, you fucking prick! I would’ve even taken Nathan, how dashing you look now that your sunburn is turning into a tan.
“I didn’t steal your cat,” I pointed out, placing Lady down on the sidewalk and letting her lead the way on her leash.
“You went into a building that didn’t belong to you and took the cat with you when you left.” Damon was lucky that his mouth was so damn pretty, considering how accusatory the words coming out of it sounded.
“I stole your cat back,” I corrected him. “That’s…that’s different. Or something.”
I glanced over at him as we walked through Midtown, enjoying the way he clutched the cat to his chest. She was purring, rubbing her head beneath his chin and looking considerably less ugly now that she had been returned to her rightful owner—and if I read into the way that Damon was gently scratching behind her ears, I was pretty sure he was grateful enough to forgive me for whatever it was he thought I’d done.
“Where were you, Nathan?”
Not grateful enough to forgive me without some answers, though. All things considered…it was fair.
“California,” I told him. “Thought you’d figured out that much from my Instagram.”
“It’s a state, Nathan. Not an excuse.”
“You would’ve had your excuses if you had answered your damn phone. I texted, you know. Tried to call.”
“Oh.” Damon had the good sense to look a little guilty at that. “It broke.”
I whistled, dipping my hand into my pocket and pulling out my phone. The messages were already pulled up—I’d been planning this moment the whole plane ride back from LA. Passing it to him, I found myself feeling suddenly smug. “Now who’s the one with the excuses?”
Damon read the messages as quickly as he could while juggling his cat in his arms and my phone between his fingers.
Then he read them again.
And again.
And again.
“You…you didn’t want to leave.” He sounded so surprised, it would’ve broken my heart if it wasn’t such an idiot way to feel.
“Fuck, no, I didn’t want to leave! Did you really think I would have invested all that time trying to make you like me just so I could pack up and fuck off to Los Angeles for a week without notice?”
“You haven’t met my other boyfriends,” he mumbled.
I laughed. “Not entirely true. I’ve met at least one.” I flashed him my knuckles, which were still bruised from my final dealings in LA. “Andrew, I think his name was? Lovely guy. Weak right hook.”
Damon blinked, then shook his head like he was trying to rattle the confusion out of it. “I don’t think anyone’s ever called Andrew lovely in his entire life.”
“Yeah, well. You’re the one who dated him.”
“And lived to regret it.”
“You really thought I was going to just take off without saying anything to you?”
He shrugged. “Andrew did.”
I whirled around in front of Damon, stopping him in his tracks. “Look. I’m not Andrew. And I’m not Connor or Gibby or What’s-his-nuts or any of the other shit-for-brain Alphas you’ve been with. Not that it fucking matters, because you still refuse to like me for some goddamn reason.”
Damon’s tongue ran over his lips as I stared him down, daring him to break my gaze.
He didn’t. But as I stared, I saw something wet and vulnerable and broken in his eyes. I’d expected so much from this encounter—but I hadn’t expected to see that.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, setting my frustration aside.
“Just…a lot has happened since you left.” He shouldered past me, leaving Lady yipping and dragging me along beside him as she tugged on her leash.
“I was gone for a week, Damon. Is it even possible that I missed that much?”
“I lost my scholarship.” He let the words fall like stars dropping right out of the sky.
“What? How?”
“Don’t want to talk about it.” He clutched his cat even tighter to his chest and doubled his pace. Fine by me—I didn’t spend all that time at the gym just to skip leg day. “And Anders’ stalker figured out where we live.”
“Anders has a stalker?”
If he walked any faster, I was going to have to pick Lady up and run with her.
“I told you. You’ve missed a lot.”
“Missed you most of all,” I said, speeding up even faster. Matching him step for step.
He scoffed. “Maybe you did. But it doesn’t matter now.”
“And why the hell not? I didn’t want to leave, you asshole. I texted you as much.”
“Could’ve called the club.”
“And you could’ve called my work, and I could’ve sent a carrier pigeon, and you could’ve hopped a train, and I could’ve quit my job so I could’ve fucking been here for you through all of this.” I jogged ahead of him, wheeling around to cut him off again. “Damon…a lot of things have gone wrong, okay? But none of this is permanent. I’ll pay for your college. I’ll get you a new apartment. All of this has an easy fix.”
When his eyes met mine again though, his gaze struck right though me like a hot pair of knives. “I’m pregnant, Nathan. Is that an easy fix for you?”
And for once, I didn’t have a damn thing to say back to him.
“P-pregnant?” I’d never stuttered once in my life, but as I forced the word out of my mouth, I stuttered then. “You’re…but you were going to…”
I blinked several times, and in the darkness behind my eyelids all the little vignettes of that night we spent together flickered like scenes on a movie screen. The taste of his sweat on my tongue. The low crescents of his fingernails digging into my skin, marking me as his. The way we’d lain together after, my cock still inside him, balls freshly emptied and already begging to fill so I could fill him up all over again.
He said that word, pregnant, like it was a curse, and for him, maybe it was.
“Morning-after pill didn’t w
ork then, I take it,” I finished lamely.
“Forgot to take it. Things got…messy. Slipped my mind.” The cat in Damon’s arms wiggled against the hold he had on it, trying to climb up onto his shoulder as he struggled to stop it. “Guess that makes it my fault.”
“It doesn’t…this isn’t anyone’s fault. Or it’s both of ours. Or…I don’t know. But it’s not your fault.”
“Feels like it’s my fault.” He gave up on the cat with a sigh, allowing it to scramble up onto his shoulder and hunching as it wound itself around his neck. It would’ve been comical if we’d been having any other conversation in that moment.
Actually—
I laughed, reaching up to disentangle the orange ball of fluff from where it was resting across Damon’s shoulder blades.
Actually, trying to herd a fucking cat while Damon explained to me that he was having my baby was the funniest thing that had happened to me in a while.
Unfortunately, Damon didn’t see it that way.
“Glad you can laugh about it.” He took the cat back from me, only to for it to start struggling its way back to its perch on his shoulder all over again.
“I’m not laughing about it,” I pointed out. “I’m laughing at the fact that your ugly-ass cat has chosen this particular moment in time to take up a new life as a necktie.”
Damon groaned as Cleo clawed her way up toward his shoulder once again. “Can we do this somewhere else?” We both looked around, seeing the way the tourists and street performers, businessmen and Macy’s perfume counter girls were all staring at us as they walked by. “Literally…literally anywhere else, Nathan.”
I smiled, nodding as I struck my hand out toward the street to hail a cab. “As you like, Mr. Bishop. Whatever you like.”
Back at my place, I found myself making tea. Maybe it wasn’t the best use of my time, seeing as the Omega who was carrying my baby was sitting on my couch ruminating on the way his whole world was falling apart around him while I boiled water, but it made me feel useful at least. It’s what our housekeeper had always done when I was younger. Bruised knee? Cup of tea. Bad grade on a test? Cup of tea.
Knocked up the man who very well might’ve been the love of my life? Cup of tea—extra strong. With the conversation we needed to have now, I felt like we were going to need it.
“Drink,” I instructed him, our fingertips brushing as I passed the mug into his hands. Compared to the heat of the cup, his hands were freezing cold. Didn’t sit right with me—the man carrying my child shouldn’t have been cold. “You want me to turn the heater up?”
“No…no, it’s fine.” He took a sip, Cleo swatting at the tag on the tea bag as she stared up at Damon from her place on his lap. “That’s…actually really good.”
“Helping?” I placed myself on the couch next to him. Close enough he could touch me if he wanted—and god, I wanted him to want to—but still far enough away that I could pretend I was giving him space.
“Yeah. A little. Thanks.” He leaned forward to place the mug onto the coffee table. Instinctively, I reached out to catch his hand in mine once the cup was settled.
“Damon…” I ran my thumb over his knuckles, tracing each little rise and fall. “I know you said I don’t have an easy fix for this. And, fuck. Maybe I don’t.”
“Guess money really can’t buy everything, huh?”
“Maybe not. But it can buy you safety. Security. You don’t have to want for anything, or worry about anything—”
“Except for the baby you put in my belly.”
I inclined my head slightly, acknowledging his point. “That’s fair. But you’ll be taken care of. Whatever else is going on right now…you’re not alone is what I’m trying to say. And if you never want to see me again…”
He knitted his brow together, pulling his hand away. “I never said that.”
“Well, you’re fucking acting like it.” I held onto the chill of his fingertips even harder, willing them to warm up in my palm. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but God—I’d touched him, and the idea of not being able to touch him anymore now that I had felt like a special kind of dying to me. “All I’ve wanted through all of this was for you to fucking like me, Damon. For you to want me.”
“And now you’ve got a bastard child to deal with instead.”
“No,” I said firmly, placing my own mug on the table beside his and scooting closer. “Now I’ve got—Christ. A head so full of feelings and questions and possibilities that it’s making me dizzy trying to keep track of them while they all spin around my brain.”
“Questions like what?”
“Questions like—well, do you?”
“Do I what?”
I laughed again. “Do you like me? Fuck, do you have any idea how strange this is for me? I’ve never had to worry about that before, and then you came crashing into my life…”
“Crashing into your life. Sounds about right.”
I squeezed his hand tight. “Crashing gorgeously. Brilliantly. Like a fucking meteor burning up in my atmosphere, and I’ve just been standing here on the ground hoping to God that by the time you pass through the clouds, there’s something left of you to knock me over with.” I reached out for him, fingers hesitating an inch away from his jawline. “You could destroy my entire goddamn world, Damon Bishop, and I’d thank you for every minute of it.”
He glanced down at my fingertips, biting his lower lip. “And am I?”
“Are you what?”
“Destroying your world.”
I smiled. “Maybe. But you’re doing such a beautiful job of it.”
He sighed. “I…I do like you, Nathan. Maybe even more than like. And…and I want to keep the baby. Foster suggested that I give it up for adoption, but…”
His words trailed off, but in their wake, my heart was soaring. I’d never felt so warm, so light—so steady and grounded and strong. It was like I’d been living in black and white for my whole life, and suddenly some divine being had touched the tip of his paintbrush to the canvas, sending it blossoming to life in vivid watercolor.
“You like me,” I repeated, dumbstruck.
“Well, of course I like you, you big dumb—”
“And you want to keep our baby.”
“Well, I’m not about to leave it in a basket on some stranger’s doorstep—”
“And you want to raise it. Together. You and me?”
He narrowed his eyes slightly. “Well, I wasn’t exactly suggesting that right off the bat, but—”
Whatever words came after that were crushed beneath my lips as I pressed them against Damon’s mouth. His fingers might have been cold, but his lips were deliciously warm. The fingertips that had been hesitating at his jaw were suddenly all too eager to claim it, hooking beneath it and tugging him toward me.
I wanted to be close to him. Physically, emotionally, mentally—hell, I’d never been a religious man, but I’d have prayed as much of a Hail Mary as I knew if it meant keeping Damon’s body close to mine.
At first, it was only me doing the kissing. But slowly, Damon’s lips eased into it, his tongue slipping out to flick against mine. With every inch he gave me, I took a mile—thrusting my tongue into his mouth, desperate to taste a little more of him. To feel him. To bask in the heat I found between his lips.
I pulled him onto me, sending us tumbling back onto the couch together like dancers caught up in the same misstep. My fingers pulled at his t-shirt, holding him closer to me still, and in the black behind my eyelids, a kaleidoscope of radiant color bloomed and swirled with the deepening of our kiss.
“I want it, Damon,” I panted, straining against my own muscles to avoid just taking him then and there on the couch. “Everything. This baby. You.” I breathed out a ragged breath. “I want it all.”
“I…I want it too,” he admitted softly. I could feel his own resistance—but where I was fighting my desire to pin him down and make him mine, it felt like he was fighting his own urge to give into me. “Just…Nathan, are you sur
e?”
“Mr. Bishop,” I purred, my chest heaving beneath him and lips curling back over my teeth. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my entire fucking life.”
Somewhere between his question and my expletive, whatever was left holding us back melted away. Like sugar in hot tea. Snow in the rain. Then, we were kissing again in a mad scramble, fingers clawing at each other’s clothing like our shirts were on fire and tearing them off each other was the only way to keep from getting burned.
His chest moved against mine, all firm muscles and soft, warm skin. I rolled us, twisting and pawing at each other’s bodies there on the couch until I was the one on top again. I had to be careful, though—with my baby in Damon’s belly, I didn’t want to hurt him beneath my weight. I thrust my hips against his instead, feeling the swelling length of my cock rub needily against the bulge beneath Damon’s jeans.
“Pants,” I snarled, clawing at his belt.
“Are you sure you don’t want to—”
“Pants,” I said again, and then our hands were a flurry of motion at each other’s waists, struggling to free each other from the confines of denim and wool.
I kissed down his chest, pulling his legs free of his jeans as I maneuvered myself between his thighs. He smelled better than anything I’d ever smelled in my life—fresh linen and musk, the slightest hint of sweat so fucking irresistible that I found myself lapping at his skin. His boxers, I claimed with my teeth, pulling them down and away until his cock sprang out for me to lick at instead. My tongue bathed the head of it as I cupped his balls in my hand, enjoying every hiss of pleasure that came with every buck of his hips.
“I love you,” I told him, gripping the base of him tight in my fist. I rubbed my face against his dick as it throbbed beneath my hold, nuzzling at him while my head swirled with longing. “God, I fucking love you. I love you so goddamn much.”
“I…I love you too—” he admitted, arching and gasping as I pumped at his hot, stiff cock, squeezing tight.
