by Aiden Bates
“J-Jason,” Luke gasped, terrified that he was going to break Jason’s reprimand because he could not hold it off any longer—he could feel the first ripples building in him low and sweet. He tried to stop himself, tried to hold his body still to keep the exploding force of his pleasure at bay. “I’m—I’m going to…”
“Yes, my love,” Jason said, pushing his mouth up into Luke’s. “Come for me now.”
He remembered.
“Jason?” Luke looked at him, drunk eyes glowing with lust. With love?
How can he look at him and not remember. Always, Jason thinks, he must. He does. Luke must remember something because Luke leans in. His body remembers what his mind has forgotten. He wants to remember a little more. Just a little, he promises himself.
Luke kisses him. And Jason opens his mouth into deeper, and their lips writhe. The omega goes back on the bed; he opens his thighs.
“Please.”
Shaking his head, crossing his arms, Jason moves to lie beside him.
“Sleep,” he tells him. He keeps his eyes on the ceiling. “Dream.”
Remember.
Remember: It was small and had no wallpaper, but whoever owned the room had done their best to make it tidy and presentable. The wall plaster, which had taken many different shades over the years, had been sanded back to show smooth, yellowed whorls of patchwork. Old woolen drapes that had been mended many times over framed the single window. The furniture was mismatched and much seemed to have been salvaged and repaired over time. There was a large wardrobe and a desk covered with strange alchemical apparatus. Two old winged back chairs that had been torn and then restuffed and repaired both sat in front of a small fireplace which still contained the glowing embers of a fire, and between them was a low, odd legged table that held an empty liquor bottle.
In the corner of his mind, Luke sees it. He sees it, but he is in his own room. Jason is beside him. Jason is not touching him, but he feels him.
In his dream, they come together.
They came together, entwined together, slept together.
Chapter Nine
He’d told Luke to sleep. He had not expected to sleep himself. If he hadn’t woken, he wouldn’t have known he’d been sleeping.
With Luke in his arms, he feels like a thief. What had he done? What hadn’t he done?
He had not intended to wake with him in his arms. He had not intended to hold him, or to be held by him.
It is enough to make his hands fall into fists. He had not intended to be this way again. Yet, if that were true, why was he here? Why had he looked for Luke again?
He woke up naked. He woke up with Luke’s naked flesh pressed to his.
He doesn’t remember. He always remembers.
It as enough to make him groan. He’d had too much to drink. His forgetting has nothing to do anything except for the terrible mistake of getting drunk with a man he cannot keep himself from touching.
How much had he done? He almost does not want to know.
Gently, inch by inch, Jason managed to work his way free of Luke’s tangled limbs. He clambered up onto his knees and crawled toward the foot of the bed. Just as he was almost free he caught one of his feet in the tangle of sheets on the bed’s edge and tumbled to the ground, landing with a muffled thump thanks to a fluffy rug that broke his fall. He shot to his feet, the motion playing havoc with his head and prayed that his disgraceful escape hadn’t woken Luke up.
It hadn’t. Jason lingered a moment, watching the omega sleeping in the light that fell in through the window. He looked peaceful like that, and even younger, the lines that usually shaped his expression softened and smoothed with sleep. He wanted to reach out and touch, to run his fingers through Luke’s tousled dark curls, but would only make things worse. It would be better for everyone involved if he just took himself quietly home and let his shame at his foolish actions from the night before consume him in the quiet sanctuary of his own bedroom.
Luke was curling into himself as though he was cold, so Jason reached over him and took hold of the blankets, intending to cover him up and got out of there as quickly as possible. Or, at least, it was until Jason caught the corner of the sheet in his hand and it slipped down, revealing the curve of Luke’s buttocks. On each cheek there were two near identical bruises. Two near identical hand-shaped bruises. There were bruises on his hips too, they were dark and painful looking things that tinted his pale skin black and blue. Those, those had to have been put there by his own hands, of that there was no doubt.
He had done all of that.
He must have gripped the man there as they… well, as he had… Jason’s hazy mind spat a memory of the night before out at him. It was fuzzy but, if Jason told himself the truth, he could remember squeezing soft flesh hard between his hands. Marveling hungrily at the perfect round muscles before reaching in between, teasing and fingering and taking what he’d found there. He remembered grasping at those hips and yanking them close as he drove himself forwards into hot, slick pleasure. He remembered crying out with gasping breaths as the body around him bucked and rocked back against him, making him feel weak, hot and so desperately hungry.
Jason steeled himself, twitching the sheet up over the bare curve of Luke’s back and his narrow shoulders, and began to rummage around the room for his clothing. If he was going to have to face the consequences of his drunken actions, then he at least deserved to face it with his clothes on. That and his naked body was beginning to feel the morning chill intensely in the cool room. He found his shirt draped over the arm of one of the armchairs, it was buttons still fastened, and pulled it over his head, grateful for the warm wool. His trousers and shoes were nowhere to be seen but his undergarments were found kicked under the opposite chair.
“Where the hell are my jeans,” he half muttered. And that small sound was the thing that made Luke shift and open his eyes.
From the bed, he silently raised an arm and pointed to the dresser, where Jason’s jeans were dangling from the corner of the frame by the waistband. Jason wondered how on earth they had gotten there as he moved over to reclaim them. Thankfully they were still clean. He pulled them on without any particular hurry now that Luke was awake. Whatever his feelings about the night before, he was still an Alpha, and he wasn’t going to run out of the room like a scared boy. He was thankful to find that his belt was still threaded through the belt loops where he had left it, and he fastened it snug around his waist.
When he turned to look back at the bed, Luke had burrowed face first into the pillows, presenting only the back of his curly head in Jason’s direction. Jason wondered, with a bit of guilt, if he was hungover. He took a steadying breath, and padded over to Luke as quietly as possible.
“You okay? Need anything?”
Luke groaned softly and tried to burrow even deeper into the pillows of the bed, grunting in displeasure when he hit the mattress with his nose. An arm crept out from beneath the blankets and grasped at the pillows, shifting them and squishing the stuffing around as he turned his head this way and that, looking for a more comfortable position. After a few moments Luke settled again, face down in the pillows.
“Sleep,” Jason told him. He didn’t tell him to dream.
Despite himself, Jason felt a fond smile creeping onto his face.
Chapter Ten
He slept. He dreamed. Or he didn’t sleep, but he dreamed without sleeping. It felt too real. It felt like remembering more than it felt like imagining.
He dreamed and it was Jason’s face even though the things they were surrounded by were so different. He dreamed: Jason had tried to make his indifference as clear as possible over the last few months. Luke just hadn’t taken the hint. Jason suspected, in his more honest moments, that he maybe hadn’t been quite as clear as he had tried to be. The problem was that Jason wasn’t indifferent. Sometimes he couldn’t push Luke away as firmly as he knew he should. Sometimes he had let himself look. Sometimes he had even let himself dream.
Jason
’s thoughts dwelled on that incredible inner strength which shone through Luke like the sun through clouds. His eyes lingered on the slender body, the quick blue eyes, the easy grace of the omega’s form. His heart opened, just a crack, and basked in the warmth of Luke’s so-obvious affection.
Stupid. And unfair to Luke. Jason was the first Alpha Luke had taken any interest in, but it was a crush. Nothing more. Jason knew very well that he shouldn’t be encouraging it. In time it would fade. Luke would meet another Alpha–a younger, less broken Alpha, who would be able to give Luke what he deserved. Someone untainted by tragedy. Someone who didn’t know the taste of death and despair. Someone who hadn’t emptied a bottle of wine every night for years before he’d finally found the strength to give it up. An Alpha who didn’t already know the feel of an omega’s skin breaking beneath their teeth, who had something better to give a mate than a damaged heart and a scarred body.
So why didn’t you just say no? Jason’s heart wanted to know. Why did you promise to think about it?
A moment of weakness. For a moment, Jason had been captivated by what Luke had been offering. A single heat. A few days in together when Luke could belong to Jason. It had been enough to tempt Jason; it would be enough to tempt a saint.
But that moment of weakness could only be a moment. Jason had to go back to Luke and tell him no. He had to make his no as plain as possible, so that Luke abandoned not only this current, foolish offer, but any thought of making any other offers in the future.
Jason sat down on his bed and makes himself think about it. Made himself picture the look of rejection Luke would wear when Jason finally made it clear that his crush would never be reciprocated. He made himself think about the way Luke would withdraw, both immediately and thereafter. There would be no more attempts on Luke’s part for them to spend time together. No more solicitousness for Jason’s well-being.
Worth it, of course. Luke had a bright future ahead of him. Jason couldn’t possibly drag Luke down by shackling him with a, broken Alpha that Luke would fall out of infatuation with soon enough.
But it was hard. Harder than Jason had expected, now that it had finally come to the point. Perhaps that was why he had let it drag out so long.
Perhaps it was why he couldn’t stop of thinking of him, couldn’t stop thinking of him the way he was thinking of him.
First Jason imagined Luke in the throes of heat. Luke would be naked, of course, that slim, fair body freely exposed to Jason’s hungry eyes. Slender and deceptively delicate; he had seen something of the steel at Luke’s core. There was a strength in him that very few Jason had ever seen shared. Luke laughed, he cried, he loved and he hated. He felt passionately. Jason, who had been frozen inside for years, felt himself unwillingly beginning to thaw.
Luke wasn’t the first omega Jason had been with during heat. He’d spent years repressing the memories of the man he’d been bond mated with, Michael, but one by one they’d all come tumbling back. He couldn’t keep them away now. They kept him up at night. He dreamed of the smooth white column of Michael’s throat tilted in mute appeal. The dark red marks of his bite on Michael’s shoulders. The bow of his back as she had presented to him. The feel of Michael’s body around him. The pressure around his knot as it had swelled to lock them together.
“I’m sorry,” he’d told Luke.
“Still.” Luke looked up over the rim of his glasses, a wayward curl falling over his forehead. “It means a lot to me.”
It means a lot to me, too, Jason thought but didn’t say. Luke didn’t know the details of Jason’s past, only the general outline of it. And so Luke couldn’t know what an incredible gift his trust was. Jason felt all too acutely the depth of his previous failures. Michael’s death, his pain echoing through him until their mate-bond had torn asunder. Over the years the nightmares had faded. He’d stopped seeing Michael’s body every time he blinked. Stopped feeling Michael’s pain every time he stood still. But he still felt the phantom brush of Michael’s touch when he watched mated couples together.
Luke knew some of it. Not all. Not enough. But he knew Jason had had a mate, and that hunters had killed him. Despite that, Luke had asked Jason for his help. Had trusted Jason with himself at his most vulnerable.
Jason wanted to tell Luke that he wasn’t worthy of that trust.
Be honest, Jason tells himself savagely, watching Luke’s graceful movements as he glanced back over his shoulder on the trail ahead. You wouldn’t let anyone else do it. You want him. And you’ll take any opportunity to have him.
Jason should have said no when Luke had asked him. He shouldn’t have been following him down the winding trail through the trees, sinking ever deeper into an obsession that could never be satisfied or reciprocated. He should have insisted that Luke find someone else. He’ll have to, one day. Someone who was as young as he was. Whole. Unbroken. Worthy of an omega as beautiful as Luke.
He wanted you, a quiet voice murmured in his thoughts. Jason shook his head, dismissing it. It wasn’t that Jason was blind to Luke’s admiration. Luke wanted him at the moment, yes. His crush had lasted far longer than Jason had first anticipated. But everything had its limits. Luke wouldn’t always want Jason. Eventually Luke would forget Jason, and find someone more suitable.
Then what were you doing here? What was he doing here?
Chapter Eleven
He dreamed: They were together in the bed. Pre-heat heightened scent. Luke’s aniseed perfume faded somewhat under its assault. The sharper notes also receded, muted by the sudden richness of it all. Luke smelled like apples and cinnamon. Like fall and warmth and home.
Luke was trembling slightly in Jason’s hold. Jason rubbed soothingly, trying to get Luke to relax. He didn’t expect the youth to go suddenly boneless, but that was what happened. Jason found himself supporting nearly Luke’s whole weight as Luke leaned in, tilting his head back so he could breathe Jason in in turn.
“You smell like salt,” he said. “And like stone.”
“Hard things,” Jason said. “Harsh things.”
Luke shook his head.
“Like the sea,” he said quietly. “Like the rocks on the shore of the lake. Beautiful things.”
Jason didn’t know what to say to that. He had spent the last ten years defining himself by a series of isolated moments, from the way Michael’s pain had felt as he raced to save his mate to the smell of the hunters’ blood on his hands. When he thought of who he was, and what had made him, he thought of that.
“What do you want,’ he asked Luke.
“For you. To love me,” Luke said. Outside of heat he’d be ducking his head, maybe worrying at his lip, embarrassed. But now he just looked earnest and wistful and so breathtakingly hopeful that Jason’s heart clenched. “If you could – just for the next two days? Pretend you care about me. Treat me like you mean it. That way I could remember it, you see. I know it was – you’re making yourself be here. And I wanted to ask you – it was okay, it was all right, I don’t mind – at least I won’t mind – but I know you didn’t want to come this time, and you won’t come any more times after this. So if you could pretend you love me, so I have the memories of it for the future, I would – that was – it would mean a lot.” Luke caught his breath. “Please,” he added.
Jason opened his mouth and found he couldn’t speak. Luke’s artless plea cut something deep inside him open, some wound that bled into the places of himself he kept hidden. All he could do for a moment was clutch Luke closer. Luke didn’t protest or make any attempt to free himself: if anything, he pressed in closer, with a soft small moan that went right to Jason’s knot.
Jason tamped that spike of arousal down. Even in pre-heat, Luke was immeasurably enticing. But he couldn’t afford to give in to his hormones just yet. Luke had shown Jason part of his heart, and Jason had to make sure it was safely tucked away first.
“Luke,” he began carefully. “Please, you must understand. I do a great deal more than tolerate you. I know our beginning was
difficult, but you were a member my pack. I care for you. Please don’t think otherwise.”
“Good,” Luke said fiercely. “Oh, that was good – I couldn’t tell you how grateful I am.”
That caught Jason by surprise. Grateful? “It is not a matter of gratitude,” he said. “You have earned my regard on your own merits.”
Luke pulled back a little, enough so that he could look Jason in the eyes. “Regard?” he asked in some confusion.
“You’re loyal, dedicated, a hard worker and a fast learner,” Jason said as firmly as he could. “I have great respect and esteem for you.”
“Thank you,” Luke said gravely.
“And there would be no need for me to pretend anything,” he added, “because I do care for you very much.”
“Thank you,” Luke said again. But his eyes slid away from Jason’s. “That was very good of you.”
Jason caught Luke’s chin and turns the omega back to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want your regard,” Luke bursts out. “And I don’t want your caring, either. I want your love. And if I couldn’t have it, then I’ll just learn to live without it. But don’t try to pretend that regard and love were the same thing.”
Once again Jason was at a loss. “You don’t want my love,” he tried.
Luke pulled back further. “I’ll be the judge of what I want,” he said. He looked hurt and proud and so terribly young.
“Luke, look at me,” Jason said, exasperated. “I’m older than you – too much older. I’ve seen too many things. You deserve someone who’s closer to your age, your experience. Someone who’s not already covered in scars, literal and emotional!”