by Willa Okati
“A few times. Just a few. And speaking of which… uh-uh-uh, hey!” Alexander put out one foot as the door swung open, blocking a huge black and white cat’s escape attempt, and crouched to nudge a tiny Siamese mix back before it made a break for freedom too. It hissed at him.
Zach’s mouth dropped open. “I thought you said you didn’t have roommates.”
“Cats count as roommates?” Alexander wrinkled his nose fondly at the contrary Siamese mix and scratched lightly behind its ears, dodging the swipe it aimed at him in return. “Little thing, you and your buddy know the rules. Back inside.”
The huge cat glowered, then flipped its tail straight up and marched away as if a dignified retreat had been its idea in the first place. The little one licked its forepaw twice before following, absolutely careless of being commanded. Zach had to fight the urge to smile. Alexander could grumble all he wanted, but it was perfectly plain to see those cats had Alexander firmly wrapped around their forepaws -- two cranky, cantankerous, crosswise cats that enchanted Zach right away.
Maybe Alexander was right, and he was a lot like the ancient cats in his bloodline. Maybe he’d just met some long-lost family.
He offered the two domestic pets a metaphorical fist bump. Represent.
Alexander winked at Zach as he stood. “The way I remember it, herding cats is supposed to be impossible. But I’ve learned a few things over the years. Come inside.”
Chapter Three
Inside, the brownstone was -- huh. And hmm, as well.
Zach frowned at it, turning in a slow circle and trying to figure out why the polished wood and off-white walls rubbed him the wrong way. They were too much like the outside, weren’t they? Polished until they gleamed, picture perfect, and possessing absolutely nothing resembling individual charm. He’d stayed in cozier motel rooms during his early years away. “You really do live here?”
Alexander glanced around at the four walls as if they were almost as unfamiliar to him as they were to Zach. “When I’m in town, yes. Once every couple of weeks or so, maybe for a day or two. Sometimes less often.”
Ah. Now it makes sense. Zach nodded. The missing personality would have gone hand in hand with the kind of clutter that accumulated whenever you hung your hat in a particular place for a while. The chair next to the window in his apartment, for example, or the collection of coffee cups he kept on wall hooks.
As Alexander kicked off his shoes and gestured for Zach to do the same -- sensible, shoes of any kind and floors so highly polished did not mix -- Zach couldn’t help but wonder why. Though it didn’t come easily to him he was a stranger in a strange land here, not at all on his own territory, and he tried a little beating around the bush. “What made you pick this town? What with the death-defying drop-offs and exploding quarries and all?”
Still frowning at the walls, Alexander shrugged almost disinterestedly. “It’s got its own charm. Friendly people, sort of ‘everybody knows your name,’ but not too Hallmark. It’s a little like a northern New Orleans, old history and new charm. Things happen here --”
“Including train wrecks,” Zach couldn’t help murmuring.
“-- and I like being where things happen,” Alexander went on. He put his bag down and flicked a lamp on that looked small but illuminated a surprising lot of the room with a soothing amber glow. “Keeps life interesting. Besides, like I said, I don’t live here, live here. It’s a place to hang my hat when I’m in town.”
“And when you’re not?” Zach drifted toward the edges of the room to poke curiously at the very few bits of bric-a-brac on end tables and the mantel of a gas fireplace. Mostly cat paraphernalia and a stack of unopened mail. It seemed so wrong, still, that there was almost nothing personal scattered around. Nothing to point to the enthusiastic force of nature the house’s owner could be.
Zach couldn’t shake a feeling of wrongness about it all.
“Where do you go? What do you do?” he asked. Underneath the stack of mail, he found a sheaf of travel magazines both new and old, and held one up. Comprehension dawned. “You write for them, don’t you?”
“Blogs, columns. Mostly food related.”
Alexander always had loved food, and though he hadn’t been much for writing way-back-when people did change. All the stretching his legs around the globe and dining daily on the good stuff would explain how he’d grown up so big and strong. And -- the things he must have seen, the things he must have done. He’d accomplished all of it, everything Zach had left him for.
“I sit on the town council in absentia as well, so I can fight to fix the drop-off,” Alexander went on. “And I’m a resident coordinator at the college during summer sessions. I like to stay busy.”
He’d made a life. A good one.
“So.” Zach dropped the magazines and tossed a little sass into the mix to hide how much this new understanding touched him. “Your job is eating your way around the world. Nice work if you can get it. How are you not as round as you are tall?”
Alexander’s laugh never got old, even when it had been familiar; more so now, when it was new again. Zach had forgotten what it really sounded like, the timbre of it, the warm depths. It’d aged well, gotten richer like a good brandy, but it was the same way the eager boy he’d once been had laughed when staggering home arm in arm with Zachary-as-he’d-been, both drunk as lords off cheap beer and bravado. “Trade secret.”
“Hmm.” Sass seemed to go over well, and Zach wasn’t above using what worked to his advantage. “So do you only do columns and the part-time town gigs?” He held out his arms to display the luxe of Alexander’s coat, then waved at his shoes and messenger bag. “Travel journalism and odd jobs don’t pay that well.”
“Nope. But the investments I’ve made over the years -- those do. Dating sites, mostly.” Alexander gave him the wickedest possible wink. “You’ve heard of Grindr? And a few others.”
Zach’s mouth dropped open. “Wait. Really?”
“Houses like this don’t pay for themselves. As to why I bought it? Call it another of my investments.” Alexander threw himself carelessly down on a cream-colored chaise lounge, putting one leg up on the cushion and bracing his other foot on the floor. “Are you hungry? You look hungry. I’ve got a freezer full of almost everything. Name your poison.”
“I had a sandwich on the train,” Zach lied.
“Uh-huh.” Nope, Alexander wasn’t buying it. “Even if you had, the best they offer is two slabs of cardboard with some kindergarten paste smeared on one side and a couple pieces of anemic lettuce. You’re hungry.” He paused, studying Zach too closely. Zach fought the urge to fidget. Alexander was a grown Alpha. He knew what it meant when an Omega looked as thin and weak as Zach did. At least he was kind enough not to say it out loud. “Do you still like Indian food? Or Thai?”
“Hmm,” Zach vocalized absently, watching the cats stalk past to make sure both humans knew they were good and annoyed.
Wait.
Zach pivoted, too startled and indignant to tread lightly. “You go off and leave the cats alone all the time? Are you crazy? No wonder they don’t like you.”
Alexander gave Zach a look flatter than a sheet of marble. “You think I neglect them?”
Outside, the promised rain kicked from light patter to steady drumming against the windowpanes. Nicely dramatic, as if he had charmed the weather into being on his side, the bastard. It even sounded freezing, and it made Zach furious for some reason he didn’t care to dwell on long enough to identify. He’d rather get good and pissed than cower in a corner. If he had to start a fight, well, he knew how to fight. Fair or dirty, either worked for him.
“I wasn’t saying before, but you know what?” Zach put his hands on his hips. “I am saying now.”
Alexander’s eyes narrowed to slits, a danger sign for an Alpha. “Not that it’s your business, but the furballs and I get along fine. I like how they don’t smother me with love. I wouldn’t know what to do with slobbering and fawning. They’re themselves, an
d I like them the way they are. And when I’m gone, I have a pet sitter who comes in every day. He plays with them, feeds them, spoils them rotten with treats.”
There was so much to unpack in there Zach didn’t know where to start and he still didn’t want to. “Don’t explode all over me, bitch. No one gave you permission to play lord and master, ever.”
“Seems like I remember differently, unless you were begging someone else to fuck you like a good little bitch in that empty house.” Alexander bent to collect his shoes and Zach’s, dropped them in the same bin, and in the same fluid movement slid forward into Zach’s personal space, close enough to feel the heat of his breath and the fire of his temper. “No matter what you think, I wouldn’t leave them alone. I’m not the one who runs off, Zach.”
His words were a knife cutting straight to the heart, and left Zach open-mouthed with sharp-stinging hurt. Alexander wasn’t as over it as he obviously wanted to appear, was he? Even so, Zach wasn’t going to take a slap like that lying down. He bristled up, temper flaring. “Refresh my memory, Alexander. Who was it telling who to get out?”
“And who couldn’t wait to run like his ass was on fire?”
“Don’t.” Zach pointed at him in warning. “I mean it, Alexander, don’t you fucking dare. You have no idea what --”
Alexander caught his pointer finger at the knuckle and knocked his hand aside. “This is my fucking house, Zach. I’ll do what I goddamn please. And what don’t I have any idea about? I have a fucking good idea about more than you think.”
“Fuck you!” Zach’s fist followed the second Alexander let go of his finger, and this wasn’t any semi-friendly punch in the ribs, this was aimed at the Alpha’s jaw and almost connected. “If you say one more word, one more --”
“One more, and what?” Alexander crowded closer to him, chest to chest, trying to dominate him, the testosterone-laden… fucking Alpha. It made Zach want to bite him. “What’ll you do if I do dare, hmm? Run again? Where are you going to go this time? Out in the cold to freeze to death?”
Zach pushed back, head forward and ready to crack skulls if need be, showing Alexander the sharp edges of his teeth. “Maybe I will. Maybe I’d rather.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“Stop me, then!” Zach shoved at Alexander, and -- meant to turn. Was halfway there before Alexander’s broad hands had cuffed his wrists and wrenched him bodily back around to face him, and then -- and then --
Then Alexander’s mouth was on Zach’s, and there was nothing, nothing gentle or careful about this kiss. He shoved Zach backward until Zach’s shoulders hit the wall, and he was strong enough to do it, angry enough not to care how rough he was. The scent normally kept muted under his clothes burst out in waves of bittersweet myrrh and burning woodsmoke and pheromones, so purely Alpha that no matter what Zach wanted, his Omega side rose in a rush to meet it with a cloud of burnt-caramel coffee and saline.
Alexander bit as much as he kissed, fierce in his attack on Zach’s mouth, and he didn’t hold back his teeth as he moved from mouth to jaw to nape, pulling Zach’s shirt open at the collar. Cold poured through the opening but Zach hardly noticed. He’d started kissing Alexander somewhere in there, who knew when or where, but giving as good as he got and leaving marks from his nails and his teeth behind. Clawing at his hair, his back, the hard muscles at his hips and ass. Alexander tasted so good his mouth watered and he had to swallow it down or make a mess.
More of a mess. His legs shook like aspens until he wrapped them around Alexander’s waist and made the man groan from somewhere so deep down it drowned out the beginnings of thunder outside. He could smell himself, his thighs Omega-wet, jeans soaked, and he could feel his insides hurrying to open too, eager to be --
To be bred.
Oh God.
Alexander must have caught the scent at the same time. He jerked back, mouth swollen and eyes wide open, startled. For a second he looked exactly like the boy Zach remembered, stunned stupid with sex and crazy dreams. Zach lay still with his mouth open, knowing he looked ravished and ripe and ready, and if Alexander tried to press his point right now he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say no --
“Shit!” Alexander dropped Zach and pivoted as fast as he’d turned in the first place, putting his back to Zach and dragging his hands through his hair. Zach could hear his teeth grinding. His jaw would break if he wasn’t careful. It sounded like it hurt. If Zach hadn’t been struggling to rein himself in too, panting for breath, he might have gone to the man and caution be damned.
He didn’t. He didn’t dare.
“Shit,” Alexander said again, quieter, after a minute. He scrubbed hard at his face and gave Zach a bewildered look over his shoulder before turning very carefully and slowly. “Zach, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
“You’re not the only one,” Zach retorted, even if he knew why he’d done it. Omega bodies didn’t listen to reason, damn them. Or -- other things. Especially when emotions ran hot and high. “I warned you.”
“Yeah.” Alexander touched a bite mark Zach had left as if he couldn’t believe what he felt there was real. Zach had broken the skin enough to draw a pinprick’s worth of blood. “And I didn’t listen. I get -- tense -- when I think about that day.”
Zach crossed his arms, more tired than angry now. “You’re still not the only one. And if you didn’t know as much before, you do now.”
“Yeah.” Alexander let out a long, frustrated breath and then shook himself. “Food. We lost the thread there. I have Thai in the freezer, made by a couple of first-generation grandparents who don’t cut corners. It’s good stuff. I can heat it up for us.”
Zach bit savagely at his lip, angry at the rush of heat that went through him when he tasted Alexander there. He was still too angry to feel the slightest bit hungry, but… oh hell, he didn’t have the energy to fight until he’d gotten something with calories inside him. “Thai is fine.”
“Good.” Alexander didn’t look at him as he stalked past and didn’t even give him a backwards glance -- but under his stubble, his face was pink. He touched his bite mark again, almost caressing it, so absently Zach didn’t think he knew what he was doing. “I’ll be right back. Wait for me here, and we can start over.”
* * *
Start over. Could they, though?
Zach should have left, of course. He had the best opportunity right there, with Alexander safely out of the room, to shove his feet back into his shoes and slip silently out the front door. Go back to normal, to what he was at least used to.
He didn’t, and he still hadn’t figured out why by the time Alexander came back.
“Here, while we’re waiting. This’ll warm you up.” He wrapped a thick cable-knit blanket around Zach and made sure it was secure before he doubled back and returned with a glass. “This’ll help too.” He held it out in offer, a cut-glass tumbler with two fingers of something peat-colored, a whiskey stone clinking gently at the bottom.
“What is it?”
“Unique.” Alexander let Zach take the glass, but as he handed it over, he held on long enough to brush his fingertips against the back of Zach’s hand. “I really am sorry. The last thing I want to do is fight. Do you believe me?”
Zach searched his face narrowly. He’d heard that before, and he knew better than to believe a word of that kind of speech -- usually -- but that old tie was still there, and he could tell Alexander wasn’t lying. He meant every word.
Always making this harder than it had to be.
“I believe you,” he said quietly. “This time. Do it again, and I might feel differently. Understood?”
Alexander let go of the glass in visible relief. “Understood.”
Zach didn’t believe him for a second. Maybe Alexander couldn’t smell a lie on himself, even one so deftly danced around, but there was no way Alexander was letting anything go. Zach thought about calling him on it, but he still didn’t have the reserves for a good head of steam. He sniffed at t
he glass instead, curious, and thought he could pick out mingled hints of clove, wild berries, tobacco, and the smoke from a fire on a cold night. “You didn’t answer me, and before I try this I want to know what it is.”
“I did answer. It’s unique,” Alexander said, crinkling his nose in amusement. “Not exactly whiskey or ale or wine but kind of a little of each. It’s probably easiest to call it mead. You’ll like it, but if I’m wrong and you don’t then I have some tequila somewhere.”
“I want to get warm, not hammered. Maybe. This sounds terrible.” Zach tried a sip, and if there was anything closer to heaven, he’d never tasted it. “Oh my God.”
Alexander laughed, freer, easier. He sat on the edge of the chaise he’d dropped into earlier; must have been his favorite. “Told you so.”
“Shush.” Zach cradled the glass reverently. “If you have any more of this, say goodbye to it because I’m taking it with me when I go.”
“You can finish the bottle tonight if you want. Or two.”
Zach gave him a quick sharp look. Trying to get me drunk?
Maybe not. Alexander just looked loose-limbed with pleasure at being right, not like a schemer. He grinned at Zach. “One of the local breweries has a guy who likes to play mad scientist, and sometimes he comes up with a stroke of genius. They bottle a limited batch every December, and I always have them save me a case because it’s my favorite no matter what time of year. I’ve barely touched the last shipment, so you can have as much as you want.”
“Twist my arm.” Zach took another reverent sip. Tasted like being in Scotland, huddling by a fire on the moors -- and it must have been stronger than strong, if it had him indulging in flights of fancy after barely a shot’s worth. “I really will steal this from you, you know. Try and stop me.”
“Nah. There are better things to do.” Alexander stretched out both legs to loll properly on the chaise. He watched Zach idly, only taking the occasional sip from his glass. “So tell me.”