by Willa Okati
Jory shivered -- no, vibrated -- and his lips parted as he breathed, “Go on. How did you…”
“The Omega needed to be on bed rest after a while. I’m told that happens?”
Jory frowned, but nodded.
“It wasn’t anything terrible. Just precautions.”
Jory’s frown didn’t disappear, but a minute amount of tension dissipated.
“The Alpha asked me for help,” Darius said with a slightly embarrassed shrug. He hadn’t known the guy that well, and it’d been stiff and awkward for both of them, at first. The way Jory chuckled and shook his head slightly, Darius figured he’d intuited as much. No need to spell it out. “I started picking up groceries, mail, taking them up the stairs. They laughed when they saw I was wary at first, called me a ‘typical Alpha’ and when I called ‘em on it, they called me on it. Said to get over there and feel the cub move if I was so big and bad.”
Jory’s eyes drifted half closed, and he was warm and pliant in Darius’s arms as a teddy bear. “Did you?”
“I did.”
“And? Scary?”
“Fucking terrifying,” Darius said on a laugh, pleased when Jory joined in. “So I did it again, and before I knew it I was being called a friend and asked if I’d like to be present at the birth. A home birth.”
Jory twisted his neck to look up at Darius seriously. “That’s an honor.”
And didn’t he know it. “It wasn’t just me, though. They had half a dozen other people there. Some parents, some not, but everyone had a decent idea of what to expect, except me. The Omega still thought I was hilarious. Put me on back rubbing duty during contractions so I didn’t have a chance to bolt.”
“I like this Omega,” Jory said with conviction. “They don’t still live upstairs?”
“I hear from them from time to time, but they moved across town. Sorry.” Darius laid a finger across Jory’s lips, both surprised and aroused when Jory bit down just lightly enough to prickle. “Feisty. Save that for later. We’re getting to the good part.”
A deeper shiver rolled through Jory. The scent of Omega, which had faded during the warm and fuzzy part of the story, thickened. Darius readjusted his hold on Jory, snugging his groin to the curve of Jory’s ass. A good fit, nice and tight, and he knew Jory could feel his hard-on.
“There almost aren’t words,” he said, for Jory’s ears alone, soft and low. “No doctor. No hospital. Just the apartment they’d made a home, and a midwife standing by. No one helping them, at their request. Just them on their hands and knees. Fucking feral, Jory, fucking primal and raw and… like nothing I’ve ever seen. For hours and hours. I didn’t know how they could go on, but they had the strength. They kept going.”
Jory breathed in quick, short gasps. His eyes were dilated, deep and dark. “And?”
“And when it’d been almost twelve hours, they put their hands between their legs and brought that baby into the world themselves.”
A small moan escaped Jory. He canted his hips, bringing them back hard against Darius’s groin. Darius bit his lip hard, the sting of pain the only thing that stopped him from coming then and there.
“And that’ll be you,” he said, punctuated with a small bite to Jory’s earlobe, because fair was fair. “Soon. Soon as can be. And I’ll be there with you.”
Jory stiffened, panting quietly. He reached behind himself and took hold of Darius’s hip, digging in with his fingers, his muscles flexing. If he hadn’t been able to smell that it wasn’t so, Darius would have thought he’d come.
But not yet. By the skin of his teeth, perhaps, but not yet.
“Darius,” Jory said. “Take me back to my place. Take me back there now, and fuck me hard. Or so help me God, I’ll knock you down and fuck myself raw on your cock here and now.” And a request like that, well. That deserved only one response.
* * *
Together, they ran.
It’d started raining while they were in MacInnes’s, and though it’d slowed to a shower for now, it must have been pouring like God had upended a fire brigade’s worth of buckets over the city. Everything not gleaming wet was crisp with frost, and the strong smell of ozone said the storm wasn’t done yet. He and Jory had maybe five minutes to get inside before those buckets got refilled and drenched the world a second time.
They made it in three and a half.
Darius stole one kiss before they got inside the apartment, just one, but one he’d had to have. Jory looked too good with fat raindrops caught in his lashes and on the tips of his hair, running over his collarbones and down the back of his neck. He set his mouth over the bend between Jory’s neck and shoulder and gnawed just a little, just lightly, but enough to make him moan. He caught that moan in his mouth, swallowing it down and coaxing another wild, desperate noise out of Jory.
Jory undulated against him, his Omega smell so strong it was dizzying. “Inside,” he said hoarsely and against Darius’s mouth. He shoved his keys into Darius’s hand. “Inside, fucking now.”
Darius thrust the key into the lock with more luck than skill, and a good thing too. He’d have broken the door down if it’d taken any longer. He pushed Jory inside ahead of him and tumbled afterward, already reaching out for him with hungry arms. The door slammed shut with Jory’s back pressed hard against it, Darius pressing into him, and nothing but writhing heat between them. It almost made the air ripple, it was that strong.
He didn’t have to steal the second kiss -- Jory gave it freely, willingly, and took just as much, as hungry for it as Darius was himself. Jory let Darius take both his wrists and raise them over his head, pinning them there out of the way.
Darius liked the look of that. “Hold those there for me,” he said roughly, licking his lips and tasting pure Jory. Jory’s eyes were wide, dazed, so Darius gave his wrists a little shake to get his attention. “Keep your wrists there.”
A wild gleam in his eye made Jory look almost feral. He rolled his hips as if to say I dare you, make me, but he threw his shoulders back.
“Contradiction,” Darius said, hands busy getting Jory’s shirt worked open. “Up is down, left is right, and my God I want you, I want you so much I can’t think. You make me crazy, wanting you. Why didn’t we do this years ago?”
Jory leaned forward to bite at Darius, his sharp teeth only just missing contact.
Now what was that for? Darius brushed it aside. He’d figure that out later. He had Jory’s shirt open and peeled the wet fabric off his shoulders to display so much firm, supple skin dusted with dark auburn curls that it made his mouth water all over again. Were his nipples larger than usual? Yes, yes, they were, swollen plump, and sweet tasting when Darius took one into his mouth and sucked hard.
Jory cried out and dropped his head back. It landed with a thump that made the door rattle in its frame, but he barely seemed to notice. He let one arm fall to thrust his fingers through Darius’s hair and tug, urging him closer.
Darius pinched the other nipple good and hard, and when Jory yelped he took that fallen wrist and brought it right back up. He laid the pad of his thumb on Jory’s kiss-swollen lower lip and looked him square in his dilated eyes. “I said keep them there.”
Jory shuddered, a full-body writhe, and let his legs fall a little apart. On purpose, or not? Darius couldn’t tell. Didn’t matter. He thrust one knee between them, both to give Jory something to grind against and for the bliss of feeling that warm, wet hardness riding his leg.
God. Damn. “You’re soaked,” he said between harsh drags of breath and deep, open-mouthed kisses.
“Mmm,” Jory vocalized, riding his leg. He started to lower one arm, stopped, and rubbed harder, shameless as a cat in heat. “Feel me. Put your hand on me, your fingers in me. Put your whole fucking fist in me Darius! I’m so wet, so open, I need, I need.”
Darius shushed him. “I’ll take care of you. Always.”
“Then do it. God, do it, before I die.”
Drama queen -- maybe. From the way he shivered and shook,
maybe it felt like that to him, and coming to his rescue made Darius feel like God. He wrestled the fastening of Jory’s jeans open just far enough to tug them down his hips -- not easy, they were wet from rain and slick and clung to his skin -- to thrust his hand inside. He curled his fingers, searching for Jory’s Omega slit, and found it as swollen as his mouth. Two fingers circled, just to make him cry out and buck forward, and then three went inside, no warning, no gentleness, no finesse. Just… hard. Fast. Fucking.
Jory arched forward, beautiful as a drawn bow, and came without a hand on his cock. He groaned from deep in his center, and it reminded Darius of the noises that Omega giving birth had made. Primal, ancient, noises Omegas had been making since they started getting pregnant and bearing fruit. He used his other hand to rub Jory’s stomach hard, so damn turned on by the thought of Jory being filled with his baby that he fucking near came himself.
He could barely breathe, but he used his air in kissing, and what little focus he had left in rubbing the inner walls of Jory’s slit. First soft and slow, then harder, faster, deeper.
“Stop! I can’t…” Jory moaned, but he rubbed up against Darius as he said it.
Darius dragged his thumb around the outside of Jory’s slit. He was swollen with the fingers inside him, and it almost looked and felt as if he were giving birth. A jolt, almost electric, made Darius’s dick jerk and let loose a thick pearl of precum. He let go only long enough to free himself from his jeans.
His cock surged forward, intent on reaching Jory.
Jory noticed. His mouth, drawn tight with agony and ecstasy, curved into the wickedest of smiles, and he hooked one ankle around Darius’s to keep him there, to pull him closer. “Fuck me,” he breathed. “Fuck me right here, right now.”
“Thought you couldn’t,” Darius teased, deliberately taunting.
Jory bit at him again, and this time his teeth closed just hard enough to pinch the cleft of Darius’s chin. “Watch me and see. And fuck me, Darius. I think -- I think maybe--” He shuddered. “I don’t smell the suppressants. Do you? I don’t. I don’t… I don’t care. Oh God. Fuck me or I’ll turn inside out. Darius, fuck me.”
Darius couldn’t last through half of that. Who could? He freed his hand and pressed it, slick-wet, against Jory’s mouth, then angled forward and sank home, balls-deep in Jory, devoured by his hungry slit and plundering with the hardest, fastest strokes his body could manage -- and he could manage a fucking hell of a lot. He was wild, on fire, crazy for it and for Jory. He stopped seeing shapes and colors, so focused on fucking deeper and harder.
Somehow, he kept Jory’s wrists pinned against the door above them, the door that rattled and banged and let every-fucking-body in the building know what they were up to.
Good!
Jory clung to him, the ankle he’d used to hook Darius with becoming a leg wrapped around his, and then somehow both legs around Darius’s waist. He kept his own wrists up when Darius dropped his arms to support Jory’s weight. “Close,” he keened between thrusts. His nails raked at Darius’s back. “So close. Deeper, deeper, please, deeper.”
Darius set his head against Jory’s shoulder and bottomed out with every stroke. He’d be bruised -- they’d both be bruised -- and he didn’t care. He was close, so close, he was -- he was coming… nothing else existed except Jory, hot and fluid and solid in his arms… And a thought, just one thought, so crystal clear that it echoed in his head like a bell gone mad. Oh. That’s what this is. I’m in love with him.
Darius lost track of himself, of space, of time, coming and coming until he could come no more. He found himself on his back gasping for air, his groin burning and aching as if he’d wrenched the muscles, with his hands over his eyes and his lips parted in shock and aftershock.
He was in love with Jory. It made sense. No one could ever have been for him what Jory was, and had been, would be. No one could be. They’d been damned near made for each other, a key and a lock shaped to fit. But all Jory wanted from him was friendship.
And a baby.
He couldn’t keep doing this. Not if he loved Jory and Jory didn’t love him. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t father a child on the man and then watch him wander off, fall in love with someone else, never fully be a part of his life. It’d break Darius.
So he’d have to break it to Jory. Now. Tonight. And kick his own ass for the timing, which couldn’t have been worse, but how could he string it out any longer, something this… true?
He’d just make sure of how Jory felt first, though. Surely he could do that without giving the whole game away. Right?
* * *
Jory’s knees weren’t working. They wobbled and nearly gave way beneath him, and if he hadn’t had a good sturdy door behind his back he might have tumbled to the floor in a messy heap of boneless satiation. His slit ached, still clenching around Darius’s fingers as Darius slid them out -- thick, gorgeous fingers -- and his ass burned from being rubbed half raw against that selfsame door. He dragged in greedy lungfuls of breath that made his chest clench up, and he could taste the sweat that’d beaded on his skin when he licked his lips.
He’d never been fucked like that, not ever. And it was Darius who’d done it! If only.. If only…
Jory lost the train of his thought. He licked his lips again and tried to swallow, clumsily pushing at Darius as he did. Better to get some distance between them before he got too tangled up in the kinds of feelings that happened after really good sex. “Couch,” he muttered, then changed his mind and said, “No, wait. Floor.”
Darius snorted quietly. “Floor?”
“Don’t care.” Jory waved one hand vaguely between them. “Just don’t let me fall.”
Darius muttered something Jory didn’t catch, pressed a messy kiss against Jory’s temple, and slung his arm around Jory’s waist. A heave, a ho, and they were shambling forward on two sets of rubbery knees. Half a dozen steps brought them to Jory’s couch where they collapsed in a boneless heap, as tangled up together as two skeins of yarn.
And just like always, they fit together.
Jory let out a long breath and leaned hard against Darius’s chest. Hard, sturdy, comfortable, smelling so finely of sweat and sex and Alpha musk. Mmm. Ripe, after all that exertion, but Jory liked it. He nuzzled the smooth skin stretched tight over Darius’s stomach muscles and purred with pleasure. Darius laughed, batted at him as if it tickled, and tucked him into a careless arm lock. He tucked his head against Jory’s shoulder, face hidden, and -- shivered? Shuddered? His muscles vibrated in a way Jory couldn’t easily put a name to, as if whatever he was feeling was too much.
He could identify with that, at least. If only Darius loved him the way he loved Darius… Jory dropped his head back against the couch cushions and raised one arm to cover his eyes. He still hadn’t caught his breath and it’d begun to make him dizzy. He tried going slowly, and that worked better, introducing some calm to blood gone fizzy as champagne.
In… The scent of Darius, of sex, of himself.
Out… The soft welcoming embrace of the couch, the supple hardness of Darius’s limbs.
In… A more nuanced sense of the way he and Darius smelled together, Alpha and Omega, and… Jory caught his breath. He hadn’t been thinking about trying to get pregnant this time around, it hadn’t entered his mind, but what if… what if… He exhaled, blowing all his air out, and sniffed.
There. Subtle, barely present, but still identifiable. The suppressants. They were still hanging on by the barest thread, and that meant he couldn’t be pregnant. His body howled in protest and his insides spasmed, a cramp rather than an orgasm, a complaint against being empty. His arms ached in sympathy, and his nipples too. His body demanded to be bred, craved like air and water and salt to be swelled out with Darius’s baby, and wailed in disappointment that it hadn’t been. Jory didn’t mean to, but he groaned and curled a little away from Darius. Damn it!
He hadn’t realized Darius was paying attention, or imagined that he’d be keen enough rig
ht now to intuit all the nuances, but if Jory’d laid a bet on that he would have lost. Darius stiffened and pulled away from him, his warmth immediately missed as he drew toward the corner of the couch.
Jory frowned at him. “What?”
“Was that the only reason?” Darius asked baldly, meeting his gaze. “Did you even want me at all, Jory? Or am I just a cock that comes attached to a friendly face?”
“Whoa!” Jory sat up straight himself. His face burned with surprise and indignation. It wasn’t true, not even a crumb. It wasn’t! But Darius…”Back up. You are my friend, Darius, and --”
Either Darius didn’t hear him or wasn’t listening, and it was anybody’s guess which of the two was true. He rolled off the couch, irritation crackling off him in waves, and when he turned to face Jory he wasn’t smiling, wasn’t sad, but his mouth was twisted at the corners in a darker expression. “Got it. Just friends. Sorry to disappoint.”
“I’m sorry, were you in the same room as me just now? In what universe was sex like that disappointing? Since when has being friends ever been any kind of disappointment for either of us?”
Darius really wasn’t listening. The twist to his lips deepened, wounded and angry, and he stalked toward the door without another word. Jory gathered his wobbly jelly legs under him somehow and beat Darius there. He put his back against the wood, not enjoying it nearly as much this time. “Stop. Talk to me. What’s going on? Why are you pissed off? What did I do?”
“Don’t play dumb, Jory.” Darius took him by the upper arms and moved him bodily aside. “Even if it wasn’t for -- never mind that. All on its own, I can’t sit here after something like that and feel you being disappointed. In me, in the sex, whatever it is we’re doing wrong, I can’t. It’s too much.”
Jory shook his head, still not understanding. “But --”