Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  What was I praying for? More of him, obviously. All of him. As much as I could get. But as he stroked us, my cock in one fist and his own in the other, I remembered the most important thing about religion I’d ever known.

  God helped those who helped themselves, and god help Noah Layton for the things I was about to do to that body of his—because I sure as hell wouldn’t.

  I threw my hips up beneath him, sending his body rocking forward onto mine. My lips crushed against his, tongue pressing into his mouth as I rolled us over, pinning him to the rug beneath me.

  “Your body is pretty perfect too,” I said, a bastard’s grin on my lips as I curled my fingers around his hips and pressed him against the floor. “But I can imagine a thing or two that would make it better.”

  “Planning on leaving a few scars of your own?” he asked, even as I yanked his jeans off him and lowered my lips to the mark a piece of shrapnel had left on his six-pack.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” I promised. “But let’s be honest—you always look better with my cock inside you.”

  He laughed, hissing and grinning as my mouth descended to the cut, muscular V of his pelvis. I stopped and stared up at him, my lips hovering just a fraction of an inch away from his tip.

  “Something funny?” I asked.

  “Yeah, actually.” He twined his fingers in my hair, tugging up gently before pushing my head down toward the precum trembling on the head of his cock, threatening to drip. “I was just thinking about how much better you’d look with my cock in your mouth.”

  “At least that would shut me up,” I agreed.

  Then I stuck my tongue out and lapped at him, smirking all the while—it shut him up as well.

  Slick, salty, organic and clean, his taste was fucking incredible—even better than I remembered. As I pressed a kiss against the base of his cock, breathing him in, he even smelled better than last time. It shouldn’t have been possible, but there it was, an undeniable deliciousness that enveloped everything about him and left me ravenous for more. I took his waist in my hands, squeezing him tight before running my fingers down his abs. His cock twitched at the sensation, leaping up toward my lips once more, and Noah moaned low in response to it—which made my cock throb just the same.

  “God,” Noah gasped, his nails curling around my shoulders as I took him into my mouth. My tongue slicked across his tip before sliding down the shaft, my jaw aching as I opened wide to swallow him up. “Maybe I’ll leave you with some scars after all.”

  We hissed together in ecstasy—him from the way I was swallowing him down my throat, me from the way the short, neat crescents of his nails scratched into my back. His hips bucked, his claws sinking deeper still. They sent a shock of pleasurable pain through my shoulders, one that told me I’d remember the way his body had felt against mine when I felt the fabric of my shirt move over my back the next morning.

  If he wanted to mark me as his, he should have known better than that. I was his without having so much as a scratch on me. Noah had overwhelmed my memory of every Omega that had come before him so completely, every scar I’d ever gotten might as well have been from his hand.

  I immediately pulled my mouth off his cock so fast, I left him whimpering and pleading for more. His cock throbbed hard, begging for me to return my lips to it, but no—I turned him over instead, settling his hips before me and pressing my cock against his ass instead. His wrists, I snatched up in my hands and pulled behind his back, leaving his cheek resting against the pillow beneath him—completely captive and helpless to anything I might want from him.

  “I didn’t know you were into that Fifty Shades bullshit,” Noah said with a breathy laugh as I took my cock in my fist, running it up and down the valley between the muscled cheeks of his ass.

  “I’m not,” I growled, folding myself over him. The skin of his back was hot against my chest as my cock found purchase on his tight, wet ring. He was fucking soaked for me, even more dripping with honey than he had been during our first tryst. It made something dark inside me purr, the heat of him, the soaking lubrication that his body was producing so I could take him as hard and rough as I liked. “Don’t forget, Noah—I’m not some sadistic fucking billionaire.”

  “Sadistic private investigator then,” he shot back at me.

  It only made me smile harder as I scraped my teeth against his neck, bringing my lips up to growl directly into his ear instead.

  “Am I a sadist?” I challenged him. “Because if your body is telling me anything about how bad you fucking want me right now, I’d say you were enjoying it.”

  “If you’re impressed by how much my body is enjoying you, it’s a shame you can’t read my mind.”

  “I can, actually,” I teased him, just teasing his asshole with my tip in dangerous little circles, coating the swollen, sensitive head of my cock with his slickness. “I know exactly what you’re thinking right now, anyway.”

  “Do you?” His wrists tensed in my hands, testing the strength of my grip. “All right—let’s hear it, then.”

  “You’re thinking how bad you want me to put it in you right now.” I positioned myself against his ring, more firmly this time. With promise of intent. “You’re thinking how fucking right it would feel to have me inside you.”

  “Oh, fuck,” Noah swore.

  “You’re thinking how goddamn sick you are with want of me,” I continued, pressing my tip into him. Stretching him out just enough to give him a taste of what was to come before I plunged in completely, a wicked smile on my lips. “And you’re thinking how fucking good it would feel to take my entire fucking load inside you, over and over again until you can’t help but get pregnant off it.”

  “Oh, god!” he moaned, his ass clenching hard around me as the full weight of my words sank in.

  Only then did I press into him completely, hard and slow at first then building in speed. I wanted him. Needed him—and he needed me just the same. I used his wrists as leverage, feeling him thrust his hips back to meet me with every bit of the force I was using to fuck into him. He arched, gasped for breath, his heat tightening around me so intensely that I found myself imagining how incredible it would feel to make good on my words.

  It was an empty threat, sure. Noah already knew that he couldn’t get pregnant, and I knew that even if he could, a baby was probably the last thing either of us needed just then. But as I released his wrists to wrap my arms around his chest, pulling him up and stroking his cock while I hammered into the throbbing perfection of his ass, I couldn’t help but fantasize about it all the same. Noah’s belly swelling with my child as it grew in his womb. Noah’s every sense heightening, his hips aching as they shifted open to prepare him for giving birth to the baby that I suddenly so desperately wanted to give him.

  “Do it. God, give it to me,” he breathed out raggedly. “Fuck, Ace—I want it. Fuck. Please.”

  He turned his head toward mine and our lips came together in a cataclysmic crush, both of us panting as our shared need pushed us over the edge. His cum spilled out onto my knuckles, dripping down my fist pearly and white, burning hot on my skin. My cock spasmed within him, jerking upward as my balls tensed over and over again. I pumped my cum into him as deep as my cock would allow—pretty fucking deep, considering my length.

  It should have felt wrong, maybe. Dirty and naughty and bad. But there was the strangest wholesomeness to it—a goodness that I’d never felt during sex before in my life. Like this was what I’d been meant to do: breeding Noah Layton. Giving myself over to him. Taking him. Claiming him. Feeling him give himself right back to me in return.

  We collapsed onto the bed together, my hand smearing his cum against his abdomen as my lips moved hard against his neck. I couldn’t get enough of him—his heat, his scent, the incredible things we’d done to each other’s bodies and the intoxication of how fucking alive he’d made me feel.

  There were no words to be said in that moment after—just sighs of blissful release, coos and pleasurable m
oans that only coming together so perfectly could possibly create. I held him tight against me, even though both of us were so obviously spent.

  After a while, I felt his body grow heavier against mine. All of the tension of his muscles released as he eased himself against me, basking in the exquisite afterglow.

  “That was good,” he said sleepily, too dazed to even come up with a clever quip. “That was so fucking good.”

  “You were so good,” I reassured him, pressing an exhausted kiss against his ear.

  “Stay with me tonight? I might drift off, but… But…”

  Might drift off. He was already halfway there, unable to even finish his own sentence. It made my cock throb again even as it slipped out of him, coated in his juices and my cum.

  Just like that, Noah slipped into the beginnings of sleep in my arms. I nearly joined him, too—I couldn’t imagine being anywhere but beside him for the rest of the night.

  But then, a phone buzzed on the carpet, muffled by the tangle of our jeans on the floor. Instinctively, I eased myself off the bed and coaxed it out of its pocket, assuming it was mine.

  I realized how incorrect that assumption had been immediately. It was Noah’s phone that had buzzed, not mine. Unfortunately for me, I saw the message on his lock screen before I could put it back where I’d found it—and once I started reading, I found that I couldn’t stop myself.

  Good work on that Alpha prick. I think our work here is done. Dump him in the morning before you come into work. You’ve more than earned your raise, it read, all beneath the name Noah had the number listed under in his contacts: Foster Collins.

  “Come back to bed,” Noah mumbled sleepily from his place on the pillow. “Miss your warmth.”

  But as I placed his phone back in the pocket I’d found it in, warm was the last thing I was feeling. Noah’s body was still hot and slick with sweat as I curled against him, but as I mulled Foster’s words over again and again in my head, I only felt colder and colder.

  As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one who’d been living a lie.

  12

  Noah

  I’d fallen asleep too satisfied to think straight, too exhausted to do anything but sleep. But despite how tired Ace had left me, it felt like I’d never drifted off entirely. I hadn’t dreamed. It barely felt like I’d lost consciousness at all. And even though when I woke up the next morning, I felt entirely refreshed, my mind had never lowered into that deep, satisfying slumber that I usually had when a handsome Alpha had been balls-deep in me the night before.

  I didn’t know why, but for some reason, it was like thoughts of Ace had never completely left my mind.

  I felt for him in the bed next to me when I finally blinked my eyes open, but there was no warm body resting on the pillow next to mine. The sheets beside me were rumpled, but cold. Ace’s clothes were gone from the floor, either tossed in the laundry or pulled back on so he didn’t burn himself while he fried up bacon again—but there was no sizzle or smell of breakfast in the air either. I found my own clothes neatly folded on the corner of the bed and pulled them on gingerly, feeling a little lightheaded as I balanced on one foot then the other to tug on my jeans.

  If I was being honest with myself, I’d felt a little strange since that first night with Ace. There was no puking, no fainting, no feeling green around the edges or getting sick over the sight of the food I liked. Ace had come inside me twice during our time together, but there were no telltale signs of morning sickness that would suggest he’d actually made good on last night’s promise to breed me.

  Which didn’t mean that I hadn’t liked it, of course. In fact, the ache in my balls from how fucking hard I’d come to the thought of it told me that actually, I’d liked it a lot.

  An infertile Omega with a breeding kink. My stupid little sob story was getting sadder and sadder—but at least I knew I had one thing squared away. I might not have uncovered all of Ace’s secrets last night, but he’d cleared up the most important of his lies. I knew who he was now, where he’d come from. I knew he wasn’t going to be able to operate in the capacity that Harmon was paying him to now—which meant that he wouldn’t be able to pretend that he was just hanging around me because he was gathering intel for the enemy anymore.

  And yet, he’d spent the night with me anyway. He’d fucked me, come inside me, held me as I drifted off. When I walked out into his living room, he was still there.

  Maybe it wasn’t love—not yet, anyway—but it was something. My only regret was that he hadn’t still been there holding me when I woke up.

  “Hey,” I said, rubbing out a knot in my shoulder that was undoubtedly sex-induced. “How’re you feeling this morning?”

  “Hey,” he said back, glancing up from the book he had perched on his knee. “You’re up. Your phone was buzzing all night. Ought to check it.”

  I raised an eyebrow, noting how he’d dodged my question but working my phone out of my pocket nonetheless. “Everything okay?”

  He turned a page, settling his attention back on someone else’s words. The book had a blood red cover, stark against the black of Ace’s robe. His dark hair was even darker than usual, still wet from a shower I wished he would have woken me up to share with him, and his stubble had been momentarily tamed with his razor—though I suspected that wouldn’t last for long. I felt my pulse pick up at the sight of him then hasten as I waited for his answer. There was some primal urge inside me that was begging me to push his book aside and place myself on his lap, though I had no idea as to why—but the shift in Ace’s demeanor from last night to this morning was so palpable, it didn’t feel right.

  “Just tired,” Ace said finally. “Not feeling great. Nothing for you to worry about.”

  “Yeah,” I said softly, running my hand across my lower abdomen. There’d been a tightness building there ever since my first night with Ace that I could explain even less than all the other weird feelings that had been rushing through my system lately. Maybe it was indigestion. Maybe I was falling in love. “Yeah, hope that pizza place from last night isn’t infested with rats or something.”

  “Wouldn’t be the only thing in New York,” Ace commented, flipping another page.

  “What’re you reading?” My phone buzzed again in my hand as I approached him.

  A little scoff rose up out of Ace’s throat in response—to my question or to the sound of my phone, I didn’t know.

  “Raymond Chandler,” he responded. “Not your kind of thing.”

  “How would you know?” I took another step closer, willing myself to sit on the couch next to him—anything to be fucking close to him, honestly. “What—is a dancer picking up Chandler the only thing more cliché than a PI reading him?”

  “Chandler’s characters have honor systems, Noah.” Ace’s jaw was set, defiant and hard.

  “And so do the Marines,” I pointed out, uncertain of where he was going with this. “What’s your point?”

  “Anything you want to tell me?” His eyes blinked up at me, dark and surprisingly glimmerless.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  “I’ve got a lot to do today.” He dodged another of my questions like a fly evading the swatter. “And I’m sure you’ve got to get to work.”

  My jaw nearly dropped, and my heart really did. It plummeted into my stomach, joining the tightness that had formed there and leaving me dizzy all over again.

  I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what leave sounded like, even when the word itself still had to be said.

  I didn’t know what I’d done. I didn’t know what was wrong. But if Ace was going to be a prick about things instead of just fucking telling me, then I wouldn’t feel a like a prick about walking out the door.

  “I had a nice night,” I said, determined not to leave things on a sour note as I paused in the doorway. I wouldn’t thank him for it—I might’ve been confused and heartbroken, sure, but I wasn’t pathetic. It had been a nice night, though. I wouldn’t let whatever shit Ace was
pulling ruin that much.

  “Yeah,” he said after a beat. “Yeah. So did I.”

  The tension in my gut and the downward spiral of my heart was joined by a sudden wave of dread as I closed the door behind me.

  I had the worst feeling that those were going to be the last words we ever spoke to each other. The last things we ever said.

  At the club, Foster was waiting for me at the bar—a bottle of whiskey out in the place of champagne.

  “It’s ten in the morning.” I raised a judgmental eyebrow as I checked my watch. “Has your mystery lover dumped you, or are you still celebrating from last night?”

  “Neither,” Foster said, reaching across the bar to pull out a glass for me. “We lost another dancer last night.”

  “Another pregnancy?” We’d lost three of our best dancers to accidental babies over the last few years. Riley’s twins were teething already, and we were still waiting on baby pictures from Damon’s recent delivery. It would’ve been a shame to lose Anders or one of the others as well, but it would’ve probably happened sooner or later—to everyone but me, anyway.

  Noah shook his head though, splashing whiskey into the second glass and sliding it toward me. “Harmon. Apparently information wasn’t all your boyfriend was trying to get from the club—he was supposed to be convincing dancers to leave the Ballroom for the Backdoor as well. Guess you were the main target.”

  That same sense of dread that I’d felt at Ace’s apartment sunk though me once again, even deeper and darker this time. And here I thought Ace had told me all of his special missions for Harmon. Apparently, I really hadn’t gotten all of his secrets out of him yet.

  “Who left?” I asked, trying my best to push the feeling away.

  “Ben. Harmon sent a man around last night. Not a huge loss, but there’ll be a gap in the line-up tonight.”

  “Maybe you could take his place.” I forced a smirk, curling my fingers around the whiskey glass and raising it toward my lips. With all these shitty feelings I’d been having lately, it seemed like a drink might help. Certainly wouldn’t hurt. “How long has it been since Foster Collins took his own stage? Bet you could draw plenty of your old fans out of their penthouses and high-rises.”