Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  “It’s not bullshit.” My smile was soft, gentle as I took his hand in mine. “Maybe I’m not so averse to the idea of opening up to someone anymore.”

  “Daddy?”

  We turned to find Lizzie standing to the side of our table, a new copy of Where the Wild Things Are clutched tightly to her chest.

  “Are you happy with it?” I asked, feeling Eliot withdraw his hand. It only made me grip his fingers tighter—I wasn’t ready for him to pull away. Not yet.

  Lizzie nodded, beaming. “It’s exactly the same as the other one. I like it a lot.”

  “Good. You ready to go?”

  She nodded again, bopping her head twice as hard as necessary. Everything Lizzie did, she did intensely. Enthusiastically. Reminded me of Patrick all over again—and, in a way, of Eliot too.

  “Can we read it when we get home?” she asked.

  I held my hand out to take the book from her and she placed it in my hand. “Of course.”

  Her gaze turned to Eliot, bright eyes focused on him intently. “Will you come back and help?”

  Eliot raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure…From the sounds of things, you don’t need much help reading this one.”

  “No,” Lizzie agreed. “But sometimes it’s nice to have someone else do it for me anyway. Daddy calls it bonding time.”

  “And you want me to join in on bonding time, huh?” Eliot laughed a little—though not enough to dissuade Lizzie from getting what she wanted.

  “I think you’re nice and fun,” she said happily. “Besides, Daddy won’t do the voices.”

  “Oh, I absolutely do the voices,” Eliot promised her. “It’s not a real story if you don’t do the voices.”

  “You sure you don’t mind?” I asked him, half-surprised that I was the one who was hesitating here. I didn’t want Eliot entertaining Lizzie just for my sake—and, after all, he was the one who didn’t seem to like kids much.

  “Well, I can’t just let this adorable little girl have an evening of substandard bedtime stories, can I?”

  “No,” I agreed, a little smile playing on my lips. “No, I guess you can’t.”

  10

  Eliot

  “Careful,” Alton whispered. “Gently…Gently…There you go.”

  The weight of Lizzie’s head slipped away from my arm and onto the softness of her pillow without even a stir on her part. Her eyelashes didn’t even flutter as Alton moved the blankets up over her, tucking her in tight.

  “Wow. She’s really out cold.” I blinked down at her, still a little stunned at the way she’d fallen asleep with such ease on my chest.

  Alton offered me a hand up from Lizzie’s bed and an amused smile as I took it. “You were good with her. She’s never going to settle for my bedtime reading ever again after that.”

  “Only had to read it to her seven times before she went down.” I laughed, then clapped my hand over my mouth as Lizzie shifted beneath her blankets at the noise.

  Alton and I stood there for a moment, holding our breaths as we waited to see whether she would wake or not. But no—she was too far gone for that. She only nestled deeper into her pillows, curling her little body adorably like a tired kitten and pressing her thumb against her lips.

  “She used to always suck her thumb when she was asleep,” Alton explained as he guided me out of her room. “My Alpha father wanted me to put whiskey on it to stop her, of all things.”

  “Did you?”

  “Hell no. She stopped on her own eventually. But yeah—she still sleeps like that. It’s how I know she’s really out, not just faking it so she can get back to reading once I’ve turned off the lights.”

  Out in the living room of Alton’s massive penthouse, I poured myself onto the couch while Alton padded out toward the fridge. The cushions were luxuriously soft beneath me—soft enough to fall asleep on. Dinner with Alton and his daughter had been fun, but admittedly a little exhausting. Lizzie was so full of questions about everything from storm clouds to stoplights. Between the two of us, Alton and I had stayed busy all evening explaining weather patterns, traffic systems and how electronics worked—supplemented by a lot of necessary Googling to ensure that we got it all right, of course.

  For the first time, I was realizing the full weight of Alton’s responsibilities as a father—and how difficult it must have been for him to do it all alone. I’d known going into this that parenting must have been a lot of work. Of course it was. But despite how tired I was from keeping up with Lizzie, I couldn’t pretend that the day had been anything short of perfect.

  We’d had fun together, Alton, Lizzie and I. We’d eaten together, laughed together, and Alton’s daughter had even fallen asleep on my chest while I read her her favorite book as a bedtime story. It had all felt so good that I was beginning to wonder if I wasn’t a kid-person after all. The way Alton looked at me as he brought over two glasses of chilled white wine was certainly making me want to be.

  “She doesn’t usually like other people this much, you know,” he revealed, handing me my glass.

  “Yeah, well, the feeling is mutual.” The glass was cool beneath my fingers, already slick with frosty perspiration as I shifted my grip to the stem. “I don’t usually like kids this much.”

  “You’re both pretty special. Don’t know why I’m surprised.”

  I sipped at the wine, enjoying its cool fruitiness as Alton settled onto the couch next to me.

  “You’re pretty special yourself,” I pointed out. “It only makes sense that the people around you are just as good.”

  We settled against each other, my legs tucked up beneath me, my knees against his thighs. It was almost strange, how natural this all felt. How easy. How right.

  “Can I tell you something?” he asked, looking up from his wine at me with those enchanting hazel eyes of his.

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Promise you won’t get weird?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, sure. Too tired to be weird right now, I think.”

  Alton sighed. “I didn’t think I’d ever have this.”

  “What do you mean, this?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. This…this sense of sharing, I guess. I’ve been doing the single father thing for so long, I always thought it’d be wrong to bring someone else into it. I enjoy spending time with my daughter, obviously, but it always seemed like…I guess I thought I’d be burdening someone else with it, expecting them to enjoy it too.”

  “Wasn’t a burden.” I swirled my wine in my glass, a little smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “Had a really good time tonight, in fact.”

  “Yeah. I could tell.” Alton’s fingers idly reached over, finding my knee and resting there as he took a drink from his own glass. “And I think that’s what really surprised me. When you said you didn’t like kids…”

  “I didn’t know any better. And Lizzie isn’t exactly like most kids. She’s insanely fucking bright, for one.”

  “You could have easily run away though,” Alton mused. “At any point today, really. When Lizzie’s school called, after that drama with Rivers, when she asked you to come home with us…”

  “I nearly did.”

  “I half expected you to. On that night we met, when Lizzie’s babysitter called me, I saw that flash of terror run through your eyes…”

  “I didn’t realize you had a baby,” I admitted, laughing at the memory. “I was worried I’d accidentally seduced some other Omega’s Alpha.”

  “Yeah, that’s fair.” Alton laughed along with me, our bodies moving together even closer. I shifted my legs off the couch so I could scoot closer to him, and he moved his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in tight. “I’m glad you didn’t run, though. I’m glad you stayed.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, nodding as I licked a stray drop of wine from my lips. “Yeah, I am too. But…I mean, surely you thought you would have all of this with Patrick, didn’t you?”

  “Once upon a time, maybe. I think I probably deluded myself into be
lieving that I never could, after…”

  “We don’t have to talk about him if you don’t want to.” I could feel the sadness well up beneath his muscles, the tension spreading across his shoulders. “I’ve never lost a partner like you have, but… Okay, don’t hate me for this, but when my first dog died, I felt guilty for an entire year every time I petted another dog, you know? My parents wanted to buy me a new puppy, and I wouldn’t let them. Didn’t seem right, enjoying myself playing with a new dog when I was still mourning the old one.”

  “A puppy, huh?” Alton chuckled. “Did you ever? Let them buy you a new one, I mean.”

  “I was thinking about it. Years and years later, mind you. But then their company went under and we had to move to a house that wouldn’t allow dogs…”

  “What was his name?”

  I smirked. “Elmer. Like Elmer Fudd. From Looney Toons. Used to be my favorite when I was a kid.”

  “Be vewy, vewy quiet,” Alton quoted, affecting the voice perfectly—but with an oddly sexy growl to it that probably meant I’d never be able to look at Elmer Fudd in the same way again. “I think that’s probably exactly how I felt for a long time though, yeah. Like I couldn’t be with anyone else because, yeah. Wouldn’t be fair.”

  “And now?” I asked, unable to help myself.

  Alton tilted his head down, eyes locked on mine as his lips lingered so close I could feel his breath. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about Patrick. It doesn’t…doesn’t hurt so much anymore.”

  “Yeah? Then what?”

  “Maybe I’m just ready for that new puppy, I guess,” he joked, then his lips found mine, locking me into a kiss so soft it made my jaw ache for want of more of him. So passionate, it made my head spin.

  “Woof,” I breathed against his lips.

  Smiling, laughing, eyes sparkling with tired delight, our bodies shifted together like we were two dancers tangled in the same effortless tango. I found myself straddling him, wrapping my arms around his neck. Every kiss came harder. Faster. More intense. His hands teased my waist, touching me first like I was something fragile and delicate that could easily shatter beneath his strength, then like he didn’t care whether I broke beneath him or not—like he wanted me too much to care.

  “Bedroom?” he finally gasped.

  I bit my lip, then dipped in again to bite his. “Thought you’d never ask.”

  11

  Alton

  Whatever reservations I’d had about being with Eliot that morning, I didn’t feel them anymore. Whatever clothes we’d been wearing, we weren’t wearing them for long.

  I groaned as he dropped to his knees on my bedroom floor. With a flick of his fingers and a clank of my belt, my slacks quickly joined them on the ground at my feet. The single moment of clarity I had before he curled his fingers beneath my boxers, I used to close the door.

  “Good move,” he said. “Don’t want any…interruptions.”

  “No,” I agreed. Thanks to Eliot’s bedtime story, Lizzie was fast asleep—and knowing her, she’d stay that way until morning. It was just him and me now. Together. Alone. “Not tonight.”

  He tugged my boxers down, my cock springing up to meet him immediately. I was rock hard—had been ever since I’d placed myself next to him on the couch. I watched the way his eyes widened as he took in the length of me, the girth, the fucking veins of my cock as they pumped hot, horny blood to fill out every inch.

  “Fuck,” he swore. “Guess I should have been expecting that, but…”

  “No one ever does.” Nine inches, give or take. I never really measured. Never needed to. The way that Eliot’s eyes tracked along my shaft was telling enough. “Think you can handle it?”

  He licked his lips and nodded. “Think I’ll have to.”

  Eliot’s tongue struck out, lapping experimentally at the tip of me. I hissed, then groaned. His tongue was hot, pink, a shade darker than my swollen glans. The precum that had been pearling at the head of my cock smeared across it, thick and clinging like warm honey.

  “Fuck, you taste good,” he breathed, sucking his tongue back into his mouth before he dipped his lips back down for more.

  If Eliot’s tongue had been hot, his mouth was somehow hotter. His lips enveloped me, swallowing up my tip and an inch of my shaft in one fell swoop. I had him practically drooling for me, his saliva coating every millimeter of my cock as he dove down further, taking more and more and more. His every lick made my balls ache, that same delicious, deep-seated burning that I felt in my muscles after an especially hard day at the gym. It made me wonder how long I’d really been burning for him—it felt like it had been so much longer than just tonight.

  My cock throbbed as he took me all the way to the back of his throat, leaping upward against the roof of his mouth before he gulped me down.

  Eliot sucked cock like a dream, every bit as angelic as his job description at Heaven’s Ballroom suggested. He was hungry, young and talented. Every lick of his tongue as he slurped at me felt like loosed flames. Every clenching of his throat drove me closer to orgasm—especially when I saw that he’d taken his own cock out to stroke himself in time with the ministrations of his mouth.

  “Christ,” I swore, my voice low. If he kept this up, I was going to end up blowing my load so deep into his throat, he wouldn’t even have to swallow. It’d slide right down into his stomach—and as attractive as that prospect was, that wasn’t what I wanted. Not tonight.

  I’d wanted Eliot since the moment I first laid eyes on him. Since I’d first watched the way he pounded his fist against the door of that shitty strip club he used to work for after he locked himself out. He was forceful, confident—everything I liked in an Omega. Everything I needed in a man.

  And if I didn’t stop him soon, he was going to make me empty my balls into him so hard, we’d both wind up seeing stars.

  Before he could, I took his head in my hands, running my fingers through the pale gold of his hair and drawing my hips back. His green eyes glanced up at me curiously, then narrowed in delight as I set the new pace. Slow. Steady. Hard. His throat could take me, and I was more than happy to give it what it so obviously wanted—but when I felt my balls tense again, a flutter catching in my chest and white-hot heat coursing through me from my thighs all the way up to my teeth, I pulled back sharply.

  “Stick out your tongue,” I ordered.

  He panted like a dog in the heat as he opened his mouth and turned up his chin to obey.

  Resting the tip of my cock on his slick, hungry tongue, I stroked myself off onto him. My hips twitched violently, fist clenched and cockhead bouncing against him as I shot rope after rope of sticky, opalescent cum into his mouth. I could feel his breath, labored and heavy, as he took it by the mouthful, pausing to swallow only when I stopped shooting hard enough to make it through his lips. He gulped it down like water for a man dying of thirst, then dove to lap up the cum that waterfalled down my shaft after.

  “Fuck,” he moaned, licking his lips clean. “Fuck, you taste good.”

  “Yeah?” I asked, smirking as I pulled him up off his knees.

  “God. So fucking salty and sweet…”

  “You make me sound like an ice cream cone,” I said with a little laugh as I pushed him back onto the bed and crushed my lips to his. “Let’s see what flavor you are, then.”

  My kisses poured down over his neck, across his chest and down to his hips. His body was exquisite, something that could have rivaled that of any Greek statue in the Met. I should have been hesitant—fumbling even, maybe. I hadn’t had anyone since Patrick. Not like this. Not even close. But he was too gorgeous, and I was too hungry for him to care. My mouth claimed his cock, all tongue and lips and saliva, coating him up and down, tasting his precum with the promise of more with every throb of his length. He was thick, thicker than any Omega I’d ever known. It made my jaw ache as I swallowed him down, sucking and slurping with every inch of him that passed between my lips.

  “Alton…God,” he whi
mpered, hips bucking up to meet my mouth as I pushed him past my gag reflex and pressed my lips flush with the soft goldenness of his pubic hair. Pressed deeper, sticking my tongue out to lap at his balls and crushing my nose against his pelvic bone.

  I wanted him. Wanted to taste his cum, feel him lose himself in me, my throat, the heat of my tongue and the gentlest scrape of my teeth. He was close already, and with one sharp little upward motion of my lips, I knew I could set him off completely. Leave him shooting, arching and moaning into my mouth, his cum pouring over my tongue while lightning bolts of pleasure shot up and down his perfect form.

  But no—I was hard again already, and my cock demanded that our orgasms be synchronized this time. I released him from my throat, gasping as I reclaimed my breath. His hips rolled beneath my hands instinctively, turning over for me. I only had to guide him, tug him backward on the bed. One hand curled around his hips, the other pressing down on his shoulder blade as I leveled my cock to his perfect, sculpted ass.

  “Please,” he purred, arching up against me. He had a dancer’s ass, hard and firm and so muscled he had to reach behind himself to spread himself open for me. “Please fuck me. Please.”

  It was all the go-ahead I needed. I wanted Eliot bad enough, I would have settled for a hell of a lot less. Just a simple yes would have sufficed—when I ran my fingers between his ass cheeks, they pulled away with a hot, sticky strand of honey. All the lubrication I needed to dive into him, drill down straight to his core.

  I rocked my cock against his hole anyway, coating my shaft in his wetness before I settled my tip against the tightness of his rim. At the first teasing thrust, he was wound too tight for me to even enter him—but then, a second, harder thrust forced him to give way.

  I stretched him open beautifully, clenching my teeth and giving a passionate grunt at the sensation of his heat wrapping around me. He wasn’t built to fit an Alpha as big as me inside him, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t care, and from the soft whimper he gave as I molded his ass to fit my girth, neither did he. My fingers clawed at his hips, pulling him sharply against me. Pulling him deeper onto the aching thickness of my cock. I impaled him with it, and he took it perfectly. Every thrust, every inch of him that I claimed came with a moan, a gasp, a gorgeously desperate breath of longing for something deeper still. Harder. More.