Heaven's Ballroom

by Aiden Bates

  I stopped dead in my tracks, moving Eliot behind me as I squared myself up to Hayward.

  “What did you just call him?”

  Hayward rolled his eyes, holding his hands up in surrender. “Come on, Palmer. It’s not like you to go getting your red up like this—and it’s not like we’re not all thinking it…”

  “No,” I said forcefully, my jaw jutting out like a knife. “Let’s get one thing straight, Mal. Talk like that about Eliot again and you’ll be picking your teeth up our of your carpet too. And, Mickey…”

  Hayward’s gaze turned poisonous as he realized what I was about to do. “Don’t you fucking dare, Palmer.”

  “You want to fix your social image, Mickey?” I asked, turning to our guest of honor. “You’re not going to do it palling around with people like Hayward and Simmons. They’ve been cooking Hayward Financial’s books together behind my back for longer than I ever could have realized, and you’re not going to get anything out of helping them fix it.”

  Mickey settled his arms across his chest, frowning as he nodded along to my words. “Well…that’s one way of putting it, Palmer. I respect you for just coming out and saying it.”

  “Then I’ll say this too—go home to your husband and kids, Mickey. If you’re lucky, they’ll take you back. I’m sure Flavio is…” I struggled for something positive to say about Mickey’s new Omega, but upon noticing that Flavio was still playing Angry Birds in the dining room, completely unfazed by the chaos around him, gave it up before I found myself lying some more. “Go home, Mickey. You know it’s the right thing to do.”

  For a moment, Mickey looked like he might throw a punch at me—but then, he merely shook his head and clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s fair, Palmer. Suppose I’ve just been waiting for…well, for someone to come out and tell me as much.”

  “You little rat,” Hayward cut in, pushing Mickey out of the way and leveling his nose toward mine until we were nearly tip to tip. “If you wanted to save the company, congratulations—you’ve fucking failed at it. All those workers…”

  I shook my head, not backing down. “I’ll find whatever placements I can for them. That’s on me. But all of this?” Blood dripped from my knuckles onto Hayward’s pristine white carpet as I gestured toward Simmons lying on the floor, heaving as he coughed up a tooth. “This is on you. Fuck too big to fail—when you fuck people around like this, throw in with assholes like him instead of just building something strong enough to stand on its own, this is what you get.”

  “Then the company’s dead,” Hayward monotoned, his lips pulling away from his teeth in a sneer. “And you’re dead in this town with it, Palmer. I’ll make sure of it.”

  I gave him my pithiest look as I plucked at his misbuttoned shirt. “You couldn’t even make sure you got dressed right, Hayward. I’ll take my chances.” I cast a glance over my shoulder to Eliot, who was looking at me with the strangest gleam of admiration in his eyes. “You ready to go?”

  Eliot gave a final glare to Simmons down the hall, then to Wesley, then to Hayward himself. “Yeah…yeah, I’ve been ready since we got here.”

  “Good.” I put my arm around him again, holding him as close as I could as I guided him to the door. “Then let’s go home.”

  18

  Eliot

  My heart was still racing as Alton pulled on his seatbelt and hung up his phone.

  “Riley and Max are going to watch Lizzie for the night,” he said with a sigh of relief. “The girls are prepping for a sleepover. She sounded excited about it.”

  “That’s sweet of them,” I mumbled back, unsure of what else to say. Despite Lizzie’s excitement over getting to spend the night with the Griffin twins, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for causing such a fuss. It must have been written all over my face, too, because as I bit my lower lip, Alton reached up and ran his thumb across by cheek.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said plainly. “None of this. Not the thing with Hayward Financial, not Simmons…” His gaze darkened as his brow lowered. “Certainly not Simmons. Christ—I should have killed him.”

  “Can’t exactly go around saving Hayward’s company if you’re getting hauled in for murder charges,” I pointed out, trying to make light of what had happened—despite the fact that it wasn’t the least bit funny. Not even a little bit. Simmons had scared me, and Alton’s boss had put me in an uncomfortable position just by inviting him. I understood Alton’s anger toward the man. I was harboring an awful lot of that myself.

  “I suppose not,” Alton agreed, stroking my cheek fondly. “But Hayward Financial was going under one way or another no matter what. All of this was just…delaying the inevitable, I suppose. I had a look at the books last week. There was no way we were going to hold out for another year—at least, not with Hayward as CEO.”

  “If the board found a replacement, maybe?” Damn my soft-heartedness, but I was still anxious about all the jobs Hayward’s mistake was going to cost the people who worked for him. It hurt to know that we had failed the Hayward Financial employees—even if it had only been a matter of time before they were laid off anyway.

  “They won’t. Hayward’s been lying to them for years to ensure that.” Alton ran his thumb down the side of my face, drawing my lower lip out from beneath my teeth. “By the time they find out the wool’s been pulled over their eyes, it’ll be too late anyway.”

  “You could tell them…” I suggested, but even I knew that was reaching.

  “It wouldn’t do any good. Even with someone else at the company’s helm…”

  “What about you?” I asked.

  “Me?” Alton laughed. “I’m not an executive type, Eliot. I’m a numbers and dollar signs man—and without any value left in the company, there wouldn’t be anything I could do anyway. I need a good, strong CEO to play quarterback when it comes to the corporate world. I’m more of a wide receiver, forgive the football metaphors.”

  “How about a tight end?” I teased, and Alton burst into laughter as he drew his hand away from my face.

  “Don’t go getting any bright ideas.” He glanced over at me as his fingers teased the gear shift. “You sure you’re okay? Simmons didn’t…”

  “No,” I said, cutting off the question before Alton was forced to finish it. “He couldn’t have if he tried. Takes a pretty dumb Alphahole to think that just because I’m an Omega, I couldn’t beat his ass to next Tuesday and back. I’m okay. Promise.”

  “That’s my man.” A smile lingered on Alton’s lips for a moment before it was replaced with a flash of fear as he realized what he’d said. “I mean—sorry. I know we still have to talk about things. Us. Where this is headed now, and I know that this is probably the worst possible time to do it, given what you’ve just been—”

  I leaned across the car, grabbing his face and pulling him into a hard, passionate kiss just to shut him up. My tongue danced against his lips, then passed through them, flicking out and tangling with Alton’s tongue.

  “Stop stressing about me,” I breathed against his lips, resting my forehead against his. “You’re the one who just got fired, you know.”

  Alton laughed. “I think you mean quit.”

  “Semantics.”

  “Not when the Feds come asking around, it’s not. I’ll get in touch with Mickey on Monday, work with him to hand everything over to them that I can. Cooperate in the investigation while I try to set everyone up with jobs once the company crumbles. If they’re lucky, they can stick around for long enough to collect their severance packages—if there’s any money left by then, at any rate.”

  “That’s kind of you, Alton.” My heart pounded in a forceful thud-thud, thud-thud against my ribcage as my chest swelled with pride. “More than my parents ever did for their workers, you know.”

  “I’m not your parents,” Alton pointed out with a wry grin.

  “Thank God.” I laughed, relief flooding my chest cavity. “As if this relationship isn’t complicated enough already.”


  “Doesn’t have to be, though,” Alton offered. “You call the shots now, Eliot. Where do we go from here?”

  “Home,” I said softly, nodding my head against his. “Just like you said before. We’re going home.”

  Home meant Alton’s penthouse, of course. It seemed even bigger and emptier than usual without Lizzie there—but as much as I loved Alton’s daughter, I really was grateful that Max and Riley hadn’t minded taking her for the night. The conversation that Alton and I needed to have now was one that probably needed to be held between just the two of us. Preferably over a bottle or two of sweet, crisp wine—Alton produced a chilled Riesling from his cellar and uncorked it over two glasses both the size of my fist.

  “You must have questions,” he began, splashing the wine into each glass. “Concerns and all. I don’t want you to feel like there’s anything you can’t ask me. Anything you can’t tell me about what you want or need or—”

  “I don’t want to take Patrick’s place,” I said before he could start rambling again. “I know I shouldn’t have used his mug that morning—”

  “I shouldn’t have gotten so upset.” Alton shook his head. “Patrick is gone, Eliot. There’s no bringing him back. It was a silly thing to get so flustered over—it’s not like he’s going to use it anymore or anything.”

  “He’s not gone,” I told him, sincerity ringing out clear in my voice. “He’s still here, living through Lizzie. Through your memory of him. That’s what I’m trying to say—whatever happens between us, I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to erase what you had with him.”

  “No, no,” Alton agreed. “Of course not. You’re not that kind of man. But you can see what I’m saying too, can’t you? I don’t want his memory looming over this. I don’t want you to feel like you’re living in his shadow for as long as you’re with me.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I said abruptly, my gaze shifting into something more serious. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “No, of course. Ask away.”

  “You said that you still love him. What does that mean for us?” I swirled my wine around in my glass, watching it a moment before the spinning sent me teetering toward nausea again. “That morning that I slept over, when you were mumbling his name in your sleep…”

  Alton watched the wine in my glass spin round and round as well, considering the question with just as much seriousness as I’d asked it with. “When I said that, I meant it. He was my soul mate. I really believe that. And for the longest time, I believed—”

  “You only get one,” I finished for him, nodding. “I know. I believe that too. Of course I do.”

  “No,” Alton corrected, his hazel eyes locking on my greens. “I believed that. I don’t…I don’t think I do anymore. Not now…not now that I’ve met you.”

  I smiled softly. “You think we’re soul mates.”

  Alton shrugged. “Think about it. Name one other person that makes you feel the way I do.”

  I blinked, running past relationships through my head and coming up short. I’d never felt this way with James. Certainly not with anyone I’d been with before him. “I’m trying. Really. But…no, I can’t.”

  “I feel the same way,” Alton professed. “Even with Patrick…it was the same level of feeling. The same heights. But different, somehow, too.” His fingertips brushed against mine. “His death changed me, Eliot. I’m not the same man I was when I said my vows to him. No better, no worse…just different. And I think that this is no better, no worse…just different, too.”

  I smirked. “Are you saying that you love me, Alton?”

  “I’m certainly not in love with anyone else.”

  “Ah, so you’re in love with me,” I teased, my smirk growing.

  Alton chuckled, closing his eyes as he realized he’d been caught. “Okay. You’ve found me out, you minx. I love you. I’m in love with you. The question is…”

  I dove forward across the couch, kissing him again. Not the same kind of kiss as the one we shared in the Tesla, although I was very much enjoying this new tactic of shutting Alton up when I needed to. Our tongues danced against each other, lips moving in ecstatic harmony, wine sloshing in our glasses as I straddled his lap, until we finally had to draw away from each other just to catch our breaths.

  “That’s not an answer,” Alton pointed out, panting.

  I traced his jawline with the fingertips of my free hand, holding my wine glass in the other. “Is it not?”

  “No,” he purred, his voice suddenly dark. Forceful. “I want to hear you say it.”

  “I love you, Alton.” I gave the words over to him with a certainty I’d never heard in my own voice before. “I’m in love with you.”

  His smile bloomed on his perfect lips like a rose in the night as he held his wineglass aloft. “Then let’s toast to it.”

  “Toast away, Mr. Palmer.”

  “To soul mates,” he declared. “To finding each other again—and again, and again. No matter what.”

  “You’re so fucking cheesy,” I giggled, clinking my glass against his before taking a sip. The wine felt cool and gorgeous on my tongue, but as soon as my brain processed the sharpness of its alcohol, my stomach rolled. A realization hit me like a fucking bus, leaving me spitting the wine back out into my glass to avoid retching.

  “What’s wrong?” Alton glanced at the bottle on the end table with concern. “Has it gone bad or something?”

  “No, no.” I closed my eyes, lips moving wordlessly as I counted out the days of my cycle. If it was even possible. If it was still too soon to tell for sure. “Shit, Alton…I’m so sorry. After the drama that morning, I completely forgot…”

  “Oh.” Alton took my glass from me gently, placing his glass down on the end table next to it. “The morning-after pill. Fuck.”

  “I forgot completely.” I pinched the bridge of my nose between my index finger and thumb, feeling like an idiot for letting something so vital slip my mind. “I shouldn’t have, and I’m so sorry for being such an airhead, and—”

  This time, it was Alton’s turn to stop my rambling with a kiss. Forceful, but slow. Hard and demanding, but not any less sweet for it.

  “You’re not an airhead,” he said against my lips. “Do you think you’re—”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve been having some weird…I don’t know. Feelings and stuff. A tightness just here…” I guided his hand to my stomach, letting him press delicately against my abs. “A little nausea—though that could just be nerves. But I think the days would line up.”

  “When will you know for sure?”

  “I don’t think a test will come up positive for another week or two yet,” I admitted. “But, if it does…”

  “Are you scared?” Alton’s gaze was unaltered. Concerned, but not panicked. He was like a lighthouse in the harbor, guiding me safely to shore.

  I steadied my breath and felt my heart rate slow back to a normal level as I let out a long breath of air. “I…I don’t think so, actually. Before you, I never wanted kids, but… I mean, is it crazy if I told you that if the test does come up positive, I wouldn’t mind?”

  “No,” he said genuinely. “No…I don’t think that’s crazy at all.”

  “Alton, I think I might actually be excited at the idea of becoming a father with you. I know how insane that sounds, and there’s no way to be sure just yet, but…”

  “There’s one way,” he pointed out, his hazel eyes glinting with desire as his hands curled around my back. “If you wanted. Wanted it. Wanted me.”

  My breath caught in my chest as I nodded slowly, the reality of it all finally sinking in. “I…I think I do.”

  “Good.” Alton rose abruptly, scooping me up in his arms and holding me tight to his chest as my legs wrapped around his waist. “Because I sure as hell know I do.”

  19

  Alton

  He tasted like the wine he hadn’t swallowed, sweet and clear, crisp as a cold appl
e on a fall day. His tongue was slick against mine as I laid him down on the bed, pinning his body beneath mine. I tore Eliot’s shirt away like it had done me a bad turn—technically, I supposed, it had.

  I’d rip away anything that kept him apart from me. Anything at all. Even if it was only the thin fabric of a tuxedo shirt separating his bare chest from my touch, my warmth, the kisses that I rained down on his skin as I untangled the knot of his tie.

  “God,” he gasped. “Your lips, Alton…”

  “My lips, huh?” I looked up at him with a fiendish smile, sliding my tongue along the rugged curve of his pecs. “What about my lips, Eliot?”

  “They’re so fucking hot.” His chest heaved, every breath coming out a half-moan, a sigh.

  A few inches eastward on him, and I turned those sighs into breathy whimpers. My tongue roamed around his nipple, darker than the last time I’d had him in this bed. Already swollen. Hard. So sensitive, I was suddenly aware that I could have probably made him come from the sensation of my mouth on it alone.

  I sucked at his nipple, nipping it gently with my teeth as I shrugged off my own jacket, tore away at my own shirt. Clothes were the enemy now, I’d decided. Belts, slacks, shoes—I wanted it all off. Gone. Forgotten on the floor, not to be revisited until morning—and even then, not until I’d had him again.

  My cock sprang up as I released it from my boxers, stepping out of them and my slacks alike in one fell swoop. He had me so hard, it was nearly fucking painful. Every moment that I wasn’t inside him was like a knife between my ribs. My whole body ached for him, every cell thrumming with need.

  And all the while, Eliot looked up at me with those eager, desperate bedroom eyes. They were the same green as a bottle of Heineken on a hot summer day, catching the same way in the light.