by Aiden Bates
I’d tucked my arm around him immediately, thinking that I’d finally won him over. That he was actually warming up to me. That his little ice king schtick was finally done.
But then I’d heard his breathing. Soft, slow and gentle. When I glanced down at him, his eyes were closed, lashes already fluttering away as his dreams whisked his consciousness elsewhere.
“Bruff?” Lady grumbled in confusion, trotting out of my office on her stubby little legs. I was surprised she hadn’t made an appearance earlier—usually, she came out immediately to bark at my guests like they were birds in the trees of Central Park across the street. But tonight, it looked like she was keeping her distance. Waiting until the perfect time to come inspect the man I’d brought home with me.
“Your guess is as good as mine, girl,” I said, gently easing Damon off my shoulder and laying him down safely on the couch. I tucked a decorative pillow beneath his head and left the room to grab a blanket for him.
When I got back, I found Lady up on the couch with him, curled in the space between the edge of the couch and Damon’s chest.
“That’s not like you,” I pointed out, speaking softly so I didn’t wake Damon. “You’ve never warmed up to any of my other friends this fast.”
“Bruff,” Lady grumbled, tucking her head down atop her paws and closing her eyes as well.
“As you like it, then.” I threw the blanket over both of them, tucking it around Damon’s body until he was covered completely, safe and sound.
It was strange, having an Omega I was so interested in sleeping with in my apartment like this. Even stranger to find that Lady didn’t mind his presence. If anything, she seemed to enjoy it. Normally when I had an Omega over, Lady treated him like an intruder when he arrived and an unwelcome houseguest when it was time for him to leave. She was old, crotchety, and just the slightest bit hateful. Normally, I appreciated that. Meant I never had to slip out of my own place the morning after or make up some bullshit excuse to herd my one-night stand out the door.
“Your dog doesn’t like me.” How many times had I heard that line? At sixteen, Lady didn’t like most people. She hadn’t when I’d picked her up from the pound, half-starved and as anti-social as they came, and she hadn’t grown to like them any more now that she was ten pounds heavier and the duchess of her own domain.
But there she was, sleeping soundly next to Damon like she’d known him all her life.
“Strangest thing,” I mumbled, turning off the movie and gathering up what was left of our midnight snack. I put the leftovers away before collapsing into an armchair myself.
I should’ve gone to bed, I knew—especially after the talking-to Damon had given me about my posture—but for some reason, I couldn’t quite bring myself to leave Damon’s side. He looked sweet when he was sleeping. All that vulnerability I’d first seen in him up on the stage at the Ballroom suddenly manifested in a new form. It awakened something in me, some kind of caveman urge that must’ve been left over from our Neanderthal days.
I didn’t want to go to bed. I wanted to sit awake next to him all night, watching over him and making sure the fire stayed lit to keep him warm.
At some point, I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, sunshine was filtering in through the windows, telling me we’d made it safely through the night. I couldn’t remember sleeping, but for some reason, my body felt more rested than it had been in weeks.
“Morning, girl,” I greeted Lady as she hopped down from the couch to follow me into the kitchen.
“Bruff!” she barked gently, pausing to look back at Damon. Like she was making sure her little woof hadn’t woken him up.
It hadn’t. He was sleeping so soundly, I was half-tempted to check and make sure he wasn’t dead. But I knew what that little bark meant—breakfast. If the sound of Lady’s barking didn’t wake him up, maybe the smell of bacon sizzling away in a skillet would.
I laid six strips down in a cold frying pan, tossing in a little water to help distribute the heat properly. A little something I’d learned from our live-in cook when I was younger—I could still hear her voice in my head as I melted butter into another pan for the eggs.
“Never settle for soggy bacon, Nate,” she’d told me, gesturing with her spatula for emphasis. “Low and slow, always always always.” I’d learned a lot from Rosa those early mornings when I’d woken up before my parents to toddle down to the kitchen. It had been worth the way Dad had tanned my hide when he found out I was fraternizing with the help; at the very least, I could cook for myself.
While butter foamed away beneath the eggs, turning the edges crisp and golden, the smell of bacon flooded the apartment. As I suspected, it finally roused Damon from his sleep.
“Shit,” he groaned, sitting up and rubbing his eyes with a clenched fist. “What time is it?”
I checked my grandfather’s Rolex, still clasped around my wrist from the night before. “Eight o’clock, Sleeping Beauty. Did you dream of me?”
“Shit,” he swore again, kicking himself free from the blanket he’d wound around his legs in his sleep. “Shit, shit, shit.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Somewhere to be?”
“My midterm’s at nine.” He glanced around the apartment frantically like it was a war zone, not a luxury penthouse. “Shower? Do you mind?”
“Not at all.” I pointed him in the right direction. “Down the hall, third door on the left. Towels on the rack are clean. Use whatever toiletries you can find in there.”
“Shit,” he swore a final time, taking the hall at a jog. “Thanks!”
As Damon hopped in the shower, I shifted gears on breakfast. He’d probably be wanting his to-go if he wanted to get to his exam on time. I nabbed a tortilla from the pantry and slipped it into the pan beneath the eggs, adding in some chopped bacon and avocado before folding it all together. The coffee, which I’d put on thinking we might drink it on the balcony together, I sidelined into a Thermos, leaving the cap off so it could cool down a little before he headed out the door. If Damon was going to go do brain work this early, the last thing he needed was his caffeine influx burning his mouth on the way to class.
Damon showered in record time, stumbling back out in jeans that clung to his thighs and a t-shirt that dampened against his chest.
“Could’ve loaned you a change of clothes,” I pointed out, but he waved the offer away.
“Too late already. Time?”
I checked my watch again. “Eight fifteen.”
“Shit!” Damon rubbed his temples in frustration as Lady waddled over to lick his toes. “There’s no way I’m going to get there in time.” He glanced down at Lady in confusion, then back up at me. “Did you get a dog while I was asleep?”
I laughed. “Meet Lady. She’s taken a liking to you.” I handed him off his breakfast tortilla and coffee with a smile. “You should be flattered—that never happens.”
“I’m flattered, all right.” Damon groaned as he pulled on his socks. “Unfortunately, my professor won’t take a letter of absence from your Corgi to explain why I’ve missed the first half of my exam.”
“Where are you headed?” I asked out of curiosity.
“NYU. It’ll take an hour at least—”
“If you try getting a cab in rush hour traffic, maybe. But that’s just south on Fifth, isn’t it?”
“Sort of. Not that it matters.”
He brushed past me, trudging down the hall to grab his shoes. I caught his arm as he moved by, pulling him back and staring into those pretty blue eyes of his.
“Damon. We’re on Fifth.” I suppressed a chuckle as the realization lit up his irises. “If you take the subway on Fifty-Seventh, you’ll be there in fifteen minutes or something.”
“Shit,” he swore for what I hoped was the last time. But this time, when the word left his mouth, it was in awe. “So…I have time.”
“A little bit.” I pressed his breakfast at him again. “Have a bite. Brain food.”
A sigh of relief left
Damon’s lips before he finally took the tortilla from me and stuffed the end of it in his mouth.
“God, that’s good.”
“Bruff!” Lady chirped in, licking her lips at the sight of the bacon poking out from the end of the impromptu burrito in Damon’s hand.
“Okay, okay. Yours is coming,” I assured her, nabbing a slice of bacon off the plate it had been resting on.
Damon brightened incredibly with a little food in his stomach and the knowledge that he wasn’t going to miss his test.
“Nate…I ought to, um…”
“Yes, Mr. Bishop?” I blinked up at him expectantly as Lady licked the bacon grease from my fingers.
“Just, thank you. This morning would’ve been a mess if I’d gone home last night.”
“Anytime,” I offered, smiling up at him from my stooped position. “Though, I’ve gotta admit. Never took you for an NYU kind of guy.”
“On scholarship,” he explained. “Full ride. Gotta keep my grades up if I don’t want to lose it.”
A full-ride scholarship at NYU. It wasn’t the easiest thing to nab, and not exactly something I expected to discover about a man who took his clothes off for a living. He was beginning to make me question all my preconceived notions about exotic dancers. But then again, I’d known there was something different about Damon from the start.
“Let’s make sure you ace this, then,” I said, striding down the hall to grab his shoes for him. “And next time your place is too loud to study, give me a call. Door’s always open.” I laughed. “Or at least, as long as I warn the doorman it will be.”
“I’d need your number if I wanted to call you,” Damon pointed out.
My smile doubled slowly as I realized what he was asking me for. God, I was tempted to tease him about it. You like me, you little shit! You fucking like me.
But he had other things on his mind this morning. Other things, I presumed, that made it a lot more difficult to keep all those walls of his up and ready.
I scribbled my number on a stray piece of paper from one of the drawers in the kitchen island, tucking it into his pocket and patting it safely against his thigh.
“There you go. Now—better get a move on.”
Damon scarfed down the rest of his breakfast in a few quick bites and laced his shoes up at record speed. He only paused once in his bid for the door to glance back at me—with a smile on his face, to my surprise.
“Thanks again,” he said gently. “Mr. Garnet.”
“Don’t mention it, Mr. Bishop. The pleasure was all mine.”
“Bruff!” added Lady, trotting forward to say her own goodbye.
Damon gave her a little scratch behind the ears before he disappeared out the door.
8
Damon
Anders whistled low as I slumped into the apartment, simultaneously exhausted and on some kind of bizarre, thrumming high.
“Late night last night?” he commented, flipping the pages of the magazine he was reading one by one without bothering to read what was printed on their glossy pages.
“Don’t start,” I warned him, poking a finger in his direction for emphasis.
“Late morning, too.”
“Do not.”
“Late afternoon…” He slid his tongue across his lips, tracing the line of smug smile.
“Anders, I will say this one more time, and only one more time.” I dropped my bag to the floor of the living room and squared my shoulders to him. “Do not, do not, don’t.”
“That was three more times.”
“Shut it.”
“Did you fuck him?” he blurted out, swiveling on the couch and leaning forward with a gossip-hungry look in his eyes.
“What do you mean, did I fuck him? I was at my midterm, for fuck’s sake!”
“Well, by my reckoning, you left the club at eight last night. Your midterm was at nine this morning. Which gives us…” He looked to the ceiling as he counted on his fingers. “Twelve hours unaccounted for.”
“Thirteen,” I corrected. I groaned when I saw the way it widened his grin.
“So you’re gonna tell me that in your thirteen missing hours, you didn’t get dicked down by the hot-ass money man you left with last night even once?”
I glanced around the apartment, taking in the rubble left from Anders’ debauching last night. Empty cans of PBR littered every surface that wasn’t already bogged down with bottles of craft beers.
Christ. He’d been partying with hipsters. I’d be plucking ironic mustache hairs out of the drains for weeks at this rate.
But in Anders’ desperate, undoubtedly hungover state, I realized that I had a rare opportunity as he bounced question after question off of me.
“I didn’t say that,” I replied, gathering up beer bottles with a coy shrug.
His eyes widened. “So you did fuck him.”
I smirked. “Didn’t say that either.”
“Come on, Damon. Don’t go all Schrodinger’s cat on me here. Either you fucked him or you didn’t. Has to be one, can’t be both. Spill.”
I walked toward him and pressed the beer bottles into his chest. “Help me clean this place up and maybe I’ll tell you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh, that’s low. That’s dirty.”
“Almost as dirty as Nathan—” I stopped myself, turning away dramatically. “Oh—but no. I shouldn’t say.”
“Okay, okay! I’ll clean, God, just stop it with the teasing already.” He pouted as he rose from the couch, tiptoeing around loose streamers and discarded party hats to go grab some trash bags. “If this is what it was like for the poor bastards I was stringing on last year, I don’t know how they made it out alive.”
“Your own medicine tasting a little bitter there, buddy?”
He sighed, slumping back into the living room elbow-deep in a pair of yellow kitchen gloves. “Not as bitter as I’m going to be if your story about last night doesn’t end with dick.”
Half an hour later, Anders was back on the couch in our freshly-cleaned apartment with his arms crossed over his chest like a child that had just been sent to bed without dessert.
“Can’t believe it didn’t end in dick,” he grumbled.
“He made me eggs,” I offered.
“Yeah, but he didn’t fertilize them!” Anders thumped his fist down on the cushion by his thigh. “I wanted passion, dammit! Where are the steamy kisses in the rain and sloppy blowjobs in the dark?”
I raised an eyebrow. “It didn’t even rain last night.”
“That’s not my point.” Anders held his hand out expectantly, closing his eyes as he sighed. “Give me your phone. We’re going to text him.”
“And say what?” Instinctively, I took a step back.
“Hmm, I don’t know…” Anders tapped his chin in a way that told me that was a lie. “How about, ‘Dear Nathan, breakfast was delicious! How about you eat my ass for dinner? Love, Damon.’”
“No.”
He tried again. “‘Dear Nathan, I have the night off. Why don’t you and me get it on?’”
“Try again.”
“Oh, come on. Did you even get his number? Please, for the love of God, tell me you got his number.”
“I did.” I patted my pocket, noticing the hint of pride in my voice—and the flush of heat that ran up and down my chest, pooling at my cock as I remembered the way he’d tucked the scrap of paper into said pocket. He’d slipped it right in, the cocky bastard, fingertips tapping against my thigh like he was wishing it a safe journey home.
Anders’ eyes lit up. “Gimme.”
I had all of a second to react before Anders dove for me, hands outstretched and grabbing at my crotch in a way that hadn’t happened since I’d dated that guy with the wrestling kink. Only this time, there was no prelude to the main event involving a forty-something-year-old Alpha trying to convince me to put on a Mexican wrestler’s mask. No, this time it was full-on warfare, no holds barred.
I was bigger than Anders, stronger, but I was a
t one important disadvantage:
He wanted it more.
“Yesyesyes yes!” Anders hissed in delight, smooshing my face against the carpet as he withdrew the piece of paper from my pocket. My phone, he found in my coat jacket. I could only groan in defeat as he typed the number into my contacts.
“Nathan…what’s his surname?” Anders rolled off me, darting across the room before I could reclaim what was rightfully mine.
“Please don’t do this,” I pleaded.
“Nathan Pleasedon’tdothis. Weird name, but it’s okay. Maybe when you two get married, he’ll take yours or something.”
“Anders, we haven’t even kissed yet.” I stopped, realizing what I was saying. Christ, that was as good as admitting that after breakfast this morning, I was beginning to want to kiss him. “And we’re not going to. End of discussion.”
“Actually, as you’ll see in a few minutes, it’s just the beginning.” He hopped up on the couch as I dove for him, handily evading my reach. “Do you think you’re more of a, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ or a ‘Hi, how are you?’ kind of guy?”
“I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t text rich entitled Alphas looking for dinner dates.”
“Dinner, huh? Good idea.” Anders typed away at the phone, bounding across the couch and onto an armchair. “But since you already did dinner last night, why don’t we say drinks instead? That way, you can feign like you’ve had too much and he’ll take you back to his apartment again.”
“Is this really how you deal with men?” I asked, flabbergasted as I watched Anders work.
“Eh. Used to, anyway. Became too much drama in the long run, though.”
“Drama is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.”
“Exactly—that’s why we’re only focusing on one Alpha for you, for starters. Later, we’ll get you a nice little harem going when you’re ready for something more advanced.”
“This is already too advanced.” I slumped onto the couch, burying my face in my hands.
“Oh, don’t be such a Mopey Marvin, Damon. I’m doing you a favor with this. Trust me.”