"Hm?" Julian said, moving closer. "Isabel?"
Blake drew back, sharply.
"What did you say?"
Julian leapt out of bed, ripping off a sheet to cover himself.
"No, no, this is all wrong! You creep!”
"What do you mean by that?" Asked Blake, getting out of bed and walking towards him.
"Damnit, I'm straight, there's no way in hell I can do this."
"Julian, after yesterday I doubt--"
"I'm an Omega, I was desperate, I wasn't thinking straight. Right. I wasn’t thinking right.”
"Like hell you were," said Blake. "If you're worried, this doesn't make you any less of a man. Come back to bed and lie down for a while. I know that this is all new to you.”
"I gotta get out of here," said Julian, grabbing Blake's boxers by accident off the floor. He put them into his mouth, and then shifted into his lion shape, bolting out of the house and down the long driveway.
“Julian!”
Blake stared after the Omega, watching him run. He considered pursuing him, but decided not to. How could he be so stupid?
Julian made it back to his home without much suspicion. Where he lived, everybody knew that he was a lion shape shifter. Hopefully nobody would smell him until he washed off Blake’s scent. There could be Alphas anywhere, and he was even more paranoid for having met one. After he got back to his room, he realized that he was holding Blake’s underwear instead of his own. He spat them out and shifted back, almost breaking into a run for the bathroom as he felt the urge to scrub last night out of his skin.
He wasn't gay, he thought to himself, taking a less relaxed shower than the one he had had earlier. The water in the apartment building the gang owned was hot, then cold, then hot again, in a capricious manner which angered him even on a good day. He shifted into his lion shape and swiped a massive scratch into the fake marble wall. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to pay the bosses for that, he thought, as he shifted back into his human form.
The pheromones had seemed to have calmed down after he had finally been taken by an Alpha. The mad lust was no longer coursing through his veins and clouding his thoughts. The only reminder of the event was that he was missing an outfit, the soreness in his rear end and a strange ache in his chest. Perhaps he was just tired, or maybe he had cracked a rib when he was attacked. There was no way that he was going to chalk that one down to emotion.
“Yo, lion boy!”
Julian heard the shout from the door, and realized that it was his gang buddy, MacMahon. Although he was higher in the hierarchy than Julian, they were friends because they each had nobody else.
“Coming, sir!” He shouted, turning off the shower and leaping into his clothes. He had barely gotten to towel dry his hair when his boss unlocked his apartment door from the outside and strode in.
“You missed last night, where were you?” MacMahon asked. MacMahon was a burly man, with close cropped ginger hair. He was covered in thick tribal patterned tattoos, which Julian privately thought were very out of place on somebody whose ancestors were probably from Ireland.
“I’m sorry, I was attacked at work,” said Julian. “I probably had a concussion, but I’m okay now, I can go out tonight.”
“Like hell you can,” said MacMahon. “I’m really getting tired of you, mate.”
“Sir?”
“Tired of you pretending like you’re fine all the damn time. We’re gangsters, not superheroes. Come here, let me see that head,” said MacMahon, beckoning him forwards. Julian bent his head down and showed him the broken skin and nasty split where he had been hit on the head.
“Actually, maybe we could head out tonight,” he agreed. “That’s gross, but it’s not going to kill you.”
“You got it, sir.”
MacMahon got up and left the room, leaving Julian behind to think. He didn’t have any details about the hustle, but he knew it was just what he needed to get over thinking about Blake.
Blake. His thoughts went back to the tall, dark man who had so carefully taken care of him, and ruthlessly taken him at the same time. Julian reclined on his bed, trying to think about something, anything else. His mind wandered back to his ex girlfriend, Isabel, whose name he had mistakenly called only this morning.
One of his cats jumped up on his bed then. She must have smelled his distress.
“Hey there, Fluffy,” he said, smiling, scooping the protesting cat onto his chest and squashing her down until she agreed to stay there, kneading his shoulder with her furry white paws. “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me.”
She stared at him for a second and continued kneading.
“Yeah, I know,” said Julian. “Except I don’t. I just don’t want that… that lifestyle, you know? It’s not for me. I already get enough shit as it is without adding being in a homosexual relationship. Besides, that’s…”
He couldn’t bring himself to say the word disgusting. It wasn’t disgusting. In the moment, Blake had given him something that he needed, something that he felt he would have died without. And in an odd way, it was beautiful. There was that ache in his chest again, he noticed, but he could have sworn that it wasn’t coming from him. He closed his eyes, trying to fight away the tears that threatened his eyes. He knew that an Alpha and an Omega could form a bond that defied logic that almost like magic could link their thoughts and minds. He shuddered. This was bad. This was really bad, if it was true. Of course, he could be just imagining it. He rolled over, dislodging Fluffy, and she meowed in protest. His other cat, Conker, jumped up on the bed and decided to lie right between his shoulder blades. While he usually found it hard to sleep with the cats in his bed, it would have been even harder without them. Trying to forget everything except the warm cat purring on his back, he attempted to nap, but sleep evaded him.
Blake felt a loss more acute than anything he had ever experienced in his adult life. He hadn’t felt this kind of pain since his sister had died. Of course, this was nothing of the same caliber, but it was still awful.
Julian and he had bonded, of that he was sure. He saw Julian’s briefs lying discarded on the floor as he got out of bed to go get a cup of coffee, spiked with whiskey to get a grip on things. The sight sent a sharp feeling of pain through him, and his eyes prickled with tears. He wiped them briskly away. He never cried.
As soon as he had drunk his coffee, showered, and gotten dressed, Blake got ready to go to work. It was an arduous task. He had to go get his clean suit out of the laundry room where Julian’s suit was hanging, waiting to be washed. Then he had to look in the mirror to shave, watching the same face that was lit up with happiness the day before contrasted with the agony he was in now.
“I’ve got to get him back,” Blake told himself, tying his tie and yanking it so it felt snug against his collar.
“Where were you?” Asked Blake’s secretary, upon his arrival to the office. Genevieve was a short blonde Beta, who seemed to have a fancy for Blake.
“Got caught up in my own affairs, Gen,” said Blake, brushing by her.
“Who’s the lucky lady?” Asked Genevieve, clattering after him on her high heels.
“Not a lady,” said Blake.
“It’s never a lady, but what is it?”
“Precisely, never a lady.”
“Wait. Hold on here just a second.” Gen weaved around Blake so she was standing in front of him, blocking off the door to his private office within the main office.
“What?”
“I should have known.”
“Come on, Gen,” said Blake, “let me through.”
“You’ve got to tell me all about it,” said Gen, steering through the door.
It was hard not to. Blake didn’t really want to talk about it, or at least he thought he didn’t, but as soon as the door had closed behind them the story poured forth.
“And then he said he was straight and ran away,” said Blake, morosely. “And I’ve got to win him back, somehow.”
“God, you’ve got awful luck,”
said Gen, looking at him with her blue eyes which were now watery. Genevieve was a very sympathetic soul, and while she was pushy, she could also feel another’s emotions stronger even than sometimes they allowed themselves to feel.
“I do, the worst,” said Blake.
“You know what I’d do?”
“What?” Blake sounded skeptical, and he had good reason. Gen was just a Beta, and also tended towards the submissive.
“I’d find him, and do nice things for him, until he became friendlier, and work up gradually from there.”
“Nice things?” Blake looked at her. He didn’t even really know how to interact properly with people, let alone be nicer to Julian in increments to win him over. His eyes almost bugged out of his head.
“Yeah, first maybe get him an ice pack for that ass of his,” said Gen. “Don’t give me that look, I’ve probably had more butt sex than all the gays in this town.”
Blake winced. That was crassly put, and probably untrue. He alone had been with the majority of the gays several times, and he was sure he had helped them outdo Gen in that department.
“Highly unlikely,” he finally answered.
“How long have you been gay?” asked Gen.
“It’s not like that,” said Blake, sighing. “It’s a life thing.”
“A life thing?”
“Do you think I would have chosen this, Gen?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m an outcast. And just once, when I find this thing that is really great in my life, an Omega man, I get it taken away. Just my luck.”
“Don’t say that,” said Gen. “There’s still hope for you.”
“I’m glad you think so,” said Blake, darkly. Having exposed his feelings, it was even more difficult to keep them off his face and out of his mind.
“Has Julian clocked in for work today?”
“He called me and gave me a verbal resignation,” said Gen, blanching, anticipating Blake’s reaction.
“What?” he roared, his lion form flickering under his skin and rising from his chair. Gen quailed.
“I’ll call him to tell him that he has to submit it to you in person?”
“I’m worried that will make him resent me,” said Blake, shaking his head and sitting back down in his seat.
“Then don’t. I”m sure you’ll see him again.” Gen got up from her seat on the other side of his desk. “I think we ought to get out in the main office. There are probably papers for you to read, and it’ll be good for everybody to see the CEO working.”
“Thanks, Gen,” he said. “Coffee and a BLT as usual.”
“You’ve got it, sir,” she said.
The days passed in an agitated crawl. It was March before Blake heard from Julian again when he was called from the main office phone.
“Blake?”
“Julian? What’s going on?”
“I don’t know who else can help me.”
“Where are you?”
“In jail, look, I need you to bail me out; you’re the only person I know who has money.”
“What’s going on?”
“There’s no time for me to explain, just please, get me out of here.”
Julian hung up, and Blake placed the phone back on the receiver. Genevieve clattered over noisily, her heels clicking on the floor. Her face was fixed in an inquisitive expression, but she said nothing.
“Julian. It’s an emergency.”
Blake said nothing more but grabbed his checkbook and stormed out of the office, past everybody looking at him with curiously, and leapt into his car. It was an hour before he reached the jail.
“I’m here to bail out a man named Julian, uh…”
“Julian Copperfield?”
“Yeah.”
“Your relation to this man?”
Blake swallowed hard. Alpha and Omega.
“He’s one of my office workers,” he said instead.
“Right. The arraignment is taking place, but we will set you up with the necessary paperwork soon.”
Five hours later, Blake pulled out of the station with Julian sitting morosely in a giant shapeless sweat suit in the passenger seat next to him. Blake noticed that Julian’s bleach white hair was growing out; instead it was a deep chestnut at the roots. Julian’s face seemed rounder, and while he was evidently upset, he looked a lot healthier than he had last time they were together.
“What the hell happened?” Asked Blake, finally.
“They didn’t tell you?” Asked Julian.
“No, I want to hear it from you,” Blake snapped, “I had better not have just put down ten thousand dollars for you to refuse to tell me.”
“Fine. I’m a gang member.”
“Go on.” Blake turned the car into a quieter road and pulled over so that he could focus on Julian.
“I didn’t know what else to do. And they cared about me, took care of me, gave me money when I was hungry in turn for doing what they wanted me to do.”
“Yeah, I know how a gang works,” said Blake. “I’m honestly surprised, but I’m not angry.”
“It’s why Isabel broke up with me,” said Julian. “She didn’t like me working under the table. It wasn’t all bad, I mean, we did shit to help people as well as to hurt them.”
“What did you get arrested for?”
“I participated in beating up a man,” said Julian. “He’s not dead, only a few punches, really. He’ll never do it again.”
“Do what?”
“He raped a kid, a little boy.”
“Damn.”
“You see, this is why I’m in the gang,” said Julian. “Because if I can keep that dirty asshole away from children I will. Sure, there are other things we do, we cheat and steal and make dirty deals, but we never, ever hurt anybody who doesn’t need hurting.” Julian had a curious expression on his face.
“So, you beat up this man.”
“And went out for a couple of beers. I wasn’t drinking, but the others were. My mate MacMahon called an ambulance for the poor sod after around twenty minutes, because we went to check on him and he was still out. But he was drunk off his ass. He confessed to everything before we could stop him, and we were arrested, along with the man. Us for beating the daylight out of him, and him for raping a minor. They found the kid too, he’s in the hospital. But please believe me, Blake, I’m not all bad. I’m just… protective.”
“Caring for children. One of the most prominent characteristics of an Omega.”
“And, uh, speaking of that, Blake… I. Shit, it’s difficult to say.”
“Go on with it.” said Blake.
“I’m… oh, damn it.” Julian unzipped his sweatshirt, and Blake gasped. Julian’s stomach was swollen, round, and full. He was six months pregnant, Blake realized.
“Mine?” Blake asked.
“Yours. Our baby.” Said Julian, helplessly. He started to laugh, but it turned into crying. “I’m such a mess.”
“Look. Julian.” Blake started to reach across the car, and stopped himself. This wasn’t the time to touch Julian, even if he yearned to in the most non sexual, comforting of ways. “You’re going to be okay. Our baby is going to be okay. And… you’ve never been more beautiful.”
“You haven’t seen me very often, have you?” Asked Julian, shakily.
“Nope, but I have all the time in the world,” said Blake. “Six months, right?” They had seen each other last in October.
“Yeah,” said Julian. “That’s what the doctor said.”
“Then I should have around three months to get to know you before the baby comes.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, though,” said Julian, “I have no money and no home now.”
“Haven’t you been listening to me?” said Blake. “You can live with me for as long as you need to, right?”
“Blake, I…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been struggling with this for a long time now. I said some stuff earlier and I wan
ted to apologize for it. I just don’t want to impose on you, but I really do need a place to stay, for the baby if nothing else, and I —“
Blake cut him off.
“You know we’re bonded, Julian.”
“Yes.”
“And were you really just saying that you’d give that up?”
“I’m not gay.”
“But you’re not straight.”
Omega Wanted: Bad Boy Mpreg Romance Page 89