Page 6 of Slow Heat
“C’mon,” he said kindly. “You can read what I wrote and I’ll help you write something almost as good.”
“Almost, huh?”
“Yeah, almost.” He slung his arm around Xan’s shoulder, turning to leave the library. Contentment pooled in his gut. “Can’t have you doing better than me when you didn’t even read the assignment.”
Afternoon sun shone in through the clear glass windows that scaled up to the ceiling at the library’s entrance. A collection of professors and their graduate student assistants gathered around a large round table a few yards from the entrance, papers, pens, and notepads scattered everywhere. A lively conversation was underway in urgent, hushed voices.
Jason spotted Dr. Obi, the upper-level professor he hoped to land as his advisor for the research he wanted to do on the expression of the engineered wolf gene in post-Old World humans. Specifically he wanted to explore the role it played in instigating heat in omegas and mounting urges in alphas.
He’d already checked out theses on similar topics from the library, discovering that a lot of his original questions had already been answered. But there was still so much more to understand about the Great Death, the advent of alphas and omegas, and the role their engineered genes played in post-Old World human behavior.
Jason was grateful the Wolf Above Party had been defeated seventeen years prior, allowing scientists in the universities to extend and expand their research on post-Old World humanity. Science had finally been freed from the tyranny of religion, and Jason was ready to get onboard. Though to express that opinion publicly was a risky thing. The Holy Book of Wolf was still considered a more important document then their government’s Constitution. But no one could deny science and technology had grown in leaps and bounds in the seventeen years since the New Wolf Reform Party had taken charge.
Unfortunately, in Jason’s opinion, the New Wolf Reform party didn’t go far enough in the civil rights department to challenge the strict laws regarding reproduction and omega rights, but at least they’d opened the door for advances in technology and science.
Dr. Obi was a real pioneer in the study of post-Old World genetics, and Jason admired his work greatly. Optimistically, he steered Xan toward the group of professors, hoping he might steal an opportunity to ingratiate himself in a brief conversation with Dr. Obi and win his favor.
His gaze swung from the frowning, grizzled face of Dr. Obi to a handsome omega standing beside him, and his heart stopped. Sheer beauty assaulted his senses: pale skin, dark hair, green eyes, and flesh that smelled like bliss. The omega stood tall and sharp-dressed in navy trousers, a black belt, and a moss-green oxford shirt, and he gripped the arm of a tall, muscular alpha in a tweed jacket.
One moment Jason had his arm around Xan, and the next his life as he knew it ended.
A raw, musky scent flooded Jason’s nose and throat, coating his mucous membranes. His eyes rolled up in his head as the scent drilled deep into his brain, awakening him with a soul-deep shiver. Pounding, urgent lust peeled his humanity away, leaving only animal instinct. His cock roared with blood. His body screamed with raw need and yearning.
Shrieks of shock barely registered in his pheromone-focused drive to get his hands and mouth on source of that mind-warpingly perfect scent. He grabbed his delicious-smelling omega, buried his face in the curve of his neck, and rutted his hips against him, growling as strong hands tried to pull him away.
His omega fought, shoving desperately, until Jason gripped his throat, stilling his struggles. He smelled his omega’s terror and confusion, rolling off him in waves of stench that nearly overpowered the sweet, musky aroma that had triggered Jason’s whirl of madness. Needing to touch skin, he tore at his omega’s clothing, his cock pulsing wetly in his pants, echoing the musky scent of slick slipping from his omega’s ass. He wanted to drown himself in that smell, rub it all over himself, die with his cock buried deep in his omega’s sweet ass and dripping with his omega’s slick.
His omega let loose a wild cry.
Jason released his hold on his omega’s throat, color and sound spinning around him, torn between comforting his terrified omega and lashing out in rage at the hands still trying to tug him away.
“Shh.” The hushing sound cut through the whirlpool of his mind. His omega gripped his hair and tugged at him, trying to meet his eyes. “Calm down now. Shh. I’ve got you. You’re all right.”
Thatvoice.
Like honey and sand pouring over him, gritty and warm, sweet and itchy. Jason wanted to hear that voice every second of every day for the rest of his life. He wanted to strip this man until he was naked and pleading beneath him, begging for his cock and crying to carry Jason’s babies.
But hands kept grabbing at him, voices kept calling to him, and he was really starting to get pissed off.
“Let him go!” his omega snarled. “Or he’ll rip me to pieces, for fuck’s sake.”
“Jason, buddy. Not here.” Xan’s desperate voice rang in the air around him. “You need to calm down now. This isn’t how it’s supposed to work.”
Who gave a shit about supposed to? He had his omega right beside him, and he was never letting him go.
Xan put his hand carefully on Jason’s arm, and Jason growled at him, barely hearing his words. “You have to register first, contract with his family, or he can press assault charges. You know the rules. You need to calm down. Right now.”
Jason’s cells screamed to possess the man he held protectively in his arms and had backed up to the table. He wanted to kiss his omega’s pink, lush, gaping mouth. He wanted to rip his pants down and get his fingers drenched in the slick seeping from the man’s anus in readiness for Jason’s cock.
It was the fear in his omega’s arresting moss-green eyes that held Jason back more than Xan’s tugging grip, or his sensible words, or the strong arm of another alpha laid across Jason’s chest. More than the security guards hustling into the library with syringes at the ready to prick him with alpha sedative, more than the quelling lull of the drug rushing into his system as they reached him and jabbed those sharp points into his neck, arm, and thigh. No, it was the glint of terror in those beautiful, perfect, soft green eyes that made Jason stand down.
He couldn’t look away as his knees went weak and he collapsed onto the stretcher the security guards had rolled up to catch his fall. He held out his hand, a cold horror enveloping him as the room grew fuzzy and distant, like in a dream. Fingers took hold of his, and he blinked his eyes open again, grateful to see his omega holding his hand.
“Get his information,” Xan said to one of the guards harshly. “We’ll need it for his alpha’s parents.”
“Wolf-god,” the alpha standing next to Jason’s omega whispered. “How the hell…?”
Jason snarled at the man groggily, tried to lift up from the stretcher to tear the alpha’s eyes out for daring to speak to his omega when he was slick and opening for a cock. He’d rip the man’s eyes out and then tear his testicles to shreds. He’d kill him for looking at his omega, for smelling his aroma.
