Page 32 of Alpha Heat
Urho shook his head. “He asked me not to tell you. Because of Vale. And the baby.”
“No. Of course not. He wouldn’t want Vale to worry.” Jason bit his lower lip, staring at the gray-brown water of the pond in front of them. “I need to go to him anyway. Make him confess to me what he’s doing and whom he’s seeing. It’s dangerous, you say? This relationship?”
“Of course it’s dangerous!” Urho glared at Jason. “He could go to prison!”
Jason swallowed hard. “He’s not foolish enough to get caught.”
“Isn’t he?” Urho motioned at his own chest. “Hasn’t he already been caught? By me?”
Jason sucked in a breath, blue eyes flashing. “You’re going to turn him in?”
“Don’t be an asshole.”
Jason huffed. “I’m not the one who grabbed you off the street, roughed you up against the car, and then proceeded to be the most dramatic asshole ever in the entire history of assholes, all right?”
Urho nodded once. He couldn’t argue with that, as much as he wanted to, so he just slumped back down on the bench. “He’s fine right now. You don’t need to rush to his side.” He hoped.
Jason sat again and turned to him, a thoughtful crease between his brows. “I understand that acting on his desire for other alphas is a potential problem for Xan, and for Caleb, of course. But you’re distraught. You’ve never particularly liked Xan, as far as I can tell. So why do you care so much? I mean, aside from common human decency and all that.”
Urho didn’t know how to answer. Why did he care? He’d been torturing himself with that very question for the last two days. He barely knew Xan. They were nothing more than acquaintances, fellows of the same cohort. They’d never shared an intimate minute in their lives. Not until the moment on the sidewalk when Xan, all broken eggshells and messy insides, had spilled out his confession, and not until Urho had slipped his finger inside the man and felt his trembling desire all around him, in the very air he breathed.
“I don’t know,” he repeated.
Jason stared at him solemnly. “I see.”
Urho leaned forward, elbows on knees, and covered his face. His coat stretched tightly across his back, squeezing him. As the immensity of what he didn’t want to admit grew, he felt like he might burst the seams.
“Let me take you home. You need a good breakfast,” Jason said, rising and putting his hand out to help Urho stand on his still-quivering legs. “And a long restful nap.”
Urho followed Jason from the park like a duckling trailing his mother back to their nest. He didn’t know the last time he’d let himself be led, or allowed another alpha, especially, to treat him so gently, but he didn’t have the energy to fight it.
Jason drove them to Urho’s house, walked him in and asked Mako, the cook, to bring him some lunch, and then saw him onto the library sofa. He waited until the food was delivered, talking about pleasant, light things, like the books in the library he’d like to borrow. As Urho ate, he sipped a mug of tea and avoided any further mention of the events of the morning or the man Urho was losing his mind over.
Then Jason called for a cab, gathered his coat again, and stood over Urho on the sofa. Urho’s belly full of soup and his exhaustion gave over to sleepiness.
Jason said, “You should rest now. And, if you can manage it, don’t worry any more about Xan. I’ll talk with him and Caleb tomorrow. Together, Caleb and I will make sure he stays safe.”
Urho doubted that greatly, but he didn’t argue.
“As for your feelings, Urho?” Jason added with a knowing sigh. “If you can’t accept them, they’ll eat you alive.”
He turned away and let himself out, leaving Urho examining the library ceiling until he finally slipped into a fretful sleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Xan stood outsidethe door to Urho’s impressive home, his knees trembling and a sick temptation swelling inside him to leave without knocking and instead head several streets over to Monhundy’s house for another taste of just how monstrous he could truly be.
Swallowing hard, he stiffened his resolve and lifted the brass knocker twice. As the boom echoed in the large house, he wondered why a man as well-to-do as Urho didn’t have a doorbell. Probably Urho considered them too new-fangled, as old-fashioned and strict as he was.
A tall, middle-aged beta servant asked his name and led him to a room near the end of the entry hall, adjacent to a set of stairs rising to the second floor. “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll let Dr. Chase know you’re here,” the beta said, a small smile on his lips.
Xan nodded and turned to the room at large, surprised to see that he’d been taken to the library. Larger than his reception room at home, all four walls were lined with books, spines in every color from ruby red to grass green facing out in ridges that rose to the ceiling.
In the middle of the room, across from a banked fire, sat a sofa and two leather chairs with a long, low table between them. Xan stood behind one of the chairs, his hands on the high back for stability, and waited for the sound of Urho’s footsteps.
There was no warning, though, before the door opened and Urho stepped inside on socked feet. His pants were wrinkled and his shirt was too. His hair stuck up in some places, as though he’d slept on it and hadn’t tidied the course salt-and-pepper curls yet. Xan had never seen the usually dapper, uptight Urho looking so disheveled.
“You’re here,” Urho said, and his voice sounded like he had taken up smoking in the time since they’d last seen each other. “Are you all right? Have your injuries worsened?”
