Page 46 of Bitter Heat
“Yes.”
“And more.”
“Sexually,” Kerry admitted. “He liked it to hurt.”
Janus didn’t know if he was going to throw up or roar in rage. The world around them blinked in and out with each beat of his heart. He wanted to beat someone or something, but there was nothing and no one.
Kerry took a deep breath and slowly reached out his hand, touching Janus’s cheek with his wet fingers. “It’s all right,” he said, with a roughness that made Janus doubt that. “He didn’t hurt me as much as he could have.” His fingers trailed, cool and smooth, over Janus’s hot face.
“I thought you didn’t want me to touch you,” Janus gritted out, his feelings shifting erratically between anger, sorrow, sympathy, and a possessive flare of want.
Kerry whispered, “I don’t. But let me touch you instead.”
Janus held still and let Kerry’s fingers drift along his jawline. Tears rose to Janus’s eyes, surprising him, and he tilted his head into Kerry’s palm. “I’m so sorry he hurt you, Kerry,” he whispered.
“Me too.” Kerry’s fingernails scratched softly against Janus’s stubble, almost like he scratched into Kiwi’s feathers. “But I’m not broken. He didn’t break me.”
Janus nodded his agreement. Kerry was strong. Stronger than Janus could ever imagine being. Maybe all omegas were like that. Caleb was. Now Kerry. How had he never understood before the inner strength omegas harbored? He’d been blind.
Janus didn’t bother insisting that he was trustworthy, or that he would never hurt Kerry. Those weren’t the kind of promises a man like Kerry, a man who’d endured what he had at the hands of his contracted alpha, would ever believe simply because another alpha swore them to be true. No, Janus would have to prove his trustworthiness.
So, he sat perfectly still and let Kerry’s fingers run over his face and down his throat. He let him explore his collarbones and his chest, let him touch his nipples without reacting except beneath the water where he had no control. His cock grew hard and throbbed. Still, Janus didn’t move.Hewasn’t a slave to his urges. He could control his desires. He would show Kerry that he was a trustworthy friend.
Reaching out, Kerry threaded the fingers of his free hand with Janus’s and then, after a slow intake of a breath that felt more like an influx of new courage, he lifted Janus’s hand to press it against his own cheek. Janus didn’t move a muscle on his own. He let Kerry do the stroking, seared to the bone by the roughness of Kerry’s stubble and the softness of his skin. When tears slipped out of Kerry’s eyes, Janus had to hold back from wiping them away.
“Your hands are soft,” Kerry said at last, releasing Janus’s hand and pulling his own back from Janus’s cheek.
“Thank you.”
“Wilbet was the first man I’d ever met with soft hands. I was so amazed.”
Janus wanted to defile his hands until they were rough and nothing like this monster Wilbet’s.
“But now his hands are rough. Like the rest of him.” Kerry choked softly. “Inside, he was always rough.”
“I’m sorry,” Janus said. He wanted Kerry to take hold of his hands again, to guide them over more of his body so that he could soothe Kerry’s pain and show him gentleness. “You deserved better.”
Kerry jerked back, as though woken from a dream he’d glided into as they’d touched. “Did I? I thought I did back then, but wolf-god alone knows my true heart.Wolf-godknew all the ways I’d thought I was better than this place, so much better than these rough mountain alphas deserved.” He sneered. “I guess wolf-god showed me ‘rough,’ didn’t he?”
“Oh, Kerry.”
“It’s blasphemous, I know. Pater would be appalled.”
“No, it isn’t that…it’s that no one deserves that, and wolf-god didn’t want that for you.”
“Maybe. Who knows wolf-god’s mind?”
“Kerry—”
“Wilbet said I was beautiful,” Kerry said, cutting Janus off and looking up at him with a curious expression that Janus couldn’t quite place. “He was the first alpha to ever say that to me, and I believed it. I’d always thought I was passable, but the alphas around here had always made it plain that, because of my chest, I wasn’t much more than that. But Wilbet said I was beautiful, his dream come true.” Kerry drifted a little away from Janus, and Janus had to resist the urge to tug him back. Instead, he let the lake’s current drift him closer again. “Wilbet always liked to lay it on thick. And I, being stupid and young, bought it.”
“But youare—” Janus bit off his words, not sure what to say.
Kerry lifted his gaze slowly. The sun sparkled on his freckles maddeningly. “I am… what?” A coy smile bloomed unexpectedly on his mouth. “Pretty? Like Kiwi?”
Janus’s heart raced, confused by the turn of conversation. Taking the opportunity to splash water on his face and shoulders, he tried to shake free of the way that smile worked on him, filling him with hot and cold pinpricks that urged him to do something, to act, to own, to possess—and no.No.
The water was cold against his sun-reddened skin. The sun was coming down hot and hard, no doubt burning them both, but he wasn’t about to suggest they move. Kerry might stop talking to him again, and for who knew how long? Days maybe. Months. Forever.
