Page 50 of Bitter Heat
“They don’t know how the pheromones affect us,” Kerry babbled on. “And what feelings they can evoke.Érosgápewe might not be—”
Janus gritted his teeth at this downplaying of the bright, intensesomethingthey’d just shared.
“—but an alpha will eventually want to own any omega he regularly fucks, body and soul.” Kerry made this statement like it was a given, and Janus wanted to tell him how wrong he was, how many omegas he’d fucked for weeks, months even, and never wanted to own body or soul. Not like he yearned to have Kerry.
But then Kerry went to the crux of the problem, a simple truth that made Janus have to work to suck in his next breath. “And I’m contracted to another, and, well, I always will be. I’ll give birth to his child, and then his parents will make me try again at my next heat. That’s my future. We can’t get confused just because of this.” He motioned at Janus’s still hard cock. How was it still so fucking hard?
Janus’s blood ran cold. Wait. How had he not realized? How had he not seen the truth? “He still handles your heats? Inprison?”
Kerry squeezed his eyes closed, and Janus scented a change in him, a horrible one that was all shame and deep sadness. Janus reached out, wanting to haul Kerry against him, protect him, make that scent never, ever, ever happen again.
But Kerry shook his head, rising to his feet. Janus stared after him in helpless bewilderment for a long moment as Kerry walked away, the water splashing around his legs and his small, tight ass.
Janus rose to follow, aware of his white limbs and ass, feeling exposed and horrified, like a fish flopping unexpectedly onto shore. His cock wasn’t hard anymore, either. Just the thought of Kerry sharing a heat with someone else—but especially with someone like Wilbet Monhundy, a man the papers had drawn a clear and ominous portrait of—awakened a dread and proprietary anger in Janus that he didn’t know how to contain.
Following Kerry out of the water, it took everything in Janus not to grab him, throw him over his shoulder, and take him up to the house, lock him in his room with his sweet bird, and never let him out to be hurt by his contracted alpha again.
Janus now had no doubt Monhundy hurt Kerry during the heats, even in prison, even with guards keeping watch. One look at Kerry’s face, the hunch of his shoulders, the change in his scent had told him that, and Janus wanted to wipe it all away. To cover Kerry with his own scent and cum and displace any right Monhundy had to Kerry’s body or life. He wanted to refuse to let that man knot Kerry ever again, to reject his right to stuff Kerry with his seed and grow his child.
But Janus had no rights at all over Kerry in this scenario. And a beautiful, deliriously perfect fuck in the healing waters of Hud’s Basin didn’t give him any.
“Tell me you have other options,” Janus begged, chasing after Kerry’s naked form, his throat tight and raw. When he reached Kerry on the shore, he grabbed for his hand and demanded it again. “Tell me there’s another way for you.”
Kerry tugged away and shrugged, drying off with the towel that Janus had brought down for himself. When he spoke, his voice was rough but steady, and the attempt at nonchalance pierced Janus to his soul. “I petitioned my in-laws to allow me a surrogate for heats, and they refused. They want grandchildren.” He put his hand on his belly and gave a horrible, tight smile. “Here’s number one.”
Janus’s stomach ached, and he reached out to pull Kerry in for a hug, but he shrugged Janus off with a fast jerk away and a sharp swat against his outstretched hands.
“Stop,” Kerry hissed, angry eyes hitting him like darts. “You don’t have any right to pity me. You don’t have any rightsat all.”
Janus heard all that Kerry was saying with his broken-hearted words. More than not having any right to pity him, he didn’t have the right to comfort either, or to have opinions about Kerry’s situation, or to express emotions Kerry himself had to bear in a visceral and real way, not just in the realm of imagined transgressions and horror.
But Janus wasn’t able to let go. He’d held Kerry in his arms not ten minutes before and felt his living, beautiful body around his own and watched his soul take flight in pleasure. He’d felt his child kick and flutter. He wasn’t going to shrug his shoulders and say that changed nothing. He’d lived at the edge of right and wrong for years, and he’d seen some ugliness, had been that ugliness himself, but this…this was beyond anything he believed an innocent man should be forced to endure. Wolf-god, or faith, or law—none of it could demand the degradation of a beautiful man’s soul and the risk of his life over a contract, could it? “There has to be a way. Petition the court for your rights back. Omega freedom groups do it all the time.”
“And get nowhere.” The wind off the lake picked up, making goosebumps rise along Janus’s arms and back, and pebble Kerry’s nipples.
Janus shook his head, his mind desperately trying to recall an article he’d seen months ago. “There was an omega last summer. He was contracted to a prisoner, too, but the law granted him the right to be serviced during heat by—”
“He was alone in the world. His alpha’s parents were dead. His own were, too. Don’t you think I already looked into that?” Kerry bit out, his eyes dark and angry. His wet hair whipped around in the wind off the lake. “Don’t you think I’ve explored every option?”
Janus stepped closer, an instinct unlike any he’d ever felt ordering him to calm his pregnant omega, to soothe him, no matter what it took. He brushed his hand against Kerry’s arm.
Kerry jerked away again. “Don’t.”
“I just want to help you.”
“You can’t. Because I’m not…” Kerry squeezed his eyes shut again, ducked his chin down. He covered his face with one hand. His long hair hung in wet streaks down his chest. “I want to be angry with you. That’s all.”
“Then be angry with me. I can handle it.” He could. If that’s what Kerry needed, he’d take it on.
“No. You don’t understand. If you’re gentle like that…if you take care of me? I’ll want you again.”
“Want me again?”
“Yes.” Kerry motioned at his own exposed cock, and Janus looked down to find it half-hard again already. “I’m sorry.”
“Because you want me?” Janus stepped closer, his dick tingling as it rose slowly with each beat of his heart. “I want you, too. I want you to feel safe. I want you tobesafe.”
Kerry cried out softly, his cock jerking at Janus’s words. “Stop. You’re making me feel so…”
