Page 63 of Bully for Sale
Ned took a seat at his side. Ezer wanted to lean into him, breathe in the scent at his neck, at his groin, and cover himself with it. He held back.
“It’s from upstairs. It’s left over from what my father had for dinner.”
“Oh.” Ezer ate the casserole, the flavors bursting over his tongue. It was so delicious, as if he hadn’t eaten in days. He found he couldn’t control himself, stuffing it in faster and faster until it was gone.
Ned watched, his arm stretched across the back of the sofa, his fingers brushing the back of Ezer’s neck in a tantalizing way that sent shivers up and down Ezer’s spine. He said nothing until Ezer’s plate was scraped clean, and then he offered seconds.
“No,” Ezer said. “I’m full now.”
In fact, he’d never been quite so full in his life. He didn’t know how he felt about it. He probably hated that too. But in the post-fuck, post-meal haze, he was feeling fuzzy about why he was so angry. The food had been so ridiculously good. He didn’t know why it tasted so much better than any food had before, but his hunger felt different too: ravenous, uncontrollable. He’d always been able to control it in the past. Another change he hadn’t asked for.
“By the way,” Ned said, taking the plate from Ezer and sliding it onto the small, low table in the middle of the sofa. “I’ve asked Earl to keep our kitchen down here stocked with all the things you like most.”
“Oh,” Ezer said again.
“So, you’ll need to help him with that. Make him a list of your favorite fruits, meals, soups, pastries, whatever you like. You need to eat.”
“Yes,” Ezer agreed. He looked down at his nakedness—how had he become accustomed to it so quickly?—and smoothed a hand over his still-flat stomach. Even now he could feel a strange tension from inside, almost as if he were still full of Ned’s semen, a bulging pressure.
“I know you’re angry—”
Ezer cut a glare at Ned; he couldn’t help it. Angry was an understatement. But he’d realized as he’d drifted into consciousness in the dark, warm bedroom of his nest that he’dchosenthis—maybe he’d been coerced, but it’d been his choice all the same. He could have done many things differently and had another outcome.
So he needed to make the best of it. The way he’d made the best of the heat. Fighting Ned every step of the way for the entire pregnancy wasn’t going to help him or help the baby. He snorted. That was probably the seminal compounds talking, but it didn’t make it untrue.
“I know you’re angry,” Ned began again after a small pause. “But we need to stay calm and talk about a few things. We’re going to have a child. We should have some understanding between us.”
Ezer nodded. He pulled his knees up to his chest, resting the flat of his feet on the sofa, and wrapped his arms around his shins. He wasn’t cold, but he was vulnerable, and he felt better holding himself this way. At least his genitals weren’t so exposed. Why didn’t alphas suffer from the sensitivity that made garments unbearable to omegas during pregnancy? Why was he the one to suffer so much indignity? God, or whoever had invented this game of life, was unfair. Definitely an alpha.
Ned sat with his legs wide, his arms relaxed at his side, and he didn’t seem to be at all affected by the fear stringing through Ezer’s muscles and sinews again. Ezer took a slow breath, trying to calm himself, but it was useless. Was Ned’s semen wearing off already? He didn’t see how. Most omegas could go hours and hours between if they needed to. That was how their alphas were able to get any work done at all during these pregnancy months.
But maybe it was that hedidn’tneed to wait? Ned was next to him, after all, covered in nothing but a fluffy robe with his beautiful cockright therebeneath—
No! He had to keep calm for this.
Ned wanted to talk. And he was right. They needed to get some things straight. Like the fact that while Ezer might give in and play his part the way he’d agreed to do when he’d signed the contracts, and he might try to make this ‘work’ in terms of parenting a child together, Ned should never misread any of it as liking or friendship. Ezer was still going to hate Ned deep down for the rest of his life. Ned needed to know he should never mistake Ezer’s physical pleasure for affection, or his compliance for love. Everything he did, every move he made, was for his da’s safety and happiness—and, now, for this new innocent life they’d created. Nothing more, nothing less.
Ezer’s head spun. A few weeks ago, his life had been so different. He’d been a brother, a son, and a student. Now and into the future he would be this… He touched his stomach again.
Ned went on, assuming Ezer’s agreement. “I think, to reach that understanding, I need you to forgive me for how things were in the past, and how I didn’t speak out or do more to protect you from Finch and Braden.”
Ezer clenched his jaw but said nothing. He listened as Ned spoke about his prior status as Heath Clearwater’s heir, and the loss of that inheritance when Heath had a late-born son. He told Ezer about his father, Lidell, and how he had a way with money—a way of losing it. Ned told him about the dire financial straits his father had kept them both in most of his life, teetering between wealth and ruin, with no comfort or safety.
Ned also revealed everything about the money and contracts Lidell had with the Maddox and Tenmeter families, and how Ned had been told to make nice with them, how he’d felt powerless to say no.
Then Ned confessed to getting in over his head with those assholes, doing Bright’s powder, fucking omegas—why did Ezer’s stomach clench with sickening jealousy over that?—and getting in all kinds of trouble, to the point his uncle, Heath Clearwater, had had to step in and bail him out.
“And that’s when I swore to myself that I’d stop being such a putz,” he said, chewing on his bottom lip before smiling ruefully. “Turns out I lied. As you know.”
“Coward,” Ezer ground out. How had he ended up connected to such a cowardly alpha?Thiswas the man who was supposed to take care of him and their offspring for the rest of their lives? What good was a romantic if he was also a wimp?
But Ned wasn’t insulted. He nodded and shot an apologetic and shame-filled glance at Ezer before saying, “I should have cut them out. I should have done more to protect you. I’m sorry.”
“They were going to rape me.”
Ned’s face twisted with rage, but he shook his head. “No. I was going to kick Braden in the face. I was going to—”
“You were going to donothing. If my da hadn’t showed up with a gun…” Ezer lifted a brow. He wondered if they’d be arguing about this forever, even when they were old with grown sons. Probably.
