“Oh, baby alpha, did I make you suffer very much?”
“Yes.”
Vale smirked. “What if I still don’t know if you have what it takes to be my man?” He went on with a hint of real sorrow in his tone. “What will you do about that?”
Jason growled softly and pushed him back into the mattress, slinging a leg over his thighs, and wrapping his arms around Vale’s shoulders. Vale could tell that if it weren’t for the baby, Jason would have flung himself on top of Vale and started ripping his clothes off. The babe required some measure of caution.
“Go on, then. Prove yourself,” Vale ordered casually. He yawned. “I’ll let you know if I’m impressed. Maybe you can earn the right to be my alpha.”
Jason made short work of Vale’s clothes and his own, and soon Vale was sweating and shaking as Jason sucked, licked, kissed, and fucked him to orgasm, and then did it again, and again. Despite the evidence of his pleasure, Vale pretended disinterest and uncertainty, causing Jason to redouble his efforts time and again.
Outside the window, Vale did not doubt the beta workers Jason had spotted in the garden below heard Vale’s cries of pleasure, and he didn’t care. Jason “earning his place” as Vale’s alpha was sheer bliss, and he had no reason to hide how lucky he was to be this man’s omega.
As he came apart again—this time around Jason’s thick cock—he threw back his head and granted Jason the reprieve he’d earned. “You’re mine,” Vale gasped. “My alpha. Mine alone.”
Jason roared as he came, clutching Vale’s shoulders as he took him from behind, and crying out his pleasure. Floating back to earth, Vale smirked. No doubt somewhere in the house Xan and Urho were having their fun, too. But there was no way what they shared could compare to his joy in Jason.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Three weeks later
The sea wasalive. Jason could think of no other way to describe the sense he got when he stood next to it, staring out at the thrashing water. It was beautiful, yes, but wildly so. The Virona ocean was much less tranquil than the water by his parents’ cottage at Seshwan-by-the-Sea. It was frothy and urgent. It should frighten him.
And yet it was the only place he wanted to be.
Vale enjoyed it, too. His hours on the beach were the only times, outside of sex, when he didn’t complain about his various aches and pains. As the child grew, the pressure on his scars became nearly unbearable, and Jason’s ability to handle Vale’s distress lessened by the hour. Still, he held it together, being the alpha. He hadn’t allowed himself to cry since Urho had told him to get it together. Instead, he buried his fears as far inside as possible and presented nothing but confidence to his beloved. It took its own kind of toll.
At least he had Urho to talk with about it. Sometimes.
Urho had his own troubles. Xan was a handful, and Urho was busy trying to hold on to him.
“Look at the gulls,” Vale said quietly, pointing toward the sky. “They swoop like they’re spelling out words.” He frowned. “That’s almost good enough for a poem, but not quite.”
Jason brushed his fingers over Vale’s beard and into his hair, saying nothing. Vale’s inability to write was one in a long list of regular complaints. He’d stopped trying to placate him and resorted to simply listening.
“I wish we could swim. Just think how the water would take the weight from my belly.”
Jason said nothing still. There would be no swimming. The late autumn air was too cool and the water too frigid to even think it. But bundled up in sweaters, they could happily bask in the dull sun every day. The salty air and crashing white noise of the waves seemed to bring Vale and the baby a kind of peace that they lacked elsewhere. And Jason loved to sit with him, Vale’s head on Jason’s knee, both of them nestled between layers of blankets to stay warm.
“It’s a war in there,” Vale had said that morning before they’d set out to the ocean. “He’s determined to beat me up from the inside.”
Jason hoped there was no truth to the old omega’s tale that the relationship between the babe and omega during pregnancy signified their relationship for the rest of their lives. Because Vale seemed to alternately adore the baby and resent it—first for stealing his words, and then for the ongoing pain he caused as he grew and moved. What if, in the end, Vale and the child didn’t get along? Just look at Xan and his parents. There was no guarantee that they would all like each other.
Love each other, certainly. But like was another matter. Everyone knew that.
“I miss my pater,” Vale said suddenly, sitting up as a wave crashed onto the shore, washing up a small raft of seaweed and a branch. “I wish he were here to tell me it was all going to be all right.”
Jason rubbed Vale’s back and didn’t offer up much else. He’d never met Vale’s parents, and while he’d been curious about them, Vale hadn’t ever talked about them all that much. Not even when they’d discussed the cabin before renovating it. Not even when they’d walked around the property that day before the snowstorm.
“My pater was smart.”
“I’m sure he was.”
Vale shrugged. “My father was smart, too, of course, but he was the silly one. Joking and laughing all the time. Pater was serious as a heart attack. That’s why I’d want him here to say that we’re going to be all right. I’d believe him.”
“If he were that serious, then he probably wouldn’t say it at all.”
Vale huffed. “No, he probably wouldn’t.”
