Текст книги "Heat for sale"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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Adrien chewed on his lower lip, his eyes drifting to the casserole dish. He wondered if he could suggest that they eat now, or if he should let Heath do that. He wasn’t a guest, yet this wasn’t his home. He didn’t quite know the protocol. He licked his lips, and his stomach grumbled again.

Heath heard it this time. “Get over to the table. You need to eat.”

Adrien obeyed, like he always did when Heath spoke in commands. It was odd, though, for a man in a beautiful suit to serve him heaping servings of a cheesy chicken casserole, and fetch water for him, and offer him a glass of fizzing juice that was said to calm pregnancy stomach.

“There,” Heath said, sitting beside him with a much smaller helping of food. “Eat as much as you can. You’re skin and bones.”

Adrien didn’t say anything to that, hurrying to get the delicious food into his mouth instead. As he ate, he felt Heath’s eyes on him, and he was grateful when Heath stood up and turned on some soft music that drifted from hidden speakers all over the room.

“Tell me about your father,” Heath said suddenly. “And your omega parent, whatever you know about him.”

Adrien frowned. “My father was a kind man. Stern, perhaps, but loving.

He was religious and sent me to a religion-based school in our small town. I decided to go to college though, and, had he lived long enough, no doubt that news would have broken his heart. I don’t know if I could have done that to him, actually. But he died.” Adrien poked at his cheesy casserole with his fork and then admitted, “I miss him.”

“I see.”

Adrien cocked his head. “Why do you want to know?”

“Curiosity. We’re making a child together. I wondered about your experience and expectations of parenthood.”

“Oh.” Adrien ate some more food and then said, “I never knew the omega who birthed me. My father said he was smart and funny. I apparently look quite a lot like him.”

Heath made a small noise, but said nothing, tucking into his food like he suddenly remembered it was there.

“They only spent the heat and pregnancy together. So, in the scheme of life, my father didn’t know him long. But he said he was irreverent and a terrible heathen. But he must have been charming, too, because my father always said that like it was a compliment, and he would never have said it like that for anyone else. Not even me.”

Heath met his eyes, opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, and then closed it again.

“What about you?” Adrien asked. “What were your parents like? Did you know them both?”

“I did. They were a married couple. Which is more and more unusual these days, I know. Due to omega freedom rights.”

Adrien’s brow went up. “Do you not agree with the new legislature?”

“I absolutely agree with it,” Heath said sternly. “But the point in fact is that my father and omega parent would not have stayed together in today’s world. Of that I feel quite sure. My da—that’s what my omega parent liked to be called—was always complaining about the things he’d missed out on being married so young. And they fought.”

Adrien listened carefully as he ate, surprised by the way Heath spoke so casually now. In the heat cabin, he’d been gruff, rough, and often silent.

They’d fucked and grunted, and he’d ordered Adrien around, but he’d rarely offered up any conversation at all. This seemed like a whole new man. Until he focused his gray eyes on Adrien and commanded, “Eat.”

“I am!” Adrien exclaimed, annoyed. “I have to let it digest. My stomach is stuffed, but I’m still hungry.”

Heath frowned. “They should have sent you earlier.”

“They sent me as soon as the pregnancy was confirmed.”

Heath glared at that. “They should have just let you stay with me after the heat. Then you’d have never been sick at all.”

Adrien sighed and pushed the food around on his plate. “I’m full. I’m sorry.”

Heath relented then. “You can’t be expected to return to full health in a few hours. I’ll take it away. You can eat more later. The pantry and refrigerator are stocked with healthy foods for you.”

“And if I want cake?” Adrien challenged, a vague sense of panic settling over him as the night grew dark out the wide, round window and a hint of claustrophobia began to set in.

“Then you’ll have cake,” Heath said with equal challenge. “Did you expect something different? You aren’t a prisoner.”

“Are you sure about that?” Adrien asked. “I feel trapped.”

Heath stared at him, a wounded look flashing over his face. “If these quarters aren’t suitable then—”

“No!” The idea of being housed in the cold, baroque areas of the castle that he’d walked through to reach this warm nest was horrifying. Beyond that, it simply wasn’t what he meant. “I’m happy with these rooms, but…am I allowed to leave? To talk to friends? Do I just sit here and read books alone until I pop this baby out of my ass?” He hadn’t meant to be crude, but Heath’s expression of surprised amusement made it worth it. “What’s my life going to be like? Like, okay, I have this baby inside me, and it’s strange, but I can’t escape him. That’s odd, isn’t it? Can you imagine what that’s like?”

Heath took Adrien’s plate to the kitchen, washed it in the sink, and then left it aside. “I can’t,” he said slowly. “And I don’t know what your life will look like here. I do know that omegas are kept away from the public for the length of the pregnancy for their safety, comfort, and pleasure. I’ll do everything I can to make your stay here pleasurable, Adrien.” His voice went husky, and Adrien’s cock liked that.

“I can call my friends?”

“You have a cell phone, don’t you? If not, I’ll get you one.”

Adrien did, but he hadn’t even looked at it since he arrived. It’d been

stuffed in the bottom of his bag. Because, truth be told, aside from Lance, he wasn’t sure anyone would miss him. His professors and colleagues had wished him well, but none of them were likely to want to check in. His co-researchers barely spoke to him outside of their work on the project. And his father was long gone.

A sudden, painful loneliness gripped him, and his throat went embarrassingly tight as his eyes filled with tears. He shoved his glasses on top of his head and wiped ferociously at his eyes. He would not cry. And over what?

Over how completely confused he was and how uncertain the future seemed? Over how he had no one in his life to even worry about him while he was gone living with a stranger and birthing a child?

Wow, he was pathetic, and he hadn’t even known it.

“What?” Heath said, coming closer, every inch of him looking like a protective alpha, ready to slaughter whatever or whomever was upsetting his pregnant omega.

Oh, God, he was this man’s omega.

He was stuffed with this strange man’s child, and he was trapped here in this nest for the next four months. He breathed roughly, trying to get a good lungful, but the room started to spin around him.

“Adrien?”

He stood up from the table and tried to speak, desperate for some fresh air, but the spots in his vision swirled faster and darker, and then it was all very black.

Chapter Twelve

HEATH CAUGHT ADRIEN as he fell, eyes rolled back in his head and his body going suddenly pale and limp. He patted Adrien’s cheeks, relieved when he opened his eyes and muttered, “Need some air.”

They’d just turned on the heat because Adrien was too cold, for God’s sake, but who was he to argue with a pregnant omega? He lifted Adrien easily—he really had lost weight since the heat cabin—and opened the door leading out to the walled garden. The twinkling lights Simon had insisted on putting on the fruit trees gave enough light to see by, along with the full moon. Adrien’s color was returning. He sat down on the closest bench by a flowering rosebush and cradled Adrien against his chest.

“Did I pass out?” Adrien asked, his breath a puff against Heath’s throat.

“Yes.”

“I got too hot.”

“We can turn the heat down. The oven can be adjusted and the heat reduced.”

“No. I’ll be too cold.”

Heath huffed a laugh. “Which is it?”

Adrien struggled out of his lap, wiping a hand over his mouth and pulling at his clothes. “I don’t know. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.”

“Do you feel better now?” He kept his hand on Adrien’s back, but he didn’t move it in the stroking, soothing manner Simon had used when he’d been sick as a child. He simply held it there, steady and sure, and tried to judge if Adrien was going to bolt, or cry, or scream. He felt a building tension in the air alongside the sweet scent of the roses.

“I don’t have anyone who cares where I am,” Adrien said finally, taking in shaky, slow breaths. The cool night air was making his cheeks go pink. His glasses had slipped again, and Adrien straightened them.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Heath said, hearing the need for reassurance in his omega’s voice. “You’re safe here. I promise.”

“I know. Maybe I’m too safe.” He smiled with a hint of embarrassment.

“I mean, I feel caged in.”

“What will help with that? You have your phone. There’s this garden always at your disposal. If you want to go out on the town, I can take you. Or the driver can take you. At least until you start to show, and then I think you’ll be far too uncomfortable to want to leave.”

“You keep saying that.” Adrien tugged at his jeans again, adjusting the fall of his hoodie.

“It’s just the facts. I have some books inside about pregnancy and birth.

You’ll read them,” he said, pushing command into his tone, knowing that Adrien would respond to it the same way he had from the moment they’d met.

“What if they scare me more?”

“It’s better to know what to expect than to be taken unawares.”

“I guess.” Adrien tugged on his hoodie again. “This is… It’s…” He pulled at the bottom of it, and then finally huffed, tugging it off. His skin prickled with goosebumps in the night air, and his nipples hardened into pink nubs. “There,” he sighed. “I can breathe.”

Heath said nothing. He only looked at Adrien with meaning in his eyes, and finally Adrien’s head bowed.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“That’s what you’ve been telling me about the clothes.”

Heath put a hand on Adrien’s back, his muscles leaping underneath his skimming touch. “It will only get worse. After the baby comes, once you’re past the critical first few days, clothes won’t bother you so much, and you’ll probably look forward to wearing them again.”

Some omegas didn’t like it, though, and continued to go nude at home for the rest of their lives. He didn’t think he’d tell Adrien that. Not yet. He seemed so shaken already. Heath wondered what Adrien would think of the other changes his body would undergo—the widening of his hips and the lactation, just to start.

“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Heath said calmly, keeping his voice low. He could sense Adrien’s reaction to that timbre in the way his muscles relaxed beneath Heath’s hands and the small shudder of arousal that went through him. “We’re going back inside, and I’m going to fuck you. That will calm you down. Afterward, we’re going to rest together and start reading one

of the pregnancy books. I’ll help you through whatever feelings come up about that.”

Adrien shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose, looking around at the rose garden in the darkness. Their scent rose around them with every small breeze. “Do you like roses?”

“Yes.”

“I do, too,” he said quietly.

Heath turned to the bush next to them, which he knew was full of fat pink roses with an orangey tip. They smelled sweet, but also spicy, and he carefully tugged a blossom free and handed it to Adrien, who sniffed it and smiled.

Heath placed his hand on Adrien’s neck. “The garden is full of them.

Tomorrow morning, after breakfast, we’ll walk out here.”

“Naked?” Adrien asked in a small voice.

“It’s up to you. I’ll be clothed.”

“That hardly seems fair.”

“It’s the nature of things,” Heath stated. “But we’ll be naked together in your room.”

“I’ve never been naked outside,” Adrien said, hiding his face by sniffing the rose again. “Or in front of anyone but you. Aside from when I had the pictures made for the auction.”

“Not even in the dorm showers?”

“We have stalls.”

Heath had lived in those dorms as well, having attended the university twenty years earlier. The difference was, he’d been a randy alpha, and he’d brought plenty of willing omegas up to play. He frowned at his memories.

He’d been an awful, entitled asshole back then.

“I wore a robe in the hallway. My father always said modesty was important in an omega,” Adrien said quickly, as though to prove he wasn’t acting without reason.

“Of course,” Heath said. He threaded his fingers into Adrien’s blond hair, a shimmer of rage under his skin at the thought that any alpha might have ever treated Adrien as casually as he’d treated omegas in college. He pushed it down by reminding himself that was not the case and that Adrien had never been touched by anyone but himself.

He really shouldn’t feel so chuffed about that. But he did.

“I don’t want to be naked in front of Simon,” Adrien said. “Or anyone else.”

“I see.”

Adrien met his gaze again, his eyes bright with determination. “Who do you expect me to be naked in front of exactly? Your servants? Your friends?”

Adrien really had led a sheltered life if nudity was such a problem for him. Most city omegas were content to be naked in their homes. It usually meant they were more likely to get laid, and, if they were lucky, find a mate to build a life with. But religious families were different. Clearly, Nathan hadn’t cared at all that his baby was going to be raised by a conservative, sex-shaming man of faith.

He had such kind eyes. He heard Nathan’s voice in his head, a little dazed with remembered bliss even all those years later. I left the baby with him because I didn’t want to raise him. And, oh, Heath, I know he’s in good hands. His father had such kind eyes.

Leave it to Nathan to think of little but himself. Typically infuriating and selfish. And yet Heath had loved him anyway. Desperately loved him. Maybe he’d been a fool all these years ago to hope that Nathan had loved him back.

Still, if he hadn’t loved Nathan, then he wouldn’t be sitting here with Adrien, who was pregnant with his child. God, what an impulsive, beautiful, wonderful, probably stupid idea that had been. Now he just needed to calm Adrien down, keep him safe, and hope that…

Hope that what?

He shut down that train of thought. It was far too early for any hopes other than a healthy baby.

“You don’t have to be naked in front of anyone. I’ll find a robe for you, something light that hopefully won’t bother your skin, and you can wear that when Simon is around. How many people you see while you’re here is up to you. As for whether I want you to be naked with my friends? That’s nonnegotiable. You will never be naked in front of my friends. Or any alphas, period.”

Adrien swallowed hard. “Never?”

“So long as you’re with me, I will be the only alpha to see your flesh.”

Adrien nodded. “I’m nervous.”

“You were nervous in the cabin, and that turned out all right.”

Adrien touched his stomach, shivering in the cool night air. He sniffed the

rose again. “Can people see us?” He glanced back over his shoulder at the castle behind them. “From inside?”

“The only people inside are servants—all betas. But, no, this garden is built at an angle that makes it always just out of view from any windows.”

Adrien frowned. “But why?”

“Because I like my privacy.”

“You don’t get enough of that in this giant house?”

“This part was built on when I first decided years ago to court an omega and start a family. I intended it for my omega’s nest to gestate and birth our child. It simply took longer than I expected to find that omega.”

Adrien sniffed the rose again. “You didn’t court me. You bought me. At an auction.”

Heath hesitated, but his next words felt right. The heat crush had worn off, and in its place was his urgent desire to soothe his pregnant omega, and a small vibrant thread of hope that was sewing itself into his ridiculous, open heart. “Then allow me to court you now.”

“By fucking me?”

“Yes. By taking care of you.” He touched Adrien’s chin, bringing his gaze up. “By teaching you how to get through this.”

“All right,” Adrien agreed. “I guess I don’t have a choice.”

“Do you want a choice?”

Adrien chewed on his bottom lip and then met Heath’s eyes, heat blazing there, and a bit of sheepishness, too. “No.”

“Then get inside. I’m going to fuck you.”

“Then we’ll read?”

“Yes. Then we’ll read.”

Chapter Thirteen

ADRIEN DIDN’T KNOW why he was so surprised that every word out of Heath’s mouth relaxed him, or that the scent of him sitting beside him on the bench left him feeling open and agreeable. But it did.

“Am I supposed to be so willing?” he whispered as Heath led him by the hand back into the cozy living area of the nest. He didn’t let go of Heath’s hand, following him as he used dimmers on the lights to make the room not so bright. Then he let him lead him to the couch and readily sat beside him.

“Pheromones,” Heath said. “Like with heat, but different. You’re pregnant with my child. Your brain recognizes that based on my pheromones.

That calms you. But fucking you will calm you more.”

“How do you know these things?”

“They teach alphas all of this. And remember there was an omega I bred who miscarried. But, in the early stages, before it all came to naught, he went through similar feelings.” Heath sounded ashamed to bring that up.

“Oh.” Adrien felt a nasty spot of jealousy grow on his heart. What was that about? The other omega was long gone. “You built this place for him?”

“No, I had another omega in mind.” He frowned.

Adrien studied him, trying to decide if he wanted to ask or if his jealousy would make it too hard.

“I could tell you about him,” Heath offered, though he didn’t seem to really want to discuss it. “The omega I had in mind.”

In a flash, Adrien decided. “No. I don’t want to hear about another omega that you wanted to make a child with.” He touched his stomach, thinking of the life within. “Let me pretend that you had this all built for me.” He smiled self-consciously. “It’s easier that way. I won’t be here forever, and it’s a nice fantasy.”

“You’re a sweet man.” Heath pulled Adrien close. “I want to feel your skin.”

“Yes, okay,” Adrien agreed. Then he flushed hot all over. “These jeans!”

he complained, tugging at the waist of them.

“Take them off.”

“I, uh, haven’t showered,” Adrien said softly, tugging the jeans and underwear down and kicking them off. He realized he had bare feet and had been out in the garden shoeless. Where was his mind? “I should shower.”

“No. I like the way you smell.” Heath smiled, running his hands over Adrien’s chest and down to his waist. He bent in close and sniffed at Adrien’s neck, the breath tickling him and making Adrien giggle. Heath removed Adrien’s glasses and put them on the arm of the couch.

“You like the way I smell, too,” Heath said, unbuttoning his shirt and tossing it aside. He wore a V-necked undershirt beneath, and he tugged it over his head. Then he reached around for Adrien’s nape and hauled him in.

“Sniff,” he ordered, holding Adrien’s face to his armpit. “Take a good, deep breath.”

As Adrien did, the sweaty scent of Heath’s pits filling his nostrils, he felt tension leach out of him.

“There,” Heath murmured.

“You’re more open here,” Adrien said when Heath released him and began to undress. “In the cabin, you were more closed off.”

Heath paused, bent over taking off his shoes and socks. He shoved them behind the giant ottoman serving as a kind of coffee table and then worked on undoing his pants. “I wasn’t sure if the pregnancy would take.” He sounded gruff now, like his throat was tight, and Adrien wondered if he was holding something back. “I didn’t want to feel…” He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t sure if an investment would be necessary. Now I know. You’re mine for the next few months. And I’m yours.”

He stripped naked as Adrien sat on the sofa and watched. Adrien’s cock throbbed and rose up against his stomach, and he shuddered in anticipation as Heath revealed his hairy chest, his buttocks, and the muscular thighs that Adrien remembered holding him open, while the giant cock, rising from a thick riot of pubes, had plowed into him.

He felt himself leak slick. Not nearly as much as during heat, but enough.

His nipples tingled and his balls rushed with omega fluid—devoid of sperm, but thick and pleasurable to spurt at orgasm. He might be ignorant of a lot of things about being pregnant, but he knew that omegas were sterile.

Heath sat down beside him and spread his legs. “C’mon, little one. Ride me,” he ordered.

Adrien’s thighs shook as he scrambled to obey. He straddled Heath’s hips and held himself upright with two hands on Heath’s shoulders. He gazed down at Heath’s face, staring into his gray eyes as he slowly lowered down until the tip of Heath’s huge cock pushed against his hole.

“Slick enough?” Heath asked. “Or should I finger you?”

The question alone made Adrien convulse and release another rush of slick, so that it slipped down his thighs and coated Heath’s cock.

“Slick enough, then.” Heath’s gravelly rasp sent shivers up and down Adrien’s spine.

Adrien threw his head back, a low moan escaping him, as Heath shoved in. Slow and hard, long and deep, until Adrien sat against his thighs with Heath’s cock buried balls deep. Adrien shifted experimentally and shuddered all over, his cock leaking pre-cum against his belly and smearing Heath’s, too.

Heath wrapped his arms around Adrien, bringing him in tight, and then pulled his head down to rest on his shoulder. “Now, just breathe here,” Heath murmured, holding Adrien close. “Feel me inside you.”

“This won’t hurt the baby?” Adrien asked, feeling how very deep Heath had plunged into him. He could feel the tip of Heath’s cock against the mouth of his womb.

“Fucking is good for him,” Heath said. “It bonds us. And it’s good for you. It relaxes your passage and hole. It’ll make it easier when it’s time for the birth.”

Adrien didn’t want to think about giving birth right then. He wanted to lose himself in the pleasure of having Heath’s thickness push hard against his prostate and slick glands.

“Now,” Heath said, “ride me.”

Adrien tentatively moved his hips and when Heath growled pleasurably, he moved them faster. He started with a circular motion, but soon that wasn’t enough. He bounced in Heath’s lap, gripping his shoulders but keeping his face tucked close to Heath’s neck, breathing in his delicious, masculine scent, as he fucked himself relentlessly on Heath’s cock.

“That’s it, little one,” Heath gritted out. “Hungry little slut. Take my cock.”

Adrien shuddered. He’d never imagined being called filthy names until the heat cabin when Heath had called him a slut. But he found he liked it. It

made him feel dirty, somehow, in a good way. A way that his father wouldn’t have understood—a way that made Adrien’s cock throb harder and his ass spasm convulsively around Heath’s big dick.

“I love it,” Adrien muttered, pressing his face tighter against Heath’s neck. “Feels so good.”

“Mm.” Heath rubbed his back and then just held on to him as Adrien did all the work.

Soon he was slick with sweat and aching all over. His cock dripped with pre-cum, smearing it all over Heath’s muscled stomach, and his nipples tingled from rubbing relentlessly against Heath’s hairy chest. He wanted to come without touching his cock, like he had in the heat cabin, but he couldn’t seem to get there.

Slick rushed out of him, until their thighs were wet and every slap of their skin stung. He moaned and clung to Heath harder, his body aching for orgasm, his skin feeling stretched too thin as he strove for it.

“Oh fuck,” Heath groaned, suddenly clutching Adrien’s ass and stilling his movements before fucking up into him roughly, wildly, holding Adrien tight enough that his cock rubbed against Heath’s muscles hard. He whispered, “Come for me, Adrien. Now. Come now.”

Adrien clenched Heath’s shoulders, pushed down with his ass, and felt himself open wide for Heath’s reckless plunging. His prostate lit up, a jolt like electricity up his spine, and he snapped his head up, eyes rolling back, as he found his shocking climax and pulsed into it.

“Fuck!” Heath yelled, and he kissed Adrien’s chest and throat, fucking him as the scent of Adrien’s spunk rose between them, slicking the channel of their bodies even more. “Good boy,” he moaned and ducked to kiss Adrien’s left nipple. “That’s my good boy.”

Then Heath shuddered all over, his cock growing harder in Adrien’s clinging channel, and he shot hard into Adrien’s quivering body. He felt Heath’s cum, hot and hard, jetting inside him, and he squeezed his asshole tight around Heath’s still-moving cock, desperate to keep his cum inside.

“That’s it, yes,” Heath murmured, shaking hard, his hips jerking uncontrollably. “Oh, fuck, that’s hot.”

Adrien’s cock shot off again between them, and Heath cried out, another volley of cum blasting into Adrien’s ass.

And then they calmed.

Adrien collapsed, sweaty and so tired, his cheek against Heath’s shoulder.

And Heath held him close, his head back against the couch, and his breath coming in heaving pants. Adrien was no better. He panted against Heath’s sweaty skin.

“Feel better?” Heath asked.

Adrien laughed, the absurdity of having just been fucked to calmness floating through his mind. And yet it had worked. He was too satisfied now to care much about what was going to happen next, or what it meant that he wouldn’t want to wear clothes, or what it meant to have the heir to this crazy castle and fortune growing in his belly.

He could just relax on Heath’s strong body, feeling his cock still twitching inside, and rest. It was okay to rest here. He was allowed.

He could learn to love this sense of safety and this full feeling of being plugged by Heath’s cock. He could learn to love a lot of things if it meant he could get fucked like this and then be held so tight after. He felt, for the first time since his father’s death, cherished and loved.

“WHERE DO YOU sleep?”

Heath was startled from the blissful reverie he’d been drifting in, stuffed deep into his omega’s body and scenting his relaxed pleasure as he cuddled on the couch in Heath’s arms. “What’s that?” he asked again, dragging his attention away from the fluorescent sensation of happiness glowing in his cells.

“Do you sleep with me or…?”

Heath picked up Adrien’s glasses from their safe spot on the arm of the couch and deposited them carefully on his face again. “I usually sleep in a room in the main section of the house.” He phrased it with deliberate vagueness, because he didn’t want to explain that it was the room Nathan had chosen when he moved in, and which Heath had never left. In fact, he was starting to think that he never wanted to explain to Adrien about Nathan at all. It was all better left in the past. “Why?”

“Oh.” Adrien tensed against him. “That’s fine.”

“Do you want me to sleep with you?” Heath asked, surprised that he hadn’t thought of it himself. His omega would need protection in the dark of

the night.

“It’s just that…” Adrien shivered against him, his asshole milking Heath’s cock lightly. “The bedroom is great in the daytime, but at night…the forest is…”

“I’ll stay with you. Protect you from the park’s deer,” Heath teased. But in reality, he was pleased. If Adrien wanted him in his bed already, then they were bonding well. Perhaps he wouldn’t be like Nathan and want to leave the child behind. Perhaps, he’d stay and…

Too soon. He shut off that line of thought.

“I don’t like that I can’t see if anyone is out there. Watching me.”

“The security for my property is incredibly tight, but there are window screens that you can pull down.” He almost regretted being honest about that.

What if Adrien didn’t want him to stay now?

“There are?”

“I’ll show you.”

“Okay.” But the stiffness in Adrien’s body returned. Heath could feel it in the tension around his cock and the tightness of the muscles of Adrien’s back.

“What?”

“If we pull the screens down, I’m sure I won’t be scared anymore. You won’t have to stay then.”

“But you want me to stay anyway?” Heath asked, sensing the truth in his body.

Adrien nodded.

“I want to stay with you, too,” Heath admitted. “In fact, I’d stay with you exactly like this forever if I could.” He pushed his cock up into Adrien a bit deeper.

Adrien smiled, but he said, “Simon would probably complain if he had to feed us while we’re stuck together.”

Heath chuckled, squeezing Adrien tight, and then he heaved up to standing with his cock still buried deep. Adrien’s legs went instinctively around his waist. “Let’s go to your bedroom. The books I was telling you about are in there.”

With great reluctance, he lifted Adrien off his cock, gratified by the boy’s shudder and gasp as his thick dick left him. He didn’t put him on his feet, though, enjoying the size difference between them, even if he did think Adrien needed to put on some weight. Heath carried Adrien easily, legs slung

over one arm and his back rested against his other. Adrien’s arms wrapped around Heath’s neck, and he helped support his weight.

“This is a little silly,” Adrien said, as they drew closer to his room.

“Being carried. I can walk.”

“Indulge me,” Heath said, inserting that edge of command that turned Adrien to mush. Predictably, Adrien relaxed in his arms and laid his head on Heath’s chest, rubbing his cheek against the hair there.

The room was neat except for the messy bed that Adrien hadn’t bothered to make when he got up from his nap earlier in the afternoon. Heath put Adrien down in the soft bed, lowered the window screens to block out the admittedly ominous night forest, and turned to the bookshelves. It was warm in the room with the space heaters going, but the windows had let a lot of it leach out, too.

Heath raised a brow, rethinking the whimsy of this glass-walled bedroom.

He’d imagined it as romantic for Nathan—because, of course, that was whom he’d built these rooms for. But then Nathan had never wanted to carry a child with him, and, worse, had preferred the rococo rooms above, being a dramatic sort of man. It’d hurt Heath when he’d realized that the nest he’d built as a lure to capture the man of his dreams had been rejected out of hand, along with his wish for a child.