I stifled a sigh. Did I want to be alone? Yes. Was I willing to relegate an Alpha who wanted to protect me to the level of an outdoor pet because I couldn’t control my hormones? No, of course not.
“I just noticed you were on your phone instead of eating,” I said quietly. “I thought maybe youdecided to eat when you got back to town.”
Otto’s brows creeped up and he looked at the table in front of him, his confusion clearing as a touch of pink colored his cheeks. “Um, I guess I forgot to fix something for me.”
“You were making food because you were so hungry that your stomach was growling, and you forgot to make some for yourself?” I repeated. “Areyoufeeling okay?”
Otto shrugged. “I’m fine. While I was trying to figure out what to fix for you, I realized I don’t know anything about pregnant people, so I guess I got distracted.”
Well, fuck if that didn’t have my stupid heart fluttering.
“What are you reading?”
Otto silently handed his phone over and I saw he was on the Reddit entry for pregnant male Omega.
“Oh.”
“Is that a bad place to start?” Otto sounded concerned. “I just started with Google and it took me there.”
I scanned it for a minute and handed Otto his phone back. “It looks okay,” I said. “I mean, what do you need to know?”
Otto’s brow furrowed again, and it was tempting to tease him that it was going to stick that way if he didn’t stop.
“Well, everything, right? I mean, I already told you I’m not leaving, and I can’t very well take care of you if I don’t know what I’m doing, can I?”
Okay, that made more sense. He was just concerned about making sure he knew what to expect while he wasprotecting me, so all I had to do was convince him I was fine on my own.
I stacked a piece of cheese between two crackers and handed it to him before selecting a slice of apple for myself.
“What’s that for?”
“You made plenty for us to share while you read,” I pointed out, making another cheese and cracker sandwich for myself and settling back in the corner of the couch to pull the blanket up. “No point in letting it go to waste.”
~*~
Otto
Okaay. Dex pinballed from anxious to get rid of me to accepting my presence to sharing a plate of food so quickly that I had mental whiplash. Assuming it was just the manifestation of the moodiness the earlier chapter covered, I tried to let it roll off my back and settled back into my reading, occasionally sneaking side glances at Dex. He was curled up in the blanket, reaching for bites off the snack plate every so often as he stared out the window at the trees barely visible in the low light of dusk.
I was about an hour into my reading when the topics got, well, spicier.
From the increased sex drive to the various positions considered safe at which points during the pregnancy, my body was responding to the clinical explanations in a decidedly non-clinical way.
My heart rate increased. My cock drew up to full attention. And when I scrolled to the next page, the pencil sketches of the body changes a typical male Omega went through had saliva pooling in my mouth. It wasn’t the pencil sketches somuch as it was the images of Dex naked that my dirty mind was superimposingoverthe sketches that had me so horny that I had to fight to control myself.
Unfortunately, there was one tell that I couldn’t control, and it was only a few minutes before my arousal was filling the small room with pheromones.
I snuck a peek over at Dex and found him watching me through lowered lashes. His lower body was covered by the blanket, but he was breathing hard, and his neck and cheeks were streaked with a dark flush of arousal.
“Sorry,” I muttered, cursing my humiliating lack of control. “I guess reading about horny Omegas is a little too close to porn.” I tapped on the screen to close the app and stood up, shoving the phone into my back pocket. “I, um, think I’ll take a walk to clear my head a little. Maybe check the perimeter while I’m out there.”
Dex didn’t answer, he just continued to watch me from under his lashes as I strode out of the cabin, carefully closing the door behind me.
The air was crisp with the slight chill that comes in the late spring and early fall. All around me I could hear the sounds of the forest as I wandered, the calls of the night birds, the rustle of small critters in the layer of old leaves on the ground. As hard as I was trying to redirect my thought process to the much more innocent surroundings, nothing was working. My dick was trying to drill a hole through my jeans and my fingers itched to map every inch of Dex’s ripening body.
I finally gave up on distracting myself and slipped behind a large copse of young aspen trees, the narrow trunks providing me with enough cover to have my movements shielded from thecabin while still allowing me to see if anyone approached before I returned.
Hidden from view, I ripped the front of my jeans open and shoved them down to let my erection spring free. Instead of trying to block that shame the way I usually did when I took myself in hand to thoughts of Dex, I leaned into it and refused to let myself enjoy the act. I gripped my cock too hard and instead of using the precum oozing from my tip to ease the way, I let my calloused palm and fingers rasp almost painfully against the tender skin of my cock.
