“An… omega?” Mal asked. His lips tightened while his grip on Vincent weakened. Vincent braced himself for the worst. “Are you serious?”
“I am.” Vincent kept his tone even, doing his best to raise his defenses in anticipation of rejection. “I’m on hormone replacement therapy. I needed to tell you before we get too involved—I won’t lead you on. You deserve to know the truth.”
“I never would have known,” Mal whispered in awe. “The way you smell, the way you feel, the way you behave…”
“Iaman alpha.” Vincent took a breath in, but it pinched his lungs. He let it out more quickly than he would have liked, losing the stability it would have given him. “In everything but what parts I have on the inside, it’s who I am. But I have to let you know, because it means that I willneverknock you up. I’ll never be able to knot you with my cock alone.”
Mal paused. He blinked. Then he met Vincent’s gaze, his head tilted to the side just slightly. “… So?”
Stunned silence. Vincent’s mind tried, and failed, to find an answer.
In the same way that Vincent had brushed aside their age difference when Mal had been insecure, Mal now undid Vincent’s doubts with a single word. Two letters. A single inflection.
So?
It had always been a big deal before—the kind of news that made people think twice. Vincent wasn’t prepared for acceptance.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Shook his head. “I don’t want to disappoint you.”
“Are you going to come home with me tonight?” Mal asked. His grip readjusted, allowing his arms to lock around Vincent’s neck again. He pushed himself back into place, rubbing his bulge against Vincent’s thigh.
Vincent slid his hands around Mal’s waist by instinct alone—his thoughts were so muddled and confused that he was barely able to piece together what was going on. “Yes.”
“Then you’re not going to disappoint me.” Mal kissed him then, a simple, sweet kiss that, when paired with his words, made Vincent’s cock twitch. “Come home with me, baby. I don’t care who you were born as—all I care about is that you’re Vincent. I want you whether you can knot me or not.”
The bottom of Vincent’s stomach dropped out, not in fear or dread, but in staggering disbelief. He wanted to say something—anything—to tell Mal how much what he’d said had meant to him, but words were insufficient.
As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Mal tangled his fingers in Vincent’s hair and tugged him in for a kiss that stole the breath from Vincent’s lungs and filled the now bottomless space in his stomach with its sweetness and its passion. He kissed back hungrily, desperate to know that he was accepted—that, despite his physical incongruities, he was wanted.
When the kiss broke, Mal stayed near his lips. To a nearly hypnotic rhythm, he moved his hips and pushed his erection against Vincent again and again. The primal, possessive part of Vincent’s mind urged him to take, to claim, to make his, and he pushed Mal against his car with more force than he had before, wanting him.
“I know that you can’t get me pregnant from sex,” Mal whispered, filling the small space between them with his words. “But over the next few days, you’re going to be pushing my body to the peak of fertility, and I’m going to need some help to get through it. Do you think that you can help give my body what it wants, baby? Convince it that we’re doing our best to get pregnant?”
Vincent’s cock throbbed, and he responded not by words, but by action. What thoughts did fire were basic, and they all said the same thing.
Take him. Mate him.Breedhim.
He’d do his best to get Mal pregnant, both in the lab, and out of it.
23
Vincent
The door to Mal’s apartment closed. In the next second, Vincent had Mal pinned against it. Their lips met again, and Mal mewled into his mouth, the sound so delightful that Vincent craved to sample it again. While Mal ran his fingers through Vincent’s hair, Vincent found the billowy midsection of his shirt and tugged, freeing the front of it from below Mal’s belt. When the fabric was freed, his hand dipped beneath it, discovering the softness of Mal’s skin all over again.
Mal made another sound. It stuck in his throat, pitched and pleasurable, and Vincent took it as the permission he needed to keep going. His hand discovered the flatlands of Mal’s stomach, the subtle musculature of his abs, the pearls of his nipples…
Fuck.
The kiss broke. Vincent gasped for breath, but even as he struggled to recover, he kept tweaking Mal’s nipple. This was the man who wanted him despite knowing the truth—who appreciated Vincent for who he was, rather than who society said he needed to be.
The man Vincent was going to knock up.
His cock twitched, and he rolled his hips so Mal could feel his need. Mal whimpered sweetly—a sound that only made Vincent want him more.
“You want my cock inside you, Daddy?” Vincent asked. He pressed a hot kiss to the corner of Mal’s lips, then hung his head so his forehead rested against the door. His hips rocked against Mal steadily, letting Mal feel how he’d take him if only they were stripped—recreating the sensations they’d shared on their scorching night together in Vincent’s hotel room. “I gave you your shot today to get your body ready for me. Are you wet for me yet? Wanna pump my cum inside of you. I might not be able to get you pregnant, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t try.”
“Baby,” Mal uttered, already sounding lost to his lust. “Oh, baby…”
