“No, not then, the planning went like clockwork as usual.” Her voice is quieter, but I don’t miss a word. “Max picked a couple of possible candidates to help with the heat and I made an offer to the first. He took a weekend to decide, but I knew he’d accept.”
“Wait,youasked an alpha to assist?” Somehow, I hadn’t picked up on that nuance of their relationship.
“Yeah, we figured out years ago that if he handled the arrangements—especially meeting and inviting alphas or packs to help us—they tended to ignore me or treat me as hired help, then got pissy when I told them what not to do with him.” She snorts, and I pity the fools who tried that.
“So we worked out a better way. He chose people who smelled good to him. Acquaintances only, so he didn’t have to run into them often, if at all, afterward. I met them and made the offer if I thought I could work with them.”
That’s so quintessentially Johanna: taking on more work to make things run smoother in personal life, as she so often does in business. She has a deep service orientation. We’ve talked over the years about the need for her to delegate work rather than taking it all on herself. Max deserved that measure of devotion, yet learning about this leaves me wondering what else I missed between them despite working and living side by side,what other nuances to their relationship, how they adjusted to each others’ needs.
“Was there a problem with the alpha?”
“No,” she snaps, then stops and makes a pitiful sound. “Well, yes, but not what you’re thinking.”
I had no idea what she thought I was thinking, except that so many things could go wrong during heats. I’d helped friends and acquaintances out a few times when I was young and stupidly fearless. Merely coordinating multiple bodies in the narrow confines of nests could get very complicated very fast, quite apart from juggling all the various protective instincts, and different layers of dominance, and comfort with accidental body contact. There were also the complex logistics of knotting and locking, dealing with bodies stuck together for lengthy periods of time.
Add in sexual preferences—or the lack thereof—and things get even more fraught.
Since Max was my cousin, I stayed away for Max’s heats. Even my assistance as an outside aide, providing food and drink was turned down, so I’d never seen him acting in a sexual way. Sensual, yes; he loved fine fabrics and food and, given the public gifts he exchanged with Johanna over the years, adored dressing her up. Romantic, definitely, not least the way he cuddled with Johanna. But sexual? No.
I had a hard time imagining him as an omega in heat. Lost in the sexual haze that overtook omegas for days on end. A writhing body desperately seeking knots or locks to relieve the unrelenting, intense drive for intercourse.
“So the alpha was and wasn’t a problem?” I ask.
“Nnn.” She wiggles against me, a dangerous move that has me angling my torso to the side so she doesn’t brush my half-hard erection. “I probably shouldn’t name him. We made himsign a non-disclosure agreement as a precaution, and anonymity cuts both ways.”
“Call him the alpha.” My inner alpha sniffs at that—I’mthe alpha, thank you very much—but is too interested in her sharing and the way her body lines up with mine to growl.
“The alpha, then. He arrived on time, which is more than I could say for Max, who always pushed the limit of when to head home.” She’s smiling, which warms her voice, and for a moment seems to relax. “Max got on his high horse, but the alpha handled it very well, making it clear that, while Max might call most of the shots during the heat, he wasn’t a passive follower.”
A rill of envy runs through me at the admiration in her voice, but I quash it.
“When Max’s heat started, he fit right in.” She sits up, covers pooling around her waist. The woman gazing down at me is the capable chief operating officer I deal with on a daily basis, glorious in her surety of competence.
A burst of sweetness wafts from her. “I’ve been doing this long enough that I know how to ensure Max gets the minimum sex required to make it through. Basically, pack in orgasms and knots and lock toys fast and hard to sate his omega so he crashes, stay away during his lucid periods so he can ignore or deny what’s happening as much as possible, and wait until his omega emerges ready for the next round.”
The competence remains, but her surety drains away as she hunches, hugging herself, and the sourness returning. “But this time, Max’s peaks were steeper and the drops faster, lower, and longer. He spent more time resting, if not sleeping, and the heat ended early. They’d been getting shorter as he got older, from four days when I first met him down to just over two—but his last was only a day and a half and it ended.”
She lies back down, pulling the covers up and tucking her head against my shoulder.
Fighting down the urge to demand more information, I wait. Pushing might stop the flow and, despite the flares of sourness, she’s showing more ease and less angst. One hand even creeps up to draw curves and circles against my chest.
Which only makes staying still next to her tougher as more blood flows to my cock.
My patience is rewarded when she finally continues.
“I liked the alpha.” Warmth returns to her voice. “He caught on without much instruction, and by the second hour, everything was running smooth as could be.”
Does she even realize she’s drawing hearts over where mine beats? If so, no telling whether it’s for him or for me.
“With all the lows, the alpha and I had time to talk. He’d lost his pack a year or so earlier—two of them, a female alpha and a male beta—in a car accident. The way he talked about them made it clear they had the kind of pack relationship I thought I’d end up with way back when, until I realized it wouldn’t ever happen to me and Max.”
Not particularly surprising. She’d grown up in a pack, most of her siblings packed up, and when Max bought this house, she’d welcomed me and my family with open arms and no hint that she might have wanted to live with him alone.
We haven’t reached whatever caused her nightmare, though. Her hand stills against my chest, flat over my heart. I resume my calming strokes along her back, and despite the tension in her muscles, she arches into my touch.
“A day and a half in, Max’s omega demanded knots and locks, so we tag teamed him ... ah.” She licks her lips and tilts her head, eyes catching the dim light as she gazes up at me. “How much detail do you want?”
“Whatever you want to share.” No matter that I’d prefer less about Max, this is for her to lay aside some of the load she’s carrying.
