A few hours after leaving Arden, they were tucked up for the night in The Hare’s Rest, one of the nicer inns on the road to Sevennis.
They ate a hearty stew supper chased with a pint of stout apiece at in the taproom. Up in their chamber, Jack wrote his fancy love letter to Arden, Beckett growled at him for poking fun at Beckett’s message about holding hands, and the whole time, Beckett had an itch at the back of the neck. An uneasy prickling, whispering that his omega was alone and he shouldn’t be.
He shouldn’t be.
It was just one of those things, Beckett told himself. He’d be feeling the same way if they were all at Avendene and Arden was in the next room, just out of sight.
One of those alpha/omega things, that was all.
Nothing to worry about.
Arden was fine.
Jack pulled back from kissing him. “Am I boring you?” he asked with enough edge to bring Beckett back to the present, to the bed they were sharing, and to the fact Jack had a thigh between his and, until a moment ago, his tongue in Beckett’s mouth.
“Yeah,” Beckett said, because he was in the mood to get Jack stirred up.
Jack gave him a fierce smile.
“S’all right, though,” Beckett said. “Been a long day. Old man like you’s probably a bit too knackered to really get going. Whyn’t you lie back and I’ll jerk off on you?”
“Oh,” Jack said with a dangerous glint in his eye. “It’s like that, is it?”
“Yeah.” Beckett pecked him sweetly on the lips, the way Arden would.
“Why don’tyoulie back instead?” Jack said, and did his best to pin Beckett to the mattress.
Beckett saw it coming in the way Jack’s muscles tensed before he lunged. Beckett was a brawler. Grew up scrapping in the slums, got paid for it as adult, and though he’d been living soft since he came to Avendene, there’s some skills you don’t ever forget.
Jack, though? You’d think a duke wouldn’t have the first clue how to handle himself. Not really. Not beyond a sexy romp in bed.
That’s what Beckett had thought when they first started up, at any rate.
Turned out Jack had got in his own fair share of scraps with the stable lads and servants around his age when he was growing up, as well as a fair portion of the village children.
All of whom, Marl had told him, had been determined to get their licks in before Jack grew up, became the duke, and started thinking he was better than them.
He drew quite a bit of attention from the local bullyboys looking to grind some humility into him, Marl said, alphas and betas alike. Once, an omega. And didn’t eight-year-old Jack go around hissing about that one for weeks? She was theblacksmith’s daughter, and she’d kicked Jack’s noble arse clean into her papa’s horse trough.
Beckett had been amazed.
He’d thought little Jack was all but carried around on a silken cushion, like some of the high-born omegas do with their lapdogs.
Marl had near burst with laughter at that comment. Couldn’t run and share it with Mrs Foley fast enough.
Point was, Jack knew just fine how to fight, and he fought dirtier than Beckett, which took some getting used to, refined nob as he was supposed to be.
So him showing his hand before he went for the flip was deliberate, and Beckett met him halfway.
They had a time of it that night, getting overheated in the small room, thrashing and grunting around, knocking the bed about until the ceiling of the taproom below them most likely rained plaster dust.
Both of them taking out their sexual frustration on the other.
Beckett let Jack have it, in the end.
He was still tender-feeling about nearly losing the man. Sometimes he woke in the night with a racing heart, thinking that he could…he could have gone the rest of his life, decades and decades of it, without Jack.
He’d have had Arden, possibly, but only if he’d pulled his own head out of his arse.
