BECKETT
“Have you had an omega before?” Marl asked.
Beckett looked at him incredulously. “Course I have.”
“Of course.” Marl shook his head.
Beckett was twenty-seven. He’d sampled every flavour of partner he cared to. He’d made a proper survey, just to be sure where his tastes lay. He’d tried out men and women, alphas, betas, and omegas. One after the other. All combinations.
He landed on alpha men, as he’d always known he would.
Sometimes, he wished it was different.
After all,anyonewould have been a better choice for him to fall for than an alpha duke, forever out of reach.
“Beckett—” Marl began, determination clear in the set of his jaw.
Nope. He didn’t want to hear it. “It’s fine,” Beckett said.
Marl ploughed on. “I know that you and His Grace?—”
He didn’t want to hear it. “Am I fucking the duch or not?” he demanded, being deliberately crude about it to stop Marl from feelingsorryfor him, right to his face.
Marl fixed Beckett with a frosty glare.
“Sir,” Beckett added, and bared his teeth. “Am I fucking the duch or not,sir?”
“You’re lucky I can’t fire you,” Marl said calmly.
“Yeah? You’re lucky I’ve agreed to do this, or Ja—His Grace—would do a lot worse than fire you if he got back home to find you’d let his pretty little duch die on your watch.”
Marl paled.
“For godssake,” Beckett said, and shook the aggression from his rigid muscles. “I apologise. I don’t know what’s got into me.”
They both knew full well it was the pheromones and the sounds of distress coming through the door that had got into him.
Beckett was already losing control and he wasn’t even in the room yet.
Marl clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s get it done. Be as kind as you can. It’s…” Marl winced. “It’s his first heat, as I understand it.”
Beckett gaped. “You’re shitting me.”
“No, I’m not. Sadly. Also, it’s his first time.”
“His what?”
“First time. At all.”
“But…? He’s married.”
He was married toJack.
“They didn’t have any time together before His Grace was pulled away by the Council.” Marl frowned. “I assumed His Grace explained it in his letter?”
Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. The letter was stuffed at the bottom of Beckett’s personal trunk along with Jack’s other letters, and his mam’s brooch. All the things Beckett didn’t want. The things he couldn’t let go.
“You telling me that not only am I servicing the duch through his heat, I’m popping his cherry?”
