Beckett didn’t even try to hide the fierce grin.
Jack didn’t hide his pleasure, either. Beckett shifted closer, pressing himself flush against the duch. Fingers fretted at his thigh, and he caught the small hand and lifted it. He set it on Jack’s shoulder, even as he wrapped an arm around the narrow waist and tugged him closer to his own body.
“Yes?” Jack asked. “Like this? All of us together?”
The duch nodded hesitantly.
Jack didn’t kiss him. “Why, darling? Is it because you want your alpha here with you? Or because you feel youshouldallow him to be here, because you think your claim on me is somehow less and you are deferring to him?”
Oh. Beckett stepped back sharply.
The duch had been using him as a support, more than likely unaware of it, and he wobbled.
Jack aimed a quelling look over the top of the duch’s head, silently ordering Beckett to stay. Beckett narrowed his eyes. Jack narrowed his back, even as his lips twitched.
“Jack,” the duch said faintly.
“Arden?”
“Don’t…that is a terrible thing…you must know that I…”
He petered out.
No one stepped in to fill the silence.
“You must know that I…I w-want him here. He should be, I think? If that’s all right with you?”
“Of course it is,” Jack said. “It’s why I asked?—”
“Not you,” the duch interrupted, and astonished both Beckett and Jack when he turned to look up at Beckett. “If that’s all right with you?”
Beckett frowned. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
The duch shifted with discomfort. “Um. Because Jack is your lover and you might not like it if he kisses me?”
“He’s your husband.”
“But your lover.”
“Right. And I’myourlover.”
The duch’s cheeks scorched, and his pupils expanded even as he hummed in nervous assent. “That was just last night, though. For my…for my heat. You and Jack have a proper relationship, and I’d hate to insert myself—oh.”
Beckett decided that everyone had danced around each other’s feelings for more than long enough.
He stepped into the duch’s space, cupped his face, and lifted him up onto his toes for a firm kiss. He took a moment to revel in the dazed expression and the rosy, parted lips, then turned him by the shoulders and pushed him into Jack’s arms, following him in.
Now Jack cupped the duch’s face—that fine skin, so soft and hot—and leaned down. Once again, he hovered above the duch’s lips. This time, the duch wasn’t having it. He stretched up with a little bounce and pressed his mouth sweetly to Jack’s smile.
And that, apparently, was it.
He dropped flat.
Beckett spun the duch, caught his chin with bossy fingers, and leaned down.
“Like this,” he said, resting his lips over the duch’s hot ones. He nudged the duch’s lips until the duch parted them hesitantly. Beckett flicked out his tongue. The duch’s eyes were screwed shut, a faint crease between his brows. Beckett watched him as he glided his tongue slowly and obscenely alongside the duch’s, and then he watched Jack.
Drawing back softly, he turned the duch to Jack. “Now you try,” he whispered in the duch’s ear.
