He nodded.
“Arden asked me to let him ‘go away’.”
“What’s that mean?” Beckett snapped. “He wanted a holiday?”
Jack smiled faintly and lifted a hand to rub at his jaw. He hadn’t shaved that morning. “No. He wanted me to let him remove himself from this…situation.” He gestured between him and Beckett.
“What’s that mean?” Beckett demanded again.
“What happened between you two?” Jack countered.
“You know what happened.” Beckett stalked over to the bay window. “I fucked him like he needed. Like he wanted. Likeyouwanted.” He stared out across the vast lawn. In the distance, beyond the stand of chestnuts, the sun glittered on the lazy river.That was what made his vision sparkle. The sun. He blinked rapidly.
Jack came to stand behind him. After a moment, Beckett took a deep breath and turned to face him.
They stared at each other in silence. Beckett searched Jack’s face for disapproval, disappointment, anger. For any of the things he’d be feeling for Beckett right now, if Beckett really had managed to screw up Jack’s marriage within forty-eight hours of them all being together in the same place. The only thing he saw was that sympathy.
Beckett’s stomach clenched. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, feeling suddenly very young, in a way that he hadn’t even when hewasyoung. He dropped his gaze to the floor and glared at his boots.
Jack, damn him, just waited.
“I was…I was fucking…I was angry with him!” Beckett burst out. He reached up and clasped the back of his neck, squeezing for comfort.
Jack stepped in, bringing their bodies together. He brushed Beckett’s hand away, laid his own over Beckett’s nape, and held him.
Beckett had never let anyone touch him here. Not quite like this, with this intent and purpose. He was an alpha. This wasn’t the way an alpha touched another alpha; they didn’t submit to it. But Beckett did, because he needed it, and because this was Jack, who he’d thought he’d lost.
He softened and slumped against Jack’s body. Fine. No point in holding back now. He wound his arms around Jack’s waist, and rested his forehead on Jack’s shoulder.
“Thought I’d lost you,” he muttered into Jack’s shirt. “Thought you’d died.”
Jack squeezed gently. His other arm looped around Beckett’s back.
“I can’t lose you,” Beckett said, turning his head just enough to brush his cheek against the warm skin at the base of Jack’s throat. He wanted to bite it. He didn’t. He wasn’t a complete idiot, though you couldn’t tell from the way he’d been carrying on.
Jack ran a soothing hand up and down Beckett’s ribs. “I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of this, I truly am.”
Beckett grunted, got a sneaky kiss in on the skin beneath his lips, and pushed himself upright, gathering himself as he did.
Jack released him with reluctance.
“I found you unconscious,” Beckett said. He frowned, then reached out and smacked Jack’s arm. “Don’t ever take suppressants again. If anyone needs to do it, I will. I’m younger. I can bear it better.” The tight band around his chest loosened at Jack’s smile. Beckett blew out a hard breath. “I was angry,” he said. “Gods, I was angry. I let him see it. Hear it.”
“Ah. That’s why he’s afraid of you.”
Beckett’s heart spasmed. “He’s afraid of me?”
“Did you think he wouldn’t be? You said it to me yourself.Be gentle. Were you gentle with him, Beckett?”
Unfamiliar heat scorched Beckett’s cheeks. He scrubbed at his face as if he could scrub away the shame. He couldn’t. “I’m not used to you refined folk,” he said defensively.
“It’s got nothing to do with him being ‘refined’,” Jack said. “I asked you to help with his heat for two reasons. One, because I was foolish enough to hope that we could all…never mind. It isn’t likely to happen now. The other reason is because you’re experienced where I am not, and?—”
“Hold up. To hope we could all what? What isn’t going to happen?”
Jack contemplated him. “I never intended to marry Arden,” he said eventually. “I never intended to be in Arden’s life at all. I intended to have someone else at my side. I still do.”
Beckett frowned.
