There were only a couple of weeks until I went into heat once again. I was dreading it.
“Not really,” I sighed. The idea of my heat had kept me up at night more than once. “I’ve been too busy to date. Not that I want to. Things are still… too fresh,” I finished softly. We danced around our feelings most of the time, trying to keep a strictly friendship boundary. There were days when that was harder than others.
“Right,” he sympathized. “I’m going to make a really bold proposal considering… everything.”
“What?” I straightened. Anticipation fizzled through my gut. I knew what I wanted him to ask.
“I miss you, Brady. This isn’t me asking for us to try again, but I miss seeing you. Would you let me share your heat with you?”
A simple question, but one that stayed with me over the next few days. Xavi suggested I think it over, then maybe think of some ground rules before we went ahead with my heat. The pros and cons of Xavier taking me through it had me spending several sleepless nights before I caved and called Mom.
Sure, I could have asked Jae for advice. He was always ready with a sympathetic ear. He just wasn’t particularly worldly when it came to relationships and sex. His upbringing had impressed upon him a need for a relationship before being intimate. Jae didn’t do hookups, though he didn’t look down on me for my past. If I wanted to have a stream of alphas through my bedroom, he wouldn’t judge me, it just wasn’t something he could do.
Mom was more pragmatic than Jae. He’d had several flings and a couple of serious relationships before he met and mated with Dad. Another reason why Dad’s mom hadn’t liked him. Dad had been raised Catholic. We’d tried to give Grandma what she wanted, with us attending church, but it wasn’t us. Mom was too liberal about everything for that life.
In my home growing up, sex and pleasure were never taboo subjects. My parents were open about heats and ruts since they didn’t know how we would present until we were in our teens. I was the eldest of four, with twin alpha brothers and an omega sister. Despite the six-year age gap between me and my sister, we had grown closer once she had presented, and we had often discussed our heats. I’d left her out of this mess with Xavier with her off at college. Concentrating on coursework and exams was more important than my drama.
“It’s coming up on your heat again, everything okay?” Not even sparing the time to say hello, Mom cut straight to the heart of the matter.
“Xavi offered to take me through my heat instead of me using a service or finding a hookup,” I blurted out, also forgoingthe pleasantries. I could just imagine the fond smile Mom was wearing.
“Alright. Walk me through what you feel.”
“It makes sense because I’ve been with him before—”
“What you feel, Brady. Where’s your heart at? Let’s not pretend you don’t care about that man.”
“I—I think about him all the time. When I get up in the morning and see a text from him, it gives me a high for the rest of the day. Just knowing he’s thinking about me as much as I think about him is… it keeps what I feel for him alive.”
“So, what’s the problem? You’re in love with the man, why not share your heat with him? Is he bad in bed? He can’t be if you want to go back to him after all the shit you’ve been through.”
“Ugh, he’s the best in bed! There were a couple of times that Gio suggested just me and Xavi hang out, probably because he was fucking Candice, but those times were so intimate. Xavi really knows how to work my body.”
“Still not seeing the problem, sweetheart.”
“Gio told me to stay away from Xavier, and there’s the mess of the divorce, which still isn’t final. There’s always this worry he’ll go back to Gio and have that picture-perfect family life I’m not sure I can give him.”
Mom swore an impressive line of expletives. “I never should have let my parents push us into the genetic testing. It’s caused more harm than good. Not that your grandmother on your dad’s side was any better.”
Although they likely had good reasons for it, my grandparents had us all tested for dominant and recessive gender traits when my sister presented. My brothers were just your garden-variety alphas, and my sister a regular omega. It was only me who was different. Recessive. Likely to struggle with fertility. Now imagine being told that at eighteen. Messed up, right?
Dad’s mom was worse somehow. Born in Colombia, she had come to the US for school and ended up staying when she fell pregnant. She had raised Dad alone and put her messed up feelings of shame onto him. He went away to school and met Mom. When Grandma found out he’d mated Mom, she disowned him, because she thought male omegas were “unnatural.” Lovely, huh? She came back into our lives later, but when early signs suggested I was an omega and Dad tired of all the loathsome things she kept saying about Mom, my parents cut her off for good. Good riddance.
“It’s fine, Mom.”
“No, it isn’t, and if they weren’t dead already, I’d be giving them a mouthful.” I could hear him pacing and a few muttered insults. “You deserve a good alpha to take you through your heat. Why don’t you just treat this as a friends with benefits thing? If it gets too emotional for you after your heat, you can cut the cord.”
“Wouldn’t that just be me using Xavier?”
Mom gave a loud chuckle. “Honey, he’s offering. Why are you turning down a decent knot? Shove those feelings out of the way and enjoy it.” His tone was softer, the humor gone. “Brady, if you can trust this guy to look after you when you’re at your most vulnerable, don’t turn it down for fear of your heart getting involved. It might be what you need to make the decision about Xavier’s place in your life.”
When he put it like that, he had a point. I ended the call with him soon after. For the following hour, I made my list of rules, then took a pic, sent it to Xavier, and waited.
A week later, my heat began, and just like we’d arranged, Xavier was waiting on my doorstep to take me through it.
The smile he wore when I opened the door was blinding. He reached down to cup my cheek, brushing along the arch with a butterfly-soft touch. “Can I kiss you?”
I smirked. “We’re about to do a whole lot more than kissing, but yes.” I went onto my tiptoes as he leaned down to meet me. Our kiss was only a brief touch of lips, yet it set my nerves alight. His pheromones settled around me like a hug. I stepped aside to make room for him to enter. “You’d better get in here before we give my neighbors a performance they won’t forget!”
