Page 39 of Broken Ice
Emilio watched him carefully. “Good?”
“Yeah.” Beau parted his lips again. This time, it was a piece of pineapple. It was too big to get all at once, so he bit into it, liquid staining his chin.
A sharp, overwhelming acidity cut Beau’s tongue. He wrinkled his nose, mouth puckering.
Emilio went very tense.
“Augh,” Beau said. “Stingy.”
Emilio looked at the piece of pineapple in his hand and thenflungit across the room.
“What the fuck?” Beau yelped as it splattered against a wall.
“It wasn’t good,” Emilio said simply.
Beau gaped at him. The lunacy of just chucking food away because it ‘wasn’t good’ was too much to argue about.
Emilio held another morsel aloft. A grape. Beau took it and chewed carefully, but it was fine—nice and firm.
Beau nodded. Emilio relaxed.
Beau chomped happily on the fruit for a while, something dawning on him slowly. “Wait, did you bring this with you?”
“Yeah,” Emilio answered distractedly, waving some strawberry in front of Beau’s lips.
Beau dodged it. “But when did you cut it up? You didn’t know my heat was today.”
Emilio grunted in frustration as Beau refused to eat. “I’ve been doing it every morning for the last few days.” He shook the strawberry menacingly.
Beau took it. He swallowed. “That sounds like a lot of work.”
“It wasn’t. Grape, Beau.”
Beau took the grape.
The heat was still simmering underneath Beau’s skin, approaching its end but not quite there yet. It felt different, suddenly, to be fed like this, knowing Emilio had prepared it especially for him.
He rested his cheek on Emilio’s chest. There was a sort of pleasant haze descending on him, filling him up with cotton candy.
“You’re a really good Alpha,” Beau mumbled.
Emilio went absolutely still. “What?”
“You’re a really good Alpha,” Beau repeated, brushing his fruit-sticky lips against Emilio’s neck. “I’m full now.”
Emilio’s scentburst. It was coloured sparks in the air, sizzling with the rich forest smell of him.
There was shifting—Emilio setting the Tupperware aside, probably. Beau hummed dreamily as Emilio bundled him closer, hand stroking through Beau’s curly hair.
And then Beau started purring.
The thing was…Beau didn’tpurr. It just wasn’t something he did. Sure, after he’d first presented at thirteen, he’d done it quitea lot, even by Omega standards. He’d been the kind of kid that let it all out there, couldn’t help himself.
Noah had teased him mercilessly about it. Which, whatever—they teased each other about everything. It wasn’t like it hadtraumatisedBeau. Their dad purred at them all the time.
Things changed the day he went and did it in the locker room.
It was one of the most embarrassing things Beau had ever done.
