Page 49 of His Reward
There were about fifty things wrong with what he said and the way he said it, but that wasn’t what struck mehardest. Lucien was flushed. He was emotional and not thinking rationally. And as he stepped back like he would get up in my face and argue with me, the rush of his strawberry ice cream scent nearly bowled me over.
I quickly counted back. The omega auction had been roughly six months ago. Right on schedule, Lucien was going into heat.
“Stop,” I said in an entirely different, calm and commanding tone. I moved close to him and grabbed his upper arms, holding him firmly. “Take a deep breath. Center yourself.”
“Get off me!” Lucien snapped, trying to pull away. A second later, he blinked as realization hit him. “No!” he groaned, trying to wriggle out of my hold for an entirely different reason. “No, not now. It can’t happen now. I’m not ready.”
My heart ached and twisted inside me at the sudden shift in Lucien’s emotions. Panic rushed in where anger had been before, and along with the instinctive lust in Lucien’s eyes as he looked pleadingly up at me, I saw way more fear than I wanted to.
“You’re going to be alright,” I told him, tightening my grip on his arms so he could feel I had this. “We’ll go upstairs and handle things. The guys have already escorted your father out. They can take charge in the firehouse while we take care of you.”
“I don’t want this,” Lucien said sagging and trembling slightly in my grasp but not yet turning to me for comfort. “I’m not ready. I…what if I can’t with my scars. What if it changes everything.” He looked down instead of up at me, which was even worse than seeing pain in his eyes.
I wasn’t having any of this. A part of me thought I should have pushed the issue of intimacy in the last couple of weeks that Lucien had been staying with me and sleeping in my bed. I knew we’d both been horny for each other, more often than not, but I hadn’t truly understood that Lucien’s fear and self-consciousness were bigger than his desire.
Now he was in heat, and whether he liked it or not, heat trumped any kind of fear.
I made an instant decision and ran with it.
“I don’t want to hear another word out of you, boy,” I said in a deep, almost threatening voice, leaning closer to him. “You’ll do as I say and you won’t talk back to me.”
Lucien snapped his head up and stared at me. I could see the conflict in his eyes as his skin flushed hotter. He wasn’t going to gleefully slip into playtime the way he had when I’d taped him up and taken him from his house, but there was a spark of acceptance in his eyes.
“I’m scared,” he whispered, eyes going glassy.
The man was going to break my heart. Every protective, alpha instinct in me roared that he was mine to protect and love and take through this heat as smoothly as possible. My only regret was that Lucien had run out onto the sidewalk in front of the firehouse, and because of that, there were a decent number of people around who might have been alarmed if I’d scooped him up, thrown him over my shoulder, and carried him inside.
“Come,” I ordered instead, switching to take his hand.
Lucien gasped and lurched after me as I headed back into the firehouse, possibly because I grasped his left hand. I could feel the rough scar tissue against my palm, but it didn’t phase me at all. I’d already seen every inch of Lucien’s scarring, and I didn’t care.
As soon as we crossed through the station and into the stairwell that would take us up to my apartment, I startled Lucien by dropping his hand and pushing him up against the wall. He let out a cry as I clamped my hand around the top of his neck, just under his jaw, and forced his head up as I pinned him to the wall.
“You are mine,” I told him, as in character as I could get with the possibility that someone might come down the stairsat any second. “There’s no getting out of it, no escape. You will spread your legs and show me that greedy hole of yours as soon as I tell you to. No hesitation, no backing out of things. Do you understand?”
Lucien trembled under my grip, his skin hot and his eyes starting to glaze over. “Yes, Sir,” he croaked, squirming slightly against the wall.
An inner part of me relaxed. This would work. Playing would help Lucien get through his fears. We could deal with everything else once his first heat wave was done.
“Move,” I growled, pulling back and peeling him from the wall.
I pushed him in front of me, shoving him up the stairs. Lucien scrambled up, and once he was a few steps ahead of me, I noticed a growing wet patch in the seat of his sweatpants. I couldn’t help but grin hungrily. Emotionally fraught or not, knowing my omega was in heat had me hard and eager. I wanted to strip him naked and worship his ripe body with my own, blasting any worries over his scars that he had away. I wanted to mark him with my hands and teeth and paint him with my cum, and then I wanted to fuck him so full of me that there wouldn’t be room for anything else.
“Strip,” I told him in a dark voice once we were alone in my apartment.
“But I?—”
“You heard me,” I said, pushing him from the main room into my bedroom. “I want every inch of your sweet omega skin exposed to me.”
“Please,” Lucien said, tears forming in his eyes that may or may not have been part of the scene.
“Do you want me to do it for you?” I demanded, moving in on him and cornering him by the side of the bed.
Lucien whimpered as I grabbed a handful of his shirt and wrenched it up over his head. There was as good a chance as any that he actually did need me to help him get naked so he could work through his fears.
I played along, diving deep into character, and tore his clothes from him. The way he burst into tears and tried to shield his body from my view was only half part of the scene. I hadn’t realized how coy and careful he’d been about not letting me see him naked for the last few weeks, but that was all over now.
“All of you,” I demanded once his clothes were off and he stood cowering in front of me in nothing but his pressure bandages.
