7. Tristan

7

TRISTAN

I can't believe I was afraid earlier, when I'd woken up alone. I'd been worried Mason had found the forgery in the bathroom and figured out why I'm really here. I was terrified he'd called the police on me—or, worse, figured out my full name and contacted Father. I should have left when I had the chance, but then he showed up with that fruit and my wave started, and now I feel so lost in heat and him that nothing else seems to matter.

Being here with Mason is a dream—the kind I never want to end.

The rest of the morning passes by in a lazy, lust-filled haze. After bathing, Mason wheels in the cart with our breakfasts from the hallway. Everything's been kept warm under cloches with small burners—scrambled eggs with herbs from the garden, toast made from fresh-baked bread, oatmeal with cream and dried fruit. Each bite is as delicious as the last. Mason heaps serving after serving onto my plate, telling me I have to keep up my strength for when the next wave arrives. If it turns out anything like my last, he's probably right.

Afterward, he dresses me in a fresh silk nightshirt. I nap while he stays in bed beside me, checking messages on his cell phone, sending instructions to Vincent. When I open my eyes again, the first thing I see is a small paper bag on the nightstand, neatly tied with a ribbon. I recognize the label immediately. It's from the general store on Waterstone Street.

My strawberry candies.

Papa …

Pushing myself up, I reach for it. After years of serving Father and my brothers, it's been hard to let go and allow Mason to take care of me. But as I unwrap a candy and pop it into my mouth, I think I could get the hang of it, if only we had more time.

I'd appreciate you, Mason—I already do.

"Are those the right ones?" Mason's palm slides up my chest, and his lips graze the shell of my ear. Even unknotted, he's kept his cock inside me while I sleep, just like he did last night. Just because he knows it comforts me.

The hard candy clicks against my teeth as I pass it from one side of my mouth to the other and nod. "They're perfect. Thank you." I offer the bag to him over my shoulder. "Want one?"

He shakes his head. "They're for you."

I crane my neck to kiss him then, and he gets a taste anyway.

"That's not all Vincent got, either."

Mason pulls back, twisting to reach for something off the nightstand on his side of the bed, and his dick slips from my hole. The loss of him inside me registers immediately, and I whine and push back with my hips, aching to be filled again.

I need my mate. My alpha. Mason.

"Can't go a minute without a cock inside you, can you?" he teases, nuzzling my neck as he wraps himself around me again.

I shake my head. "Not during heat. I think another wave is coming."

He slides his shaft back between my cheeks, and I sigh with relief.

"Then it's a good thing Vincent also ordered this." Mason holds up a butt plug with a weighted, silver handle. Its base is thick like him, and the tapered tip should be long enough to brush against my p-spot when I need it. I wiggle my ass against him, already imagining how good it will feel inside me when he can't be there himself.

"Vincent said it's not uncommon for omegas in heat to crave being filled between waves, too, the way you do. I thought we could try it out later and go to the pool. Get some fresh air. How does that sound?"

Smiling, I take the plug from him and turn it over in my hands. "I can't wait. Will you do the honors of inserting it before we go?"

"Tristan, it would be my pleasure."

My next wave arrives in minutes, and when it does, we fuck wildly, savagely—the way our ancestors did thousands of years ago when our survival depended on it. Afterward, I lay in Mason's arms, impaled on his knot, and when it goes down, he reaches for the plug again.

"I can't stop staring at your hole like this," he tells me when I turn onto my hands and knees, ass up. "So pink and pretty, all stretched and freshly fucked."

I glance over my shoulder and watch as he palms my cheeks, then spreads them apart to see better. He circles my hole with his thumb, collecting my slick and his cum on the pad, then brings it to his mouth and licks it clean .

"Mmm …"

Mason hums with delight, as though our mingled juices are as sweet as the citrus from earlier, and although I'm not a huge one for modesty—I've been with too many people for that—my face warms shyly at the intensity in his gaze. Then, he goes back for more. This time, he offers me a taste.

Closing my eyes, I suck his thumb. I've tasted cum before. And slick. Both my own and others'. But this is different. This is better—delicious, even. An instant aphrodisiac. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's Mason himself. Either way, I can't get enough. My dick agrees. It gives a valiant attempt to rally, but I'm too recently spent, so I let out a moan instead.

"Good?"

I nod, Mason's thumb still pressed against my tongue, then mourn its absence when he pulls it out. His fingertips return to my crease in a heartbeat. He massages my hole, rubbing slick and cum into my rim. It occurs to me I should probably be sore by now, given how hard and often we've used my hole. Gods know I would be with any other alpha. But right now, I simply sigh and sway beneath his touch.

Mason grins down at me. He scoops up our fluids as they continue leaking from my hole and gently pushes them back into my channel. "I want to know I'm still inside you, even when my cock is not."

It's the best kind of nonsense I've ever heard. "Me, too."

He presses a kiss to my shoulder, and his erection brushes against the back of my thigh. I want to reach for it and guide him back inside me, but the tip of the plug is already there. Mason eases the toy inside me slowly, rubbing soothing circles against the small of my back. I take deep breaths and will myself to relax, and in a moment, I'm fully seated upon it.

"All right?" Mason asks, his hand still on the handle.

I bear down on the plug—tentatively at first, to test the weight and girth of it—and the base expands abruptly, filling my hole until my rim is stretched tight around it. Gasping, I whip my head back to look at Mason again, and he chuckles.

"It's not just a plug. It's a fake knot," he explains. "Is it too much?"

I groan and rest my head on my forearms, thighs shaking. "It's amazing. But I won't be able to walk now, you know."

Mason stands. In one swift, sweeping motion, he scoops me up into his arms and cradles me against his chest. I cry out, panicked, and grab onto his biceps for balance, but he just combs his fingers through my hair affectionately and beams down at me like one of the stars through his skylight.

"That was half the point, my omega. Why walk when I can carry you?"

My omega.

As long as he calls me that, my feet will never touch the ground. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I try not to think about how hard I'll fall when this is over.

Vincent arranges for the staff to vacate the north wing, pool, and gardens so Mason and I can have privacy. The security guards check the perimeter to make sure there are no onlookers hiding in the bushes, and when they give the all-clear, Mason carries me downstairs, the artificial knot still securely inside, both of us naked.

"Does it ever bother you that someone is always watching, even in your own home?" I ask Mason as we lie together on an oversized chaise beneath a cabana, eating the late lunch Jack set out for us. One of the guards stands, his back to us, at the far side of the patio. Soon, I know, they'll rotate, and another will take his place.

Mason shrugs. "To be honest, I've never had much need to walk around the estate naked before today, so no. It never bothered me before. As a child, I don't think I ever noticed. I think I even liked having people around. There was always someone to talk to. Like Vincent."

On cue, the new guard approaches. He glances in our direction out of habit, then looks away again quickly, our nudity an apparent reminder he's supposed to leave us as undisturbed as possible.

I shrug and take a bite of my chilled chicken salad. "I always wanted to be left alone. If you'd grown up with my brothers, you'd understand."

"Alphas?"

Nodding, I look out at the pool. Why did I bring up Dane and Blaise? All they ever do is spoil the moment, and my heat is short. I can't afford to waste a single second with Mason. "They never let me forget it, either."

I'm grateful when Mason doesn't pressure me for details. "They don't deserve you," he says as he runs his fingertips up the length of my arm, then cups my cheek and leans in to kiss me.

No, I'm the one who doesn't deserve you.

But once again, his touch bewitches me. I set aside my dish and let him drive away the bad memories with his lips and tongue. I scoot closer, so we're laying chest to chest, groin to groin. His hand slides over my hip, then between my cheeks, where it finds the handle to the fake knot. Mason tugs and flicks it gently, teasing just enough to light my fires but not enough to stoke my flame. I moan against his mouth. These quiet moments between my waves, when we can take our time to touch each other without the frenzy of heat, are our true paradise.

Mason rolls me onto his chest, then lifts me into his arms again. I wrap my legs around his waist and let him carry me into the pool. Down the steps in the shallow end. Deep enough the water conceals the way our groins are pressed together between us.

"So, if you didn't have a need to walk around your house naked until today, does that mean you never swam like this with Luke?" My heart rate quickens when I ask the question. I don't know why—I have no right to be jealous of Mason's prior lovers, and I certainly don't want to be like the man who broke his heart. But I'm curious anyway.

A light laugh rolls off Mason's lips, and I struggle against the urge to kiss him, with his perfect, white-toothed smile, again. "I definitely swam with Luke. Just not like this."

For reasons I don't want to admit, I find this reassuring.

"Luke and I were on the swim team at university together," Mason tells me. "It's how we met."

"Oh." My shoulders slump, and I look away again in disappointment. I can't compete with Luke after all. Not even close.

"Tristan? Where did you go?" Mason's fingertips find my chin, and he tilts my face back toward his. "What's wrong?"

"I didn't go to university … And I … I can't even swim."

The soft laugh is back. "You really think I care if you went to university, Tristan?"

That does sound rather ridiculous now that I hear it repeated back to me. I shake my head.

"That's right. Now, the swimming on the other hand …" Mason raises a brow. "Let's just say it's a good thing we can do something about that."

"You'll teach me?"

I barely manage to squeak the question before he's wading us toward the edge of the pool. In minutes, he has me holding onto the wall, wetting my face and blowing bubbles in the water. Then, we move on to the back float.

"How come you never learned to swim?" he asks.

"I guess because there wasn't time or money." Standing beside him in the shallows, I puff out my chest, trying to use the air in my lungs for buoyancy. "Father always made sure my brothers had whatever lessons they needed. There usually wasn't anything left over for me."

Mason frowns. "I would have taught you."

"You are teaching me," I remind him. He's good at it, too. I've never been so eager to please my instructor.

"You know what I mean. If I ever have omega sons, I'll treat them the same as any alpha. I'll teach them anything they want to learn."

I know he will . Mason is all alpha like my Father, and yet they are also nothing alike. Hearing the words is a comfort, though. As he coaches me through the next steps of my lesson, I keep my eyes on him, and the pain of the past seems to fade away.

"That's it, Tristan … Head back … Belly up … And lift your feet."

His hand finds the center of my back, supporting me as I kick off the bottom. My limbs rise, lifted by the water. I'm weightless, staring into nothing but blue.

"You're doing it!" Mason's smile is an eclipse so bright it blocks out everything but him, and I feel proud—so deeply, irrationally proud. All for finally acquiring a skill most people master as boys.

But my love-starved heart can't help it. He may as well have just taught me to fly.

Eventually, Mason's hand leaves my back. I panic, arms flailing as I start to sink below the surface. My head dips underwater, but Mason pulls me to my feet. He pushes back my hair to see me better, his own face puckered with concern.

"Are you all right, Tristan? Are you hurt?"

I shake my head. And even though I cough, I also laugh.

I did it. I floated. When I'm with him, I somehow always am—in the water or on the land.

After swimming lessons, my heat intensifies, then ebbs, then intensifies again. We fuck in the shade of the cabana. We go for another dip in the pool. Then, as the sun is beginning to set, Mason reinserts my fake knot and carries me back inside, straight into the kitchen.

"What are you doing?" I ask him, amused, as he moves around the space, taking pots and pans and cutting boards from the cabinets.

He pulls a plastic container from the oversized, paneled refrigerator in the corner. "Making pasta. It's your favorite, after all."

I grin and shift on the stool at the counter where I'm sitting. The artificial knot slips a bit deeper. "You remember?"

"How could I forget?"

Warmth pools in my belly—a feeling much deeper and softer than any caused by my heat or his cum stoppered inside me. "I didn't know you could cook."

Mason turns to the stove but keeps his body at an angle so he can see me while he works. His eyes are like a cloudless sky. "It's only boiling water. Let's not set our expectations too high." He empties the container into the pot and gives a stir. "Jack did all the hard parts earlier. I hope you like mezzaluna …?"

"Mezzaluna?"

"It means half-moon."

I like that. Half-moon like our view through the skylight at night. Half-moon because with Mason, I can almost reach the stars.

"They're like ravioli," he adds. "This kind has cheese and mushrooms, and the sauce will have brown butter and almonds—if I don't manage to mess everything up."

"Well, can I help? I cook for Father and my brothers back home all the time."

Mason flashes me a smile as he lifts a recipe card off the counter. "You relax. I've got Jack here in spirit if I get stuck."

Within minutes, the kitchen smells like an award-winning restaurant—garlic, shallots, and cream. I sip from the glass of white wine Mason pours me, watching him move around the room like a dance. A box step to the windowsill for fresh herbs. A waltz to the pantry for some dishes. I've never seen an alpha cook like this before. By the time Mason announces everything is ready, I have a suspicion he's dramatically undersold his skills.

Mason insists on serving me in the dining room like a proper guest. It feels strange to sit at the long, antique table nearly nude. While I wait for him to bring out our plates, I fasten the buttons on today's silk nightshirt.

That's better.

Only one problem remains.

I reach for the fine linen napkin at my place setting and spread it across my chair before Mason shows up. I don't know what kind of fabric the chair is upholstered with, but I suspect even a drop of slick or cum might ruin it.

I've only just gotten settled again when Mason appears in the doorway, our plates in hand. My mouth waters—not only for the food but also for him.

Mostly for him, to be honest.

Our time in the sun has left his muscular chest freshly bronzed, and his golden hair is slightly damp from hovering over the pasta water. The pajama bottoms he's wearing—the complement to my top—hang low on his hips, a trail of coarse hair stretching from below his navel to the package hidden in their contents.

I moisten my lips with my tongue. It's a good thing I put that napkin down on my chair. Another wave is on the way. I might not even make it through dinner.

"What do you think? Would Jack be proud?" Mason asks, setting my plate in front of me with a flourish.

"It's impressive," I tell him. I ogle the delicate crescents and pick up my fork. Swimming, it seems, works up your appetite almost as much as all our other illicit activities today. But when he takes a seat across the table from me, I frown.

"What's wrong? Did I burn the sage?" With a hint of panic, he leans over his own dish, searching for the offending element.

"It's not that …" I shift in my seat, the fake knot reminding me exactly what's wrong. "You're too far away."

A smile lifts the corner of Mason's mouth. "I only wanted to look at you, Tristan. The food isn't the only thing I plan to dine on tonight."

I glance at the woefully empty chair beside me, wishing he was there instead, and Mason sighs. Chuckling, he picks up his plate again and makes his way toward me. Sliding into the chair, he raises his brows.

"Better?"

"I suppose …"

But something's still wrong, still missing. He still feels too far. Longing tugs at my gut. Then, I realize what I want. My body aches for his; it needs to feel him pressed against me. I've gone too long without his touch, and my skin knows the same way I do in my heart what it wants.

Standing, I turn his chair out from the table, then straddle his lap. I lower myself onto his thighs, and the moment our limbs meet, I feel like a puzzle piece settling into its proper place.

"How about now? Is this better?" Mason asks again, his voice deeper, slightly hoarse.

I nod. "Definitely a vast improvement."

"We'll eat like this then." Mason's hands run down my silk-covered back. One palm cups my cheek. The other hand finds the handle of the fake knot buried in my ass. He twists it, and I jolt, falling against his chest, my arms around his shoulders, as I moan. "Take a bite now, Tristan. Try your dinner. I get to watch you enjoy it after all."

I reach for a fork again—his, not mine—and spear one of the mezzaluna. As I take a nibble, Mason adjusts the knot again. Pleasure shoots up my spine like an arrow, and I nearly miss my mouth, smearing cream sauce on my lips. Chuckling, Mason picks up his napkin and dabs it away again.

"That was mean," I tease him with an exaggerated pout.

Mason shrugs. He stares at me, glossy-eyed, and I realize how hard his cock is against my thigh. "I couldn't help myself. You're quite sensual, Tristan. All those little sounds you make." He taps the handle of the knot again, and I stifle a squeal, proving his point. "The curve of your lips when you move your mouth." He traces the swell of my bottom lip with his thumb. "The slight flush of your cheeks when you drink just a bit too much wine." He reaches for the stem of my glass and drags it closer.

Blinking, I glance away bashfully.

"You don't even seem to realize how attractive you are half the time. But I do. Everything you do calls to me."

He dots a kiss against my mouth, where the sauce was a moment ago, then tugs on the fake knot and begs me to take another bite.

Without hesitation, I do.

We eat dinner like that together, until our plates are cleared and my heat wave peaks. Mason takes me on my back on the dining room table, my ankles on his shoulders. Afterward, he carries me back upstairs, and all I can do is sigh happily while he treats me to another sponge bath.

It's the most perfect, pleasant day I've had in years. I can't remember the last time I've had so much fun. Or felt so adored.