4

nikolai

I SEIZED JOHANNES by the back of the neck and hissed at him, like a snake or a feral animal.

He gave me a look that was pure sin. "Was I a bad boy, Nikolai?"

I let go of him in disgust. I started walking faster than him, hurrying down the hallway away from the omega's room and towards ours.

He laughed, picking up speed to catch up with me. "Let's go out," he said, falling into step with me. "Let's go to a club and do shots. Let's try to score some blow. Let's be the headlines of the gossip sites tomorrow. ‘Prince Johannes and Scantily Dressed Pal dance on tables in Ludwig.'"

Oh, that was just like him. I shook my head, seething. "You've been pushing my buttons all day long."

He snickered, pleased with himself. "Oh, did I rile Nik up?" he breathed, seductive, teasing.

I turned on him, narrowing my eyes. "First, that comment about my being an assassin, then working the omega's scent up the way you did, then sulking at dinner, and then kissing her. What is going on with you?"

He shrugged. "Can't help it. I'm built to misbehave, I guess."

"Yes, exactly," I said. "And if you misbehave, who will Dmitri take it out on? Not you, because you can't help yourself. It'll be me. I'm here to mind you. I'm your handler, for fuck's sake."

"Let's get drunk," he groaned.

"No," I said. "We have that luncheon tomorrow. You went on and on about it five times, and there's no way I'm staying up until dawn and crawling into that like a drowned rat."

"Please?" He gave me a truly pitiful look, one that sometimes melted me.

"You're acting like this is a game," I said. "Not everything is a game, Johannes." I picked up the pace again.

This time, he didn't catch up with me.

I got to our room and threw the door open. I hurried inside, feeling antsy as I checked everything. The windows. The closets. Under the beds. Behind the shower curtains.

He was in the kitchen as I was looking inside the oven.

"Who's going to hide in an oven, Nik?" he said, amused.

I straightened. "Don't," I said, hurt.

The thing about being obsessive is that you know you're being obsessive. That's what people don't understand about it. They think you really think there's danger. I knew there wasn't any danger, but I had to look for it anyway.

It was habit, that was part of it.

It was ritual also.

I do my rituals, and then I am safe, and then I can relax.

Except, of course, I never did actually feel safe, so I knew the rituals were just a bandaid. They held it all off, like a dam against the rush of horror that was the entire outside world, except there was no way to hold all that off. The outside world was there, and it was a horror. And the thing about that kind of horror is that it strikes when you're not expecting it. It surges up out of the shadows and stabs you when you're thinking about other things.

And you were left gasping, wondering why you weren't looking for danger, why you'd let your damned guard down.

He bowed his head. "You're actually angry with me."

I slammed the oven closed.

I was angry.

Was it Johannes that I was truly angry with, or was it that omega? Or myself? Or Dmitri?

Maybe it was Dmitri for doing this to us. What kind of sadistic asshole did this to his lover and his friend? He must have known what it would be like to be in the omega's presence. After all, he'd had that dinner with her, and he hadn't even managed to go back to her after he'd been called away. He knew .

I clenched my hands into fists and released them.

Then I looked Johannes up and down. "All right," I said with a sigh. "Take off your shirt and go kneel next to the bed with your arms behind your back. Do not move. Do not speak."

He sucked in a breath. "Okay, okay, good. I thought… you said it wasn't a game—"

"We're wound up and we need a release," I said.

"Fuck yes, we do," he breathed. He held my gaze, his scent rising.

"Go," I said in a quiet voice.

He went.

I stayed in the kitchen, running my fingers over the countertop. What was the purpose of these elaborate suites? No one who stayed here cooked in these kitchens.

I opened up several of the drawers, not because I thought anyone was in them, necessarily, but because… well… there could be explosives? There could be surveillance devices? There could…

No one's after you, Nikolai, I told myself.

Funny how knowing that didn't make any difference, though.

I shut the drawers and wandered into the bedroom, where I found Johannes exactly as I'd asked him to be, shirtless, hands behind his back.

I sat down next to him. He was resting his cheek on the bed, head turned sideways. His eyes were closed. He smelled phenomenal, all eagerness and arousal.

I traced my fingers over his features, affectionate.

"I'm going to tell you something and you're going to be even angrier." His eyes were still closed, but he was smiling. He liked making me angry. No, he liked making me react.

We did this with each other, played little power games, but what we liked about it was the way that we got under each other's skin.

He was one of the few people I ever allowed myself to be vulnerable with.

"What did you do?" I crooned, my voice soft. "Tell Nikolai all the very bad things you did, Johannes."

His grin widened. "I told her to touch herself and think about us."

That went through me like violence. My fingers actually started to tremble. I swallowed hard.

Was that what she was doing now? In her suite, in her bed? Was all her pretty, smooth skin entirely bare?

"Nik?" he said, opening his eyes.

I met his gaze. "When we have her, it won't be like other times with women."

"No?" he said, his voice affected and throaty. "How will it be different?"

"I want her, too," I said.

"Yeah?"

I unzipped, businesslike, freeing my aching, knotted-up cock. I'd been forcing myself to ignore how aroused I was all day, and that might have been a bad idea. "Yeah," I said.

Johannes liked women, so I let him have them sometimes. We'd pick someone up, and then I'd let him fuck her, and I'd just watch, telling him what to do, telling him where to put his hands and his mouth. Sometimes, I wouldn't even touch myself. Sometimes, I'd just sit in the corner, totally clothed, a voice in the shadows, holding his pleasure in my hands even without touching him.

I liked being in control.

He looked up at me, grinning, and then his gaze went to my naked cock. "I'd love to watch you fuck the omega."

I shuddered, and my cock jerked. I was afraid of that, actually, of Johannes seeing me like that, even though it wasn't as if he hadn't watched me lose control a million times. It was only that those times were me losing control with him, and this seemed even more vulnerable in a way I didn't entirely know what to do with. But I wanted it, in this moment. I wanted it fiercely.

My voice was gruff. "You know what to do."

He chuckled and latched on.

I let out a low moan as his wet, warm mouth descended onto me. He knew the drill. Suck me, like this, no hands, just his mouth.

I liked looking down on him, his face nestled against my crotch, so intimate and yet so filthy at the same time.

"I have a lot for you, and it won't take me very long," I breathed, tucking strands of his long hair out of the way of his face. "You'll need to swallow every bit of it. I'm going to empty my balls down your throat, and you'll take every drop of it, because that's what bad boys like you get, mouthfuls of come."

He made a mangled sound, moving on me.

"And you've been…" I toyed with his ponytail. "A very, very bad boy, Johannes."

He worked his mouth harder on me.

I traced the notches of his bare spine. "Such a bad boy. A shockingly bad boy. Now you take your punishment, hmm?"

He gagged himself on me, and the tremor of it around my sensitive head made my eyes roll back in my head. I gasped. "Hands, Johannes," I managed.

He'd let them come apart from where he held them behind his back, and he quickly put them back, bobbing up and down on me.

The sight of him obeying me was too much. My balls tightened and I crested with a shout. I pumped into him, and I wasn't lying. It was a lot. There was no way he was going to get all of that down his throat, and I started to pull away, to say that he could—

But he latched on tighter, the suction more intense as his throat worked, and he did, he swallowed all of it.

In the wake of it, I panted, hands in his hair, disrupting his ponytail. It had felt good, but I was still hard. That was odd.

I thrust my foot between his legs and started rubbing his erection. "Stay there," I said in a silky voice. "Keep your mouth on your alpha, bad boy."

We played this game a lot, too. He'd have to kneel in front of me and hold my cock in his mouth. Usually my soft cock, while I did all manner of things. Talked on the phone, watched TV, ate snacks. If I got hard, he had to suck me off and swallow my come as punishment because it was always his fault that he'd gotten me aroused.

I rubbed my foot against him. "Come this way, bad boy. Come in your pants, make a mess of yourself, because you're bad."

He groaned.

"Just like that, Johannes. You wanted a release, now you'll take it, and then you'll have to clean yourself up. Bad boys make messes, and you're a bad, bad, bad boy."

I felt him jerk against me. It had been quick for him too. There was a telltale warmth, wetness seeping onto my sock. "Naughty Johannes, got your filth on me."

He looked up at me, mouth still full of my cock, his expression insouciant, not the least bit ashamed of himself.

I grinned at him. Fuck. "I love you," I whispered. That came out at odd times with us, strange little moments, and it always felt good, too good, and it scared me, too.

He gave my cock an affectionate suck.

"You'll have to clean my sock too," I said, careless. "Get off me, you dirty thing."

He moved his mouth off and stood up, showing off the wet stain on his pants. He stretched and then motioned with one hand.

I put my foot in his hand, lying back on the bed.

He stripped off my shoe and my sock and then went off into the bathroom, where I heard the sink running.

I rolled over, face against the coverlet. I groaned. "You don't have to do that."

"Oh, no, I'm a bad, filthy boy," he sang out. "Gotta scrub away my filth. And I'm still hard, by the way. You?"

I groaned again. "Fucking omega."

"I know, right?" He giggled. He was having the time of his life. Johannes took pleasure in strange things, but then… well, so did I. We went well together, in the end. "You want to get in the shower with me?"

"I want you to leave your soiled clothes and get back out here and undress me," I said.

The sink went off.

He appeared in the adjoining door to the bathroom. "Well, then." He waggled his eyebrows. He was entirely naked, and his hair was down, falling around his shoulders so that he looked like some kind of warrior from antiquity. His body was all muscle and brawn. He was spectacularly beautiful. His cock was huge and red and sticking straight out.

It made my mouth water. "Get over here," I said.

He sauntered to the bed and climbed over me. He began undressing me, lazy, tutting to himself under his breath as he removed my suit jacket, loosened my tie, and began unbuttoning my shirt.

I lay there and let him. All the while, my cock was peeking out of my pants, hard and bare.

He wrapped a hand around it. "What are we going to do with this?"

I chuckled. "You have any ideas?"

"Oh, I get ideas?" He grinned. "I didn't think bad boys like me got to have ideas."

"Mmm, you don't," I said.

He unbuttoned my pants, and then got up to pull them off my legs. He stripped off my other sock as well. Then he tugged off my boxers. He looked down at me, and I was bare and utterly uncovered for him.

I felt shy.

"Well, get an idea, Nik. You want to put it in my ass?"

Tempting. I considered. Anal was a bit of a production, but it might be worth it tonight.

"You want to knot my ass?" he said.

I went up on my elbows. "Not in a hotel room. We need to get some sleep. We'll be tied together for ages."

He raised his eyebrows. "You know what Dmitri said to me?"

"You talked to Dmitri?"

"I called him, because the omega, her scent, it was intense, and I thought we needed some kind of permission to…" He sighed heavily.

"Did he say you could kiss her?"

"No, he told me if I touched her, he'd break my fingers," said Johannes, with a shrug, as if this was nothing. "But he said I could knot you ."

I went still.

"You let him do that, huh?"

"You know that," I muttered.

"Like, a lot?"

"Dmitri is… Dmitri," I said. I crawled away from him, up to the top of the bed and pulled the covers aside. I got under them, pulling them over my body like a shield. "You do things for him. You do them and you like them. He's… he's…"

"Yeah." He stood at the end of the bed, arms folded over his chest, and his scent had changed, to that way it had smelled during dinner, when he'd really worked the omega up. I'd never scented that scent on him before.

I eyed him, a little concerned. I was understanding what that scent was. I scooted up on the bed, leaning into the headboard. "You're jealous," I said flatly.

He loosened up immediately, letting his hands fall to his sides. His cock drooped too.

Shit. I furrowed my brow. "I had training to deal with jealous alphas," I said softly, my voice a caress. "I know all the things to say. ‘Oh, but there's no one like you, alpha. Oh, but the way you fuck me—'"

"Stop it." His nostrils flared.

Now, it was quiet.

He came around to the other side of the bed and climbed in next to me.

I sighed. "Except it's true, you know. With us, it's different."

He lay next to me, staring up at the ceiling.

"I mean, you know that," I said. "You've always known that with him, I'm not like this."

Nothing from him.

"I mean, with him, it's about him," I said, getting a panicky feeling now, as if I was digging myself into a hole, and by all rights, I should have lost my erection, but it soldiered on, still very stiff, taunting me. I couldn't think properly if I was this aroused. All the blood was rushing away from my head. "With you, it's about—"

"You?" he said sharply. "He uses you, and you use me?"

"No!" I peered down at him, the panic growing like a red storm. "I thought we both… I thought it was…" I gave up. I scooted down on the bed, defeated. "You can knot me if you want."

"Nik?" He scooted over to me, under the covers, and pulled me against him, against his hard, nude body.

It was steadying, the touch. I let out a relieved noise, burrowing into his broad chest, letting him hold me.

"Sorry," he said quietly. "I've never been like this before." A pause. "Fucking omega."

"Is that why?" I said into his skin.

"Yes?" He wasn't sure.

I put my palm on his chest, stroking him, stroking his chest hair. Petting him, almost, soothing him. Or soothing myself, maybe. Soothing us both. "It'll be better after he's mated her and then we can have her, too."

"Probably." He tightened his grip on me. He let out a little laugh. "Oh, you're still hard."

"It's fine," I said.

He reached down between us and toyed with my cock. "What do you mean, it's about him?"

"He's just…" I sighed. "If you're going to do that, I can't think of words."

"You want me to stop?" He was teasing now.

I didn't know. I didn't say anything.

"You don't mind being with Dmitri?" There was a sharpness to his words.

"No," I said. "No, it's nice. Everything about him, it's so much. He's got this power, and it rolls over you and consumes you, and you get caught up in it, and it's good."

He was still stroking my cock. He jerked me, silent.

I was pretty sure I'd said the wrong thing.

"Well," he said, finally, "that's how I feel about you."

"No," I said. "No, it's not the same, because with us, it's a dance, a back-and-forth, and I don't do things you don't like, and—"

"He does things you don't like?" Now, Johannes was angry.

I shoved his hand off. "Johannes, please."

He blinked down at me. His jaw was tight, and there was a little nerve in his face that was jerking. I'd never seen him like that, never.

I licked my lips. "It's not his fault," I said finally. "You know the way he was raised, that family of his, the way they feel about designations and how he grew up with all that weird homophobic bullshit."

"The King has a male omega."

"I know, but that's the King," I said. The way it worked in royalty, people in line for the throne did not come from the same bloodlines, so the king wasn't Dmitri's father. He was another member of the Valhn peerage who'd presented first in his generation. When the king died, Dmitri would ascend to the throne.

Amongst designations, there was a sort of bacchanalian bisexuality, and it was considered normal to fuck, well, anyone. People with designations were ravenous. There were more alphas than omegas, and most alphas were male, and that tended to mean a lot of male-on-male sex, and it always had, but even as recently as thirty or forty years ago, that was considered a dirty secret. There had been a tacit agreement between the press and the royals to not air that as public knowledge.

Now, even though it was out in the open, some people were still phobic about it. Dmitri's family was very old guard.

"So, what? Like, he uses you like a woman, that's what you're saying? He likes you because you're…" He looked me over. "Delicate and lithe and—"

"I'm not delicate," I said, but I was smiling. I liked androgyny, that was the thing. I didn't mind if I had a feminine edge to the way I presented.

"Does he let you knot him?"

I shook my head. "No way. Are you insane? He won't even let me put it in his ass."

Johannes flopped down next to me on the bed, stunned at this revelation. "For fuck's sake, Nik."

"It's not his fault," I said. "He'll come around eventually. He needs time, and—"

"Should we give the omega to him if he's like that?"

"Oh, what?" I sat up to look down at him, shocked. "You're not serious."

"It was only a question," he said.

"He's the alpha heir to the throne," I said. "He's going to have an omega, and we like this one, so why would we get in the way of that?"

He flung an arm over his face. "Because if we did that, she'd be gone. It's not as if we could…"

I pulled his arm away. "You want the omega to yourself."

"Not…" He made a face. "You and I could—"

"You have lost your damned mind," I pronounced. "That's not even done."

"I know," he said softly.

"There are, what? Less than ten omegas on the entire planet—"

"It can't be that low of a number," he said.

"And you think you can just have one, all to yourself—"

"Shut up," he said and rolled over with his back to me. "It's not about that. Only… I like the omega, and I'm reevaluating all of my opinions of Dmitri for whatever reason."

"You like Dmitri. You two are close."

Nothing from Johannes.

Well, fuck. Fuck me. I lay down and gazed up at the ceiling, my stomach churning. I liked Dmitri.

No, more than like. I loved Dmitri.

I didn't think I should say that to Johannes, not in this moment, not when he was so oddly jealous and strange all of the sudden. It wasn't like the way I loved Johannes, of course. What Johannes and I had was something different, something just about the two of us, something real and sweet.

But Dmitri, he rescued me.

He was my white knight with his golden curls and his wide grin. Maybe he had some weird stuff to work through concerning the way he interacted with his attraction to men or whatever, but I had a lot of weird stuff to work through myself.

I would not and could not give Dmitri up.

I wouldn't leave Dmitri to be with Johannes and the omega.

If Johannes tried something like that, I would stop him.

"I'll talk to him," I said finally, into the silence. "Tell me what you want me to say to him, and I'll talk to him."

"Fuck that, I can talk to him," muttered Johannes. He rolled back over and he was angry again. His hand delved under the covers and he found my cock, which was still hard, against all odds, like some zombie erection that refuses to lie down and die. He started to stroke me. "Enough of that, okay? Enough."

"You don't have to—"

He put my hand on his crotch, and his cock hardened against me. "Let's stop talking, Nik."

So.

We didn't talk.