“What about you?” Kade asks before he can stop himself. “Are you scared of me?”
Felix’s eyes glint, warm and grass-green. “Probably not. Do you think you’ll frighten me?”
As Felix straightens, Kade steps closer, until his shoes bump into Felix’s, and there’s an inch between their chests. Warmth seeps through their clothes. Felix looks up at him, his lips slightly parted. Kade lowers his face, murmuring a hair’s breadth above his mouth, “Are you scared now?”
“Try harder,” Felix whispers. “You don’t scare me.”
So Kade drags the tip of his tongue over Felix’s lip. Felix’s breath puffs onto his skin. “Maybe this weekend,” Kade says. Felix opens his mouth, an invitation, and Kade swallows. “I’ll test you again.”
“No more murders?” Felix asks.
“Just a lot of fucking,” Kade answers, brushing his knuckles down Felix’s chest. Felix’s heart kicks against his fingers.
He turns, leaving Felix with musk rolling off him in waves.
The next week, Kade sets a bottle of lube down at the register. Felix smiles, meeting his eyes. “Another one? Are you already done with that first bottle?”
They both know it’s still in the bike’s trunk, unopened, but Kade shrugs anyway. “Need one for home. Ran out.”
Felix licks his lips. “You must be a beast, going through lube so quickly.”
“I fed it to the ants,” Kade says. “To drown them.”
“Oh?” Felix grins, raising his eyebrows. Kade knows his omega doesn’t believe any of that. The last time he looked, there was half a bottle left on Felix’s bedside table. They’d gone through a quarter of it this past weekend. “Don’t you need any? Not that you’re lacking, of course.”
Kade raises his brows. “And you’re a good judge of that?”
Felix squirms. His ass still stings, Kade knows. He smirks. “I’m not certain,” Felix says, grinning. “We may have to try it out again.”
“Sure.”
Felix lets Kade take him home that night, and they spend two hours in the kitchen, Felix’s moans ringing through the house.
The week after, Kade returns, saying, “Do I come here if I want to lodge a complaint?”
Behind the counter, Felix bites down his smile. “What would you like to give feedback on, sir?”
“The lube. It’s gone too quick.”
Felix snorts, turning and biting his lip, and over on the other side of the store, Susan groans. “Could you at least stop flirting while I’m here?”
“I have serious issues with the lube,” Kade says, but he’s grinning. “It doesn’t last. You squirt it and it goes—”
“No! I don’t need to know,” Susan says, hidden somewhere behind the shelves. Kade imagines her covering her ears.
“Where does it go, sir?” Felix asks, gaze darting down to Kade’s hips. Kade grins. Two nights ago, in Felix’s bathtub, they’d smeared lube all over each other’s thighs. Then they tried to wrestle, getting their shirts sticky. And Kade had pinned his omega down after.
“Inside,” Kade says, quirking an eyebrow. Felix grins. Susan marches up, wagging a finger at them.
“Enough,” she says, grinning. “Pay for your gas and go. Felix, you know better than this.”
“Not how you treat a customer,” Kade tells her. “Felix is doing better than you.” He’s smiling, though, reaching for his wallet. Susan shakes her head.
“I should be educated on lube,” Felix says.
Susan groans. When Felix reaches for his cash, Kade rubs their wrists together, scenting him. Felix beams.
Two days later, Kade steps in with a small lavender bouquet.
“Where did you get that?” Felix asks, eyes widening.
“Across town,” Kade says. “You don’t sell them here.”
“I know we don’t.” But Felix stares at the flowers anyway, pink fanning up his ears. “What are those for?”
“You,” Kade says, pushing them across the counter. Maybe he shouldn’t have assumed that Felix would want them, but Kade had glimpsed the bouquets when he walked out of his office, and it had felt right, getting one for his bondmate.
His omega stares up at him, his throat working. “You shouldn’t,” he says. But his cheeks turn pink, and he glances hesitantly between Kade and the flowers. “Flowers are expensive.”
Kade shrugs. They’re worth the fifteen bucks, if they light Felix’s eyes like someone told him he sold a million-dollar painting. “Are you taking them, or not?”
Felix reaches out for the bouquet, his eyes glued to the tiny purple flowers, and he raises them to his face, inhaling deeply. “I guess they smell like me.”
“Thought of you when I saw them.”
Felix ducks his head, blushing up to his hairline. Kade smiles. It gives him hope that he has a chance with Felix after all, that he can still win his omega back, and maybe... they can have a future ahead of them.
“Thank you,” Felix mumbles, pushing his face so far into the bouquet that the plastic crinkles. “That’s very nice of you.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” Kade says. “You never need to.”
Felix hides his smile, and Kade watches as he darts to the backroom to tuck the flowers away.
When Kade walks out of the convenience store, it feels like things in his life are finally falling into place.
20
Felix
Five months into his pregnancy, Felix has a breakdown.
The tape measure around his waist reads thirty-four inches, up from twenty-eight. He drops the tape on the floor, sits back at the kitchen table, and tries not to look at the bills spread before him.
Instead, he pulls his lumpy sweater down, his skin prickling with sweat, and stares at the dark screen of his phone.
Kade still doesn’t know. Every time his hand drags down Felix’s chest, Felix links their fingers together, shoving their hands down on his cock. Kade’s voice always echoes in his mind: Don’t wanna knock you up. That’ll be a mess. He doesn’t want a baby. And that thought haunts Felix the most.
Once, Kade’s hand had rested on Felix’s abdomen, and Felix’s heart had clenched. He’d kept absolutely still, picked off Kade’s hand as calmly as he could, and pushed it down hard on his cock.
It distracts Kade,
