Micah sighed. They’d been having this argument increasingly, and it always ended in a stalemate. “No, Spike. He’s twenty. Life is too short to chain yourself to something you don’t even know. Even you—”
“But how do you know Kai will be happy there? I think he’s happier with us,” Spike retorted.
“That’s for him to decide, isn’t it?” Micah unlocked his office door. “Anyway, you should leave. I’m due to have a meeting with Bernard Hastings in a while.”
Micah didn’t even want the meeting. But Bernard had insisted on following up with some departmental form, and it gave Micah the cold shivers. Maybe Bernard wanted to talk about what Micah had overheard in the office the other day.
Spike followed him in. “Kai can be a huge butthead when he wants to be. You know how long he took to fall in love with you?”
Micah almost tripped. What? “He—”
“You didn’t know?” Spike glanced at Micah sidelong, shutting the door behind them. “It’s been months.”
“Months? You mean... before he left?” Even before Spike answered, Micah read the answer in his eyes. Kai loved Micah, and all this while, he hadn’t said anything? Micah’s heart thumped.
“Yeah.” Spike’s voice was low and rough. Micah knew it was tough for Spike. Spike had been tossing and turning in bed, constantly reaching out for Kai, only to find him missing. Even now, almost three months since Kai had left... Spike hadn’t been sleeping well.
And Kai loved Micah.
“I-I thought he...” Micah gulped. He’d kept his own feelings toward Kai a secret. There wasn’t any point, anyway, when Micah had insisted that Kai should pursue his dreams. “I just thought he was... fond of me.”
Spike had to be wrong. Kai can’t love me.
Spike laughed wryly. “Hell, no. The way he looks at you? When he started thinking you looked good, he was just smiling these tiny smiles. These days, he’s watching you like he wants to devour you. And I don’t mean in the fucking way, or the eating way. He looks like he wants to bring you home and mark every inch of you.”
“That’s just sex, isn’t it?” But Micah’s heart thumped.
“Well.” Spike looked thoughtful. “Maybe he just does that to me. He might show you his love some other way.”
Gods, how had this gotten so messed up? Micah sat down behind his desk, Spike’s words whirling in his head. He yearned to know what Kai’s love felt like. And yet... Spike looked so young, standing in front of him. Tanned skin and perfect, ever so full of energy. Kai, too, with his sweat-soaked jersey and his youthful face.
“I’m a dad, Spike.” Micah sighed, his heart heavy. “Sometimes I imagine York getting involved with someone two decades older, and he gives up his dreams because of that omega. That kills me inside. So when I think about you and Kai... I can’t do that to you. Your future is too important.”
Spike narrowed his eyes. “To me, nothing is more important than you.”
Gods, that kind of reliance was unhealthy. “No,” Micah said, kneading the gnarly scars on his right hand. He thought about the scars on the rest of his body, and the stares that he, Kai, and Spike sometimes attracted at the grocery store. “You need someone you aren’t throwing away your future for.”
“I’m not!” Spike’s eyes flashed. Then he reached into his backpack, tearing out a sheath of assignments. He thumped them on the desk. “Look at this and tell me I’m throwing away my future. I’m not, and you know it. I haven’t even asked you for help with the classes. I’m doing damn well on my tests.”
There were three assignments on the desk—all with Spike’s name, and all with an A grade.
Spike was right. But over the past week... Micah’s nightmares had haunted him. He’d dreamed of the fire and the scars. Then he’d dreamed about Kai and Spike finally seeing Micah for who he was—with the expanse of blotchy skin, the bald patches on his head.
In those dreams, Kai and Spike had left Micah, moving far away, leaving him alone. The memory was enough to make his stomach twist.
Spike prowled close, towering over Micah in his chair. A low rumble left his throat, and he leaned so close that the heat of his body bled through Micah’s shirt. “I’m not leaving,” Spike growled, cupping Micah’s nape.
Then he hauled Micah against him and meshed their lips together. Spike’s kiss was hungry and possessive, sharp teeth scraping along Micah’s lips. Micah groaned, his insides growing hot when Spike dragged his wrist down Micah’s chest, all the way between his legs. Spike rubbed his wrist over Micah’s covered cock, marking him there. Micah grew painfully hard; he moaned into Spike’s mouth.
There was something Micah was supposed to be doing, and it wasn’t this. Unease prickled in his mind.
“Gonna make you come so hard when we get home tonight,” Spike growled against his lips. “And we’ll put it on video so Kai can watch and get jealous. Serves him right for being absent.”
“No, don’t,” Micah began to say. Spike pushed his tongue into Micah’s mouth, tasting him.
There was a sharp knock on the door; it swung open a second later.
They broke the kiss too late. Spike pulled his hand away; Micah jerked back from him. Bernard Hastings stood in the doorway, those shrewd eyes scanning them, making a judgment. It wasn’t in Micah’s favor.
“Bernard, I—” Micah fumbled for something to say, except his mind had gone blank, alarm filling it.
Bernard’s lip curled. “Of all the things I expected to find, Davis.”
Behind him, Harold Saxon stepped forward, disgust clear on his face. “I never expected another of my staff to do this, Bernard,” Harold said. “I’ll clean this up immediately.”
Micah’s heart stopped. He leaped to his feet, stepping in front of Spike to protect him.
Spike growled, grasping Micah’s arm. “No, you stay back.”
“Spike—” Micah protested.
Bernard’s gaze grew cold. Then he glanced at Micah’s desk, where Spike’s assignments lay. And even
