Heat Race - Tanya Chris Page 0,55

a hammer. Sometimes they could and sometimes they couldn’t, but that was true of alphas too. Elias, for instance, had no idea what he was doing.

He put down his hammer and approached the group surrounding Jack Henry.

“We’d be honored if you’d come home with us for dinner tonight,” Rebecca was saying as he walked up. She and her husband were frequent helpers who kept dropping hints about how much they wanted to be pack members.

Elias didn’t know how adding pack members worked. Were they supposed to take applications? Was there a swearing-in ceremony? Mayor Hyde acted like she could just turn the town over to them as a whole, which seemed to be what the disgruntled alphas who mumbled to each other about uppity uber-alphas feared would happen, but Elias and his packmates were too busy sorting through their own lives to take on anyone else’s problems.

“Thanks,” Jack Henry said in response to Rebecca’s invitation, “but I could use some quiet time with my mate.”

“I thought Jasper and Saul left. Oh!” Rebecca turned to acknowledge him with a bright smile. “Of course. There’s Elias here still.”

Yes, there was Elias here still. Galvetta loved Jasper. They loved Saul. They loved Jack Henry. And then there was him.

“You’re both welcome,” Rebecca said, as warmly as if she hadn’t basically forgotten he existed.

“Thanks,” Jack Henry said, “but when you have three mates, you don’t get enough one-on-one time with any of them. Elias and I will enjoy having an evening to ourselves.”

Elias got to have alone time with Jack Henry every weekday when he drove him to and from Galvetta, but he understood what Jack Henry was up to. They were all doing anything they could to strengthen his bond to the pack. He was trying too. He spent every lunch hour combing through the library stacks, reading whatever he could find about pack dynamics.

Bonds were strengthened through sex. “Regular intercourse” was what the textbooks called it, in that formally vague way they had of writing hundreds of years ago. But Elias and his mates were having sex. Really regularly. Obviously something was missing, and if Elias had to have sex with Saul and Jasper to form a bond with them, then how had the bond been forged in the first place? And why did his connection to Jack Henry seem to be weakening too? It was stronger than the others but not as strong as that first morning. None of their bonds were as strong as that first morning, which was entirely backwards from how it was supposed to be.

Elias pondered the question in frustration as people took their leave, until he and Jack Henry ended up alone. Thanks to a hot plate, a mini-fridge, and an endless supply of leftovers Alice sent from the farm, they were able to make themselves dinner. Rebecca might’ve fed them better, but Elias would rather eat cold beans out of a can with Jack Henry than something fancier in company. No matter how much time he got with Jack Henry, he never got enough of it, like he was a desert floor so devoid of moisture that rain pooled on top of it instead of being absorbed. He was surrounded by mates yet starved for attention.

They ate at a picnic table under a canvas canopy, dressed in nothing but shorts. Jack Henry smelled delicious, sun-warmed and sweaty. Elias wanted to lick him all over—clean him up with his tongue and then get him dirty again. He stretched his hand across the table to toy with Jack Henry’s fingers, unsure whether his advances would be welcome without their mates there.

“You wanna go inside?” Jack Henry asked.

“Yes.”

“I can tell. I think you’re the horniest of the four of us. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Because he was the least alpha-like? Well, Jack Henry knew better now. Elias fucked, and he could fuck hard. If things had worked out differently, if he and Jack Henry had arranged to meet during the heat race like Ashton and Beauregard, he could’ve kept Jack Henry plenty satisfied.

“Let me suck you first?” he asked as they moved inside. He had a craving for Jack Henry’s come. It’d become a real dilemma—choosing whether to go anal or oral—but with only the two of them around, he didn’t have to choose. He could be greedy. Suck Jack Henry off first, give him a few minutes to recover, then fuck him into a second orgasm. Even when Jack Henry wasn’t in heat, he was good for more