Page 82 of Slow Heat

Ignoring the tease, he said, “Earlier you wanted to come inside and take me. Now that I’m willing you just stop?”

“Earlier I was going to take you up to your room and do it right,” Jason said calmly, though his neck was flushed.

Vale gritted his teeth.

“It’s a good thing I dosed up on more alpha quell before coming in here, huh?” Jason lifted a brow. “Or I’d have failed the test for sure.”

“It wasn’t a test.” Vale stood up, his body a livewire of denied arousal. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Jason nodded warily. “I know. Well, I mean, I know you wouldn’t do it on purpose, like in advance. But later, you’d be thinking about it, and you’d wonder how you could be with an alpha who took you for the first time in the kitchen, without care and preparation, and without following protocols.”

“I don’t give a shit about protocols,” Vale said, gripping the edge of the table hard. “I’m not the kind of man who could demand you follow them.”

Jason put his sandwich on the plate to give Vale his full attention. “That’s not true. You do care. You insisted from the beginning we follow them.”

“Because I was scared,” Vale admitted. The wood beneath his palms dug in sharply. “I didn’t know you.”

“And now you do?” Jason’s eyebrows rose.

He had a point.

Jason tried a grin. “I think you’re suffering from pheromone delirium, Professor Aman.”

Vale glared at him.

“Eat your lunch,” Jason said, nudging Vale’s untouched plate. “You need to keep your strength up for all that reading and napping you’ve still got to finish today.”

Vale snorted but didn’t take up his sandwich. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

Vale stood and waved toward the laundry room. His underwear was soaked again, and he wasn’t going to eat lunch with the annoying, slippery wetness a constant reminder of how Jason had led him on. “I need to change.”

“But I like the way you smell,” Jason said, his eyes hooding. “Knowing you’re wet for me, I like that.”

“You would.” Vale gritted his teeth and went to change his clothes.

He took a few minutes to clean himself up and get his head together, but when he returned to Jason and the table, his hands were still shaking when he picked up his sandwich. How long would Jason have this effect on him? Would his body calm down if he gave in to his desires, if they contracted and consummated? How long until they both relaxed into something more normal?

“So, what’s new?” Jason asked like he hadn’t just been the biggest tease in all of human history five minutes earlier.

Still on edge, Vale chewed his bite of sandwich and then shrugged. “Not much. I think I told you I saw Rosen the other day. He’s working on a new painting.”

“Oh, yeah. He’s an artist/chef/philosopher, right? Is he any good? At the art part, I mean.”

“In my opinion, yes, but everyone has their own tastes about art, of course.”

Jason popped a loose piece of spinach into his mouth. “I like abstract better than figurative. What does he do?”

“A bit of both.” Vale wasn’t hungry for food. He shoved his sandwich aside. “What draws you to the abstract in art?”

Jason cocked his head, thinking a bit. “Are you going to eat that?”

Vale shook his head.

“Do you mind if I…?”

His growing alpha had been working outside. Of course he was hungry. “Go right ahead.”