Another week went by, with Tom gushing every day about his new friendship with Pierre. As it turned out, Pierre had been beyond thrilled to find out that Tom and Cecil were the parents of his son’s half-siblings. He and Tom shared the uniquely horrible experience of having been the victims of Junior Dev, while Cecil was the adoptive father of the child whose deceased omega father was Junior Dev’s final victim.

Allie, Tom’s almost 13-year-old daughter, was thrilled to have another little half-brother in Julian. According to Tom, Julian followed Allie around everywhere when they were together, while Cecil’s little Joshua followed Julian. Tom had taken to calling them the little ducklings.

Milo and Liam were talking him out of getting them all matching T-shirts that were screen printed with fuzzy little duckies on them, although my money was on the fact that Tom had likely already ordered them.

It made me happy to know that Pierre was now a part of Tom’s inner circle, and had a support system finally. I had the feeling that the omega had been alone for a long time—just him and Julian against the world.

“Wow, I forgot how tiring it was to be busy!” Tom said as he came bustling into the kitchen, tearing me from my thoughts while I stood washing the last of the pots that I’d used today.

“Do you and Colin have any hot plans for tonight? Or did you not arrange for a sitter in time again?” I teased, remembering how Tom had sulked last Valentine’s Day because he’d forgotten to arrange for a babysitter and nobody had been free.

I would have been happy to watch his kids, but I’d been up to my armpits with my own niece and nephew, along with Cecil and Ian’s two little ones. Tom’s twins would’ve been too much, considering that they both had bad colds at the time. Otherwise I would’ve been happy to take them all on.

“Kent doesn’t need to worry his little alpha head about Tom and Colin, Kent needs to fix his own shit. I think it’s high time that you get the fuck over this whole bakery thing, and go make things right with Pierre.”

“Tom,” I said warningly. “You have no proof that there is anything to fix between me and Pierre, so quit trying to dig up the dirt. I know your tricks, or have you forgotten that I know you?”

I turned to dry my hands after I’d started the dishwasher that would steam clean and sanitize the pots now that I’d gotten all the loose stuff out of them. When I was finished, I found Tom watching me with a thoughtful look on his face.

“Go ahead,” I sighed. “Get it all out, we both know that you’re not going be able to leave until you tell me what’s on your mind.”

“What’s on my mind, is that despite what you and Pierre want everyone to know or not know, as the case may be... I think that the two of you would be good together. Pierre gets anxious and is constantly running around in circles, while you are calm and steady. Kind of like me and my hot alpha daddy, you know? I’m not trying to match you up just because you are the two single people in our circle. I’m simply telling you to pull your head out of your ass, if there’s a chance that you are interested in him. For your sake, not mine. I’m just an innocent bystander watching his friend sit around like a lonely goofball. But that’s all I’m gonna say, because I need to get home. Will you think about it though?”

I looked into Tom’s caring eyes and reached out for a hug. Nosy Tom? Him, I could push aside without a thought. But caring Tom? That guy got to me every time.

After I’d locked up the kitchen, and headed around to my car, I took a detour across the street to the bakery. Tom’s words were echoing in my head, and the thought of yet another lonely Valentine’s Day wasn’t all that appealing. I figured that I’d go and offer Pierre an apology, and if he accepted, I’d offer to buy him a drink as a peace offering. If he turned me down, that would be that. But, it didn’t hurt to give it one last shot.

My heart was pounding as I approached the door to the bakery, nervous as fuck, when something in the front window caught my eye. On full display in the center of the plate glass window was a neatly stacked tower of beautifully iced milk chocolate coated macarons.

Normally, a macaron tower was made of different shades of pastel iced treats, so the fact that these were all chocolate coated caught my eye. I leaned down to view the hand printed sign at its base, and almost immediately sucked in an angry breath through my teeth.

Okay. I'd come over here with the idea of apologizing to this creativity thief, and now he was at it again? First, he'd blatantly stolen my idea for the salted caramel treats that starred the pink Himalayan sea salts, but now he was trying his hand at Milo's family recipe?

Enough was enough. Fuck going to war, I was going to put the little copy artist in his place. It was one thing to copy me… But don't fuck with my friends.

I moved over to the door, but it was locked. I tapped furiously on the glass when I saw the light coming from the kitchen, but it was Amor who came walking out with a happy smile on his cherubic face.

"Greetings, my friend. I knew that you wouldn't stay away from here on this day of celebrating love. I'll just let you in and be on my way, please be sure and lock the door behind me if you will."

Before I had a chance to argue, Amor had swept around me and was practically skipping down the sidewalk. I shook my head and locked the door, although locking myself in with the object of my wrath probably wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had.

I hesitated for just a second before boldly walking around behind the counter and walking into his kitchen the same way that he done with mine. I found him bent over a large wooden butcher block table, elbow deep in a huge ball of dough.

"You asked me to back off, and I did. So, tell me why you did it. I mean, you’re fucking friends with the owner of my shop, and all but blood brothers with my manager. And yet, I see a fucking display in your front window that's an obvious rip off of our PBF Ballz? Seriously? Are you even capable of having your own creative ideas? Is that the real reason that you moved in across the street from our shop, so that you could copy all of our ideas and pass them off as original creations?"

"If you really must know, I asked Milo for permission to do my take on his recipe. Not only was he on board, but we came up with a plan. We thought that since our sons are friends that it might be cute to do a cross promotion. Everyone who buys some of my macarons are given a discount coupon for Sweet Ballz. Not that Milo or Tom need to run their promotions by you, but they probably just forgot to mention it since we just came up with the idea last night. I put that in the window after I closed, for tomorrow's sales. But you know what, Kent? If you can't stand the heat of fucking competition, you need to get your ass out of the kitchen."

He looked over at me then with a pinched look on his face. "Now that I think about it, what are you even doing in my kitchen anyway? I don't recall inviting you in here, so make like a tree and leave."

I looked at him standing there in his perfect little white coat with that obnoxiously poufy hat and before my brain registered what my hand was doing, I picked up an egg from the basket on his table and threw it right into his snotty little face.

Pierre stood there staring at me in shock, as if completely aghast at what I had done. I opened my mouth to apologize, right as an entire measuring cup full of sour cream got splashed into my face. I all but gargled on the thickness of the cream as I attempted to curse.

The metal cup landed on the floor at Pierre's feet as he started grabbing more things to throw. I grabbed two more eggs and threw them rapid-fire at him. One landed on his left shoulder, one hit him on the right side of his chest. He glared malevolently at me, a look that was completely lost in translation with the egg yolk currently dripping from his chin and down the front of his shirt.

"You son of a bitch," Pierre yelled as he came running over and slammed an entire cube of softened butter right into the center of my chest, taking care to slowly rub it in for maximum effect. While he was rubbing the butter into my chest, I reached over onto his table and grabbed the ten-pound sack of flour with one hand and proceeded to pour it over his head. Flour went everywhere, filtering through the air like smoke as we both slipped and slid around the floor, and grabbed at the rest of the ingredients that were so helpfully lined out on his table and proceeded to attack each other with them.

I lifted his hat and tossed it aside with one hand while breaking an egg over his head with the other. Pierre gasped and threw an egg into my face, while I grabbed a chunk out of his huge ball of dough and grounded it into the top of his head to go with the egg.

Pierre was cursing a stream of profanities in French as he grabbed a cup of oil while I was smearing the dough into his hair. He casually pulled my waistband forward and poured a full cup of olive oil down the front my pants. He went to reach for his own chunk of the dough, but started to fall when his shoes skidded in the mess that we’d made on the floor.

I reached out to grab his biceps, hoping to steady him from falling but I over reached and began falling right along with him. My protective instincts kicked in, despite how angry I was at the moment.

Even as I cursed the day he was born, I pulled him closer to me and twisted us so that I braced our fall. Pierre started squirming to break free and presumably grab more of the ingredients that were scattered all around us on the floor.

His hands gripped my shoulders as he went to push off, when he made the mistake of looking me in the eye. We both went silent then, staring at each other for a fraction of a second before Pierre suddenly dove forward and all but attacked my lips with his own. I flipped us over neatly, caging him between my arms and bracing myself around him as we kissed, our tongues battling for domination.

He pushed at my shoulders, flipping me back over as he straddled my hips and sat up panting. "Merde. You piss me off more than any person I've ever met in my life. I fucking hate your ass," he said, his eyes flashing fire above his flushed cheeks, egg coated nose, and those puffy lips that were swollen from our kiss.

"I fucking hate your ass too. You fucking keep trying to put me out of a job, yet all the while are busy stealing my creative ideas. You're nothing but a snooty, pretentious, cheating fraud," I all but growled with frustration.

"And you're just a bull-headed, provincial, judgmental asshole!” he shouted, his chest heaving from our fight. "So, tell me, Kent—if I hate you so much, why does fucking you right now sound like such a good idea?"

"I don't know, you French dick. But you’ve got about thirty seconds to get your pants off," I said as I pushed him to the side to get at my own pants as I kicked off my food coated shoes.

Getting undressed in the middle of the floor covered with flour, sugar, broken eggs, oil, and other bits wasn't the easiest or most sanitary thing that I'd ever done. But somehow, we both managed to get our pants and shoes off before we attacked each other again.

"Merde, that feels good," Pierre panted into my ear when he stretched back over me, and our cocks slid against each other. Thanks to the oil he poured down my pants, I was pretty slippery from the waist down.

His determined hands were yanking at my hair and pulling at my jaw to line us up for another kiss while I busily worked at unfastening his chef jacket. I needed to see him naked, I simply had to know if he was as beautifully perfect in person as he was in my dreams from our one night spent together over three months ago now.

I didn't even have his jacket fully open before I felt him slip down onto my fully erect cock. I groaned as Pierre began to rock back and forth with abandon, his head thrown back highlighting his prominent Adam's apple and cleanly shaven jawline.

Finally, I got the last button undone and ripped his jacket open, slowly pushing it off his shoulders and down his arms each time he rocked forward, until I had him free of it and was able to toss it off to the side.

Ignoring the tightening of my balls and the fireworks going off in my head as the synapses in my brain all but short-circuited, I ran my hands over his smooth chest down his sides and over his flat—wait, what the hell? I looked up at him curiously, but he shook his head with a glare.

"I already know that you're a fucking dick, but why don't you focus on fucking me with yours instead of behaving like one for a change. Yes, I put on a few pounds," he panted out as he continued to furiously rock back and forth along my cock as he spit out these angry words. "But what kind of an asshole points out something like that during sex? Even if it's a grudge fuck, you still don't do that."

"I did not call you fat, so quit putting words in my mouth," I panted back at him as I grabbed his hips and began to buck mine. His eyes rolled back as I thrust harder up into him.

Pierre reached down and grabbed his own cock and began almost desperately stroking it in rhythm with our fucking. It only took a few more thrusts and strokes on both of our parts before Pierre was coming all over my chest. I held him firmly in place until I'd finished shooting my own load of cum up inside him.

As soon as we finished, Pierre flopped forward across my chest with his head resting in the crook of my shoulder. I ran a hand idly along his spine, my fingertips grazing up and down over his silky skin as my brain slowly processed the firm bump that was pressing into me where his soft, fleshy stomach should be.

I'd been around enough pregnant omegas within my own personal circle to know a baby bump when I felt one. And given the size of it, and the timing, I knew it was mine. Apparently, what happens in Vegas, doesn't always stay in Vegas.