We pulled up at the St Regis, and I gawped up at the building beside us.

“Here?” I asked, incredulous. “We’re going to stay here?”

Lewis laughed and nodded.

“Why not? I’ve heard so much about this place it’d be rude not to.”

The doormen came over to take the keys to our underwhelming car, and Lewis mumbled something to them before we walked up the red-carpeted steps.

We stood out enormously with our casual country clothing and Lewis’s sports bag.

The reception staff watched as we approached them.

“I’d like a room please,” Lewis said leaning against the counter. “We’d like a room.”

The receptionist looked at me and then took the credit card from Lewis’ outstretched hand.

“We have several rooms available. What type were you looking for? A suite or a standard one?”

I turned away from the front desk and leaned into him, lowering my voice.

“Are you sure? I know a few decent places for much less further out. In fact, a couple of friends owe me a favor…”

Lewis rested a hand on my arm.

“Listen, we’ve travelled a hell of a long way just to be free together. Let’s stay somewhere worth remembering.” He smiled at the patiently waiting receptionist but turned back to me and lowered his voice again. “Go and take a seat over there. I’ll finish up here and come over.”

I looked over to where he’d gestured and made my way across the entrance hall while he continued to get us a room.

The hotel was more than I could have ever imagined it to be. I’d heard stories of how fabulous it was and how decadent the lives were of the people who frequented.

Never in a million years had I imagined I’d be staying there.

I knew Lewis’ family had money of course, but enough to stay in a place like this?

I watched the other guests swanning around the lobby, looking expensive in their immaculate clothes. Handsome Alpha men with their Omegas going about their daily business. Pretty young women on the arms of much older men.

This was a lifestyle that I’d very rarely been an observer to.

Lewis came over after several minutes and held up a room key.

“Shall we?”

I nodded, excited to finally be out in public with him, doing what proper couples did.

I took his outstretched hand, and we navigated our way up to our room, stopping in the elevator to look at each other.

He pressed the button when we got to our floor, keeping the doors closed.

“Is this what you want?” he asked, staring into my eyes. “It’s been twelve years, Max. Twelve! After everything we went through back then and everything now, am I still what you want?”

I nodded urgently.

It was. He was. I couldn’t imagine the outcome any other way.

He pushed me up against the back of the elevator and pressed his body against mine.

“I’d give up everything for you,” he whispered before kissing me. I felt his hands go up and under the loose-fitting T-shirt Evan had given me.

“N-not here…” I tried to say when he pulled away momentarily.

He rested a hand on the wall by my head.

“You were always the cautious one…” he said, his lips inches from my ear.

I opened my mouth to respond, but the doors sprung open and made me jump and push Lewis aside.

Two Alphas entered the elevator just as we walked out, and Lewis held back a laugh until we were down the hall.

“You don’t have to be so nervous anymore,” he said with a large grin as we checked each door number.

“We’re so far from home, no one will even find us here. Here it is.”

He stopped outside of the door and turned to me. I was in awe of his ease and confidence in such an unfamiliar place.

“What they did to you… to us back in Grayson was barbaric, but here, we don’t have to hide anymore. We’re free.”

He unlocked the door and pushed it open.

“Welcome to your home for the next week.”

“Week?” I asked stunned.

He nodded and laughed as he ushered inside the room.

“I figured we needed a decent place to rest our heads and some privacy while I work out how to get my hands on an apartment. I’m serious about us, you know.”

I turned to him and wrapped my arms around his neck.

“Thank you!”

He laughed and freed himself from my grip and made his way over to the mini bar.

“Anything you want to drink?”

I shook my head, instead making my way over to the bed and throwing myself down onto it.

“I know what I want…”

Lewis’ head jolted up and looked at me. His eyes darkened.

“Give me two minutes.”

He picked up a bottle of water, took a small pill pot out of his bag and disappeared into the bathroom.

I lay back on the bed, looking up at the ornate ceiling while I waited.

He emerged shortly afterwards, wide eyed and glugging from the bottle.

“You sick too?” I asked sitting up. “Everything okay?”

He looked over at me and nodded.

“Good. Fine. Great.”

“What were…?”

He jumped onto the bed beside me and rested a hand on my thigh.

“When I watched you drive off through Main Street in the back of your parents’ car, every fucking image of us living the best us filled my head. I couldn’t see straight or think straight or… I just couldn’t function.”

“I should have told you sooner that I was leaving,” I said quietly into the dimly lit room. It wasn’t my entire fault, I knew that. I remembered my mom sitting me down in the lounge and telling me that we were moving to New York. I remembered her stern face glaring at me when I’d mentioned telling my friends.

I closed my eyes, trying to rid myself of the memory.

Leaving Grayson that day had been one of the worst moments of my life.

Lewis turned to me and propped himself up.

“I wonder where we would’ve been now if my parents hadn’t made you leave?” he asked.

I thought about it and imagined myself sprawled out with him in the garden house, my head on his Alpha chest, inhaling him and everything he was about.

God, I’d loved him. I didn’t fully know it back then, but I knew it now. I knew that the man lying beside me had my heart completely.

None of the suave Alphas in New York mattered anymore. Nothing was worth losing him again.

“I’d like to think that we would have up and left at some point and moved away. Got the hell out so we could be together.”

“I’d like to think that too,” he said, tracing an imaginary line up and down my leg. It sent shivers through me.

“Why were your parents so against me, Lewis? I mean, I know I don’t come from the best family, but they didn’t even give me a chance…”

He sighed, and his fingers stopped moving on my chinos. I’d already asked this question and he’d told me as much as he wanted to share, but I hoped that being here in the city, alone, he’d open up more.

“Be honest.” I pushed. “Just hit me with it.”

He smiled and shook his head.

“There’s nothing sinister going on. I just… It’s just…”

“You can tell me,” I whispered, lacing my fingers through his. “I’m not the wild city boy you think I am.”

He sighed again, taking a while before he answered.

“You understand my ancestors were the founding fathers of Grayson, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, everything they’ve done is to protect the family and to keep the name strong.”

“So, Omegas would dilute it?”

He shrugged.

“I suppose? We’re supposed to marry women from a founding family. That’s what everyone’s done—my uncles, my cousins, my friends. No one challenges it because being a Grayson is so damn important to us. It’s in our blood and all we’ve known… Well, until…”

“Until we started taking proper notice of each other…”

He pushed himself up and stared down at me.

“I never meant to hurt you,” he said seriously. “I couldn’t get enough of you. You were like an addiction, and I…”

“What?” I urged.

“I’m not what you think I am. If you knew better, you’d have never come back.”

“I had to. I had to see you one last time.”

“I’m dangerous,” he said under his breath.

I shifted on the bed until I was closer to him.

“And I love playing with fire…”

He watched me momentarily before closing the gap between us and pressing his lips against mine.

He pushed me back onto the bed so his body was on top of me, and I felt his hands snake their way up to cup my face.

My cock involuntarily twitched in my pants, stiffening at the thought of having him inside me again.

I grabbed hold of the edge of his jacket and pushed it back over his shoulders. He lifted away from me, and I watched as he took his top off, my eyes wandering over his body hungrily. Back at the motel, everything had been so quick that I hadn’t had a chance to properly study him, but now, seeing his muscular torso made me want more immediately.

I pulled at the zipper on my trousers whilst I watched him undress further, pulling them off the end of my feet as fast as I could.

His eyes landed on my hard cock in my underwear, and he licked his lips, stopping his own strip tease to pull at my top.

“Take it off,” he ordered.

I did as I was told, pulling it over my head and throwing it onto the floor.

“What next?” I asked.

He grinned and pointed to my underpants.

“Off.”

“Yes, sir.”

He laughed as I pulled them down, his eyes never left my dick, and impatiently, before I’d kicked them off, he was down kissing a line along the trail of hair on my swollen lower stomach He didn’t care that I’d put on extra weight since I’d first arrived in Grayson. He just loved me for me. My erection bounced against his neck before he took it into his mouth.

“Fuck!”

I gripped hold of the sheets on the bed beside me as he deep throated my cock, and then closed his lips around my shaft.

“I’m… not… going to be… able to hold back,” I whimpered as the pressure built up in my stomach.

He didn’t respond or stop, instead choosing to continue, and I pushed him away like a school kid.

“God! Anyone would think you were a pro.”

He laughed.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

He stood up and took the rest of his clothes off under my watchful eye before he climbed up my body and kissed me again.

“I want you so fucking bad,” he growled into my neck, and I felt his teeth graze the skin there. “So bad.”

“Then have me,” I breathed back, bucking my cock against his.

He reached down and grabbed both our dicks, jerking them together, his hand moving urgently.

He lifted his body back with his other hand to watch me as he jerked me off.

I felt his cock against mine, felt the thickness of his erection as his hand gripped us both.

“Damnit, Alpha, I’m gonna come too soon,” I said between gritted teeth.

“Do it,” he instructed.

I closed my eyes, trying to hold it off, but there was no use fighting it. I came hard, crying out into the quiet room. A stream of my cum shot out and coated Lewis’ hand.

He kept going, tugging hard and keeping the orgasm rolling.

He stopped when he saw me flop back onto the bed spread eagle, and he curled up against my back, snuggling me and breathing me in.

“Everything okay?” I asked, turning my head back, slightly disappointed that things were winding down.

He nodded against my neck and held me tighter.

“Just give me a minute,” he said hoarsely.