Only You

By Willa Okati

Second Chance -- a small town where anything can happen -- and does.

Once upon a time, an eighteen year old Alpha named Alex fell in love with a pretty Omega boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Zachary was everything he’d ever wanted -- sweet, sassy, and sexy as hell. Alex would have married that boy and raised baby after baby with him -- if Zachary hadn’t run away when Alex popped the question.

Alex doesn’t give up easily. When a train derails on its way to Alex’s hometown, he’s finally got another shot at the one who got away, and he’s not going to waste it. Now he’s got Zachary in his sights, and he’s never letting go again.

It killed Zachary to let Alex go the first time. He loved that man as much as Alex loved him, and he’s never fallen out of love, but he left to give Alex his best chance at living his best life. Zachary can’t -- won’t -- be sorry for that, no matter what it cost him.

Stranded in Second Chance with nowhere else to go and no way to get there, Zachary’s got no choice but to accept the help and shelter Alex offers. The chemistry’s still there. The desire. The connection. The yearning. But when the secrets they’ve both been keeping come to light, will they shatter their bond for keeps, or bring them together in a forever kind of love?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Changeling Press
• Release date: Jul 28, 2021

Willa Okati

Willa Okati can most often be found muttering to herself over a keyboard, plugged into her iPod and breaking between paragraphs to play air drums. In her spare time (the odd ten minutes or so per day she's not writing) she's teaching herself to play the pennywhistle. Willa has forty-plus separate tattoos and yearns for a full body suit of ink. She walks around in a haze of story ideas, dreaming of tales yet to be told. She drinks an alarming amount of coffee for someone generally perceived to be mellow.

Book preview

Prologue

Alex

Three months. Three months since they’d started doing this. Since Alex had been allowed to have it. To have him. Zachary. To have him like this, both of them naked and hard, Zachary kneeling on top of Alex and looking down at him like he was the only thing in the world he’d ever wanted. Alex knew he was looking up at Zachary the same way. Maybe even more so, because of the way Zachary shook his head fondly and stroked his cheek, teasing the edges of his smile with one thumb. And -- why not? It was true. The basement of the empty house they usually snuck away to might be freezing and dusty, and they might have to keep their voices down so no one would hear them, but Alex wouldn’t have traded it for anything. Not even the world.

What did the world have that could compare to this?

Nothing he could think of, for damn sure.

The way you smile could melt snow, sweetheart. Slow, smooth and easy, Zachary pressed his palms flat against Alex’s bare chest, pushing him down until he came to rest with his back against the floor. The old linoleum was enough to make Alex shiver, but he didn’t care, and he didn’t stop grinning. Zachary stroked one fingertip against Alex’s cheek. God, look at you, you beautiful baby, you wild dog. You’re gorgeous.

Alex laughed. To tell the truth? He loved the pet names, and he did mostly have forest-hunting canines, wolves and mastiffs, in his animal heritage, but the other one -- come on. He couldn’t let that slide without at least a little snapback. Baby? Really?

Mmm-hmm. The way Zachary grinned at him, brazen and predatory as the wildcat bloodlines he came from, told Alex he’d been angling for exactly that reaction. Not many men could make a full shift, but bits and pieces came out in everyone, like the way Zachary’s eyes went cat gold with oval-slit pupils when he was on the hunt. What, you don’t like it?

"I didn’t say that." Alex reached up to take Zachary’s smooth, bare hips in the cups of his palms; he was a big guy, built sturdy and tall like most Alphas, and Zachary was small like Omegas usually were, all slim bones and delicate joints with a pointed chin and a shoulder-length tumble of silky dark hair. Alex could hold those hips with room for his fingertips to curve around and knead at Zachary’s ass cheeks, making both men hiss at the contact.

But there was never an ante Zachary wouldn’t up and no challenge he wouldn’t rise to. He’d been stubborn and feisty as hell like that for as long as Alex had known him, and he’d known Zachary since, God, they were snot-nosed kids growing up in the same neighborhood. They’d played soccer on the same team at the same high school and worked summer jobs at the same community pool. Genderless kids could do that until they presented as either Alpha or Omega and were separated until their hormones settled down or they paired up. They paired up more than they were supposed to and got together as often as they could.

Really, really together.

Like this. Even if it had to be in secret because they were still young, not twenty yet, and the second an Alpha started sniffing after an Omega the whole damn world wanted to get involved. It was their business and no one else’s, Zachary insisted; he’d been with a handful of other boys before any of them presented as one gender or the other and he’d already dealt with more than he wanted of the whole neighborhood bike bullshit.

So Alex hadn’t argued too hard and anyway, Zachary had been right. They’d needed time to figure this whole thing out between them, and it was easier this way. Private. Protected. Nothing but the two of them together in the shadows.

And it was -- good, so good. Perched on top of him Zachary was warm, light enough his weight barely registered but so solid and there, his cock dark and hard where it rested against Alex’s belly. He rolled his hips in a tease, moving slowly against and with Alex’s hands. There you go, that’s good, like that, he murmured, his slow roll asking Alex to join the fun.

Alex couldn’t resist the temptation. His hands shook as he reached up to stroke whatever parts of Zachary he could reach, sliding from here to there every time he saw another part he needed to touch -- and there were so many he had to sit back up, balancing Zachary in his lap, to reach them all and to taste them too. He moved his mouth over everything he could reach on Zachary -- his slim hands, for starters, especially where they were marred with a few scars from the carving he liked to do sometimes. His nipples, flat brown discs with the centers raised up hard as little pebbles. The dip of his navel and the shudder and flex of his stomach muscles underneath. Between his collarbones, where he tasted sweet; at the softness of the skin on his throat, and the tendons that stood out hard when he arched his head back. Zachary hummed when he mouthed at them, and made small, desperate noises when he bit them.

The whole time, he kept his gentle rhythm going. Maybe he couldn’t help it, maybe he liked it, but God, he was good at it. He smelled as sweet as he tasted, the scent Alex had come to recognize as a gentle release of Omega hormones. Hormones, and the slick wetness his Omega body produced, making them both slippery and sticky where their hips fit together. More so when Alex reached down to guide his cock into the space between Zachary’s legs and slide there in the tight heat between the muscles. He could feel the Omega channel between balls and ass, open and dripping, wetting him when he nudged his cockhead there.

"Oh." Zachary arched above him. He wasn’t even inside the guy, but Alex had made him shudder and made his cock jerk up with what he was doing. Made him feel like he was more than human, like he was a god or something, or like -- like -- he didn’t know the right words. Yet.

Or maybe he did, and it wasn’t the right time to say them.

Or was it?

Alex put his face to Zachary’s chest, wanting his mouth on Zachary’s nipples again. No. Not yet. There was time. They had all the time they wanted.

How’d he gotten so lucky? Alex had gone over and over it and he didn’t have a clue. Seemed like it’d happened all of a sudden one day, when he was looking at Zachary, hungry but not willing to say so when Zachary never seemed to look back the same way, but then suddenly Zachary was looking back, crossing whatever room they’d been in, driving straight into Alex’s arms and demanding to be kissed.

Alex had. He could still feel the first shock of Zachary’s mouth on his. He never wanted to forget it.

And ever since then: this.

Zachary shuddered again as he caught his breath. He threaded his fingers through Alex’s hair to push his head back. You’re thinking so hard I can almost hear you, he teased. Where’d you go?

Nowhere. Right here.

Good answer. Zachary let go of Alex’s hair to slide back a little and took hold of his cock, shiny-wet, and give it a couple of lazy pulls. Because right here is exactly where I want you.

Alex wasn’t going to argue with him, especially when the change pressed their bellies together with both their cocks trapped between them. The friction made him grind his teeth and press his forehead hard against Zachary’s shoulder. They were both shiny with sweat, hot and red, and if it weren’t for the difference between their scents, his Alpha musk and Zachary’s Omega sweetness, he wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between them.

So maybe he might argue a little. This was -- amazing, this was like getting drunk off nothing more than touch, but -- Alex wanted more. Something he’d gotten once or twice and craved like a junkie going after a fix. Zachary was an addiction, and he wanted to feed on it.

It made him brave. Bold.

You want me right here? Alex asked, sliding his hand between Zachary’s thighs. He found his way to Zachary’s entrance and slipped two fingers inside. So tight, so wet, muscles clutching at him as he curled his fingers to stroke up the way Zachary had taught him. Or here, instead?

"Oh. Oh, Alex. Oh God. Zachary leaned forward to capture his mouth in a kiss, rougher than he’d been since the very first time they’d kissed. He only stopped kissing Alex when he ran out of air and it left him panting. Oh God, you’re going to make me come."

Alex laughed into the softness of Zachary’s open mouth and slipped out of him, making him whine in protest. Uh-uh. You think I’m done yet? I’m not. Baby.

Zachary laughed with him, breathless but light and sweet and pure. You’re a menace. Come back. I want more.

No. Alex bit at Zachary’s chin. I’ll come, and I don’t want to. Not yet.

But soon. Zachary’s hips moved faster. He’d gotten harder, leaking trails over Alex’s groin. Alex could tell he was