by Kathryn Moon
He didn’t really smile, but I got the impression he was amused at least. “Yeah. Your courting present. Bullet’s teaching you to shoot. I’m teaching you to punch. Fight back.”
I perked up in my seat, a bite of potatoes dressed in gravy and egg yolk halfway to my lips. “Wait for real?”
“For fuckin’ real,” Brody said, and this time he really was smiling.
“Okay, cool! Yeah. I took a self-defense seminar but…”
“But it was awhile ago and you haven’t practiced?” I nodded, and Brody shrugged. “It’ll still help. Drink the juice, don’t stuff yourself. If you’ve done some work before, I won’t go easy on you.”
I had no doubt about that, and despite being kind of sore, I was looking forward to Brody coaching me. My alphas definitely didn’t lack originality in their gifting.
Brody grunted behind me as I threw my legs backward, my heel hitting the cup he wore over his groin, and then yanked his wrist back, escaping out of his hold and running to the other side of the mat. I was sweaty, I hurt, and I was some uncomfortable place between rising anxiety and rising arousal after all of this physical contact and aggression. Not for Brody really, although he wasn’t hard on the eyes, even if he didn’t really fit me the way others did. Cole was in the corner though, lifting weights and working up a sweat that I found painfully delicious as his scent drifted in our direction.
“Not bad,” Brody said, turning his wrist. “I’d catch up to you, you should’ve broken my nose too.”
I laughed, still slightly gasping from exertion. “You told me not to draw back this time. I would’ve really broken it.”
He shrugged. “Dunno if you can tell, but it wouldn’t be the first time. No big deal.”
I scoffed and shook my head. Macho men.
“You tired?”
I was exhausted. And getting crabby. “I can do one more.”
“If you push yourself, you’ll injure yourself and then you won’t be able to do what I’ve been training you on.”
I frowned and rested the heels of my hands on my hips glaring at him and thinking it through. “I am tired. But I can do one more.”
His lips twitched slightly and he nodded, patting his chest. “C’mere then. We’ll do one from the front.”
Weight clunked down in the far side of the room and from the corner of my eyes I caught Cole stretching and resting from his workout. Brody growled softly in warning, hands clasping around my upper arms.
“Focus, Baby,” he said, as my eyes drifted back to him.
Before I could nod or speak, Brody’s grip tightened and he dragged me up to his chest, my legs kicking in the air, and then dropped us down to the mat, landing heavily on top of me. I let out an ‘oof’ of surprise, head thumping against the slight give of the mat, and Brody kicked my legs apart, landing between them.
I whined and tried to yank myself away, but the position was familiar, one we’d worked on in old self-defense classes. I twisted beneath Brody, his bulk and weight suddenly oppressive in the sterile space of the gym, drawing my knees up between us, until one banged against his jaw. My heart hammered in my chest and my breath stuck in my lungs as I slipped my foot to the center of his chest and shoved hard. He grunted and his hands loosened on my arms as he leaned back. I rolled, kicking at his chest and towards his face, landing one briefly against his jaw before he sat up and I twisted and crawled away.
“Good!” Brody said, but his voice was buried under a siren in my head, pulse pounding in my ears as I kept crawling. “Hey, Baby.”
“Hold up.” Cole’s bare feet squeaked against the floor as he ran closer.
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” My voice was too high to be convincing and I was sitting on my heels since my legs were shaking.
“You scared her, dickhead.” Cole sat down in front of me, shoulders rolling in so we were on eye level, blue eyes scanning my face.
“He didn’t.” I turned to look up at Brody, whose arms were crossed over his chest. His brow furrowed with worry. “You didn’t. I did good?”
He nodded slowly and then crouched, arms hanging loose at his side. “You remembered a good move. You okay?”
“Yeah. Uh… little wobbly but no strain or anything. Just kind of a reflex adrenaline stress.”
“Believe it or not, that’s a good thing. If it made you react instead of freeze, it’s useful stress. You want me or Cole?”
My eyes widened but before I could answer, Cole was sliding closer, arms circling me and drawing me to his chest as he started to purr. “She needs a break from the eau de testosterone,” he answered for me.
“No, really, Brody. I’m grateful, thank you.” I turned in Cole’s hold to face the other alpha and stretched my leg out to nudge my toe against his calf. The giant man smiled at me, glared at his packmate behind me, and wrapped a big hand around my ankle.
“Drink juice. Get some rest. Cole, take her up to her nest and take care of her, yeah? We’ll do this again later in the week.”
I nodded and Cole was silent behind me, pulling my hair off my sweaty skin and waiting for Brody to leave us in the gym.
“He’s a brute,” Cole muttered, purring again.
“He’s not. He’s sweet. I like training, anyway.” I leaned back to absorb the vibration of the sound, trying to relax like Brody had instructed.
“Doll, you don’t need to train. That’s what you have us for.” His hands soothed up my arms and over my shoulders, twisting my hair around his fist.
I rolled my eyes and tried not to give into the sea salt and vanilla cream temptation he was oozing. “Sure, but I still like being able to manage for myself. Don’t you want a badass omega who can, um, like roll with the big guys or whatever?”
Cole was nuzzling against my jaw, and it was starting to become hard to formulate the words I wanted. Adrenaline was quickly turning to shivery heat born lust, and it occurred to me that Cole was the last of my dangerously tempting alphas to really touch me aside from the sneaky, demanding kiss he’d managed in the garage.
“I want a good little omega,” Cole growled in my ear, and when I frowned and flashed him a glare, he returned with a dazzling grin and a soft laugh. His arm wrapped around my waist loosened and his fingertips found their way between the hem of my t-shirt and leggings. “A good little omega who tastes delicious, and soaks my fingers when she comes. Do you want to be that for me?”
I shivered and twisted to look at him. It was hard to reconcile the fact that I hadn’t really gotten to know Cole in the time I’d been here, with how natural and easy it was to lean into him and accept what he was offering. This was the moment where heat cravings played tug of war against my usual beta reserve. It didn’t help that he was preternaturally beautiful either, blue eyes full of heat, tongue flicking over his bottom lip as he stared back.
“Anyone could come in,” I said, voice already breathy.
“Red probably put the word out not to disturb,” Cole said, touch slipping down into the waistband of my leggings. “Would you care if you were caught? If Scorch saw you with me, crying out my name?”
Maybe not Jonah, I might enjoy if he watched. But some of the others? I wasn’t much of an exhibitionist usually.
“Let me take care of my omega,” Cole purred in my ear, lips trailing down to my throat to nip and lick. “I’ll have you screaming in no time.”
I was panting, already chasing his touch, craning my neck to press our faces together. I would’ve given in, and maybe he knew that, because he didn’t wait for me to say yes. I moaned as his hand burrowed down, fingers sliding through dewy arousal.
“Already wet for me,” he whispered, before claiming my mouth in a sudden and rough kiss. There was no play for control, no exchange of pace, just claiming and devouring. I whined as he circled my clit with two fingers, rubbing and swirling until I was limp in his hold, hips rising for more. Before I could come, those fingers found their way to my entrance, plunging inside.
“Fuck you’re tight,” Cole
said, tearing away from my lips and leaving my cries to echo off the too open room. I clung to his arms around me, squeezed my eyes shut, and tried to find the rhythm of his rapid pace to ride it out. It was cold in the gym, the lights overhead leaving harsh stripes of color behind my eyes. “That’s it, doll. Squeeze my fingers like you’ll squeeze my knot. Gonna make you come till you can’t walk, can’t think of any alpha but me.”
“Cole, please, slower,” I said, pressing my forehead to his cheek.
“Just starting,” he answered instead, and then his thumb was pressed to my clit, grinding hard as he fucked me with ruthless efficiency. I came, trying to pull away, and he held me tight to his chest, driving me through my orgasm. “Bet you’re as sweet as you smell, Baby. Come on, hands and knees for me.”
I gasped as he pulled his hand from my leggings, drawing it up to his lips and sucking with a long groan. He shifted up on his knees, dragging me with him, and tried to lean forward, pushing me to the floor.
“Gonna fill that greedy pussy up with my knot just like you want,” he hissed in my ear, fingers hooking in the top of my leggings to pull them down.
“Stop, stop, hold up.” I grunted, and swiped his hands off my waist, turning to face him. “You can’t knot me here.”
He frowned, sitting back on his heels, cock clearly at attention inside of his sweatpants. He was almost cute, blush high in his cheeks, and full lips pouting with annoyance. Except I was annoyed too.
“Why not?” he asked. “You can’t be satisfied yet.”
“I was satisfied before you started,” I snapped, and then sighed, trying to sort my head out. I brushed my hand over my face and then back through my hair, feeling it tangle around my fingers. “Look, I don’t wanna be stuck down here for the next hour or more for a sex-a-thon on exercise mats that haven’t been cleaned in who knows how long.”
“Fine, we’ll go upstairs,” he said shrugging and making to rise.
“I’m sore, Cole.” He stopped, and his eyes narrowed. I ticked my eyebrows up, daring him to contradict me this time. “I’m sore. And tired, and clearly crabby. It’s… sorry to let you get started, or whatever, but no.”
He huffed and then stood, rolling his shoulders and holding a hand out to help me up. I took it, bracing myself, but he only looped strong heavy arms over my shoulder and then bent and kissed the top of my head. “Fine. Raincheck.”
I mean, maybe, I thought, not entirely impressed with his first performance. Talk about wham bam, no thank you ma’am.
“I’ll walk you up,” he said as I turned, and we headed for the door.
I wanted to manage on my own, but I wasn’t sure if I was just starting up another fever and getting snappish like I had been with Mackenzie. I let Cole walk me up out of the basement gym, his arm over my shoulder until we reached the back hall, the beta girls passing us.
“Where are you off to?” Cole called to them.
“Gonna go make a grocery run, wanna drive us?” Lizzie, the one who sometimes smelled like Cole, stopped in the hall and draped herself against the wall, dreadlocks piled high on her head. Behind her, Emmy raised an eyebrow at me and I nodded.
“You mind, doll?” Cole asked.
“No, go for it. I’m gonna nap,” I said, smiling. He snuck a firm kiss to my lips and tugged on my hair once before sliding down the hall after the other women.
I waited for them to continue down to the exit doors, Cole murmuring something under his breath and a few giggles rising up. It bothered me more that I felt like I dodged a bullet than it did that he’d slinked off so quickly. And an orgasm was an orgasm which was alright in my book, but I was feeling a little icky about the one I’d just had.
Giving in to my omega instincts, I went in search of a cuddle.
21
Baby
Ryan’s back was to me as I snuck into his basement grow house, rows of dense green plants growing under sun lamps in tidy lines on water tables. He was seated at a desk, more high lamps pointed at the work in front of him, and I considered backing out of the room and leaving him to it, when he sat up straight, setting a pair of small scissors down and dropping a bud into a basket. He glanced over his shoulder, finding me immediately at the door, his brow furrowing.
“Baby. What’s wrong?” His chair spun to face me and he was standing as I fidgeted in the doorway.
“Nothing. Can I hang out with you?”
He blinked and searched the room as if he thought I was speaking to someone else, except we were alone. “Of course. Want me to take you upstairs? Or my office?”
While my nest was tempting… I looked around the open space. “This isn’t your office?”
Ryan’s smile was faint as he shook his head. “Let me clear this out of the way first.”
“I don’t mind just sitting around while you work. Or helping.”
“We’ll go somewhere quiet. You can’t stand still and you…you smell a little stressed,” Ryan said with his back to me.
My nose wrinkled in response. “That’s weird. I’m not sure I’m wild about being on everyone’s olfactory radar.”
Ryan coughed, or laughed, and shook his head, carrying a tub over to a shelf and then wiping down the scissors he’d been trimming with. “Sorry, normally I wouldn’t say anything but…” He finished putting things away and stood still, watching me from a few yards away. I felt as though he was trying to read the past hour on me, and I wondered how much my scent could really tell him. “What happened?”
It took rapid blinking and a few swallows before I could answer him. And it wasn’t really an answer so much as an attempt at distracting him from the question. “Office. Cuddle me. Stat.”
He took the order without another word, meeting me in the doorway and pulling me into his chest, my eyes falling shut as I sank into the dark, earthy, and sharp aura he exuded. “Arms around my neck, sweetness.”
I tucked my nose against the hollow of his throat and reached up around his neck as he lifted me from the floor, scooping my legs up with one arm and wrapping them around his waist. The office wasn’t in the basement as I expected. Ryan carried me up a flight of stairs, to the first available door in the hallway. The room smelled like weed, although more like the raw material than the smoke, herbal and fragrant instead of skunky. I lifted my head as he shut the door behind us, shoving it with his shoulder.
“It’s the back of the dispensary,” Ryan said. “Tom has his own office, so we won’t be bothered. He and I operate pretty independently.”
The room was small and there was a door across from us that probably led out to the shop front, but it had a big stack of empty cardboard boxes piled in front of it as if to discourage visitors. There was a window, but the window had been painted over, only thin catches of light sneaking through scratches in the paint. More interesting to me, however, was the fact that the room had a deep black leather couch taking up most of the available space, with a low, stained coffee table sitting in front of it. There were bookshelves stuffed into the corners, with paperbacks piled in haphazardly to fill every inch.
“This is kinda a nest,” I said.
Ryan grunted in what might’ve been agreement. He sat down on the couch and then twisted, taking me down with him. I rolled over him, stealing the inside spot as we stretched out together. The room was painted an uneven but dark green, and it was missing the overhead box lighting most of the Plaza had, with just a shaded lamp sitting at the top of a bookshelf for light.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much,” I said, smiling as Ryan wrapped me up against his side, one of his legs leaning over mine. Then he rumbled—a little scratchy sound, but undeniably a purr—and my unease settled. I stretched in his hold, fitting my face against the side of his throat and he raised a hand to my hair, his fingers sticking to the strands almost immediately.
“Shit, the resin gets everywhere, sorry.”
“Do you do all the cleaning and growing yourself?”
“Most of Tom’s stock is ord
ered in, so my part of the job isn’t too much to do alone. Just gives people a reason to come here instead of any of the other joints.”
I tapped on the end of his chin. “Is that a dispensary pun specialty?”
He huffed and turned his head, bumping against mine and pressing a kiss to my forehead. “Gonna tell me what had you twitchy?”
I was not going to if I could help it. “What got you into growing weed? You don’t seem like the usual…stoner, I guess.”
“I don’t smoke much. Enough to know what I’m growing, but I can tell a lot of that under the microscope.”
His fingers slid up beneath my t-shirt, palm resting against my back. Ryan had none of Cole’s greedy impatience, just the simple appreciation of touch, and every second I spent in his company made it easier to relax.
“So you’re in it for the science?”
“I was a chemist, I worked in pharmacology out of college.”
I leaned back, staring up at the ceiling and tried not to let my confusion show on my face. Ryan reached out and turned my face back to his, eyes crinkled at the corners with a hidden smile. “I helped invent new medicines. Well, prescriptions at least.”
“Oh! Huh. How do you go from prescription medicine to marijuana grower?”
He was quiet for a long pause, brushing fingers through my hair and studying my face. If he had never answered the question, I still would’ve been content in the silence. Ryan was the most peaceful of my alphas, a steady center for me to rest in.
“I guess…I got one too many results from the drug trials. After a while, when you’re designing new drugs to address the side effects of the last drug, you don’t really feel like you’re helping anyone. A friend had given me some seeds and I found growing really…meditative. And I was reading a lot of articles in medical journals about the beneficial properties of marijuana.” He hummed and shrugged his shoulder beneath me. “When I started hanging around here I let Tom try some of my crop, and when he asked me to grow it was easy to quit my job, join the club.”