by J. L. Wilder
He could do it. He’s more than twice my size. He’s strong. He could do whatever he wanted right now, and I wouldn’t be able to stop him. And the way I’m feeling right now, I don’t think I’d even try. I feel like my temperature has shot up, standing here in front of him, and my body is suddenly aching with need. He’s right there. All I have to do is reach out, cross the line, show him I want it. He would do everything else. But he’s not a bad person, so he’s standing still. He’s waiting for me to invite him in.
God. I can’t handle this. I can’t make a decision like this in the heat of the moment, can I? Not with Tony looming over me, tall and dark, a solid wall of muscle, melting me from the inside out. I have to think this through. I have to get away from him, be calm, be rational.
Although how I’m ever supposed to do that living with three men who have imprinted on me, I can’t imagine.
Everything I know about omega life comes from what my old pack taught me. Omegas were objects of desire that would be set upon by millions of men. But that hasn’t proven true. Here with the Hell’s Bears, I came to expect that imprinting was something that happened once. With one person. Not three.
Tony is still watching. Waiting. Asking. And in a minute I’m going to lose it and say yes to him, because I won’t be able to resist this pull.
“I can’t,” I say, practically gasping, backing away. “I can’t.”
His eyes narrow, just a little. Then he inclines his head slightly. “If you change your mind.”
I turn and run for my room before I can change my mind right then and there.
I’M A MESS FOR THE rest of the day. All I can think of to explain what’s happening is that there must be something defective in me, something that’s pulling in extra people. Or perhaps the imprint with Caleb is faulty. Something is wrong, for certain.
But Alex, when I put the question to her, doesn’t seem to think so. “I’ve never known an omega before you,” she reminds me. “I don’t know what’s supposed to happen. Caleb seems to think this is normal, and maybe he’s right.”
“You don’t think he is?”
“I don’t know what to think, Jacie. I don’t think you have any control over it, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” I say. “What if everyone who’s always told me I need to stay inside, stay protected, was right? What if every time I’m around men I’m just going to have random people imprinting on me? What if that’s what it means to be an omega? That I’m just—an object of lust?”
“Is that a bad thing?” she asks.
“What?” I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Of course, it is.”
“No, hang on, that came out wrong,” she says, shaking her head. “Of course, you’re not just an object of lust. You’re probably my best friend, for one thing, and I know Caleb really loves you. And you were decisive in helping us get rid of Dan. You’re brave, and you’re smart, and... you’re a lot of things, Jacie. You’re a lot of great things. And you know them, even if you have trouble admitting them to yourself. But maybe...yes, maybe you’re also an object of lust. Maybe that’s part of being an omega.”
I feel sick. “What am I going to do?”
“Well, why does it scare you so much?” she asks.
“Because...” I stop and think it over carefully. “It could happen with anyone, couldn’t it? I mean, if it could happen with two random people I see on our doorstep, it could happen with anybody in the world. Someone like Dan, even. Or my old alpha, in the pack I left behind.”
“First of all,” Alex says, “just because someone imprints on you doesn’t mean you have to do anything with him, necessarily.”
“Easy for you to say,” I groan. “You don’t know what this feels like. It’s like I’m going to die, every minute of every day. I feel like I’m going to explode.”
“You can’t keep putting yourself through this,” Alex says. “There’s no reason to torture yourself this way. Just go for it. The next time you see one of them, make a move and see what happens. What’s the worst thing possible?”
“I don’t know how to make a move,” I grumble, and Alex laughs at me.
I GET MY OPPORTUNITY that night after dinner. Caleb asks me and Ty to wash up together. I throw him a dirty look, as if to say I know what you’re doing, and he smiles. I feel a glow in my chest, like a talisman, keeping me safe. Caleb is so convinced this is going to be good for me. I feel like he’s not so much pushing me and Ty together as he is helping me make my proverbial move. I never thought I’d be in love with such a wonderful man.
Washing dishes with Ty is electric, of course, and I realize just how accustomed I’ve become to the tension between me and Caleb. As powerful as it is, it’s familiar and safe. But it’s different with Ty. The two of us have barely said two sentences to each other in all the time we’ve known each other, and there’s something powerful in that. Something hot. The distance between us mentally, between our understanding of each other, throws our physical attraction into sharp relief. It’s something I’ve been overthinking and worrying about for days. Now, standing beside him at the sink, both our hands in the suds, I can’t hang onto my thoughts long enough to feel concerned.
It happens quickly, suddenly, with no time for thought or analysis. Ty reaches around me—for another plate, maybe—and suddenly I’m backing into him as if drawn there magnetically, my ass grinding into his hips. He lets out a low groan, slaps his hands onto my thighs, and grips hard. “Yeah,” he breathes, leaning forward over me, his voice husky in my ear. “God, yeah, Jacie, I’ve wanted this since I first saw you.”
So, I guess this is making my move. I have just enough presence of mind to register that it’s easier than I thought it was going to be.
He bows his body over mine. My hands are still in the soapy water, my palms braced against the bottom of the sink. His hand is already down my pants, his fingers finding their way inside me, and I’m rocking against his palm and gasping even as his free hand fumbles with the button of my jeans. It feels like less than a minute before his own pants are shoved down, and his massive cock escapes. I can feel its thickness against my ass, and there is nothing in the moment that I want more. He takes me, hard and fast, soapy water getting everywhere as my hands skid in the sink. He is so thick and long, and I didn’t know I could take his shaft so deeply inside of me. His manliness is a tremor causing my body to shake. I bite my lip to keep quiet, but I can’t quite suppress a moan when I come. I fall forward so far that my hair dips into the water, and Ty’s arm is supporting me across the chest like a seat belt, holding me up so he can finish.
We are not in love. I know it immediately. It’s so different from what I feel for Caleb. And yet it’s good, deep and strange, intense and wonderful. We can’t stop grinning at each other as we straighten our clothes and hair. And it’s Caleb I’m thinking of as I make my way upstairs to take a shower. I know I wouldn’t have had this amazing ride without him.
I’m starting to think that, just maybe, being an omega might not be so bad.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I take to my new role gladly, almost joyously. There’s a real sense of power in it, now that I’ve embraced who and what I am. I feel constantly aware of the presence of the men who have imprinted on me, as though I can literally sense where they are in the house at any given time. I never feel taken by surprise anymore when I find one of them in a room. Instead of a shock, it’s a shiver of pleasure. I am attuned to my attraction to them, almost as if I have a sixth sense.
Life with the Hell’s Bears has never been easier or more pleasant. I have a unique place in the pack now, just like the alpha does. I feel the rarity and importance of my birth status. I am an omega, and that means so much more than I ever realized. It doesn’t make me a sex object. It doesn’t make me helpless. It makes me alluring and powerful and strong. Bill has already imprinted on Mary, they’re soulmates, and Joe is too old to imprint, but every other man in this house want
s me.
I worry, at first, that Alex will be jealous or hurt, that the way the men all focus on me will create bad feeling between us. But she laughs this off when I finally get the courage to bring it up. “I know you’re very attracted to them, so don’t take this the wrong way,” she says, “but Ty and Tony aren’t my type at all. I like burlier men. And Caleb is my brother, for God’s sake.”
“It just feels weird,” I say. “Me having three lovers and you having none, I mean.”
“I get mine,” Alex assures me. “There are plenty of nice single guys who come into the restaurant.”
“You’re just with them for one night?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I don’t think I could do that.”
“You probably couldn’t,” she agrees. “It seems like, for you to be with someone, your body has to have a chemical reaction that actually binds you to them. So yeah, that would kind of eliminate one-night stands as a possibility in your case.
“Being an omega is really weird, isn’t it?”
“Super weird,” she agrees with a grin. “But quit analyzing it all the time, Jacie. You’re going to drive yourself to drink. You’re happy now. Just enjoy it.”
I try to. Ty and I catch each other in the afternoons, the world’s most exciting game of tag. We pull each other into empty rooms, shove our clothes out of the way, and go at it like animals, quick and dirty and desperate, and we part ways giggling and gasping.
Tony is different. Tony takes his time about it, lets tension build up between us, so I’m wondering if he’s ever going to make a move. A thousand different times I think it’s about to happen, and it never does. One night he stares at me across the dinner table the entire time we’re eating, his eyes never leaving mine, holding me in thrall. The next day, he brushes my hand as he reaches for the salt and lingers slightly too long. I am a coiled spring, tightening, tightening, and even the regular release I get from my interludes with Ty isn’t enough to ease the tension for long.
I sleep with my door unlocked. I stir at the slightest noise. I wait.
He doesn’t come.
Is he waiting for me to go to him? He didn’t want to cross a line with me before, I know that. But it must be clear that things are different now, mustn’t it? Everyone knows about me and Ty. We try to be quick about our business, but I know we haven’t been entirely secretive, and it’s the worst kept secret in the house. So I know that Tony knows that when it comes to me, the rules have changed.
And yet...nothing.
Doesn’t he want me? He must. He imprinted. I felt it. I couldn’t have been wrong.
Could I have been wrong?
I can’t be. I couldn’t possibly want him this badly if there wasn’t something behind it. If I don’t get something soon, I’m going to lose my mind.
I feel like a live wire. I walk through the house afraid of being touched by anyone, knowing the barest contact will set my senses ablaze. Ty works me over in the upstairs hallway one afternoon, pinning me against the wall, and all I can do is growl in his ear that I need more, I need more.
Caleb should never have gotten me into this. I may never be satisfied again. What if I’m always hungry?
I lie in bed one Sunday morning, reluctant to get up and face the rest of my family. I know they can’t be blind to what I’ve been going through, and it’s getting embarrassing. Maybe I’ll just spend the day lying here, alone with my thoughts. Maybe I’ll catch up on reading, or sleep.
Maybe—
There’s a knock at the door.
“Go away, Alex,” I insist.
A deep voice. Unmistakeable. “It’s me.”
I freeze. It’s him.
And then I’m moving, across the room and to the door as if I’m sleepwalking, as if I’m being drawn by magnets in my feet. I unbolt the door and pull it open and he shoves it out of the way as if it were nothing more than vapor, and then I’m in his arms and we’re kissing.
It goes on forever. I feel like I’ve been drowning and he’s my first breath of air, and I can’t stop taking him in. At some point he lifts me off the ground and my legs go around his waist. At some point our bodies find the bed. The kiss continues, unbroken.
Finally, finally, he pulls back just an inch from my face. Just enough to speak. “I waited as long as I could,” he says.
“What were you waiting for?” I want to be furious, but I can’t find fury. I can’t find anything but desire. It’s burning away every other emotion I’ve ever felt. He is right here.
“You want it so bad,” he says. “Don’t you.”
It’s not a question, and I have just enough dignity not to answer.
“I love you like this,” he says. “So strung out for me. We should always wait as long as possible, don’t you think?”
“I think I’ll murder you.”
He laughs. “You’re wild. You’ve got more of the animal in you than I thought, don’t you?”
I’m tugging at his shirt, pushing at the waistline of his pants with my feet. I need him naked. I need it.
He backs off and a whine slips out of my mouth. I swear, it doesn’t even sound human, but I am so far from caring what I sound like right now. I take advantage of the moment to pull off my clothes. Tossing them away, I spread out before him, bare.
His eyes darken. I knew it. I knew he felt it too.
He grabs my arm and flips me over on my stomach. It’s not violent, but it’s insistent. I bury my face in the mattress and breathe as I hear the sound of a zipper and cloth falling to the floor and then—
—Oh.
His arms thread under mine, holding my shoulders, pulling me back into him, and tears of relief soak my sheets as the fire that’s been consuming me stabilizes, becomes a steady, friendly flame. He moves slowly, lips trailing up and down my spine, whispering words I can’t hear and don’t need. Feeling him is enough. Finally, after days of torment, it’s enough.
So I guess I need all three of them. I guess I need to be with anyone who imprints on me in order to feel peaceful and rested. And as Tony pulls his pants back on, gives me a hug and a wicked grin, and disappears out my bedroom door, I realize that I don’t have a problem with that at all.
I WORRIED THIS WOULD impact my relationship with Caleb, but to my surprise and delight, it hasn’t at all. With Caleb it is, as it has always been, lovemaking—intimate and incredibly powerful. We spend every night together, losing sleep, losing ourselves in each other. I begin to get the feeling that I don’t sleep in a bed anymore—I sleep in Caleb. Caleb’s embrace, the vast sea of Caleb’s skin. Caleb’s strong, steadying presence.
One night, after sex but before sleep, we’re lying naked side by side, tracing our fingers across each other’s skin and slowly coming down from the tremendous high of our shared passion. Caleb tips his head to the side. “You’re happy, Jacie, aren’t you?”
“Of course. How could I not be?”
“Do you have everything you want?”
“And more. I never thought I could have this much, Caleb. I never even dreamed of it.”
He pauses. “Have you ever thought about having cubs?”
“A litter?” Of course, I’ve thought about it. I’ve been forced to think about it. Dan was going to force me, and Aiden before him. They were going to breed me. It would have been impossible not to consider what the future would have looked like if they’d been successful. And that’s a dark thought, one I still flinch away from mentally.
But that’s not what Caleb’s asking, I know. He wants to know whether I’ve ever thought of having a litter by choice, children that I actually want. “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess I never did, no.”
“Never wanted to?”
“Never thought about it,” I clarify. “I was never in a position to make that choice before.”
“You’re in that position now,” he points out.
“Are you saying you’d want to do it?”
“I’d like a family,” he says softly. “
As alpha, I’d like the pack to grow bigger, of course, and I do feel a sense of responsibility to help that happen. But I’d also like to be a father. I’d like to raise cubs.”
I think about the idea. My mind calls forth a vision of a baby with Caleb’s auburn hair and my blue eyes, beautiful, healthy, fat legs kicking. I close my eyes, and the image shifts. Now I see a whole pack of babies lying together on a blanket, like different executions of the same basic blueprint, perfect in their little differences from each other.
Then the image changes once more. Now I’m seeing bear cubs. Some are dark brown, and others are a lighter shade, pale, almost white. They’re rolling around, cuffing each other’s ears, playing. And I feel a surge of love as I recognize these imaginary children, as my heart calls out to them, trying to will them into being.
“Jacie,” Caleb’s voice breaks through the silence. He sounds anxious. Upset, maybe. “Are you all right?” he asks. “You’ve been quiet for a long time. We don’t have to talk about this if you’re not ready. I know you’ve been through some hard times. And... if this isn’t something you want, if you don’t want to have children, we don’t have to do it.”
“I do want to,” I say. “I want to, Caleb.”
“Because I don’t want you to feel forced,” he continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “That’s the last thing in the world I want. You need to know that I will never use my power as alpha against you that way. I am not giving you an order. I want that to be very clear. I want to have children, but only if you want to.”
“Are you listening to me?” I ask him. “I’m telling you I do want to, Caleb. I was quiet because I was imagining it. Imagining how wonderful it would be. I feel like I can see them right in front of me, like they already exist out there and they’re just waiting for me to—to make it official, I guess. To bring them to life.” I breathe in and think about the power I’ve felt inside my bones since accepting my role as the pack’s omega. This is what that power’s for. The attention and attraction of all these men feeds into me and makes me strong, and I use that strength to bear litters of children, to grow the pack in a way nobody else can.