by N. J. Lysk
“Yes,” Ray replied, helpless to resist. “Yes, do it.”
Gabriel still didn’t rush, pulling his fingers out and lining his cock with almost insulting calm. But Ray couldn’t stand the wet, gaping emptiness anymore. As soon as he felt the head poised to enter him, snapped his own hips back to receive it. He messed up the angle, though, and instead of going into him, Gabriel’s cock slid wetly against his balls. Gabriel gasped against Ray’s shoulder. “Fuck, Ray…” he panted, pushing his cock into the space between Ray’s buttocks like he couldn’t stop the reflex. Ray whimpered at the feeling: the wonderful silkiness of Gabriel's dick against the delicate skin of his balls and hole, and the terrible emptiness he felt when he clenched around nothing. He was so close to getting what he truly needed...
And then Gabriel was taking hold of his hips, and lining himself up. He gave a good push that got his cock to pop past the ring of muscle again. The moment he was inside Ray, Gabriel leaned in close, arm going around his waist. Ray could feel his heart beating wildly against his back. Ray squirmed, trying to get him to move as the sensation of Gabriel’s cock breaching him deeper sent a shock of pleasure through his whole body. He clenched around the heavy weight inside. “Ready?”
Ray grunted in response, putting a hand down on the bedding to get enough leverage to thrust back onto his lover’s cock. Gabriel let out a sound like he’d been hit hard on the solar plexus, and his hips snapped into the movement. Just like that, they were fucking. It was a hard angle for both of them and it wasn’t enough, but Gabriel seemed determined to stay in that position.
“Just fuck me,” Ray snapped, reaching back and digging his nails into Gabriel’s hip to yank him close. Gabriel made a choked noise in his ear, but complied, pushing Ray face down into the bedding and giving it to him, hard and fast. Ray sagged for a moment, the relief so intense it left him weak. But he needed to come too badly too just lie there, so he got a knee under his body and pushed back.
Gabriel immediately helped him raise his hips, never letting his cock leave Ray’s hole completely but slowing down enough long enough for Ray to get on his hands and knees. And then it was perfect. It didn’t take long—Gabriel was desperate after having made Ray come without finishing himself, and Ray felt like he hadn’t had real sex in so long, he’d explode. He wanted it. Not reluctantly, not because the wolf made him, or because Gabriel did. Because it was his body and Gabriel’s fat dick was hitting him in the perfect spot with every thrust. And then Gabriel did something he’d never done before, he reached around and closed his hand around Ray’s cock and pulled. Ray screamed, pleasure flooding over him, too much at once for his nerves to handle. And then he was coming, clenching hard around the cock buried deep in him. And Gabriel was coming, too. The orgasms rolled into one another, Ray’s barely starting to fade when Gabriel’s peaked, forcing Ray’s body into another wave of ecstasy.
He must have dozed off afterwards, but it couldn’t have been long because even though Gabriel was no longer inside him, the sting still hadn’t quite faded when he felt his cousin pressing close again, curling his body against Ray’s back and cocooning him in his warmth.
“Told you,” Gabriel said. He didn’t sound smug, though, just relieved.
He hadn’t knotted, Ray realised. He’d completely forgotten about it. He reached back and patted Gabriel’s thigh. His cousin laughed, maybe because he had literally fucked Ray out of words. He reached over Ray’s prone body and dragged the blanket over them both, and then there was nothing to keep Ray awake anymore.
Chapter 3
Alec knocked on Ray’s door as soon as he got home. Ray wasn’t surprised, but he was drained. He’d had a full night sleep for the first time in maybe a week—not the five hours he’d been getting between feedings—and woken up with Gabriel’s alarm. His nipples had been killing him, tits too full after so many hours. He’d bolted before Gabriel had woken up enough to try to talk to him. The babies had been fine—the others must have fed them something else, maybe that enhanced formula Alec had decided would be better than having them drink fresh cow milk—but Jamie had happily latched on when Ray had sat with him.
He didn’t mind breastfeeding so much, especially compared to being pregnant. He’d spent the day with the pups—for once relieved that they couldn’t communicate beyond whimpers and yips. But time was running out, and now he had to face the music.
“Um, so you decided to go for prevention?” Alec asked, still on his doorway.
Ray nodded. “Yes.” After his conversation with Gabriel, he felt like he’d run out of words. He glanced back at the babies sleeping on his bed and Alec blushed. “Is Josh awake?”
The TV had been on in the living room for a while, but Josh had come back from his night shift at eight that morning and hadn’t slept, and Iesu and Sergi wouldn’t be back for at least an hour.
“Yeah, he had like three red bulls at work. Even though they’re terrible for you,” Alec babbled.
Ray hesitated. Would it be enough to leave the door of his bedroom open? The railings were up, so even if the babies rolled over in their sleep, they wouldn’t fall. He had no hope in hell that the others wouldn’t know what he had done with Gabriel. Not even if he wasn’t about to do it with Alec, who still blushed around Ray and couldn’t have kept it a secret from noseless humans. But the idea of going over there and announcing it… He couldn’t do it.
He was happy to have talked things through with Gabriel, more than, really. But he didn’t have the energy to do it again so soon. And enjoyable as the sex had been, he didn’t really want to be that close to anyone again either.
It’d been too long, obviously. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to believe he could decide for himself what kinds of sex he had. Or when. He needed to stop hoping that, somehow, he could twist his circumstances so that his body would belong to him again. The period after giving birth had been an illusion, an exception, not what Ray’s life was really like.
Alec put a soft hand on his hip, then offered quietly. “I’ll tell Josh to keep an ear open for them. He might even prefer to come nap with them than watch TV. Even if only to watch them like a total dope.”
Ray gave him a weak smile. They all thought Josh’s baby craze was sweet, but he was too discomfited to truly return the smile. He went to Alec’s room to wait and took off his clothes. It was a little selfish to try and speed things along, but he hoped Alec wouldn’t mind.
Alec gasped when he saw him, and they were tangled together in the bed a moment later. Alec’s mouth was on his, greedy and overwhelming. Ray kissed him back. He got wet for him and got his legs lifted and hooked over Alec’s shoulders, tilted his head away from his kiss to breathe out slowly as Alec lined up his dick with Ray’s hole and pushed it in. He shuddered as he bottomed out, and Ray concentrated and relaxed his inner muscles for him, letting him pull out and push in again a few times before his hips started pistoning in and out of Ray faster and faster, making Ray’s cock bob madly between them.
It was over pretty quick, after all, but Ray let Alec hold him afterwards and hoped that made up for it.
&
The knock woke him from a light doze. Alec was gone, but the two heartbeats outside the door made it clear he hadn’t simply remembered he had left something in the oven. Alec was his doctor and he had taken it upon himself to administer Ray’s course of treatment: he had told the others. He sat up, pulling the sheets as he went to remain at least covered enough for decency.
If he didn’t answer, they’d probably go away. But he had seen the effects of Alec’s advice before: an alpha who’d had sex with him outside of heat had a much easier time being careful when the moon was pulling at him.
“Come in,” he called out, only realising he was in Alec’s room when Iesu had already opened the door. Sergi met his eyes from the doorway, his own expression guarded. Ray was about to get up and offer to go to their room when Iesu shoved Sergi in with an impatient sound and closed the door unhurriedly behind himself. Ray su
pposed there wasn’t much of a point in covering up either, it wasn’t like anybody there hadn’t seen Ray naked plenty of times.
Iesu turned to Ray with a sunny smile, but with Iesu it was hard to say if it meant he was particularly happy. It might be leftover amusement from catching his favourite cartoons, or one of the babies doing something cute. “Hey, Ray,” he said, perching on Alec’s chair in a way Ray was pretty sure Alec wouldn’t have approved of. Ray hoped Clara got that uncanny ability to be happy at the smallest things. “Alec said you’d got over that headache of yours, honey.”
Ray laughed, surprised. From the doorway, Sergi snorted.
“More like had a whole box of aspirin,” he explained, not completely sure what he was saying, but Iesu smiled at his attempt anyway.
“Do you want me to go?” Sergi asked. Ray turned to look at him in surprise. They’d never asked him before if it bothered him that they were lovers, or that they preferred to have sex with him together. Sergi shrugged. “I guess… it’s been a while. I don’t know how you feel about… anything, really. But I could come back later, or in the morning.”
“We could both come back in the morning,” Iesu added, a little more careful, but nowhere near as serious as Sergi.
“But… don’t you have work?” Ray checked.
Iesu shook his head. “Day off, all of us. Except Gabriel, who is a masochist, says he doesn’t mind working the day of the full moon.”
They let Ray think it over for a minute while they made fun of Gabriel’s work ethics. Ray couldn’t see why not. He was still quite sore from Gabriel and Alec and the closer they were to the full moon when they did it, the better it had to be. He looked up at them. “Tomorrow sounds nice.”
Iesu clapped his hands together and jumped to his feet like, for some unfathomable reason, he was pleased that Ray had asked to delay having sex with him. “Okay, so now, what about a movie marathon? We’d have to start with something PG because it’s only six and, man, you make truly energetic babies! But we can move on to something a little meatier later. You in?”
Ray stared at him. “I make energetic babies? Have you seen yourself? You’ve been working all day and you’re chipper than a bird at sunrise.”
At this, Sergi burst out laughing. “Oh, god, that’s so true.”
“Whatever,” Iesu singsonged. “You guys are just jealous. Do you want popcorn?” he asked Sergi, then turned to Ray. “I don’t know how I don’t know this: but do you like yours salty or sweet?”
“Skipped the movie dates,” Ray said easily. “And I don’t like popcorn. I’ll take M&Ms if there’s any.”
&
It had taken a while to convince Iesu that nothing was wrong with Ray for disliking inflated cereal, but in the end they’d found some crisps in the cupboard and made hot chocolate to share and settled in the living room. Josh was there, half covered in sleepy babies and keeping an eye on Clara and Sasha’s multi-coloured block project on the floor in front of the TV.
The TV was off; so their kids had been Josh’s sole source of entertainment until Iesu walked in and selected a child-friendly DVD. It wasn’t surprising that Josh didn’t look that alert himself, but he smiled when he saw them come in. Maria and Michael were resting against his sides, carefully cradled in his arms. Jamie was lodged between his shoulder and the couch in a way that a baby three months old could have never accomplished—clearly their son had got there on four paws and then changed back. At least he still had his diapers on, Ray supposed. Changing diapers with an enhanced sense of smell was never going to be fun, but it was even less so when the babies in question could get out of their diapers by simply changing into pups and back again.
Tossing Sergi the remote, Iesu swooped up Clara and Sasha both and twirled them around. They squealed their delight before he settled them all into the other two-seater. He gave Sergi and Ray an expectant look. “Come on, movie’s going to start.”
Sergi rolled his eyes at him, walking closer. “It’s Lilo and Stitch, Iesu.”
“So?” Iesu replied, face blank. Then noticed Ray was still standing. “Maybe unearth some of your boy’s limbs before you squeeze in there, Ray,” he suggested, and Ray froze for a second, his heart speeding up.
But Iesu was in too a good mood to allow any awkwardness. He met Ray’s eyes and tilted his head towards Sergi, silently indicating the way they were pressed closed together and shrugging. Ray turned towards Josh—who didn’t seem to have heard—and collected Jamie to a grateful groan from his friend.
“Oh, god, I think he broke me,” Josh said, moving his neck side to side to relieve some of the tension. Jamie snuffled unhappily until he realised whose arms he was in, then nuzzled his face against Ray’s collarbone, hungry even in his sleep. Ray ignored the way his shirt was getting wet with spit and shot Josh a questioning look.
“Mikey,” Josh asked. He was rumpled and a little sleepy himself, Ray saw, and the baby in question probably was quite heavy to have lie on your arm for hours on end. He put Jamie down on the other end of the sofa, where his son blinked lazily awake, and snagged Michael up from his father, surprised still by the difference in size between them. Not that any of them were truly small—Alec thought their growth rate at this stage was twice as fast as that of human babies—but Jamie was still a good pound heavier than the others.
Ray turned Jamie around and sat with him on his lap just in time for the credits, ignoring Josh’s fussing over Maria and Sasha’s giggles as Iesu gave into the temptation to tickle her. He was about to shush him when Sergi got there first. Ray didn’t catch what he said, but it worked like a charm, getting Iesu to hold the baby against his chest without any further shenanigans. His eyes snagged on the way they all looked together: Sergi’s head patiently tilted to listen to Iesu’s probably in-depth explanations about how the film had been made, and the way Sasha was sprawled all over Iesu’s lap like she was a queen on her throne while Clara was ignoring the movie, too intent on the buttons on Sergi’s checked shirt.
They looked like a family.
And then Josh got up to get the popcorn bowl closer and blocked his view. His friend, Maria safely tucked into his side but awake now, was turning his way with a steaming mug of hot chocolate from the carafe Sergi had set up well out of the babies’ reach.
“Put them down,” he said, gesturing towards the couch, and Ray did, arranging Jamie and Mikey in a sitting position to watch the TV, where the tiny alien had gone from looking cute to murderous in an instant. Josh deposited the mug on Ray’s cupped palms with a satisfied smile. The brush of his fingers against Ray’s skin made him shiver.
“You’re looking thin these days,” he said with the thick northern accent he had learned from imitating his Mancunian grandfather. He’d hoped Josh hadn’t heard Iesu’s teasing, but he knew him too well to mistake the awkward joking for anything but discomfort.
Ray shot him an unimpressed glare and sipped, sitting back down on the arm of the sofa so he could watch both the TV and his sons. Iesu had called Josh ‘his boy’, but that was too simplistic. If Josh felt something other than friendship and attraction for him, he had never said so; and Ray… Well, what did it matter what Ray felt for him? Josh was his mate, and so were the other four. Ray had a responsibility to them. He could talk to Gabriel about how he’d felt when he’d been a kid. Three whole years ago. It didn’t need to mean anything for the present. Gabriel didn’t… if his interest had ever been romantic as well as sexual, it was long over now. Ray’s old crush wasn’t going to make anybody feel left out. But Josh wasn’t his past. Josh had never left. Ray had never stopped… It was all fine and dandy for Iesu and Sergi to play boyfriends, but Ray didn’t fool himself that his alphas would take it well if he showed a marked preference for any of them. They understood Josh had been his best friend all his life, and that he’d known Gabriel the longest. But anything beyond that…
It would be foolish to imagine that because he was theirs, it meant they were his.
&
&nbs
p; But Iesu wouldn’t just let it go. He had seen something on Ray’s face the day before when he had made that comment, or maybe he had made that comment because he had seen something. Whatever it was, he couldn’t resist making a point of it, not even seeming to notice how odd it was to try and talk about Ray’s feelings for another man when his come was still leaking from Ray’s arse.
Ray tensed, but even in the large king beds all the alphas had in their rooms, he didn’t really have far to go with Iesu behind and Sergi in front of him. Sergi’s eyes blinked open—sex made them all much more acutely aware of the other’s bodies, and Ray had heard his own heart rate spike. He hoped Sergi would understand, or at least be more willing to respect Ray’s desire to avoid the topic, but his ex-rival gave him a sad smile.
“Would it be so bad to try?” he asked, and Ray found the strength to sit up despite his wolf’s profound dislike for the idea. He was pretty sure he could get off the bed, too, but he was already feeling a little shaky. He turned to face them both and glared instead.
“Would… Oh, of course, what’s a breakup or a rejection from someone you can never walk away from?” he spat.