by Joyee Flynn
“You haven’t let one of us touch you in days, Wes,” he said gently, but didn’t let me go. “Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse. You don’t want to have sex with us anymore even, do you?”
“No,” I admitted, my stomach tying itself up in knots at finally admitting that out loud. “You can send me back. The High Council will make an exception I’m sure if you tell them I refuse to do my duty to you.”
“No!” Harkin and Levey exclaimed together as they jumped to their feet.
“This isn’t about the sex, baby,” Bay said gently and I broke down in front of them finally.
“I’m not your baby!” I sobbed and fought to get away. “I’m not your mate. I hurt all the time. I don’t even want sex now. I can’t keep doing this or I’m going to die of sadness!”
“Forgive us,” Bay pleaded as he lifted me into his arms. “Forgive us, Wes. We love you. We want you to be our mate. We want to claim you and wake up with you in our arms every morning.”
“What?” I gasped, his words penetrating through my hysterical fit.
“We love you,” Harkin answered with a soft smile as he reached out and touched my cheek. “We have for a while now but were too afraid we’d make things worse by telling you. You’re wonderful, Wes. You’re so sweet and kind. Do you know how many people would never think to raise wolf cubs like you are? It’s such hard work and it’s been all you do for weeks now.”
“They needed me.” I shook my head. They didn’t know me well enough to love me.
“Yes, but just because they needed someone doesn’t mean most would have said yes to that,” he defended.
“And you’re giving,” Bay added as he rubbed my back. “We know you’re tired, sad, and drained, but yet, every day you go to the lake and help clean it up some more. We think it’s all been too taxing for you. It takes energy to stay in your wolf form as long as you do, plus us screwing up and hurting you, and it’s not helping your depression.”
“Having jerks hurt me made me fall into depression,” I countered as I finally got him to let me go. “You guys can’t love me. You barely know me. You didn’t even trust me not to be a lying prick. So send me back if you want but don’t you dare lie to me.”
“We’re not liars!” Bay shouted as I raced to my room. I skidded to a halt when I felt a familiar presence. I didn’t even hesitate. I dove onto the bed and curled up on his lap, letting him hold me.
“I should beat you for lying to me like you did,” Tristan whispered as he hugged me tightly. “Imagine my surprise when your inner circled called and asked to release you from your contract because they thought they were killing you slowly.”
“They hurt me,” I sobbed, not sure what else to say.
“Yes, they were idiots. Men normally are. Mine can be too.”
“You’re not going to tell me to let it go?”
“Not yet,” he sighed. “Right now you need to get all this pain and anger out. I’m here to help with that. Once you’re calm and feel better for having let it out, then we’ll talk about how to fix things. Nothing pisses me off more than when I’m almost hysterically upset and Jared’s being all rational with telling me what to do. Sometimes you just need a moment to grieve that things suck.”
“Okay,” I agreed, still crying. It took about twenty minutes for me to get it all out, rambling on to him what had happened and the way I was feeling. I dropped the shields we had as Omegas so he could feel it as I remembered it all. Tristan frowned and whispered comforting thoughts to me when I started getting worked up even more.
Once I was done, I sagged in his lap, completely spent.
“I get that they hurt you and that instead of being happy that you’re upset that things mentally and with your power getting better have made you depressed because of how it went down. But you’re also missing a big part of who you’ve become since you woke up in the hospital after your rescue, short stuff.”
“Like?” I tilted my head up so I could see in his eyes… And he kissed me. It wasn’t a quick kiss like when I had done it to recognize people. It was kiss with tongue and all.
“See?” he whispered, when we broke apart. I didn’t know what he meant at first but then I realized I was smiling shyly and touching my lips. “You need kisses like air, my friend. What else did you feel besides connected to me?”
“Sad it wasn’t them,” I answered as my cheeks heated up. Then my eyes went wide. “Oh shit! We just cheated, Tristan!”
“No we didn’t,” he chuckled as he stood and sat me on the bed. “A kiss isn’t cheating and I had no intention of letting it go past a kiss. I know you didn’t either. You didn’t even get excited like that, Wes. You were happy to not feel so alone. I felt I needed to prove a point to my dear friend. That’s not cheating.”
“Okay, good. I love your men like brothers. I couldn’t ever hurt them,” I agreed after a moment of thought. “So what did you prove exactly?”
“That cutting them off from kissing you didn’t help anything. All you did was cut yourself off from something you need and what they need to show you that this is real from them. What did you feel from me when we kissed?”
“That you missed me and were worried about me.” He raised an eyebrow at me as if to say ta-da! “I get it. I just don’t know how to let them in again. I’ve been so hurt over and over again in the past. I won’t survive any more with them.”
“You’re not surviving now. If you can’t let them back in yet, then don’t. Let them grovel though. It’s part of the make-up process.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me then and gave me an evil smile. “It’s the only good part of a fight. Let them show you how sorry they are. You deserve their apologies and effort to make things better.”
“I guess,” I hedged, still scared.
“Hey, I wouldn’t have let you go off with them if I didn’t know they were good guys. You wouldn’t have gone off with them. You know who they are, Wes. They screwed up. Let them fix it.” I nodded, still sad though but trying to take what he said to heart. “So which one am I sending in here to grovel first while you get cleaned up? I want to go meet your rescue pups.”
“Bay,” I sighed, knowing it had to be him. “He’s Alpha and the other two follow his lead. He’s going to be the tough one to move forward with because he’s been the most vocal in his anger.”
“Okay. I’ll send him in then.” He leaned over and gave me a peck on the cheek. “You ever hide something like this from me again and we’re going to tussle in wolf form and I’ll bite your ass.”
“Who says you’ll win?” I giggled. He rolled his eyes, knowing full well he would. He said wolf form after all. I couldn’t use most my powers in that form and he was almost twice the size of my wolf. Yeah, he’d win. “I bite too.”
Tristan threw back his head and burst out laughing as he walked out of my room. It was the first time I really smiled in weeks besides when I was with the pups. He was right, I needed interaction with people. And I was about to get it.
Now if I only knew if I could handle that.
Chapter 6
Tristan had left the door open so I had heard everything he said when he found my men in the living room down the hall.
“Are we all good now?” Harkin asked and I groaned in disbelief.
“No, you’re not all good now, you twit,” Tristan answered, his tone exasperated. “Wes took a huge chance coming here with you, trusting you, and in the first day you blew it. He’s scared, doubting himself, doubting you, and all around not knowing what to do. But I’ve talked him into being receptive to your groveling at least.”
“We’ve been groveling for weeks now,” Harkin growled.
“No you haven’t. You’ve probably been saying you’re sorry and fucking. That’s not groveling.”
“Maybe but I’m also not sure the punishment is fitting the crime on this,” Harkin hedged. He had a point but I couldn’t help the way I felt either.
“We don’t get to decide what hoops we have to
jump through to make this better. We screwed up. If we hadn’t, then we wouldn’t have to fix anything. Wes is the one we hurt. He gets to decide when we’ve done enough,” Bay said quietly. I liked him a little more right then for having realized that. He put what I was feeling into words when I couldn’t have.
“Yeah, I didn’t think about it that way. Good point.” I heard Harkin sigh and it gave me hope for all of them that they were taking this seriously.
“I’m the one who started all of this. I’ll go grovel first,” Levey said.
“No, actually Wes wants to try with Bay first since he’s the most upset with him.” I could hear the hesitation in Tristan’s tone. He knew the reaction he’d get from that statement.
“Yeah, I’ve been a complete bastard over this whole thing. I didn’t mean to. This wasn’t how I pictured things when I signed the contract. Everything just went to hell in a handbasket and it’s been killing me that he’s hurting. Instead of making things better, I’ve been bitching and yelling at him,” Bay agreed. Wow, I hadn’t been prepared for that one. I thought he would have fought Tristan the way he did me all the time.
“Why?” Tristan asked quietly, probably already having read the answer in Bay’s mind.
“Because I love him and he can barely even look at me,” Bay whispered and I could hear the tears in his voice. “I think it was love at first sight with Wes. When we met him at your house and he was scared by all the strangers, all I wanted was to comfort him and make him smile. And when we kissed I knew he would be what our family needed. What our pack needed.”
“What you needed,” Levey said quietly. “You’ve been much more open with us since you’ve met him, Bay. I think you needed the blond, pint-size firecracker to break down those walls you put up.”
“Maybe,” he agreed. “And maybe hurting him will be the end of me if he won’t forgive me.”
“Let’s not go off the deep end here, Bay. Wes is a good guy. He was protecting himself after all the hurt and broken promises that have been made to him. He’s just protecting himself from more hurt. He’s not mean or trying to make you hurt too.” Tristan sounded worried as if wondering if I’d broken the Alpha.
I wasn’t sure that was true. I kinda did want to make them feel as bad as I did. Well, for the first couple of days. Now it wasn’t about that anymore. I didn’t know how to let them in or even try. We were stuck and if Tristan hadn’t flown out here then I’m not sure we would ever have made our way back out.
“Thanks for coming out here, Tristan. He needed you desperately. I didn’t realize he hadn’t been telling you what was going on and he’d been trying to deal with this all on his own with no one to talk to.” Bay had a point on that as well. Maybe that’s why everything seemed quite so life and death and extreme depression? Dealing with huge problems alone normally did make them seem that much worse.
“I threatened to bite him if he ever kept anything like this from me again. That’s all I can do besides listen to him. You have to make things right,” Tristan said gently. I could almost see Bay’s head bobbing, the way he did when he was trying to acknowledge something he was having trouble processing. It was quite endearing actually.
“Hey,” Bay said quietly as he stepped into my room a few minutes later.
“Hey.” I wanted to roll my eyes. Yeah, we weren’t completely lame.
“I don’t know what to say besides I’m sorry, which I keep saying and it seems to piss you off more,” he whispered as he closed the door. I nodded as he came into the room and knelt in front of me. I didn’t flinch as he reached up and wiped away a stray tear. “And then I make things worse by yelling. I’m sorry for that too. You haven’t deserved my anger. I can’t get my frustration under control when you deny me the chance to fix things. But it’s not your fault.”
“I heard what you said to Tristan.” I covered my hand with his. “I don’t know how to let you back in and try to fix this. It hurts, Bay. When Tristan kissed me though—”
“Tristan kissed you?” he growled as he moved his hands to my hips and pulled me closer. “You can see people now. There’s no reason he should be kissing you.”
“He was proving a point,” I panted as I stared down where he was holding me, my naked body up against his. Even though he was clothed, I got hard almost instantly.
“And what point was that?” He glanced where I was looking and licked his lips.
“That I didn’t want to kiss anyone but my inner circle and I missed it. I missed having the connection and I missed wanting you guys.”
“Do you want me now? Do you want me to lick your sexy little body?”
My dick started leaking pre-cum and I smiled at him. “I think that answers your question, don’t you?”
“I came here to grovel and instead I feel like I’m being crass and ogling you. I don’t just want sex between us anymore, Wes. It hurts my heart.”
“Then kiss me and come wash my back in the shower,” I whispered as he rubbed my hip bones. “I want more than just sex too. But a kiss tells me so much about you and the way you feel for me. I want that.”
“And here I’d give you anything you want. And here you’re asking for something I want just as badly.” He mashed his mouth to mine, pushing me back to the bed as his larger body surrounded mine. I moaned and opened for him, sucking on his tongue when he pushed it past my lips. We were still kissing when I yanked his shirt up, breaking apart for just a moment to get it off.
“Take me to the shower.” He nodded and kissed me more as he lifted me up, helping me wrap my body around him.
“It’s okay for you to be away from the pups a little bit longer? Do you want to check on them?” he asked me as he stumbled into the bathroom.
“Yes, it’s fine,” I breathed against his neck, shaking with emotion. “The fact that you brought that up now, because you know how much they mean to me, makes me start to believe that you really love me like you told Tristan. Thank you.”
“I do truly love you, baby.” He set me on the counter and turned to the shower, flipping it on. “Please just let me in again.” He sniffled as he took off his pants. I hopped off the counter and moved so I was in front of him.
“You’re crying,” I whispered in shock. “You’re that upset by what’s been going on?”
“I figured you knew exactly what we’ve all been feeling.”
“And that’s why you’ve been yelling and so mad,” I surmised, waiting until he nodded. “I’ve been blocking you, all of you, and what’s been going on, Bay. I didn’t want to hear anything else that upset me. I didn’t know, I’m sorry. I spent most of the time in wolf form as well.”
“You didn’t know,” he parroted, his eyes filling with tears. “My gods, so much anger and attitude I gave you and you didn’t even know. I thought you felt my deep depression and sorrow every time we had cold sex. I thought you knew and didn’t care.”
“I hurt you too,” I whispered. The realization hit me like a ton of bricks. Yeah, I mean, I knew we were all hurting from the situation, but offering them only sex hurt them.
“I could have said no,” he admitted as he pulled me into the shower with him. “It was my choice, all of our choice. We decided something with you, even if it wasn’t what we wanted, was better than nothing. I didn’t realize that it was making this pit form in my stomach that just kept growing.”
“I felt the same.” We stared into each other’s eyes as tears overflowed them, the water washing them away as we held each other. “I don’t want cold anymore. I don’t want to hurt or grow to hate you.”
“It would kill me if that happened.” I closed my eyes and opened myself to him, gasping as I felt his pain and utter despair at the idea. “Do you believe me now?”
“Yes. Yes, I do,” I whispered. His mouth found mine and seconds later I felt his fingers pushing against my hole. I wrapped one leg around his hip, smiling when I realized he was using bodywash to slick me up. That’s one I’d never used before. “Take me and love me,
Bay.”
“My pleasure.” He stretched me quickly, his lips never leaving mine. We made out with a passion most people didn’t ever get to experience and when it was time he lifted me up. “Wrap your legs around me, baby.”
“I am your baby now,” I agreed as he lowered me onto his cock. I cried out in pleasure as my shoulders moved against the tiles of the shower. Bay thrust into me over and over again, our eyes never leaving each other’s.
“Mate me,” he begged as he picked up the pace. I felt my eyes go wide in shock and he simply smiled. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted from the moment you kissed me. I’m yours, Wes. We’re all yours as we are each other’s. You were the piece we were always missing to the puzzle.”
“Yes, I’ll be your mate.” He kissed me again, moving us in a pleasurable dance that words could not describe. When we got close to our climaxes I leaned in and bit his shoulder. Bay bellowed my name as he filled me with his cum, mine shooting all over his stomach. We rode out the pleasure together, holding on to each other as if we were all that mattered. And right then, it was all that meant anything.
“Love you,” he whispered as he kissed my neck. I smiled as I licked his bite closed, not ready to say the words back but finally able to hear them for real.
“I believe you.”
“That’s a start.” He lifted me enough so his spent cock slipped from my ass before lowering me to my feet. We cleaned each other up, trading kisses and intimate touches of comfort and love as we showered. Long after we were really clean, we stepped out of the shower and dried off. Then we got dressed and headed out into the living room to see what everyone else was doing… Only to find them outside playing with the pups.
“Oh good, you’ve made up,” Tristan chuckled after he sniffed the air. “I take my payment in cute wolf pups. These will do.” He went so fast and stared down at the ground I knew he didn’t really think I would hand them over.
“Cute little buggers, aren’t they?” I giggled as I leaned against Bay, his strong arms wrapping around me.