by R. E. Butler
“That you did,” her eyes crinkled at the corners and glittered with happiness.
When the tub was half full of steaming water, Orion pulled a basket from the ledge and poked around in it before tossing a few colorful globes into the water. The scent of vanilla and something flowery filled the air as what Crux told him were called bath bombs disintegrated and filled the water with oil and fragrance.
Fantastic. Now he’d smell like a girl until his next shower.
Crux and Orion got into the tub and he helped Sydney climb in before he sat down in the milky water and felt his bones scream in relief. He and his brothers tended to Sydney by gently cleansing her skin and hair, massaging her muscles along the way. When she was finished, he set her outside of the tub and secured a towel around her before returning to the murky water and cleaning up quickly.
She sat down on the toilet lid and yawned, propping her elbow on the counter and leaning her head against her palm.
“Sleepy, sweetheart?” Orion asked, rinsing his hair off.
“Not at all,” she said, punctuating the sentence with another yawn.
Sterling climbed out of the tub and tucked a towel around his waist. Grabbing another towel, he brought Syd to her feet, turned her towards the mirror over the sinks and began to rub her hair dry. When it was just damp, she tucked it into a quick braid with a hair tie and Orion turned her around and pulled the towel away from her.
The evidence of their mating marathon was in the bruising on her arms and legs from where they’d held her tightly, and the red places on her skin where their stubble had started to rub her raw. With her hair pulled back, he could see both mating marks on her neck easily, and he was glad to see that they were nearly completely healed. The mark on her thigh was also almost healed, but because of the placement of the mark, it was red from friction.
Orion cupped her face and kissed her gently. “How are you feeling?”
“Really good.”
Crux knelt in front of her and applied a soothing balm to the mark, as well as her tender pussy and ass. He looked up at her, his brows drawn in worry. “Are you hungry or thirsty?”
“No. Just sleepy. I think I saw a big old bed in there calling for us.”
And it really was. Crux was clearly worried about how much activity they’d had over the last day, but Sydney was in charge of how much she would tolerate and she’d urged them on again and again. And the last time they’d made love, she had marked each of them by sinking her fangs into the sides of their necks and making sure that they were hers forever, too. Because they were.
Closing the blinds and heavy drapes in the bedroom, he closed the bedroom door and joined his clan on the bed, where Sydney was already sound asleep, her head resting on Crux’s shoulder.
When he woke, the clock on the bedside table read nine-fifteen. Hair tickled his arm and he glanced over to see that Sydney had somehow climbed over Crux and was now nestled between him and Orion, her pretty blonde hair grazing his inner arm.
He closed his eyes and rested his hands lightly against her back. He didn’t think he’d ever been happier.
* * * * *
Monday evening, Orion glanced across the desk to where Sydney was feeding papers into a large shredder a few at a time. She seemed to know he was looking at her and lifted her eyes and grinned. “This is really tedious.”
He chuckled. “Because Dante is secretly a pack rat and never wanted to throw anything away. You know when we first started working with them, Dante was still grumbling about how impersonal computer files were over paper files?”
She laughed. “Alyssa said that she’s pretty much had to drag him by the scruff out of the dark ages and into the light of technology.”
He leaned back in the chair and smiled at the familiar squeak of the spring. “I wanted to ask you something, sweetheart.”
She put the papers down immediately, stood up, and came over to sit on his lap. He loved that no matter what she was doing, she stopped right away to give him and his brothers her full attention.
“I’m all ears.” She hooked her arms around his neck and smiled at him encouragingly.
For a moment, as she wiggled on his lap, he couldn’t recall what he’d wanted to talk to her about, only that bending her over the desk seemed like a really, really great idea. Then someone dropped a weight and it clanged loudly and he remembered that they were in a pretty public place with lots of humans and hyenas with sensitive ears.
“I’ve made some calls to Justices of the Peace, and was wondering when you wanted to get married?”
Her mouth dropped open a little bit in surprise. “Who am I going to marry?” Her voice dropped to a whisper as if it were a secret and she didn’t want anyone’s feelings to get hurt.
He chuckled and kissed her. “Me, since I’m the oldest. Crux and Sterling will sign as witnesses so all our signatures are on the license, and then I’ll whip one up with all of us named as your husbands for the house. Dante offered to have a party at his place for us, and I thought that if you were okay with it, we’d get married this Sunday. How does that sound?”
Her head tilted to the side and her hair slid over her shoulder. Her blue eyes softened and her lips parted into a slow smile. “I’d love it. I want to belong to you in every way.”
He squeezed his arms around her. “You know you do already, though, right? The marriage license is just for the human government and so that we can get you on our insurance. And so you’ll have our last name.”
“I know. But it will be nice to have it completely official.”
“Are you happy, sweetheart?” He pressed his forehead against hers and took a deep breath of the sweet scent of her skin.
“Truly.”
Chapter 17
The week passed quickly as her mates planned their small wedding. They’d asked to do it all as a wedding gift for her, leaving her and Alyssa to only deal with their dresses. Alyssa and Dante had gotten married at the courthouse with Mason and Cairo in attendance, but Sydney liked the idea of the clans all coming together to celebrate this last part of their final joining. They’d made her theirs in every way except legally, and she was excited to have their last name, even though she really liked the name that Sterling had picked for her.
On Friday morning, Crux and Orion left early to run errands and she found herself alone in bed, staring out the open window. A light breeze ruffled the drapes and brought in the scent of the flowers that grew outside. After a quick shower, she put on a pair of shorts and a tank and walked into the kitchen, where she stood in front of the open refrigerator and pondered her choices. She was feeling a little hungry, but then she noticed that the door to the den was open and her body filled with another kind of hunger.
She padded down into the den on bare feet and found the main room empty. A spill of light came from the far room down the hallway, which was an office. Before she reached the hallway, the door opened and shut quickly and Sterling joined her in the main room. “What’s up, Little One?”
She let her eyes roam over his bare upper body and the little trail of hair that went down inside the waistband of his track pants.
Her brain fogged over a little. He was so damn gorgeous.
She’d never really considered herself a bold person, but she knew that her mates wanted her to feel like she could say and do anything she wanted without being embarrassed. They were always encouraging her to speak her mind and share her ideas, and as she looked at the growing bulge in his pants, she felt like she was having one of the best ideas. Ever.
Dropping to her knees in front of him, she rubbed the back of her knuckle along his rapidly swelling cock through the thin material of his pants and looked up at him.
She could have said something profound, about how she wanted to worship him the way that she felt like he always worshipped her. But as she tugged his pants down his thick legs and his cock popped free, all thought left her mind, replaced with heavy desire.
His cock rose in front of her
and she lifted her hands and grasped the thick shaft, watching as he braced his hands on either side of the hallway and stared down at her. Stroking her tongue over the hot head of his cock, she smiled inwardly as his eyes shuttered closed and his upper body tensed. She released his cock and spread her hands across his hips, holding him as she took his shaft into her mouth. She opened her mouth wide and leaned forward, taking as much of the hard length into her mouth as she could. It brushed the back of her throat and she pulled away, swirling her tongue around the broad head and deviling the sensitive place underneath.
She was ruthless as she went down on him, sucking him hard into her mouth until her cheeks hollowed and stroking the vein with her tongue. His body tensed and she could tell he was fighting to keep still and let her do whatever she wanted to him. It made her want to give him pleasure even more.
One hand left the bruising grip on his hip and cupped his balls, massaging them in her palm and stroking the soft skin just behind them with her middle finger. She didn’t take her eyes off him as she moved faster on his cock, taking him all the way to the back of her throat and then nearly completely out of her mouth. A sheen of sweat made his body glisten. With his arms braced on the walls like he alone was holding them up, she watched as his stomach muscles tensed harder and harder. His head dropped back and the cords of his neck stood out in stark relief. He was so close she could taste the pre-come on her tongue, and it only made her stroke him faster. She wanted to see what he looked like when he fell apart.
With the first jerk of his cock in her mouth, his jaw fell slack and he let out a gusty groan, his hips flexing as his cock spurted in her mouth and his body trembled against her. She growled in happiness as she swallowed every drop of his come and then let his cock slip free of her mouth.
Sterling dropped his head suddenly, his eyes flashing. He grabbed her under her arms and hauled her up, pressing her against the wall. Shoving his hand down her shorts, he pushed two fingers inside her pussy, which was tingling and wet with arousal.
His teeth raked down her neck as he growled, “My fucking sweet Little One, so hot and ready.”
Her nails dug into his shoulders as he drove her fast into pleasure. “Yes, oh yes,” she moaned.
His thumb latched onto her clit with brutal efficiency and she teetered on the edge of climax for just a moment before his blunt teeth sank into her shoulder and she fell off the edge into white hot blinding pleasure with a scream on her lips.
He used his fingers to ride out her climax, wringing every ounce of pleasure from her that he could, until she sank against him with a moan. His drenched fingers slipped from her shorts and he scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the bed, where he lay down with her while she caught her breath.
She rolled to her side and threw her leg over his waist. “You have the best hands.”
He chuckled and kissed her forehead. “You’ve got the best mouth.”
When her heart had stopped pounding and the aftershocks of her climax had ceased, she went up on her elbow and said, “What are you up to down here?”
“It’s a surprise,” he winked and rolled over on top of her, caging her in his arms. After a quick kiss, he said, “Are you hungry?”
She nodded. Her stomach took that moment to growl in agreement, and they both laughed. He stood and righted his clothes, helping her to stand and holding her hand as they walked upstairs. After some discussion in front of the fridge, he settled on a tall glass of milk and a few protein bars, and she pulled out the bowl of fruit salad from the night before. It was a big glass bowl that was still half full. She put the bowl down on the kitchen table and got out a big spoon from the drawer, not bothering to get a bowl from the cabinet.
He laughed as he opened a bar. “You’re going to turn into a strawberry if you eat all that, Little One.”
She scooped up a selection of berries and grinned. “If I keep eating like this, I won’t be your Little One anymore.”
“You’ll always be my Little One, Syd. Didn’t I tell you that already?”
Her whole body warmed. While they ate, they talked about the party on Sunday. She was curious what he was doing in the den, but knew no matter what it was, that she’d love it.
That night, she and her guys walked through the woods to visit Dante’s clan, who had called to say they had news to share.
The woods were quiet as they walked, the setting sun lighting the way enough for them to see easily.
When they entered the kitchen, Nyte and his clan were standing around the large island with Alyssa and her mates. Sydney hadn’t gotten to know Nyte and his brothers very well yet, but she looked forward to learning more about them as they became family.
Dante put his hands on Alyssa’s shoulders and squeezed. “We wanted to share our good news with our baro. Alyssa is going to have a boy!”
The men all hooted and cheered, clapping Dante and his brothers on their backs in that macho way that men did. Sydney hugged Alyssa. “I’m so happy for you!”
Alyssa grinned. “We found out on Thursday, but we had to tell their parents first and we couldn’t talk to them until this morning.”
“I thought you’d just decided not to find out and that’s why you never said anything.”
Alyssa was six months along, and Sydney thought that most ultrasounds were done in the fifth month. “The ultrasound machine at my doctor’s was broken for a little while and it took them so long to get it fixed that they had a huge backlog of patients when it was ready. So it took longer to get it done than we thought, but I already knew it was going to be a boy.”
“Oh?”
Alyssa nodded. “Hyena females are rare. I read that only one in one fifty hyenas are females.”
Orion put his arm around Sydney and kissed her temple. “It’s one of the reasons that our people have always clanned with multiple males sharing a single female. And now, when many clans are choosing brides that are from different weregroups or human, the chance of females being born is growing slimmer by the generation.”
“Why is that? Don’t mixed weres produce children of one group or the other?”
Nyte said, “Yes and no. If Alyssa were having a female, it would most likely display wolf characteristics and shift into a wolf as a teenager. Because she’s having a male, it could be either wolf or hyena. I’ve never heard of a wolf-hyena pairing where a female child shifted into hyena form. I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, simply that it hasn’t. In mixed pairings, the hyena DNA is stronger than most others out there and our DNA favors males over females.”
“Right, but we know because of her hot flashes that it’s definitely a hyena, so we already suspected that our child was going to be a male.” Cairo pointed out.
“Hot flashes?” Sydney asked in surprise.
“They’re not so bad,” Alyssa winked.
Mason laughed. “Of course not. Especially when you have three males waiting on you hand and foot to make sure you’re comfortable.”
Cairo punched Mason in the arm with a grin. “You love it.”
Mason shrugged and rubbed his arm, smiling broadly. “I do.”
Dante suggested a toast, and Mason and Cairo handed beers out to all the men as Dante filled two wine glasses with pink liquid and handed them to Alyssa and Sydney. Alyssa said, “Mason’s famous raspberry lemonade. It’s really terrific and Cole can’t get enough of it.”
“Cole?” Sydney asked.
Alyssa said, “Now that we know for sure it’s a boy, I’m trying out names to see what sounds good. I like Cole.”
Dante snarled. “No way. You are not naming my son Cole Stone.”
Sydney giggled at the name as Alyssa and Dante argued playfully about baby names.
“I don’t care what we have,” Sydney turned around and faced her mates, “as long as he or she is healthy.”
Dante said, “To healthy sons and daughters, and our gorgeous mates.”
The baro cheered and clinked glasses, and Sydney touched her glass to h
er mates’ bottles and took a long drink of the sweet and tart concoction.
She kissed her mates and turned her attention back to the group, while Crux joined Mason and Azrael at the refrigerator and they began to pull out snacks for everyone. Sterling slipped one arm around her, his hand resting possessively on her stomach, and she smiled, joining in the conversation about potential baby names and reveling in being a member of such a tight, amazing group of people.
Chapter 18
Sterling brushed a lock of hair from Sydney’s shoulder as she talked to Alyssa about potential baby names. His mind was on the cub in her belly, but not necessarily on names. He’d been worried about her health and happiness from the moment that they found her that first night, and now he was adding a child to the list of people that he loved and cared about. He was already mentally making a list of things that needed to be done to make the house more baby-friendly, along with the den nursery that he had finished up earlier. She’d almost busted him, but he was glad that she hadn’t pressed to know what he was doing in the room. They were going to tell her in the morning, as a wedding day gift.
He tossed a sliced cucumber into his mouth and surveyed the room, his other hand pressed lightly, but possessively, on Sydney’s stomach. This was his family. Not only his clan, but his cousins. He had missed Dante when he and his clan came north to start their business. It was cool to have everyone together again.
A knock on the front door caused the voices to die down immediately. Alyssa asked, “Who would come here at this hour without calling first?”
All the males tensed at her simple question. Dante straightened from where he had been leaning against the island and turned towards the door. Orion and Nyte joined him and the trio walked down the hall and answered the door.
Sydney asked, “What’s the big deal?”
“We’re so out of the way back here that no one comes to the door by accident. Whoever it is, they’re here for a reason.” Cairo said, one hand on Alyssa’s arm, his eyes boring straight ahead.