29. Piper
CHAPTER 29
Piper
“C an you up my dose of suppressants?” I asked Otis one morning as we sat at the breakfast table.
My friend shook his head resolutely at me as he shuffled the cards for our daily tarot reading.
“Can’t do, my darling. The higher the dose, the harder it will be when your heat does break out.”
I sighed. “I was afraid it was something like that. But how else can I resist their disgusting Alpha scents until I figure out what to do?”
“Are they starting to smell good?” Otis asked.
“Yes,” I said unhappily.
I felt itchy and warm, like I was on the brink of getting sick. But I knew it wasn’t that.
It was their damn Alpha scents working on me. I needed to figure out what I wanted to do.
He flicked the window open.
“I could smuggle you out of the country,” Otis said.
But I shook my head.
“Fuck, I can’t decide what to do.”
My fingers played idly with the Coffee Dispenser 3000, a little machine of Otis’ invention designed to remember your coffee order and give you the exact right amount of cream and sugar.
The machine had never figured out I wanted two scoops of sugar, not twenty-two, but I still loved it.
“Look who it is,” Otis said, nodding his head at Erain walking up the garden pathway, now miraculously free of weeds, with freshly-planted herbs growing. “Can’t turn around without falling over one of these damn Alphas. I’m going to the grocery store.”
I sighed.
What was I going to do?
I grabbed a bag of snacks to go meet Erain, then sat down on the couch in the living room while he prowled in behind me.
“When are you going to give up?” I asked. “Accept that we aren’t meant to be together?”
Erain looked almost unearthly beautiful sitting beside me on the couch with his hair pulled back like that, his cheekbones sharp, and those goddamn ice-blue eyes.
But I couldn’t look at him without remembering what he said about me.
“Please, Piper,” he growled, “Forgive me, angel. I will never take you for granted ever again. I love you.”
“I know you love me,” I retorted, opening the bag of Cheetos. “Old news. I still can’t get over it.”
I stretched my legs in front of me, watching as he hungrily eyed my gray sweatpants and white tank top, knowing he can look but he can’t touch.
“Can you tell me what it was?” Erain asked, moving closer. His shoulders were broad, and a muscled flexed in that perfect movie star jaw. “It’s going to make me sick to remember it. But I want to tell you very clearly how fucking stupid I was.”
“That my perfume must smell like Hot Cheetos and Marlboros,” I said, examining my fingers, and sucking Cheetos dust off one of them.
Erain flushed red.
“I’m so sorry,” he said desperately. “I was a fool for being so shallow and closed-minded. It was—literally just snobbery. I knew you didn’t come from the same kind of money that I did, so I assumed that meant I was better than you.”
His hands clenched in the fabric of the couch and I saw the tendons standing out in them.
“It was the worst mistake of my life and this whole damn thing is my fault. I’m the one who suggested we break our vows in the first place.”
He looked flushed and unhappy, his eyes burning into mine. His scent rolled off him in waves, making my chest flush, my neck feel uncomfortably prickly and hot.
What could I add to what he had said?
I knew Erain was sincere. I could feel it, the mate bond seeping through my skin and traveling up my blood stream. I had to decide before my suppressants gave out entirely. If I rejected them, I could take one last dose of the suppressants and let Otis’ smuggle me out of the country.
What to do. . .
“I do smell like Cheetos,” I said reflectively, looking at my fingers, each one thick with sticky orange dust.
“I love the smell,” Erain said huskily.
“You love Cheetos smell?” I asked skeptically, crossing my legs and rolling my eyes. “Why don’t you go away and don’t bother me with bullshit?”
“What can I do to prove my love to you?” Erain asked desperately. “It seemed liked you almost were going to forgive Teddy.”
“ Teddy is a sweetheart who was obviously led astray by you,” I said severely. “Although I haven’t forgiven him yet either.”
“Our scents go together so perfectly,” Erain insisted. “We’re made for each other.”
“Meh,” I said.
“Let me prove it,” he begged, his eyes burning with fire. His arm on the couch behind me was mere molecules from my skin, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise in primitive, primal Omega recognition of my Alpha.
“Get away from me,” I said. “You smell like garbage.”
“Let me lick it off.”
“Lick it off?” I yelped.
“Yes, of your fingers.”
It was an obscene request, but with him panting beside me, I gradually extended my fingers and he fell eagerly on them, taking each one carefully into his mouth and sucking the salty crumbs off.
It was both the most revolting and most strangely erotic thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Did I take my suppressants this morning ? I wondered in a panic, as I felt one pulse hit between my legs, then another, as Erain’s tongue flicked between my fingers.
“That’s enough,” I said suddenly, jerking them away.
He was panting hard, and I felt electricity crackle between us.
My suppressants were failing!
Thankfully, just then I heard a knock at the door and it was the rest of my Alphas.
I broke away irritably from Erain.
“I was thinking,” I said, “that Mario really hasn’t had a chance to shine. What about him? Don’t you feel sad that he’s had his fated mate torn away because the three of you are huge, hulking Alphas and he’s a sensitive, tender Beta?”
“No,” Rook said. “I do not feel sorry for him. He is not your fated mate. We are your fated mates.”
“I know you have a preference, a sort of mild enjoyment of my scent—” I began, before Erain burst out tempestuously.
“A mild preference? Piper, you are—I know you are joking. Your scent drives me mad! It courses through me every day.”
He started forward, dropping to his knees in front of me.
“It’s the most—the best thing I’ve smelled in my life.”
“If you really cared for me, more than just a belly to fill with your Alpha brood, you’d help Mario put on his music show,” I countered, trying to wildly think of any way to chase them off. “He has some very unique talents.”
“Fine,” Rook said immediately, crossing his arms over that massive chest.
Something squirmed and turned over deep inside me, and I gritted my teeth to ignore how I felt slick begin to pump between my legs.
If I was going to forgive them, it would be because I trusted them and because I thought there was something more than just thinking with their knots.
Not because of anything like raw attraction.