Knot Her Shot (MVP: Most Valuable Pack Book 2)

Chapter 56

chapter

fifty-six

*Sad Sausage Fest Chat*

Smith

If either of you are late, I’ll have your balls.

Cassian

I’m on my way. Had to get some special wine Remi asked me to pick up.

Damon

Coming home now. I have flowers for our pretty girl.

Cassian

Fuck. I got Rems flowers.

Smith

I had some delivered this morning.

Damon

If the card said, “petals for my petal,” I’m never going to stop laughing.

Btw, did anyone buy a vase?

Smith

Fuck.

Cassian

Fuck.

Damon

On it.

But that’s totally what the card said, didn’t it?

Watchingmy big brother with Remi is really fucking annoying.

And cute, I guess.

If you’re into that sort of thing.

In a turn of events that’s shocking to no one, they work perfectly together. Smith may not be a chef, but he’s every bit as scrupulous as Remi is. When she gives him a direction, he follows it to the letter, moving around the kitchen like he’s there with her every night.

I’m in his usual place at the kitchen table, feeling a weird sense of role-reversal when he steps up behind her and wraps an arm around her waist. She’s entirely focused on some gravy bubbling in a saucepan, frowning at it while he drops his forehead to her throat and scent-marks her.

He’s been all over her since we came home from our road stretch this morning. And, apparently, for the last three days, in general. I don’t even think he’s been to the office, unwilling to leave her for that long.

I remember that feeling, after the first time I knotted her. It’s particularly bad for pack alphas, according to Damon’s research. Which explains why Smith is hogging her right now even though we’re the ones who have been away for almost two damn weeks.

I’m trying not to be a jealous dick.

I’m really bad at not being a jealous dick.

Absentmindedly, Remi reaches behind her and pats the side of Smith’s hair. He smirks, though she can’t see him, amused that she barely notices his advances at this point.

When he turns his face into her hair and whispers something, she suddenly whips her head around. They share a private look that leaves him grinning and her lowering her lashes in the most beautiful cock-tease of all time.

The scent of her perfume winds across the kitchen. I grit my teeth to keep from getting up and going over to her, wanting them to have their time together.

But my girl feels me struggling.

Butterfly-blue eyes flit to mine, her face warming in the special, unguarded smile she seems to reserve just for me. It’s younger and more carefree, somehow, than the sassy smirks she gives Smith, or the flirty giggles she saves for D.

Not for the first time, I wish I could feel her. The looks she gives are everything, but I want to be able to reach for her without ever having to glance up.

That’s a lot, for me. I’ve always liked silence. Being alone. The thought of having someone in my head is pretty much my worst nightmare.

But Remi?

She’s already there. All the time.

A whisper. Sunshine. The color and lace and warmth I don’t have.

Having her in my blood doesn’t feel like an intrusion. It’s more… completion. I wasn’t whole before. Now I am.

Weare.

I watch her read my face. The humor falls off hers, but the joy remains, shining in her gaze. “Bear, come help me?”

God, she’s the sweetest fucking thing. How did we get so damn lucky?

I don’t need the bonds to know Smith is thinking the same thing when he meets my eye over her head and begrudgingly moves aside.

“I’ll check the rolls,” he says, nuzzling her cheek again. “I’ll be right over there.”

When he finally moves away, Remi lowers her voice into a stage whisper and shoots me a mischievous look. “He thinks I don’t know where the oven is.”

My mouth twitches into an involuntary grin. “Does he realize you’ve been leaving him food in there for a month?”

She shrugs her bare shoulder, shifting the strap of her pink dress. It’s the same one she had on that first day—at Forever Matched—and I’m not much for clothes, but maybe we should hang this one article in a frame or something.

“I don’t know,” Remi replies, all put-on innocence. “Maybe his memory is going. You know, he is old.”

She yelps, and I realize Smith smacked her ass. A week ago, she might have shrunk down if he even touched her. Now, she flashes him an indignant scowl and he walks toward the fridge with a shit-eating smile on his face.

Which is when I see that?—

Smith is in jeans.

And he doesn’t have shoes on.

Goddamn.

Remi literally fucked his brains out.

It’s a shame he’s in such a good mood on the one night Damon and I have to ruin it.

We’ve only been back at the pack house for a few hours, but he’s clearly spinning out. After greeting our girl, instead of joining her and me in the nest, he said he had a headache and went back to his own room. Smith checked on him while Remi had me occupied and told me later that he found him listening to another of her audiobooks.

Now, as he comes slinking into the kitchen, I move to give him access to her.

“This smells amazing, pretty girl,” he rasps, sidling into her other side. He nuzzles his forehead into her shoulder, scent-marking her before dropping a kiss to her cheek. “Thank you for making us dinner.”

Remi giggles, oblivious to his somber expression. “I make you dinner all the time,” she points out, bending to examine the bubbles in her gravy. “But this is my first time making Smith’s favorite, so it might be a disaster.”

She’s too modest. The meal already looks incredible, and it’s still on the stove. Rice pilaf, green beans in some sort of sticky, buttered glaze, a cast-iron full of perfectly rendered pork chops, and a pot of pepper gravy to smother them.

Damon hides his face in her hair, inhaling deeply. “What can I do to help?”

She juts her chin at a stack of white dinnerware. Which is new, just like the table she gestures to next. “Can you guys set the table? Everything will be ready in five minutes.”

Smith comes back over as D and I jump to our task. He meets my eyes across the kitchen table, his look significant.

And I don’t need a pack bond to see what he’s thinking.