Chapter 10
CHAPTER TEN
Zane
Reese looks like she’s been through a war when she comes through the front door.
Not physically. Her hair’s still up and the dress is still perfect.
It’s her eyes, the set of her shoulders, and the fact that she doesn’t say anything for three full seconds.
Tyler comes in a few steps behind her, and whatever passes between them happens too fast for me to read before he heads for the kitchen.
“Hey.” I push off the couch where I’ve been pretending to watch TV for the last hour. “How’d it go?”
“About as well as expected.” She drops her clutch on the side table and kicks off her heels. “My mother called me a whore. Tyler told them off. We left before dessert.”
“Jesus.” I start toward her, then stop before I get close enough to crowd her. “You okay?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m too tired to know.”
The house is quieter than usual because everybody’s been waiting for her to come back, even if none of us is admitting it. Bo and Beckett are in the kitchen, Jackson’s upstairs, and Gray’s door has been shut since before she left.
“Come on.” I tip my head toward the stairs. “I’ve got a projector and a Netflix password I stole off my sister. You look like you could use ninety minutes of nothing.”
She glances toward the kitchen, where Tyler’s voice has joined the others.
“Just a movie,” I add. “No pressure. No feelings discussed unless you bring them up.”
That gets the first real change in her expression. “What are we watching?”
“Anything. I’ve got zero standards and even less taste.”
She follows me upstairs. My room’s messier than I’d like, clothes over the desk chair and textbooks stacked on the floor in a way that would give Tyler an aneurysm, but the bed’s made. My mother put that in me at six and it never came out.
I aim the projector at the blank wall. “Pick your poison. Comedy, action, something with subtitles so we can pretend we’re cultured?”
“Something dumb. Something I don’t have to think about.”
I put on a comedy I’ve already seen three times. The picture takes up most of the wall and throws the room into a flicker, but I don’t watch much of it. Reese sits beside me with her legs tucked under her, and over the next twenty minutes some of the tension works its way out of her shoulders.
Then she starts talking.
“She knew I wasn’t staying in my dorm. My mother called the housing office and found out I haven’t swiped my keycard in weeks.”
“That’s creepy as hell.”
“That’s my mother.” She pulls her knees up. “She asked where I’ve been sleeping like she didn’t already have the answer.”
I pause the movie. “What did you say?”
“The truth. That I’ve been here because I didn’t feel safe. She said my solution to being stalked was moving in with eight men. Like that’s worse than being alone in a dorm somebody already broke into.”
“Your mom sounds like a real piece of work.”
“She’s terrified of what people think. Her Omega daughter, living with a pack of Alphas.” Her mouth twists. “She doesn’t care whether I’m happy or safe. She cares whether I’m respectable.”
I want to pull her against me and tell her that her mother’s opinion is worth exactly nothing. I’m not sure she wants hands on her right now, so I keep mine where they are.
“Tyler was incredible,” she says after a while. “When my mom said it, he shut her down cold. Told her to apologize.”
“Tyler?” I don’t manage to keep it out of my voice. “Our Tyler? Mister Spreadsheets?”
“He’s not who I thought he was.” Something soft comes into her face. “Afterward we pulled over and talked. He told me things about himself. Then he kissed me.”
Tyler kissed her. I knew this was coming. We all knew, with the pack bond and the claiming and Tyler practically living inside the paperwork for the last week. That’s the entire point of what we’re doing, but knowing it and hearing it are two different animals.
“Oh,” I manage. “That’s good. That’s great.”
Reese turns to look at me. “Zane.”
“No, really. Tyler deserves somebody like you. He’s been gone on you since forever, he just didn’t have a procedure for it. I’m happy for you guys.”
“Zane.”
“Somebody had to make a move eventually. We can’t all keep circling like lovesick idiots—”
“Zane.” Her hand lands on my arm and shuts me off. “Are you jealous?”
“What? No. That’s ridiculous.” I look back at the frozen movie. “Why would I be jealous? We’re a pack. Sharing is the whole architecture.”
“You are. You’re jealous that Tyler kissed me.”
“I’m not jealous. I’m impatient.”
“Impatient.”
“I’ve been waiting, okay?” It’s out before I can stop it. “Trying to do the decent thing. Give you room, don’t push, don’t be one more Alpha crowding you. And then Tyler kisses you in a hundred-thousand-dollar car after one dinner, and I’ve been right here the entire time, and—”
I stop and take a breath. “Sorry. That came out wrong. Tonight was hard for you and I’m making it about me, which is a thing I do.”
She’s quiet for a moment before she shifts closer, near enough that I can smell her shampoo.
“What if I want it to be about you for a minute?”
My heart does something stupid. “What?”
“You said impatient.” Her eyes come up to mine. “Impatient for what?”
“Reese.”
“Tell me.”
I swallow. “For this. For you.” I move a strand of hair off her face before I can talk myself out of it. “I think about you constantly. About the bus after Riverside. The way you tasted. The sounds you made when I—”
I cut myself off when my face goes hot.
“When you went down on me,” she finishes, her voice dropping lower. “I remember.”
“I think about it all the time. And then in the kitchen, when you had me in your mouth.” I have to stop and collect myself. “I’ve been running both of those on a loop for weeks.”
“Zane.”
“And now Tyler’s kissed you and I’m sitting here like an idiot who can’t even—”
She kisses me.
It isn’t tentative and it isn’t a question.
She leans in and puts her mouth on mine like she’s been thinking about this too, and for a second my brain completely gives up on me.
Then I’m kissing her back, one hand in her hair and the other hooking under her thigh to bring her into my lap.
She comes willingly, knees bracketing my hips, and the angle lets me get deeper into it.
She tastes like mint and something sweet.
Ice cream. Tyler fucking bought her ice cream.
I pull back just enough to look at her. “He bought you dessert too?”
“What?”
“I can taste it.”
“Salted caramel.”
“Of course he did. Guy really came prepared.”
She looks entirely too pleased with herself. “Are you keeping score?”
“Apparently.”
“That’s very secure of you.”
“I’m going through something.”
She kisses me again before I can embarrass myself further, and this time I let the rest of the room go. The ease of it gets to me more than I expected, the way she settles against me like there was never a question about where she’d fit.
“Is this okay?” she asks against my lips.
“Are you kidding? This is the opposite of not okay. This is extremely, incredibly, enthusiastically okay.”
“Good.”
She kisses me harder, and I shift us until she’s on her back against the pillows and I’m over her without breaking away. Her dress has ridden up over the smooth skin of her thighs, and I run a hand down her side, over the curve of her waist and the dip of her hip.
“I’ve thought about this,” I say against her jaw. “Getting my mouth on you again. Doing it properly instead of rushed in the back of a bus.”
Her breath catches. “Zane.”
“Can I?” I pull back far enough to see her face. “I want to taste you again. I’ve been dying for it.”
“Yes.”
I kiss my way down and take my time about it. Her collarbone, the swell of her breasts through the fabric, the soft skin of her stomach as I push the dress up. She lifts her hips to help me get her underwear off, and I throw it somewhere behind me without looking.
“God, you’re beautiful.” I settle between her thighs and press my mouth to the inside of her knee, working higher. “Every time I look at you I think that. Even when you’re yelling at us at practice. Especially then.”
“Are you going to talk the whole time?” Her fingers thread into my hair.
“Probably. I’ve been told I don’t know when to shut up.” I bite gently at her inner thigh and feel her legs tense around me. “But I can think of better uses for my mouth.”
I lick a slow stripe through her center and her hips jerk. She’s already wet and slick, and the taste of her goes straight to my head. I groan against her and settle in, finding the rhythm that makes her breath break.
“That’s it,” I tell her between strokes. “Just like that. Let me hear you.”
She’s never been quiet, from what the walls of this house have taught me. Being the one drawing it out of her is different. Every sound she makes goes straight through me, especially when I slide two fingers into her and curl them and her hand tightens hard in my hair.
“Fuck, Zane.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t get smug.”
“Little late for that.”
Her answer disappears into a moan when I do it again. Her thighs start trembling around my shoulders, and I know she’s close before she tells me. Hearing her say my name like that nearly finishes me without anybody touching my dick.
“Zane, I’m—” Her breath catches. “I’m close.”
“I know, sweetheart.” I keep my fingers moving and put my mouth back on her. “I’ve got you.”
She comes hard, heel digging into my shoulder and fingers pulling my hair while I work her through it. I don’t stop until she starts squirming away from my mouth, oversensitive and breathless.
“Okay. Okay, Jesus.”
I kiss the inside of her thigh. “You asked if I was going to talk the whole time.”
“I take it back.”
“Thought you might.”
She’s still shaking when I press another kiss higher on her thigh. Her pulse jumps under my mouth, and suddenly my teeth ache. I go still, and Reese feels it immediately. Her fingers stop moving in my hair.
“Zane.”
I look up at her. For once, there isn’t a joke anywhere in me.
“You want to?” she asks.
“Yeah.” My voice comes out rough. “Really fucking badly.”
Her eyes stay on mine. “Then bite me.”