Chapter 20 Lorenzo
Lorenzo
Oliver is boneless against Nicholas’s chest, his breath fogging the Alpha’s collarbone, his body still locked around that knot inside him.
His eyes are half-lidded and his mouth curves into that loose, wrecked smile he gets when he’s pushed over the edge with pleasure.
Glitter smudges the pillow beneath him and trails onto Nicholas’ jaw where Oliver’s cheek pressed these last few minutes.
I sweep my hand to Oliver’s chin and tilt his face toward me. His pupils are still blown wide, the blue of his irises barely there, though his scent has settled from the desperate surge of twenty minutes ago into something richer.
His mouth parts before I lean in, and I kiss him thoroughly, my tongue sliding against his, tasting the salt on his lips and the copper tang from where he bit the skin. His fingers curl weakly in my shirt, tugging, and a low, satisfied sound vibrates from his throat into my mouth.
“Zo.” Hearing my name pressed against my lips feels like a prayer.
My thumb traces his jaw before I pull back. His eyes already drift shut, his body melting further into Nicholas’s chest. The Alpha’s arms wrap around Oliver’s back, hands splayed between the Omega’s shoulder blades. The knot will hold them together for another fifteen minutes at least.
That wasn’t a heat spike so I’m sure the combination of the four of us orbiting each other definitely set his pheromones off. It also means his regular heat schedule might be thrown for a loop but it’s too soon to tell.
Nicholas meets my gaze over Oliver’s head.
His look is raw, like a man who’s just made a sound he didn’t intend.
I settle my hand on Nicholas’s shoulder and squeeze, holding a beat longer than casual.
An understanding seems to pass between us.
While my priority is Wilson and Oliver, I’m beginning to see that Nicholas’ place is beside me, not in challenge to me.
It’ll take me a while to truly believe that, Nicholas’ Alpha biology constantly at war with my own instincts. Right now, though, I need to check on Wilson. The way he left tells me something broke during this moment but I can’t fathom what it was.
“Go check on him,” Nicholas purrs softly. “I got your Omega.”
“Our Omega. Nicholas. Ours.”
The bathroom door is closed when I reach the hall, the shower hissing behind it. I tap twice with my knuckles and push in without waiting.
Steam fills the room. The shower is running, the glass fogged, but Wilson isn’t in it.
He’s at the sink under the harsh overhead light, both hands braced against the porcelain, head bowed.
The shower’s white noise fills the space with the sort of cover a man turns on when he doesn’t want to be heard through walls.
The scar on his neck is fully exposed, the jagged ridges clear from where I stand in the doorway.
When his eyes lift to the mirror and find my reflection, his hand shoots up to cover the damage, palm pressed flat against his throat as his body twists away from me.
I’m not even sure why it matters. I’ve already seen it.
“Don’t.” I close the distance in two strides. My hand slips around his wrist, holding his palm against his neck while stopping his retreat. “You don’t get to hide from me anymore, Wilson. I already saw it—and it doesn’t bother me.”
His jaw clenches. “Lorenzo, you don’t understand what this—”
“I understand exactly what it is.” I cup the side of his face with my free hand, turning him toward me.
His eyes are red, lips pressed into that tight line he uses to keep everything in.
“You did what you needed to remove yourself from an abusive relationship. You survived something that should have broken you, and you came out the other side with a scar instead of a grave.” I press my thumb against his cheekbone.
“I’m proud of you. I’m so fucking proud of you, Wilson. ”
His face crumples. That tight line of his mouth buckles, his chin drops, and his hand goes limp in my grip. I hear Wilson’s voice barely above a whisper against the shower’s hiss, his words shifting the conversation. “That sound Nicholas made. You know what that means.”
“I do.”
His eyes sharpen, the grief in his expression folding behind something harder, more accusatory. “You knew. When you invited Nicholas to do security at the club. When you let him into your bed. When you pushed him toward me at every opportunity. You knew what he was.”
“I’m not ashamed of keeping people around me that I know will become a permanent fixture in my life.” My hand stays on his face. “Nicholas fit with Oliver. He fit with me. And the moment I watched him look at you across that club floor, I knew he’d fit with you.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Wilson’s hand drops from his neck, exposing the ugly, defiant scar again. “I mean how can you be okay with all of this? An Alpha in your pack who makes a claiming sound for your Omega. For me. How does that not—”
“Wilson.” I step closer until our chests are inches apart. Steam wraps us both as the shower drums against empty tile. “Why won’t you let yourself have what you want?”
His mouth opens, then closes as his hands press against the sink behind him.
“You’ve tortured yourself for years. You’ve punished yourself for wanting a pack, for wanting Nicholas, for wanting anything at all, and it’s gotten you nowhere except more hurt.
More alone. More nights on a couch counting exits in an empty room.
” My voice drops lower, pressing through the steam.
“You deserve love, Wilson. You deserve a pack that holds you when the nightmares come and fucks you until you can’t think and brings you cinnamon rolls without being asked.
You deserve all of it and you won’t take it. ”
His chin lifts, tears falling, cutting tracks through the steam on his cheeks. “Because I don’t deserve it.”
“Bullshit.” I refuse to let him lie.
I crush my mouth against his, my hand locking into the back of his skull as I press him into the sink. Wilson’s hands clench my shoulders, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, and his groan against my lips is the sound of a man whose last defense just shattered.
I slide my hands down to his thighs and lift him. His legs snap around my waist, his back hitting the tile as I walk him into the shower. The shower sprays across my arm, warm water misting over us, and Wilson gasps into my mouth when I shift, his cock pressing harder into my stomach.
“You are loved, gorgeous,” I whisper, grinding my hips forward. His head tilts back against the tile, water drenching my clothing. “So fucking loved. Do you hear me?”
“Lorenzo—”
“I love you.” I pull back just enough to see his face. “Maybe it’s too soon to say it. I don’t care. You’re my Beta, Wilson—mine, Oliver’s, and Nicholas’ if you’d let yourself have some fucking happiness.”
He claws at my shirt, pressing his forehead to mine, his breath ragged, his whole body trembling. I hold him there, hips braced against the wall, arms wrapped around him, the weight of my confession between us.
My hand slides between us and I press two fingers inside him where he’s still open from the nest. Wilson arches off the wall, a groan ripping through his teeth, his arms locking around my neck.
“How can you be okay with this?” he rasps, voice raw, each word torn from deep inside. “With Nicholas and me. With him knotting your Omega. With all of it, Lorenzo, how—”
In one thrust, my cock replaces my fingers.
Wilson’s body takes me in, and his voice cracks on a moan that fills the bathroom and bounces off the wet tile.
I clamp my hands around his thighs, pinning him firmly, and drive up into him hard enough that his back slides against the wall with every stroke.
“Because he’s not my Omega.” Each word punctuates a thrust that presses Wilson higher against the tile.
“He’s our Omega. Ours. I can’t meet all of his needs alone, and I don’t have to.
” My grip tightens on his thighs. I shift the angle and Wilson cries out, his nails raking the back of my neck.
“That’s what a pack is. A group. We share responsibility.
We share love. We share everything, Wilson—including you. ”
Wilson’s arms squeeze around my neck. His face buries against my throat, his body clenching around me with every stroke, his cock trapped between our stomachs, leaking warm against my skin.
“I’m breaking.” His words come out muffled against my neck, small and raw in a way I’ve never heard. “Lorenzo, I’m breaking apart.”
My hands hold his thighs and my hips drive forward while the shower floods the room with steam that wraps around us. Wilson shivers in my arms, his body folding tighter with each thrust, his breathing melting into sounds that aren’t words anymore.
“Good.” I press my mouth to his ear, dropping my voice into the register that always makes him go pliant, the one that slips past every wall he’s built and speaks directly to the part of him that craves authority wielded with care.
“Break for me, gorgeous. Let it all come down. Because weve got everything I need to build you back up if you’ll let us. ”
Wilson tightens his grip in my shirt, his breathing kicking up a notch.
“Let us catch you,” I whisper, adjusting my angle until his spine bows away from the tile. “Let us fix you.”
When he comes, the sob breaks against my throat like a wave. Heat pulses between our bodies, spreading across my stomach as he tightens around me with such force that my own release tears through me in the next heartbeat.
Pressing him harder into the wall, I bury myself inside him completely, my face finding the curve where his neck meets his shoulder, arms trembling with the effort of keeping us both standing.
My fingers thread through his damp curls, cradling the back of his head while he gradually loosens his grip on my shirt. The violent sobs that wracked his body begin to subside into shudders, then into trembling, until finally he grows still in my arms.
“Yours,” Wilson whispers, his lips brushing my throat with each syllable. “I’m yours.”
My lips find his temple, pressing against skin still damp from tears and steam. “You always were, gorgeous,” I murmur into his hair. “You just had to stop running long enough to let us prove it.”