18. Wren #2
Soren buries his face in my shoulder, probably blushing hard enough to catch fire. I pull him closer and don’t even try to hide my grin.
After that the party settles into its natural rhythm.
Declan pulls burgers off the grill, Tessa pours drinks, and Aaron challenges Ava to a corn-eating contest that Callum referees with deadpan seriousness.
Benji draws something obscene on a paper plate and slides it to Knox, who studies it with real artistic consideration before adding horns.
I end up at the grill with Declan. Not on purpose.
I just drift over because grilling is something to do, and having a job still feels safer than standing around.
Declan doesn’t say anything for a while.
He flips some sausages, takes a drink, and watches Shay across the patio, who’s reorganizing the dessert table like he’s got a spreadsheet in his head.
“He rearranged my stockroom three times in the first week,” Declan says. Not to me, exactly. More like he’s talking to the sausages. “I thought he was criticizing my system. Took me two days to figure out he was nesting.”
I don’t say anything. I just stand there with the tongs and wait him out.
Declan turns to me, eyes steady. “You know the feeling. Where you think the only reason they keep you around is because of what you built.”
My grip tightens on the tongs.
“The bar,” he says. “That’s what I thought. Shay loves the bar, he loves the system, he loves fixing things. Take the bar away and what am I? Just some alpha who’s too old for him and talks too much about whiskey.”
He picks up a sausage, looks at it, puts it back down.
“Took me a while to figure out he wasn’t staying for the bar. He was staying for the man who built it.” He looks right at me. “You get that?”
My throat goes tight. I just nod.
“So stop staring at your own damn tree and look at the guy sitting under it.”
He claps me on the back, not as hard as Knox but it still lands heavy. Then he heads off to bring Shay a plate. Shay takes it without missing a beat in his conversation with Tessa, leans into Declan for half a second, then straightens up again like nothing happened.
I look across the patio. Soren’s in a lawn chair with Milo, their heads close together while Milo shows him something on his phone.
Keats is balanced on Soren’s knee, and every so often his thumb goes back to the bird’s wing like he can’t help it.
He laughs, and it takes over his whole body—shoulders shaking, head thrown back, the bite mark on his neck catching the lights.
My bite. My omega. He doesn’t know I’m watching, and all I want is to cross the patio, drag him out of that chair, and kiss him until he tastes like me for the rest of the night.
If he looked up and caught me staring, he’d just smile like he already knew what I was thinking.
The night gets softer as the beer kicks in and the music switches from Jude’s aggressive playlist to something slower—probably Soren’s doing.
Couples start peeling off from the group, finding their own corners.
Rhys pulls Jude off the bench and into a chair, and Jude immediately sprawls across his lap.
Callum and Milo drift over to the porch steps, Milo’s head on Callum’s shoulder, Callum’s thumb tracing circles on his knee.
Soren comes back to me. He doesn’t say anything, just settles into the lawn chair I grabbed, fits himself against my side with his legs over mine, and buries his nose under my ear. His mouth brushes my neck, and I feel his sigh more than I hear it.
His breath hits the skin under my jaw and my whole body goes tense.
I freeze. My arm’s already around him, palm spread over the dip of his waist under his thin shirt, thumb on the bare skin where his shirt’s ridden up. If I moved my hand just a little, I could trace his spine and feel his breath catch. I don’t. It feels like if I move, I’ll set something off.
His scent changes, sweeter and darker all at once.
My cock throbs against my zipper, and I have to breathe through my mouth so I don’t groan.
I think about sliding my hand up under his shirt—not to grope, just to feel the warm skin of his stomach, the way his muscles would twitch under my palm.
I picture him turning into my throat and licking over my pulse while I hold him still, making sure no one else sees how much he wants it.
I think about a lot of things I’m definitely not doing in the middle of Declan’s patio.
“Hey,” I say, voice low and rough.
“Hey.” His voice is sleepy and smoke-sweet. “Knox’s bird is on the dessert table. Milo put it next to the brownies. It’s guarding them.”
“Good. It’s found its purpose.”
He laughs, quiet and warm against my throat, and my arm tightens around him.
His thigh slides higher over mine, and the new pressure against my dick is torture.
Perfect, awful torture. There’s a moment when his breath stutters and he realizes how hard I am.
He doesn’t pull away. If anything, he settles in heavier, like he’s seeing how much he can get away with before I lose it.
The patio’s quieter now. I look around at all of it. The string lights. The loose railing I’m not fixing tonight. The people who, somehow, ended up being mine.
“I love you,” I say.
Soren lifts his head. His eyes are dark and shining, and the look on his face wrecks me the same way it wrecked me the first time he said my name in that hallway. For half a second his gaze drops to my mouth, and the want that flashes across his face is so naked my breath stalls.
“I love you too,” he says.
Then he yawns against my neck, big and unselfconscious, and his whole body goes heavy on top of me.
He drags his cheek against my throat as he settles in, slow and on purpose.
It’s a promise. Later, when we’re alone, he’ll let me peel him out of that thin shirt and kiss him until he’s shaking.
Until slick is running down his thighs and the only thing either of us can hear is my name and the bed creaking.
I press my lips to the top of his head.
He’s out in under a minute. One second he’s warm and heavy against me, the next his breathing evens out and his hand goes slack on my knee. Keats is still balanced on his other leg, standing guard.
Across the patio, Declan catches my eye over the grill. He doesn’t say anything. Tips his beer in my direction, and I tip mine back.
The railing can wait till tomorrow.
I close my eyes, rest my chin on top of Soren’s head, and hold on to everything I’ve got.