Chapter 16
“T hink it’s a good sign they haven’t come back yet?” Kit asked.
I looked up from my half-consumed coffee I’d been staring into. “Making me feel left out, but yeah, I think so.”
Bear popped his head out of the nest he’d been working on for Morgan, his hair staticky and floating around his head like a halo as he signed, “She’s getting comfortable.”
That was a good thing. The more comfortable she got out here, the less likely she was to leave. Fate had to have been working overtime. Getting her out here right before all the roads shut down was the only reason we had time to woo our omega.
We had to make the most of these precious days.
If we weren’t lucky enough to convince her to move in, maybe we could bring up long-distance dating for a while.
I checked and rechecked my two cameras. I would let Morgan decide which one she wanted to use when we went out later. We had a fox that liked to come by and hopefully it would make an appearance so we could get some good shots. If the fox wasn’t cooperative, we could always check out the owls around back, or the multitude of squirrels and grouse all over the property. Maybe we’d even get lucky and the deer would discover the trails we’d packed down and come for a visit.
Kit put me in charge of cooking lunch while we waited. He passed over a bowl of all the chopped vegetables he’d prepared, and another with hunks of marinated bison, before bringing over the pot of rice.
Cooking over a fire had been a learning curve for me. Kit was a champ at campfire cooking, and he had patiently taught me a million tricks of survival so I could thrive out here. My own family didn’t camp, but Maverick had dragged me out a dozen times every summer. Mom thought I was crazy to willingly sleep on the ground out in the woods, but Mav had loved it so much it had grown on me too.
The buzz of the snowmobile came from outside and I drew the pan back from the fire so I could check on them, all three of us abandoning our tasks to meet Morgan and Maverick as they pulled into the yard.
Our omega was flushed pink, waving to us from behind Maverick with a huge smile on her face. That was a relief. I’d worried she would get stressed being out in the woods.
Kit got a couple steps ahead of us and Morgan threw herself at him first in a hug, then Bear, and then me. Her scent was markedly stronger than usual. I spared a glance at Maverick and he grinned widely at me. I raised one eyebrow in question. Maverick nodded, making a chef’s kiss gesture. Apparently he and our omega had gotten close on their adventure.
Morgan rooted against my chest before letting out a growl and thunking her forehead against me. “Stop having no scent. It’s pissing me off.”
“I would love to have my scent again. Unfortunately, I’m at the mercy of time.”
She peeked up at me, gray eyes curious, asking quietly like her words were some secret conspiracy only meant for our ears. “Would you want to try burning the blockers off faster?”
“I’m up for anything with you.”
Maverick and I discussed the potential of our blockers burning off because of proximity to her, but I honestly hadn’t expected Morgan to be up for trying to speed that along. I was the last of us to touch her, and from the sounds of it, she was interested in making that change quickly.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Maverick said, coming up behind her. “You need to eat before Ryder absconds with you into the woods.”
“Okay.” She looked up at me again. “Can I borrow something to wear? I don’t have a lot under my snowsuit.”
My body instantly reacted, arms tightening around her and cock stirring to life. “Take your pick out of my closet.”
She blinked, tilting her head to examine me. “Bring me something?”
I swallowed hard with a nod and let Maverick guide her inside. I sprinted up the outside stairs, kicked off my boots, and kept sprinting all the way up to my room where I picked out a black tank top and a blue flannel shirt, then dashed back down. Morgan was wriggling out of her snowsuit in the garage when I arrived, her top half completely exposed though she was facing away from me, and her bottoms only in her tight wool leggings.
Holy shit.
My cock hardened painfully, my breath lodging in my throat. Ordinarily I liked my scent being muted, but right now it was a unique sort of nightmare. When Morgan got close to me, it was like all of my scent tried to rush out at once and instead crashed up against the metaphorical glass of the blockers.
Morgan shook out the braid in her hair, tipping forward to fluff it before flicking the whole mass of red curls back. I bit down on a growl. It had to be unhealthy how much I wanted to bend that woman over and get a handful of her hair to hold while I fucked her to the edge. The expanse of freckled skin only made my fantasies worse.
I held the selected clothing out in front of me and tipped my face to stare at the ceiling while she collected it from me. I picked her snowsuit off the ground so I could hang it up to air, but caught a glimpse of her as she tugged the tank top down.
Doomed.
I had seen the curve of her breasts. Now I knew the exact contrast of that raspberry pink against the paleness of her skin, the softness of her belly, and the thousands of freckles that decorated every inch of her. All of that would get compounded when I went to bed tonight, the scent of her pleasure still branded onto my sheets. How the fuck was I supposed to cope?
Bear gathered the rest of her clothing and tossed our omega over his shoulder to make the journey into the main house. She squeaked, her face flushed and eyes wide, but she didn’t struggle out of his grip. Her gaze caught mine. The gray was nearly eclipsed by the dilation of her pupils, her scent rising as we followed them in. Apparently our omega was a fan of being manhandled.
Bear set her on her feet in the living room and spun her so she could see the nest he had constructed.
Her soft gasp of delight almost took me out at the knees. “Is that for me ?”
Kit nodded. “Bear put it together for you while you were out with Maverick.”
A shiver ran down her body before she launched herself into it, landing in the pile of blankets. A trill of pure omega joy erupted from her. Morgan rolled around in the fabric, burrowing deep underneath, her purr audible through the layers when I stepped closer to peek in on her. The tent Bear had used fit all four of us comfortably when we camped and had room to stand up. He must’ve put every blanket we owned in there.
Morgan popped her head up, static lifting her curls like it had done to Bear, the biggest grin I’d ever seen on her face gracing us.
Bear kneeled in front of her, signing, “Do you like it?”
Our omega threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck. “I love it. Thank you.”
The embrace lasted only a few seconds before she flung herself back into the pile, nestling until only her eyes were visible to us.
“Kind of unfair for you to get even cuter than you already were,” I said with a laugh.
That only made her purr get louder.
“Are you ready to eat, little fox?” Kit asked. “Or would you like some time to bask?”
“Bask, please,” she chirped.
At least that gave me some time to finish the food I had abandoned. I sat down where I could watch her and still cook. When I was almost finished, she ordered Bear into the nest and our quiet companion cuddled up against her back.
Jealousy sat heavy in my chest. I wanted the others to have these opportunities with her, but I knew she wasn’t going to be asking me into that nest without a scent. At least I could take comfort in the fact that my scent had definitely been doing its best to battering ram its way through the blockers today and every moment I spent in my own bed. I had already imagined her a dozen times, stroking my cock as I lay there in the dark with her pleasure tinting every breath.
By the time we were dishing up, her stomach growling was louder than her purring, and Bear managed to extract her enough that he could feed her while she was buried under the mountain of blankets.
After an hour or so of her accepting bites like a baby bird, her instincts had calmed down enough to let her emerge from the nest. She tied my flannel around her waist, leaving her arms bare and the fabric stretched just enough over her chest to make it slightly see-through in the right light. I picked out patterns in her freckles when she sat next to me in front of the fire.
“We’re going out today?”
“If you’re feeling up to it. The weather is supposed to hold for a few more hours.”
“More snow tonight?”
“A few inches, yeah.”
“Town isn’t close enough to use the snowmobiles to get to, right?” she asked.
“Not safely, no. We’d have taken you already if we could. Our last set of guests got a bit rowdy and a lot of them were relatively new to snowmobiles. Combine that with some trails that had hidden trees down under the snow, and it was a recipe for disaster. Had to drag them back to the lodge one at a time and people did a lot more hiking than they intended.”
“Did they pay for the damages?” Morgan asked.
“They’re just kids and don’t have anywhere near the money it would cost. Insurance should cover it, but it’ll be a pain in the ass to get everything into town for replacement parts.”
“What if there was a medical emergency in the meantime?”
“The risk is kind of assumed when you live in remote areas.” I shrugged. “An emergency would need to get you all the way to Great Falls, and someone would have to get dragged on a sled for about seventy-five miles to access care in that case.”
Our omega pursed her lips. “Rural infrastructure really needs an overhaul.”
“The fewer people that live in an area, the less attention it usually gets,” I replied. “It’s often left to the people themselves to figure out how to help their communities.”
“On happier topics,” said Maverick as he stood at the window, “our fox is visiting.”
Morgan hopped up and pressed herself against the glass. “Oh, it’s so cute. They’re so fluffy this time of year.”
“Want to go out and get some photos?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
I led her over to the two cameras I had ready and waiting.
She perked up, lifting the white one with the telephoto lens. “You have the same one I do.”
“Then you won’t even need a lesson on how to use it.”
“I don’t know about that. Your composition is pretty fucking awesome.”
I preened at her praise. “Let’s get you bundled up.”
Morgan did the cutest happy dance as she cradled the camera to her chest and practically skipped off toward the garage.
Kit laid a hand on my shoulder, his smile full of mischief. “How’s the alpha crush on her going?”
I let out a bitter laugh, despite hope burning hot in my chest. “Debilitating.”