Chapter 59
chapter
fifty-nine
*Remi’s Bag of Dicks*
*Cassian changed the name of this chat to REMI’S BAG OF DICKS*
Smith
Explain yourself.
Damon
Is this really you Cass?
What’s the secret password?
Cassian
Shut the fuck up
Damon
We need a new secret password.
Cassian
Theo made me do it.
Damon
And you didn’t deck him?
Aww did my big bear make a **real friend**?!
Cassian
You have to stop calling me that.
Smith
Damon, enough.
Damon
Or else what, Bear?
Cassian
Or I’ll tell Remi.
Damon
….
Fine.
Fucker.
Smith
Seriously? Remi is more threatening than me, now?
Cassian
100%
Damon
Oh yeah, for sure.
Rememberwhen I said that putting all of my alphas in a room with all of Meg’s alphas seemed like a good way for someone to lose an eye? With all the dick-waving?
Um, yeah.
About that.
“Do you think one of them is going to drown?” I fret.
“Eh.” Meg chomps into a tortilla chip that’s full of queso. “I think it’s more likely one of them will end up with a black eye.”
I might smile, remembering Damon’s shiner the day we first met. But, at the moment, I’m worried my trouble-maker alpha is going to crush Cassian.
Archer watches the mayhem unfolding in their pool and shakes his head. He removes his glasses to clean them with the hem of his white linen shirt, muttering, “You’d think they would pick something a little more dignified to humiliate themselves with. This just feels… obvious.”
“We can—” Declan’s head gets dunked under the pool water, interrupting his shout. He reemerges ten seconds later, snarling, “—hear you!”
“Good,” Archer chips back. “This is embarrassing.”
Theo whoops, his tree-trunk thighs flexing around Declan’s head while his shorty-short pink swim trunks bunch at the other alpha’s ears. Meg snorts quietly into her margarita, wincing. “Dec probably should have been on top.”
That was my alphas’ strategy. Which is how Damon ended up on Cassian’s very broad, very bare shoulders, duking it out with Theo. To say the big tight-end is “balanced” on his quarterback packmate’s shoulders would be a generous way of putting it.
I lean closer to Meg. “There’s a good joke here, somewhere. They’re playing chicken, but it’s an actual cock fight?”
She grins. “Close enough. Still, you can’t complain about a view like this, right?”
She has a point. Even if my preheat hormones weren’t running rampant, I couldn’t complain about a swimming pool full of gorgeous, half-naked, pro-athlete alphas. Wrestling. And wet.
Fanning my face, I sip my drink until the straw sucks on air. A solid palm lands on my shoulder, kneading the skin under the thin strap of my white sundress before skimming down my arm.
“Here, angel,” Smith rumbles, stepping into my back. He wraps his arm at my waist, passes me a new drink, and bends to purr in my ear, “Are you feeling all right?” He nuzzles my neck. “You smell very all right.”
My heat perfume started this morning. The old Remi wouldn’t have even noticed, having no reason to get excited.
But now? I gave myself away before I even got out of bed.
Though, I refuse to believe that was my fault. Smith must have known how sexy he looked in that navy suit before he wore it to bring me my coffee. And the way Damon rubs his daily Good Morning Wood into my backside just isn’t even fair. Not to mention all of Cassian’s broad-chested yumminess being the first thing I see when I open my eyes.
Now that Smith sleeps in my bed, too, we’ve had to start up a rotation. But even when it isn’t his turn to hold me or wrap around me from behind, he’s always there. And he always wakes up before the rest of us to bring me coffee.
He told me, on one of our date nights, that he sees it as a way to make up for how he acted when I worked at Proper Coffee. When I asked him how long he plans to go on doing it, he told me he figures we’ll be even sometime around our eighties. I laughed and told him his eighties would be a long time before mine. Which earned me a spanking when we got home.
Ronan comes up behind Meg, and Archer subtly moves away. My best friend rolls her eyes at them, casting me a look. I hide a giggle in my drink.
She has a point.
These alphas are ridiculous. Even happily bonded, with another pack in their house, the Ash pack alphas feel the need to keep one man at Meg’s side at all times.
And my alphas are worse. I’m sure that has something to do with my heat perfume, and the fact that they can’t “feel” me yet. But Smith hasn’t left my shadow since the others got in the pool.
I wore my swimsuit, intending to go in with them, but the cramping in my lower abdomen has me feeling less-than athletic. The guys have asked me a thousand times if I’m in pain. And even though I’ve mostly broken my fibbing habit, I haven’t been totally honest with them about this.
The playoffs start in two days. And I refuse to be in heat for the first week of games the Timberwolves have to win to continue to the next leg. Because I refuse to put Damon in that position with everything that’s going on.
You hear me? I tell my Omega. I REFUSE.
All I get back is a snort of derision, along with a mental image of all three of my alphas, naked, in my nest, and attending to my every whim.
So that’s going well.
Bitch.
Damon shoves Theo hard and finally sends him careening off Declan’s shoulders. He hits the water with a mighty thwack! The pool sloshes around, while Cassian ducks down to get D off him. Damon whoops victoriously, coming right over to me.
Holyyyyyyy….
He’s way too gorgeous, all shining muscles and bright blue eyes. Even the way his dark hair swoops over his forehead in wet waves is sexy. And when he braces his palms on the deck and flexes every muscle in his upper body to haul himself out?
Smith’s teeth nip at the soft part of my neck. He growls, sensing my perfume and reacting as discreetly as he can.
Damon is way less concerned with propriety. His gaze snaps to mine, zeroing in. “I won, pretty girl,” he flirts, then twirls me into a dip and goes right for my mouth, kissing me breathless.
Cool pool water seeps into my cover-up, but I don’t mind. Especially when Cassian appears behind me a moment later, sliding his arms around my waist and holding me up while Damon slides his tongue along mine.
“We won, jackass. Now give me a turn.”
They’re both pumped up—probably some combination of the competition, my heat symptoms, and the fact that we’re surrounded by other alphas. Through their wet trunks, I feel Cassian’s erection rub into the small of my back as Damon’s connects with my belly.
Smith looses an even warning bark. “Easy.”
Meg lets out a peal of delighted laughter, while Ronan chuckles. He thumps my pack’s alpha on his shoulder and smiles fondly at Theo, who’s shaking his beard and long hair out like a golden retriever. “I remember those days.”
Smith smirks. “So you’re saying it gets easier to manage the impulses?”
Ronan and Archer answer in unison. “No.”
As if to prove their point, Declan flops onto Meg’s pool lounger, planting his face right over her thighs. “I lost,” he pouts into her bikini bottoms. “I need something to revive me.”
My best friend bends her leg, kneeing him in the stomach. He rolls off her with a groan, and Theo high-fives her, winking. “Saving it all for me, right, peaches?”
Good Lord. There are so many of them. All half-dressed and strong-smelling and everywhere.
Meg shoots me a wide-eyed look that I return. She waves her hands around her blonde messy bun, snapping, “That’s it! Alpha pheromone overload! We need some girl time!”
Damon’s face drops into an expression of outrage that makes me laugh. Hearing me titter, Cassian rolls his eyes, fighting off his own smile. Smith puts a hand on each of their shoulders. “You should both go and clean up before dinner, anyway.”
Ronan nods. “Archer’s about to put the burgers on. Declan? Can you show the guys where they can shower and change? I want to speak with Smith.”
My brows curve in surprise, but Smith flashes his reassuring grin. “Pack alpha stuff,” he mumbles, briefly kissing my lips. “We’ll just be over by the grill. You relax, petal. That’s an order.”
I can’t help the grin on my face any more than I can control the butterflies in my belly. “Yes, Sir.”
With the size of Meg’s pool deck, “over by the grill” is about twenty yards away. She waits until all the guys are out of earshot before she erupts into giggles.
“Holy shit,” she gasps, swiping under her eyes. “I can’t wait until you’re bonded. Right now, Damon is talking shit to Declan, and Theo is trying to make Cassian be his friend. Once you’re all bonded, we’ll have both sides of the conversation. Like spies behind enemy lines.”
I try to picture the two of us sitting together, relaying our alphas’ every thought while they talk among themselves. It does sound entertaining… and overwhelming.
When she sees the look on my face, Meg’s softens. “It’s not as… much as you’re probably imagining,” she tells me. “In order for you to hear what they’re thinking, they have to specifically ‘knock on your door,’ so to speak. And you can always put up your Do Not Disturb sign if you need a break. They’ll all understand that. Especially once you’ve all been in each other’s heads for a couple of weeks.”
She glances over at the grill area with an unbothered shrug. “Ronan has his up right now.”
I wonder what “pack alpha stuff” he’s discussing with Smith. Looking like salt and pepper—Ronan’s dark hair and Smith’s light—they both lean over one of their phones, brows furrowed. Behind them, Archer nods along with whatever Smith just said, listening while he places enough burgers on their double-wide grill to feed an entire hockey team.
“Is it nice?” I ask, dropping my voice into a whisper. “Being bonded?”
Meg grins. “It’s…incredible. You never have to miss them because they’re always right here.” She taps the center of her chest. “And the way they love me… and each other… it’s just an amazing thing to be at the center of. You’ll see.”
More nervous jitters squirm in my middle. “I think I’m scared. Which is crazy. This is all I’ve ever wanted. Being chosen, being in a pack… but it’s so permanent. What if they change their minds?”
Meg’s mouth pulls down in a soft frown. “Remi, babe, that would never happen. They all love you.” She half-smiles, nodding subtly. “Look for yourself.”
Smith is staring at me, his expression intense. When he sees that I’ve caught him, he quirks an eyebrow, scolding. I can’t actually hear his thoughts, but I might as well be able to.
You’re supposed to be relaxing.
I toss him a flirty flip of my hair. Yes, Sir.
Back to grinning, Meg waves a dismissive hand. “You guys are going to be great.” She bends to the side and grabs a small box. “Here, I got you something.”
“Meg!” I cry. “You know you don’t need to do this sort of thing anymore.”
“I know, I know. But I couldn’t help myself.”
I pluck the ribbon off and remove the lid. A laugh and a sob tangle in my throat when I see the Timberwolf-blue heart-shaped sunglasses inside.
My best friend smiles, so genuinely happy for me that I can feel it. She waves at the matching orange pair nestled into her hair. “Now we both have eye protection,” she says, grinning. “For all this dick measuring.”