Chapter 8
Elias
Maisie is drowning in my shirt, and I’m fighting to keep my hands to myself.
I followed the soft tread of her footsteps from the staircase and into the living room. It feels wrong to be secretly watching her like this, but I can’t turn away. Something about her wearing my clothes, rubbing against her skin…
Yeah, walking away isn’t an option.
Is she even wearing anything under that shirt?
Last night, Wyatt brought her home in a sooty, dirty PJ set, her feet bare.
Her huge blue eyes were red from tears and smoke; her voice was raspy.
She looked so fucking sweet and sad. All I wanted to do was carry her up to bed, build her a nest, give her every single thing she could ever want.
My thoughts had been about taking care of her. Pure. Comfort. Only.
Then I spent twenty minutes in my bed staring up at the ceiling, hard as a rock, listening to her in the shower. I wanted to touch her. Kiss her. I needed to know how it would feel to rub my hands over her slippery wet skin, then pin her against the shower wall and fuck her against it.
Omegas are… enticing to alphas.
Maisie Lucas is something else entirely. She’s not my scent match. Not that she’s Wyatt's, Hunter's, or Knox’s either, but some needs and wants speak to a part of your soul that you can’t ignore. I wanted her before I caught her scent; her scent just makes me crave her even more.
As she stands in the living room, peering curiously around, I can’t help but want her even more. In Nico’s Diner, I was in public. I had to keep my thoughts and urges in check.
Now she’s in our home, and we’re all alone.
I need to know what she’s wearing under my t-shirt.
I should be in the kitchen making breakfast for her. The guys have gone to work, but I took PTO to spend it watching over Maisie. As much as we all wanted to stay, we have jobs we can’t all take personal time off for, especially with the condo job ramping up to completion.
She picks up a black-framed photo of us from a side table, lifting it closer to her face to examine it as I continue to study her from the living room doorway.
Someone took the photo at a brewery in Texas.
My mind is hazy about our night out to celebrate the completion of our first job together, a small housing development.
We were beyond buzzed by that point, so I have no clue who took the picture.
We’d eaten too many wings, downed too many shots, but even before that, we were having fun.
None of us had a pack before or thought we’d ever be part of one, but we knew we wanted to keep working together.
Sunlight bounces off strands of gold, auburn, and copper. Her shoulder-length hair is a little curlier in the morning than it was last night, tempting me to plunge my hand into it. She’s so fucking pretty.
A tiny line forms between her dark blonde brows. When she gnaws at her bottom lip with small white teeth, I swallow a groan as I strangle the need to adjust myself in my pants.
“Hey,” I say softly before I can act out any of the five inappropriate thoughts involving her mouth and my cock.
With a gasp, the photo flies out of her hand.
I catch the photo frame and smile apologetically at her as I hand it back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Her cheeks flush pink, and she takes the photo frame and puts it back. “It’s not your fault I’m jumpy. I was looking at your stuff.”
“Look at whatever you want, Maisie. This is home for however long you want it to be.”
I try not to feel too pleased when her gaze darts to my bare chest and lingers, her cheeks flushing a deeper red.
“How about I make us some breakfast?” I suggest hiding my smile. “I was going to go knock on your door when I heard you in here.”
It’s only half a lie. I had intended to go upstairs to knock on her door and see if she wanted me to take breakfast up to her. She’s been asleep a long time, but she looks well-rested, her voice only slightly raspy, so it’s sleep she must’ve needed.
“Breakfast sounds good,” she says.
As I lead the way to the kitchen, I ask her, “What do you feel like?”
She’s staring at my ass. I definitely feel her attention. I pretend not to notice her yanking her eyes toward the refrigerator when I turn around to meet her gaze.
“I’m not fussy. Whatever you would have made for yourself.” She chews on her lip, and I force my eyes away from temptation.
“How about pancakes?” I suggest. “If you grab a seat, I’ll whip some up for us.”
She walks over to the dining table with six chairs in the middle of the kitchen and takes a seat, turning in her chair to face me and curling her bare toes on the hardwood floor. “You make pancakes?”
I shouldn’t have suggested that she sit down.
She’s probably naked under that shirt—my shirt—and sitting has made the hem of it rise over soft, rounded thighs.
“Elias?”
I yank my eyes from her bare legs to her face, rubbing a hand over my mouth. I clear my throat. “Uh, we have the box kind. Add two eggs and milk. It’s not exactly homemade, but it’s the best I can do.”
“That sounds good.” She looks around. “What about everyone else?”
I turn around to pull a large mixing bowl from one cupboard and the box of pancake mix from another. “Work.”
“Did they leave early?” She glances at the window over the sink.
“Not exactly. You want blueberries or choc chip?”
The question distracts her from the sun high in the sky and a conversation I’m in no hurry to have with her. “Um, blueberry.”
“Coming up.” We have half of a small container of blueberries in the refrigerator. It’s not enough for a big batch of pancakes, but I can do half a batch for her and choc chip for me.
“What time is it?” she asks. “I need to go to work today.”
With my back to her, I shut my eyes and let out a quiet sigh.
Then I pull a container of eggs from the refrigerator and set it down on the counter beside the bowl and the pancake mix.
“Wyatt texted Nico last night about the fire, and Nico called this morning to say not to bother going to work today.”
She sits back in her seat and wraps her arms around herself. “I’m fired.” Her eyes turn glassy, and she blinks them rapidly. “I mean, I knew I would be. Who would want me to work with them when I’m a danger to their business?”
Abandoning breakfast, I cross over to her and drop into a crouch, taking both her hands.
“Not fired. You went through something intensely traumatic last night. Nico wants you to take the day off to rest and recover. He’s stopping by with a couple of things for you.
Mostly, he was just worried and relieved you came out okay. ”
Her eyes widen. “Really?”
Her surprise catches me off guard. Doesn’t she have someone to care about her?
We have all been afraid to move too fast for her. She came to Rios with nasty bruises on her arms and her face. But maybe showing how I feel about her will give her more confidence in herself.
I tuck a strand of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear, letting my touch linger longer than it would have before. “Really.”
Her eyes stray to my mouth, and my belly tightens in response to the heat in her gaze.
Does she want me to kiss her?
“The others went to work, but we thought we could all meet at the diner for lunch. Hunter, Knox, and Wyatt are finishing work a little earlier so we can do this when it’s busiest in town,” I say, giving her a snippet of a much longer conversation that started after she went to bed last night and continued into this morning.
“Why?”
I hesitate.
Last night, Wyatt made it clear that she might not want to talk about this. She refused to talk about it with him and with the sheriff.
“About the fire at your apartment—”
“What about it?” She sits back in her seat and pulls her hands from mine.
Looks like Wyatt was right.
Giving her more space for a conversation she doesn’t want to have, I rise from my crouch and take a seat in the chair beside her. “We figured it was someone who hurt you, so we spent most of last night talking about how best we could protect you.”
Her jaw drops. “Protect me?”
I give her a firm nod. “If someone thinks you’re alone and without friends, we want to make it crystal clear they’re fighting a losing battle. They have four alphas standing in their way.”
She swallows. “Knox threatened to throw a guy out of the diner window for trying to touch me.”
“And he meant every word. We’d have all done the same. Eating lunch together in town, at the diner, in full view of everyone, would send out a clear message.”
“And that message is?”
I hold her gaze as I tell her, “You’re ours, and there is no way on this planet that we’re about to let anyone hurt you.”
She tilts her head. “So… pretend?”
This is absolutely not pretend. Maisie Lucas has felt like ours since we walked into the diner, and she froze us all on the spot.
Nico wasn't surprised to learn she was staying here with us after the fire rendered her apartment unlivable. Once Nico has finished dealing with the insurance company on behalf of his niece, who owns the apartment, it will still be a couple of months, if not longer, before anyone can live in it.
The whole town knows how we feel about Maisie because we’ve never tried to hide our interest in her from day one. The only one who doesn’t realize it is Maisie.
It’s time Maisie learned it too.
“It would not be pretend,” I tell her softly.
“Then what would it be?” she asks in the same quiet voice.
I don’t know if this is too soon, but my instincts say we’ve given her a month to get used to us. That we’re not going anywhere and we’d never hurt her. It’s time to let her know exactly how I feel about her.
I lean in closer, angling my head to press a soft kiss on her lips. “Something real.”
She stares at me, breathing hard. “You like me?”
“A little more than like, beautiful.”
If she’d seen the tent in my pants last night when I heard her in the shower, she’d know not to bother asking a question like that.