Fifty-Six
FIFTY-SIX
Zalen
WHEN I TRUDGED DOWNSTAIRS at oh-dark-thirty for coffee, I’d expected to have the kitchen to myself. It wasn’t accurate to say I’d been up all night thinking about what might be going on in Byron’s bedroom. I’d actually slept just fine.
I just hadn’t slept for long .
And, of course, once I woke up, I knew there would be no getting back to sleep again. Rather than fight the inevitable, I’d hauled myself out of bed with the intention of caffeinating and heading into work early, before the others untangled from their post-coital snuggle pile and stumbled down for breakfast.
If anything, I’d assumed the footsteps I could hear pacing restlessly back and forth in the brightly lit kitchen belonged to Emiel, who’d also opted out of the nights, er... festivities .
I certainly hadn’t expected to find Nat, of all people, walking restlessly back and forth in front of the breakfast bar, his hands dragging through his mop of dark hair until it stuck up in all directions. Frankly, after some of the noises I’d heard down the hall last night, I was a bit impressed that he could walk at all .
“Morning,” I greeted, a bit cautiously. “Surprised to see you up this early. Is everything okay?”
At my appearance in the doorway, Nat froze as though I’d walked in on him committing a crime, instead of wearing a trench in the ceramic tile with his nervous pacing. He stared at me for a beat, looking like a rabbit that had hopped into the middle of the highway and gotten caught in the oncoming headlights—lips parted, eyes wide.
“Um...” he said.
My surprise tilted slightly in the direction of alarm.
“Nat?” I prodded. “Is everything all right?”
We stood squared off across the width of the kitchen, wreathed in the rich scent of brewing coffee. The seconds ticked by, and I’d just drawn breath to try again when the coffee maker beeped, its cycle complete. Nat jumped, clearly startled, and the moment broke.
He looked from the coffee machine back to me. An instant later, his posture slumped—his entire body curling in on itself.
“I’m going to fuck it up again,” he said, the words barely more than a whisper.
And... okay.
On the positive side, it didn’t sound like he’d had a sudden episode of gay panic or decided that he hadn’t liked whatever the others had done to him in Byron’s bedroom. Unfortunately, there were some additional things that might have happened to send Mia’s beta husband running to the other end of the house while his wife slept in the arms of two other men.
“Can we get some coffee for this conversation?” I asked mildly, coming into the kitchen and grabbing a couple of mugs from the cabinet. “Thanks for making it, by the way.”
Nat scrubbed a hand roughly over his face and nodded. It wasn’t nearly as obvious as it had been a week ago, but in the harsh overhead lighting, I could still make out the faint echoes of bruising on the side of his face.
“Yeah,” he said. “Sorry. I just... I couldn’t stay with the others.”
I didn’t answer immediately. Instead, I poured us both coffee and handed him the first mug—black, the way I knew he took it.
“Drink,” I told him. “Then tell me what happened.”
Nat looked jittery enough without the caffeine, but he meekly sipped at the scalding mug, wrapping his hands around it as though he were chilled. After a moment, he hesitated and put it down on the counter.
He took a deep breath, like someone steadying his nerves.
“I’m going to fuck this up,” he said again, with more certainty this time.
A tinge of redness colored his cheeks and the tips of his ears, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t because of the hot coffee.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
He shook his head in disgust. “I couldn’t even make it one goddamned night without falling right back into the shit that got me in trouble the first time.”
From what I’d seen over the past couple of weeks, Nat wasn’t normally the kind of person who cursed like a sailor. Something had him riled, and riled badly—even if I still didn’t understand what it was.
“Maybe you should start from the beginning?” I suggested. “I promise I never pass judgment on anyone before I’ve had at least two cups of coffee. It’s too much work.”
Nat nodded and grabbed the edge of the countertop with both hands, letting his head fall forward to hang limply for a couple of seconds. When he looked up again, it was to make unblinking eye contact with me.
“I want sex. All the time.” His grip on the counter was white-knuckled. “Mia doesn’t. Or, at least, she didn’t with me. She’s an omega, and sex without alpha pheromones doesn’t do much of anything for her. But our lives were busy, and she didn’t make a priority out of buying synthetics so she would enjoy it.”
He gave a bitter laugh. “But then again, neither did I... because part of me always resented that she needed them.”
“So, it sounds like you had a pretty serious libido mismatch,” I offered, keeping my tone free of judgment, just as I’d promised.
That earned another sharp bark of ugly laughter.
“Yeah. You could say that.” His eyes slipped closed. “So, since neither of us seemed able to address the problem head-on, I demanded an open marriage. And here we are.”
I already knew most of this, though it still didn’t explain what had dragged him down here at five-thirty in the morning.
“Is ‘here’ really such a bad place to be?” I asked.
He looked startled, as though he’d just realized how that might have sounded to the guy who owned the house.
“No! No—that’s not what I...” He trailed off. Tried again. “It’s not that. Last night, Mia offered me everything I could ever want on a silver platter. And the sex... it was...” Nat swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing.
“Good?” I offered wryly.
“Amazing,” he said. “And then I fell asleep, slept like the dead for a couple of hours, and woke up with my dick hard enough to drill wood.”
Unconsciously, my eyes were drawn to Nat’s checkered pajama bottoms, where I confirmed that he was, in fact, sporting a painful-looking hard-on. I dragged my gaze back up to his face.
“I had the best sex of my life last night,” he said miserably, “but now all I can think about is how soon I can have sex again, and if Mia will let me come inside her.”
The penny dropped. “You’re worried your high libido will drive her away?”
“How long before she realizes that we’re right back where we were, and nothing has changed?” There was a quiver in Nat’s voice, and his eyes were growing suspiciously bright.
“But you aren’t where you were,” I pointed out. “And last time I checked, several things have changed.”
He scoffed. “Yeah. Sure. She found a pack of alphas who treat her way better than I did.”
Ah.
This , at least, I could fix. And didn’t that realization send a flush of satisfaction through the deepest alpha parts of me?
I shook my head, holding his gaze. “No. You both found a pack of alphas—and an omega—who are deeply flawed. We’re just trying to find our way, like everybody else... but we want both you and Mia to get every single damned thing that you need out of this relationship.”
“You don’t need some beta man-whore who can’t go six hours without worrying how soon he’s going to get his dick wet again!” Nat’s voice dripped with self-disgust.
After several years working with the kids at the Hope Project, I could recognize the voice of internalized parental judgment when I heard it.
“Hey.” I let my tone sharpen, and gave in to the instinct to grasp Nat’s chin between my thumb and forefinger, making him look at me. “Here’s the first thing—great sex frequently reminds your body that it wants more great sex. I’m guessing there’s a bit of a honeymoon period at play here. It may well be that your dick will calm down once it realizes that sex is available for the asking.”
Nat caught his breath.
“Which brings me to the second thing,” I continued. “You’re in a pack with two omegas and three alphas. You’ll have to keep up with at least four of those five people sexually—I’m not sure about Emiel. He may not be into you that way, like the rest of us are.”
Nat gaped. “You mean... you...”
I flashed him a feral smile, still flush with the enjoyment of solving a problem as the pack alpha.
“Hey, I had to listen to all of the moaning and screaming last night from the solitary confines of my room down the hall,” I reminded him. “If you need to let off some steam this morning, you could always make that up to me right now.”
Nat stared at me as though I’d broken his brain. Then, he gulped, the red staining his face growing darker.
“Really?” His hand slipped toward his own ass. I doubted he even realized he was doing it. “Er... I know alphas don’t like to pop a knot outside of fucking someone, and... uh... I don’t think I can do that after last night.”
I didn’t doubt it. I let my hand drop away from his chin. “Believe me, I’m not a fan of pain during sex, in any capacity. Trust me?”
I watched Nat waver... saw the moment when his brain said ‘ fuck it’ and decided to go all-in on whatever this pack was becoming.
“I trust you,” he said. His voice sounded younger. Vulnerable.
It drew my alpha instincts even further to the fore, settling something inside me that had been off balance for so long.
“I won’t abuse that trust, Nat,” I promised him. “You tell me if you don’t like something, or if you’re not sure. Now, I don’t have a ton of time before I need to get ready for work, so this is going to have to be quick and dirty. Emphasis on the dirty .”
Nat’s deep-set eyes, already an earthy brown, darkened further as his pupils blew wide.
I grabbed a cushion off one of the fancy barstools and tossed it on the ground at my feet. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You suck me until I’m nice and hard. Then I’m going to bend you over this counter and fuck you between your thighs. You can keep my knot warm that way afterward, and I’ll jerk you off so it’s good for you, too. I think Mia’s got some fancy olive oil in here someplace. We’ll use it as lube and not tell her about it afterward. Deal?”
Nat stared at me, open mouthed.
“Deal,” he croaked, his fingers hooking in my waistband and tugging the fabric down as he dropped to his knees in front of me.