Fifty-One
FIFTY-ONE
Mia
THE OVERWHELMING WALL of spice, and summertime, and tropical drinks coming from inside Luca’s nest hit me like Emiel punching out an opponent in the fighting cage, and I started crying even harder.
Everything was falling apart... everything was going to complete shit, and it felt like I didn’t have the smallest bit of control over any of it. I just wanted someone to walk in and say, hey, it’s going to be all right; sit back and let me take care of this for you .
Zalen’s arms were strong and secure around my body.
“Mia,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happened, but we’re going to make it right, okay? But first, I need you to nod yes or no. Are you physically injured?”
It was so close to what I’d just been thinking that my heart skipped and kicked hard in reaction. Squeezing my eyes closed, I shook my head no with more intention this time. Zalen relaxed minutely against me.
“Good. That’s good.” He took a deep breath, his broad chest expanding beneath my wet cheek. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
I shuddered hard in his embrace, trying to map out the right words to explain before I said them. But I couldn’t. It was too big. Too absurd.
“ Everything ,” I sobbed.
A whimper of distress penetrated my veil of misery, emerging from the depths of the nest. Luca’s summertime scent had turned sour and curdled, while the sharpness of concern threaded through the alphas’ musky pheromones.
“Mia?” Luca’s voice was thin and scared. “ Mia !”
That was enough to jolt me partway out of my self-absorbed fugue. Luca was mired in his heat after days of miserable waiting—trapped in the helpless state he hated so much. And I’d shown up at his door in hysterics, frightening the hell out of him at a time when he was operating on pure instinct.
An answering whine of distress escaped my throat. I pushed at Zalen’s chest. He released me immediately, moving his big hands to my shoulders to steady me instead.
“Can you come in and show him you’re not hurt?” he asked quietly, scanning my face with his earthy brown gaze.
I nodded, feeling tears drip from my cheeks at the movement. I swiped at them, smearing them across my skin even as more squeezed from the corners of my eyes. The cushions lining the nest were in total disarray, as though Luca had been obsessively moving them around in the run-up to his heat. Trying not to stumble over the uneven piles, I picked my way toward the source of Luca’s voice.
My throat closed up as I knelt beside him in the low light. He was naked, curled on his side in the fetal position, the smell of sex hanging around him like a cloud. Byron was seated, nearby but not touching, on a low couch that normally sat against the far wall of the room. He, too, was naked—his tattoos half-seen shadows in the nest’s dimness.
“Why aren’t you holding him?” I demanded, my voice wavering. It sounded petulant even to my own ears, but weren’t heat partners supposed to hold you and comfort you between peaks? Surely it couldn’t be right to leave Luca curled miserably on the floor by himself!
Byron’s face closed off as though it had been carved from marble.
“Because he refused,” Zalen said gently. “He doesn’t want that from us. Maybe he will from you, though.”
My tears had stopped, but at that, they immediately started again. Why did everything have to be like this? Why couldn’t the people I cared about be happy? Why couldn’t I ?
“Luca,” I croaked. “I’m here, I’m okay. I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you. Can I hold you?”
Please, please, let me hold you .
Luca made a choked noise and reached for me; his movements uncoordinated. I let him pull me down and wriggled close until we were tangled together in a messy clinch. He smelled like sweat and spunk and desperate neediness, his heat-soaked mown grass and honeysuckle perfume settling heavily across my overstretched senses.
He sobbed once, and I swallowed against an answering sob. Maybe I could just... not think about things for a while . If Luca needed me, was there anything to stop me simply staying here and focusing on him? For tonight, at least.
The restaurant was closed. Hiring exterminators and dealing with the health department bureaucrats was in Nat’s job description, not mine. I cooked the food, and that wasn’t going to be happening again for the foreseeable future after word of the latest nightmare got out on social media and the news.
Before my brain could conjure up images of what the lurid headlines might look like, I distracted myself by tucking Luca’s face against the crook of my neck. He nuzzled into me with a small noise of distress, but then his lips closed over my mating gland like a baby suckling at the breast to comfort itself.
The jolt that echoed along my nervous system from scalp to toenails was enough to drive away all other thoughts. I made an answering noise, but it definitely wasn’t one of distress. The sourness faded from my scent, and a moment later, it faded from Luca’s as well. His tense, trembling muscles loosened until it felt like he was melting in my arms.
Within moments, he was a warm and pliant weight pressed against me, our arms and legs entwined until I couldn’t tell where he ended, and I began. I closed my eyes, my own tension easing as exhaustion rushed in to take its place. My nerves thrummed pleasantly beneath his lips, still pressed to the juncture of my neck and shoulder.
A faint rustle of movement sounded from nearby. “I need a minute,” Byron said in a tight tone. His fennel-and-aniseed scent wafted past us, rife with a complicated knot of lust and emotional strain that I couldn’t unpick.
“I’ll guard the nest,” Zalen said, solid and unflappable as ever. “Don’t be long, Byron.”
Tangy lime and coconut replaced the sharpness of spice, as Zalen settled in the place Byron had abandoned. Watching over Luca, but not touching him.
“He’s between peaks right now,” he said softly. “He needs to rest, and I think you probably do, too. Whatever happened outside tonight, none of it will reach us in here. You’re both safe, Mia. I’ll make sure of it.”
The violence of my emotional reaction to his words took me by surprise. How long had I been waiting to hear something like them? I had to swallow hard, several times.
“Thank you,” I rasped, when I could speak.
He shook his head. “You don’t need to thank me. It’s what I’m here for. Anything you need. Both of you. Now, get some sleep if you can. I’m watching over things, and Byron will be back soon.”
Luca shifted against me, somehow managing to press another few square inches of our bodies together. Out of nowhere, I wished that I wasn’t still in the clothes that I’d been wearing when I walked out of the restaurant. No way was I letting go of Luca long enough to wriggle out of them, though—especially with Zalen sitting right there watching me.
Before long, tiredness banished the minor irritation of cloth rubbing against my skin, and sleep overtook me.
When I woke up, it was because Luca was rutting his erection into the crease of my hip, smearing precome against the black cotton-spandex blend. Sharp teeth nipped at the tendon running up the side of my neck, startling a gasp from me.
The air that rushed into my lungs still smelled like sex and summertime, but the minor annoyance of my clothing against my skin had roared into an untuned symphony of jangling nerves while I slept. I moaned, aware of the sweat prickling across my entire body. My womb felt heavy and bloated, aching with cramps.
“S-something’s wrong!” I choked out, suddenly panicky.
“Mia?” That was Zalen’s voice, but it sounded like it was reaching me through a tunnel.
“Oh.” Byron’s voice, this time. “Oh, shit .”
Then Luca moved, canting his hips so that his bare cock dragged directly over my clit through my work pants and underwear. Fireworks exploded behind my eyes, everything inside me igniting like a lightning strike catching a dry forest afire.
Without any further thought, I was pulling and tearing at my clothing, desperate to get the stale grill smoke and deep fryer smell as far away from my body as possible. Luca seemed to be thoroughly on board with this plan, tugging clumsily at buttons and pulling on pantlegs until I was completely exposed.
I was still half-smothered in my T-shirt, my bra hanging unhooked from my shoulders, when a hot mouth landed between my legs. Luca dove in as though my pussy had just gained its own Michelin star rating, devouring the slick that pulsed from my passage like a starving man.
Other hands helped disentangle me from the rest of my clothing, and I found myself blinking owlishly up at Zalen. His broad palm cupped my cheek as I panted, Luca’s tongue curling inside me to chase the source of my honey.
“Mia,” he said, slowly and clearly. “Being in Luca’s nest triggered your heat early. We’ll take care of you, but I need to get your birth control shot and give it to you. Do you understand?”
I licked my lips, arching when Luca’s tongue rasped over a particularly sensitive spot, and tried to replay the words in my head. It wasn’t time for my heat yet, was it? But the alpha was right. This felt like heat.
I nodded hesitantly.
“Good,” Zalen said. “And you still want to be here? You want Byron and me to help you through it?”
This time, I nodded so fast I probably looked like a bobblehead doll—and it was only partly because Luca had fastened his lips around my clit and was sucking on it like a butterscotch candy. Zalen’s hand moved to smooth my hair back from my face.
“Then we’ll do that,” he said. “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be taken care of. You and Luca can play with each other all you want while I get that shot for you, all right? He can’t get you pregnant.”
Luca gave a little growl against my folds and surged up the length of my body, wriggling his hips between my spread legs and thrusting his omega cock into me as though he’d taken Zalen’s words as a personal challenge. I wailed as he slid home—an out of control, animalistic noise—locking my ankles around the small of his back as he pumped into me wildly.
“Yeah, so, you might want to hurry with that, Z,” Byron said from somewhere behind Luca.
“Um... yes.” Zalen sounded mildly taken aback. “I’ll just be a minute.”