Chapter 58
FIFTY-EIGHT
Tony
I DIDN’T MAKE KNOX take me butt-plug shopping. I wasn’t a monster, and that would have been cruel and unusual punishment for a guy who still seemed vaguely grossed out by the memory of having been dragged to a brothel more than a decade ago.
Even without the butt plugs, it was pretty clear that any ideas Knox had about ‘courting,’ as he insisted on calling it, had been taken directly from Victorian romance novels. Or... possibly not, since try as I might, I couldn’t picture Knox actually reading a Victorian romance novel.
And so, I hung out with a faintly perplexed bazillionaire a couple of nights per week, had doors opened for me, chairs pulled out for me, ate the most amazing food I’d ever had in my life, and went on truly epic, paid-for shopping sprees, often with Jez joining us as well.
I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that a pack who ran a sprawling import/export empire was good at organizing things and using their time wisely.
At no point did either Jez or I feel like we were taking a back seat to the other.
We got alone-time with each alpha on a regular basis, and also group time in various combinations.
I’d been wrong about one thing, though. It wasn’t a constant sex-fest. That might have been disappointing, if it weren’t for the reason behind our near-celibacy.
With the mating bond, Gage could feel it whenever either Heath or Jez got frisky, whether it was happening right in front of him or a thousand miles away. And despite his protestations, it was miserable for him while he couldn’t knot a partner because of his injuries.
Yes, there were knotting sleeves available, designed to make busting a nut outside of a willing body more comfortable for an alpha—but a knotting sleeve wouldn’t do a damn thing to dull the pain of climaxing with three broken ribs.
Of course, Gage being Gage, he’d been adamant that just because he was out of action, it didn’t mean the rest of us had to be.
Jez had immediately vetoed that, and I didn’t blame her one bit.
Unfortunately, that left only two people outside of the mating bond—me and Knox.
And I was pretty sure Knox and I weren’t going to be together sexually. He simply wasn’t wired that way.
At the end of the day, maybe it was just as well. I had an industrial-sized bottle of the best lube money could buy, a set of brand-new, graduated anal dilators, and an increasingly large mental vault of wank material, because damn.
Plus, I was good at staying quiet... mostly.
Let’s just say, it was easier when it was just me by myself, instead of me in a room with one or more growly and dominant fantasy men with huge dicks.
My goal was to be ready for Jez’s upcoming heat, when the growly, dominant fantasy men with huge dicks might not be under careful control, like they usually were with me.
Which, yeah... that prospect was a big part of my previously mentioned mental wank bank material these days.
But other parts of pack life were good, too. Very, very good, in fact.
I had no worries about money, no worries about loneliness, no worries about physical safety as long as we were holed up in the mega-mansion, safely out of reach of the Vozzinas or anyone else who might wish us harm.
Plus, there was my new favorite hobby of making Knox watch the most ridiculous movies Jez and I could come up with.
He’d admitted to having seen Airplane!, but he hadn’t seen the sequel.
He made it to the periscope scene with William Shatner before silently cracking up over the line about irony being pretty ironic sometimes; his chest shaking beneath Jez and me as we curled up against his sides.
From that, we graduated to Killer Klowns from Outer Space and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. After which, he countered with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I’d already seen, and Life of Brian, which I hadn’t.
We’d just finished that last one earlier tonight. I was pretty sure everyone else had headed to bed, but an odd restlessness had me pulling out my laptop. There was something I’d been putting off. For some reason, this finally felt like the right time.
I brought up my group chat with Byron’s pack in St. Louis on Messenger. It had been quiet lately, mostly because everyone else in the chat saw each other on a daily basis, while I’d been a bit distracted by the whole ‘nearly getting blown up’ thing and hadn’t wanted to worry them.
Hey, I typed. Anyone awake and online?
I’d figured no one would be, so I’d have plenty of time to mentally compose and edit what I wanted to tell them.
The Price pack wasn’t my family. But they were the only people who’d looked out for me when my own flesh and blood couldn’t be bothered to give a shit.
I figured they deserved to know about the recent changes in my life.
Dots marched across the screen.
Whoops. So much for mental editing.
A message from Nat—the pack’s beta—popped up.
Heya. Yeah, couldn’t sleep. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How are you doing?
I’d had less interaction with Nat than I had with Byron, or the pack’s leader, Zalen. I knew he’d been married to the pack’s female omega before they met the others, and that their introduction had been messy... but I’d never gone prying for details.
Maybe I should have talked to him more, because right now, getting wisdom from a male beta who was part of a pack sounded like a really smart idea.
I’m good, I sent back. Really good. I’m pretty sure I found a pack, here in Chicago.
An incoming video call window popped up barely two seconds later.
Sheepishly, I clicked the green icon. The screen pixelated for a moment, and then cleared to show an Asian man in his late thirties with messy dark hair and deep-set brown eyes.
“You’re joining a pack?” Nat demanded. “Turn your camera on; I need details. Actually, no. Wait. Hold that thought.”
He was on his phone, based on the narrow portrait image. The room behind him spun crazily, the picture catching and freezing again for a second. The sound of loud knocking came through the speaker as the view swung again to show a random patch of ceiling.
“Hey, wake up, you guys! I’ve got Tony on a video call. He says he’s joining a pack!” The video swooped again, settling on Nat’s face. “Okay, now give me those details. The others will be here in a minute.”
I swallowed hard. This was why I’d needed time to edit the story. Somehow, blurting out that my ex-best friend, who’d secretly murdered my stepdad, had also tried to murder the head of the pack I’d been doing odd jobs for, didn’t sound like a good way to open.
“Um...” I said. “It’s kind of complicated?”
Nat snorted. “You think so? I hate to say it, but you’re talking to the king of ‘it’s complicated,’ when it comes to relationships.”
“Well, he’s not lying about that,” said a familiar voice, rough with sleep. Byron shoved into the camera frame.
“Hi, Byron,” I said weakly.
“What’s this about a pack?” Zalen said, squeezing in as well.
Maybe I could just fast-forward past the awkward parts. “Well... uh... there’s this pack who runs a business here in Chicago. I started taking odd jobs for them to make extra money, and...”
I ran through a heavily sanitized version of reuniting with a close friend after losing touch with her for more than a year, only to discover that she was scent-matched to the pack I was working for, after I’d already fallen into bed with one of the alphas.
“I thought he only wanted a one-night stand,” I finished. “And I would have been okay with that! I mean, mostly okay? But it turns out, he wanted more, and one of the other alphas was also interested, and Jez is okay with it, so...”
I trailed off.
Emiel, the hulking alpha who fought in cage matches for fun, tilted the phone until I could see him.
“Are they good people? They treating you right?” he demanded.
The first part was a loaded question, especially when it came to Jez and her murderous tendencies... not to mention Heath and his familiarity with scrubbing the evidence from homicide scenes. But the second part was easy.
“I’ve never felt as safe and cared for as I do with these people,” I said honestly.
After a moment, Emiel nodded. “Okay. That’s good. But you know if that ever changes, you gotta tell us right away.”
I smiled a watery smile. “I don’t think that’s going to happen... but thanks.”
Byron tilted the phone back toward himself. “When do we get to meet this pack of yours?” he asked.
Mia, the pack’s female omega, ducked under his arm to get in the frame. “Can you bring them to St. Louis one of these days? You could bring them to the restaurant. I’ll have a word with Shaniqua.”
Mia and Nat had owned an award-winning restaurant together before they’d met Zalen’s pack. They’d since stepped back to focus on running a culinary arts program through Zalen’s youth center, but they were still close friends with the family that had bought the restaurant from them.
“I’ll ask,” I said. “I’d really like that, actually. It would be great to see you all in person.”
A knock sounded at my bedroom door, nearly making me jump out of my skin.
“Tony?” Heath’s muffled voice filtered through to me. “You up? You’re going to want to see what’s on the news!”
“Is everything okay there?” Zalen asked.
I blinked my attention back to the video call.
“Yeah, I think so. Apparently, there’s something on the news I’m supposed to see.
” I leaned away from the screen and raised my voice.
“Just a second! I’m on a call to St. Louis!
” I turned back to the screen. “Seriously, I’ll ask if there’s a way we can all come down and see you.
Take care, you guys. And thanks for being there. Give the kiddos my love.”
“Don’t be a stranger,” Zalen said. “We’re really happy for you, by the way. Congratulations.”
“Thanks,” I told them again, unable to hold back my sappy smile this time. “Talk soon, okay?”
After closing the call, I set the laptop aside and went to the door. Outside, Heath was pacing restlessly in the hall.
“Hi,” I said. “What’s on the news?”
He came to an abrupt halt and gestured me to head toward the TV room. “Oh, just the little matter of the FBI descending on the Vozzina pack house and arresting everyone they found inside.”
I stumbled, nearly falling over my own feet as I whirled to face him. “What?”
He nodded, his bushy red eyebrows lifting for emphasis. “Yep. The clip of Lorenzo Vozzina getting handcuffed and perp-walked to a black SUV is all over the news channels. Come on—Gage is recording it for us.”