Chapter 23
MONTY
Laurel needed something to drink that wasn’t just water, and I could use a cup of coffee, so we relocated downstairs to Laurel’s living room with the adjacent kitchen. Since Jordy hadn’t brought any clothes, Laurel lent him a bathrobe, and I wore my briefs and a T-shirt.
I found a blender on the counter and a bowl of fruit, so I made Laurel a smoothie while Jordy talked to Sedric.
Sedric was a godsend. He’d heard parts of our earlier phone call and had already been looking for someone to serve at the pub while he stood behind the bar.
Jordy blew out a breath when he ended the call. “Monty, your cousin Felix is coming to help out Sedric today, so the pub is covered.” Then he turned his eyes to Laurel. “Sedric won’t tell anyone, don’t worry.”
Laurel gave him a tense smile. “I mean, people will find out sooner or later.”
Flipping my phone in his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with it, Jordy nodded. “So. There’s stuff you should know about me. Now that we’re…”
“Mates?” Laurel filled in.
“Yeah.”
Laurel finished his smoothie, and we sat on the sprawling sofa with him between us. He wore nothing but loose sweatpants, and my gaze kept returning to his heat-swollen lower stomach. The curve was so sexy.
Behind the glass wall covering the front of the chalet, the sky was darkening. It was going to rain again.
Laurel settled with his back to my chest, and I hugged him to me, breathing in the perfume of heat from his hair. It was less intense now, but still oh-so tantalizing.
Jordy took Laurel’s feet and put them on his lap. He began massaging them with utmost focus. The tattoos on his arms seemed to swirl as he moved.
“Once you asked me how I ended up in Beauville. I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell you the truth either.”
“There’s no pressure.” The brittle sound of Laurel’s voice undermined his words. Jordy must have noticed.
“I want to get it out.”
Laurel shifted in my arms. “Does it have to do with how you got arrested on your first night in Beauville?”
Jordy nodded and glanced at me. I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile. In my opinion, he had nothing to be ashamed of, and I’d been telling him that for years. Not that he’d ever really listened.
“I grew up in the city, in foster care among humans,” he said, kneading the arch of Laurel’s left foot.
“My foster parents did their best, but they had five other kids, and me being the only shifter… I didn’t really fit in.
I caused trouble at school and did some stupid shit.
Nothing too bad, but enough to be a headache. ”
I should have sat by his side, but something told me Jordy wouldn’t want that. I held Laurel to my chest and stroked his bare torso, tracing the cushion on his underbelly, and struggled to keep my mouth shut.
“When I was seventeen, I got arrested for armed robbery.” Jordy’s voice rose and hardened. “As a shifter, I was deemed more dangerous, so they gave me three years. They let me out after twenty-eight months, with nine years’ probation.”
Laurel grew stiff like a plank in my arms. Uh-oh.
Jordy must have felt the tension in our omega. He curled into himself, as if making himself smaller. He stared at his hands, which had stilled cradling Laurel’s foot. He recited the story flatly, without a speck of emotion, like the weather forecast on the radio.
“When I got out, I couldn’t find steady work in the city, and I was terrified I’d end up on the street.
I figured maybe if I went somewhere with more shifters, I’d have a chance to lead a decent life.
The probation officer said he would allow me to move if I had a job lined up, so I applied at the Beauville lumber mill.
They told me to come in person for an interview. ”
When Jordy paused, the room was eerily silent. Laurel waited, barely breathing. It had started raining, and a gust of wind drove the rain against the front facade. The room whispered with the pitter-patter of drops on the glass wall.
Jordy looked at the rain and sighed, caressing Laurel’s ankle.
“I arrived a day early, thinking I’d sleep in the forest in fur.
I just wanted to grab a meal before I went to hide for the night.
It was in the middle of the summer, and the pub was full of tourists.
I overheard this creepy guy saying something to his boyfriend, a tiny slip of an omega.
One thing led to another, and I got into a fight with the alpha. ”
“You defended someone from an abusive jerk.” I hadn’t planned on butting in, but Jordy made it sound as if he were some kind of outlaw.
He shot me a warning look, and I bit my tongue.
“Monty dragged me off the alpha,” he said. “The boyfriend must have gotten scared because when the cavalry arrived, he said I’d attacked them. Chickie put me in jail overnight.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said. He was leaving out so many important details. “The guy didn’t press charges. He knew he didn’t have a leg to stand on…”
Jordy lifted a hand to stop me. His gaze warmed as he looked at me, and I exhaled.
“In the morning, you came to pick me up,” he said, not taking his eyes off me.
“You explained everything to Chickie, and then you took me to the diner and fed me waffles. Sleep-deprived and still freaking out, I spilled my pathetic life story. You listened, then asked me if I knew how to pour a beer. I said that I’d never done anything like that.
And you said that you’d teach me. I’ve never understood why you would hire a convicted felon on the spot like that. ”
“You were hot,” I joked, and winked.
Jordy shook his head, chuckling humorlessly.
“The armed robbery,” Laurel murmured. “You were just a kid, weren’t you?”
Jordy’s expression hardened again. “I knew it was stupid, but I did it anyway.”
“Except the gun wasn’t yours,” I protested. “Why are you determined to make yourself into a criminal?”
He glared at me. “Because I am? I served time, remember? Laurel should know who he’s mated to.”
Laurel sat up and watched us like a tennis match.
I rolled my eyes. “Tell him about the gun, Jordy.”
Jordy grimaced.
“Tell me,” Laurel said.
Looking up at the ceiling, Jordy clenched his jaw.
“It wasn’t mine. The shop clerk pulled it on me when he caught me stealing an energy drink.
We wrestled for it, and it went off once.
It was pure luck nobody got hurt. When the police arrived, way too fast, the clerk said I’d brought the gun.
He didn’t have a license, so he claimed it was mine, that I must have stolen it somewhere. Later, the judge believed him.”
“Fuck, Jordy. I’m so sorry,” Laurel whispered, reaching out to touch Jordy’s arm.
Jordy leaned back, avoiding the touch. But he didn’t let go of Laurel’s feet in his lap. “I was there to steal,” he said, his tone ice cold.
“You should have been arrested for shoplifting,” I said. “Instead, you had illegal possession and armed robbery pinned on you.”
“What about a lawyer?” Laurel asked.
“The pro bono guy I got was actually good, but shifters always get harsher sentences. I get it. We’re more dangerous.”
Laurel moved his feet from Jordy’s grip and set them on the carpet. For all his hard-ass talk, Jordy looked like a kicked puppy.
But then Laurel used my thigh for leverage and stood. He took the two steps separating him from Jordy and straddled his lap. His fingers scraped through Jordy’s dark beard, and he lifted Jordy’s face until he could make eye contact.
“I’ve always had a thing for bad boys,” he said lightly.
Jordy snorted, shaking his head. He stroked Laurel’s waist and up his bare back.
“You spent more than two years in prison?” Laurel’s voice was gentle, barely audible.
Jordy hung his head. “Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry,” Laurel murmured. His eyes were glistening.
With a loud exhale, Jordy rested his forehead on our omega’s shoulder, and Laurel stroked his back up and down. He glanced at me, his mouth curved downward in sheer sadness.
I’d always been attuned to Jordy somehow. I used to be able to tell from across the room whether he was pissed, sad, content, or horny. Finally, I knew why. It was what bonded mates could do, right? Sense each other’s emotions.
And now, I felt the tension melt from my own gut as Laurel comforted Jordy.
Laurel’s care and tender sadness blended with Jordy’s relief, and it flowed through me like a river.
Seeing them together, embracing each other, I was flattened by longing just as I was floating on clouds.
I itched to touch them, to melt together with them, but I also sensed that they needed one more minute, just the two of them.
I had a lifetime of opportunities stretching in front of me when I could have them to myself—my omega, my alpha, and both of them together.
Laurel pressed a kiss to Jordy’s messy hair.
“One day, when we’re all lying in bed after marathon sex, you’ll tell me stories from prison, okay?
I want to know how it changed you. And after that, Monty and I could kiss it all better, hold you…
and suck you until you’re shaking. Maybe if we do that a few times, it’ll hurt less? ”
Jordy nodded, rubbing his face against Laurel’s neck.
He had never let himself be so vulnerable with me. Somehow, with Laurel in his lap, Jordy let go of some of his iron self-control, and it was beautiful to see.
“I don’t care,” Laurel said firmly, combing through the short hair on Jordy’s neck. “I really don’t. I’m sorry it happened to you, and I can’t imagine what you’ve been through over the years, but beyond that, I don’t give a shit.”
“Thanks,” Jordy murmured against his skin, barely audible.
I shuffled over and wrapped my arms around them both. Jordy found my hand on Laurel’s back and gripped my fingers. He squeezed hard and let out a deep breath.
Laurel’s bed was huge, and thank fuck for that.
When Laurel’s second heat wave arrived that afternoon, I could feel my self-control slipping. I wanted to maul him like an animal.
Jordy held back, his jaw clenched and eyes wild. I almost felt sorry for him, but while growing a knot outside of Laurel’s body had been a special kind of torture, having them both take care of it afterward was hot as fuck. Jordy would love it too.
I was inside our omega to the root, spooning him on the bed, and he moaned for me as if my dick was making him euphoric.
Fucking finally.
“I knew it,” I growled, my head muddled with lust. “I knew you were going to be mine in the end. Knew it from the start.”
“Less talking…” Laurel rasped. “More fucking.”
I thrust harder, and he cried out. “Just like that!”
I almost laughed out loud with the exhilaration of the moment.
Jordy was sucking Laurel’s cock, growling and swallowing around it, and I gave Laurel harsh thrusts, staying deep.
My cockhead was pressed against the gate to his womb, and it felt bigger and softer than before.
Holding him to me by his hips, I burrowed deeper and deeper. His inner muscles clenched around me, and the arousal felt like flames licking my spine.
The pressure in my knot overwhelmed me, and I roared, bucking into Laurel blindly.
“Oh fuck! Fuuuck! Aaah!”
My knot grew too fast, and I worried it would be too much, but Laurel’s wails sounded ecstatic until they were suddenly cut off. Jordy knelt by his head, feeding him his cock, hand flying over the base.
Laurel gagged and gulped, and sloppy licking sounds followed. He ate hungrily what Jordy gave him.
Propping myself on my elbow, I watched Jordy’s knot pulsate in his hands. I wanted to touch it.
Reaching over Laurel, I grabbed it and squeezed, milking it roughly.
“Harder!” Jordy barked.
Laurel lay with his mouth open, and Jordy’s cum spurted from his slit onto Laurel’s lips and cheek.
Jordy shuddered, his knot throbbed in my hand, as he rubbed himself under his cockhead with his thumb and forefinger. Another splash of cum landed across Laurel’s face.
I had never seen anything hotter in my life.
We rested, Laurel sandwiched between us, my knot tucked inside him, tendrils of pleasure still coursing through my body.
“Doesn’t it hurt?” Laurel whispered.
“What, darling?” Jordy asked.
“Your knot. When it’s not in me.”
“It’s weird, but it doesn’t hurt. Not when you hold it like you do.”
“I’m such a greedy nympho.”
I chuckled, and Jordy purred. “Are you, now?”
“Two knots. I love it so much that I have two knots to play with.”
“Laurel, sweetheart, have you ever been double-dicked?” Jordy asked, and I almost swallowed my tongue.
Laurel’s reply was just a breath. “No.”
“Do you think you’d want to try?”
Laurel’s insides clenched around me one last time and he sighed. “I want both of you. I’ll be loose during the heat, right? I want it.”
Jordy pressed his lips to mine, then kissed Laurel.
“We’re going to make you scream, superstar.”