Chapter 29 Crew #2
"Crew." She waits until I open my eyes. Hers are green and wet and looking at me with something that has nothing to do with biology.
Nothing to do with scent matching or bond compatibility.
She's looking at me the way a person looks at another person they actually see.
Not the steady one. Not the reliable one. Not the one who holds.
Just me.
"You should have played tonight."
My jaw aches from clenching it.
"Your mom came to watch you play and you didn't play and you haven't said a single word about how that feels."
"Because it doesn't matter."
"It matters." Her voice is so gentle it cracks something in my chest that I've been holding in place since the first whistle.
"It matters because you matter. Not as a packmate.
Not as a defenseman. You. Crew Banks, the man who calls his mother every night at eleven and holds everyone together and never once asks someone to hold him. "
The sound I make isn't a word. It comes from somewhere below my ribs. I turn my face into her palm and press my mouth against the warm center of her hand because if I open it I'm going to say things that I can't contain.
Steele sits on my other side. His shoulder against mine. His hand on the back of my neck.
"For the record," he says, "you are the best man on this team. And Wallace is wrong."
I breathe, only because Remi's hand is on my face, and Steele's hand on my neck.
"I wanted to play," I say. The words come out rough, scraped raw. "I wanted to play so fucking badly it made me sick. Sitting three feet from the ice watching Rider try to do what I do, watching Seattle target you because there's nobody protecting you who knows you well enough."
"I know," Steele says.
"And my mom flew here. She took three days off work and sat in that seat and watched a game where her son wasn't on the ice."
"She came to see you, Crew. Not the game." Remi's thumb brushes my cheek.
"I feel as though I need to fall apart."
Remi climbs into my lap and wraps her arms around my neck and presses her forehead to mine and breathes. Just breathes and lets her scent envelop me, the combination that's compatible but not a full match, but she's still very much mine.
Steele leans into my side. His arm comes around my shoulder.
"We've got you," Remi says against my skin.
"You're allowed to not be okay," Steele says.
I close my eyes. I hold Remi. I lean into Steele. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I let someone else hold the room.
At the apartment, the lights are low. Steele locks the door. Remi leads me by the hand to the bedroom, and Steele follows.
She's warm. So warm her skin glows under the lamplight, and the flush hasn't left her neck. Her scent keeps spiking in waves that make my alpha sit up and pay attention.
"Sit," she says. Pointing at the bed.
I sit. She stands in front of me and runs her fingers through my hair, and my eyes close at the tenderness.
"Your heat is getting closer," I say.
"I know."
"We need to get you to a doctor."
"I know that too." She tips my chin up. Her eyes on mine. "But right now I'm not taking care of my heat. I'm taking care of you."
She kisses me. Slow. Not urgent, not desperate. The kiss of a woman who is choosing to be here, choosing me, choosing this, and despite what Knox wants, she's choosing us.
Steele is behind her. His hands on her waist. His mouth at her shoulder. The three of us, the configuration that existed before Knox, the one that is simple and warm and doesn't require anyone to learn how to share.
She pulls back from the kiss and holds my face in both hands.
"Tonight is about you," she says. "Both of you. I need you to let me do this."
I nod. Steele's hands go still at her waist.
She undresses slowly. The sweater first. Then the rest, until she stands in the low lamplight, and the heat that's been building in her body for days radiates off her.
She pushes me back onto the bed.
Her hands map me the way I've spent weeks mapping her, unhurried, attentive, and following the lines of muscle and bone with her palms and then her mouth. My chest aches for her, and it has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with being known.
"You matter," she says against my skin.
My hands go to her hair. I don't direct as she carefully kneels in front of me.
“Your knee...”
“Is fine. Now be quiet.”
I just hold on to her hair. And when she takes my dick into her mouth I stop thinking about the bench and the tape and the dry gloves and the scoreboard.
Only the sounds she makes are what I want, those and the way she moves as if she's doing something she wants to do rather than something she feels she should.
Steele kneels behind her, hands steady on her hips, his mouth at the back of her neck where her scent is warmest. His eyes close when he breathes in her heat-thick scent, which is filling the room with a warmth that presses against my skin.
I pull her up.
She comes willingly, climbing over me, her thighs on either side of my hips, her hands flat on my chest. Her skin under my palms is fever-hot, slick already coating her inner thighs, and when I reach between us she inhales hard at the contact.
"Crew." My name in her mouth. Mine.
I guide her down onto me in a slow, careful slide that drags a groan from us both. She's tight and so warm it's almost overwhelming, and I hold her hips and let her set the pace because tonight is hers to give and mine to receive.
She moves. Slow at first, finding the angle, her hands on my chest steadying herself. Her head tips back, her eyes close, her lips part, and she looks lighter, happier. As if she’s been carrying something heavy for a very long time and has finally, finally set it free.
Steele moves behind her. His chest against her back, his hands replacing mine at her hips, and she arches into him with a sound that I feel in my sternum.
His mouth finds her neck. “You’re perfect, omega. Look how good you make your alpha feel.”
She moans with the rhythm. Steele turns her head and kisses her, slow and deliberate.
Her scent deepens.
She cries out.
Her climax rolls through her in waves, each crest stronger than the last, and taking me with her.
Her eyes find mine in the low light and hold them, green and certain and present.
"I always see you, Crew," she says. “I always want to make it better.”
Her rhythm breaks on the last word, her climax cresting through her body in a long shudder.
“Just come for me, Remi,” I tell her as I hold her through it with my hands at her waist and my eyes on her face. My knot is already swollen from the deep, patient bloom of something that has been building all night.
She feels it and stills against me, her forehead dropping to mine.
Steele murmurs something low against her neck. She comes back slowly, breathing hard, and bends forward to press her mouth to mine.
“Knot me, alpha.”
"Breathe," I say.
She does. Steady, even, her body opens around the knot with the trust of someone who knows exactly who is holding her.
We thrust harder together, until the knot completes us.
“Yes!” her eyes flutter closed and we both go still. The room fills with the sound of our breathing and her scent.
Steele lies down beside us. His arm across us both.
This bond between Steele and me is one that predates Remi, built from six years of shared ice and shared apartments and the unspoken understanding that we would die for each other without discussion. His presence grounds me the way an anchor grounds a ship.
“I’ll take her when you relax,” Steele says as Remi falls onto my chest, exhausted.
We stay locked for thirty minutes. She keeps her forehead against my chest the whole time, and when the knot finally eases and I slip free, she doesn't move. She stays draped across my chest with her ear above my heart, listening to it.
Steele's arm tightens around us both before he leaves to run a bath.
"It's steady," she says. “Your heart.”
"It's always steady."
"I know." She presses her lips to my chest. "That's why I need it."
And I need her.
Our blend isn't a full match but it’s something real. Something built rather than fated.