Chapter Twenty-Three ABBIE
My packmates make sure I go to sleep with a smile on my face, but the uneasy feeling in my belly doesn’t quit.
I startle awake at midnight, my heart racing as I realize that the only scents I can smell are alpha musk.
My hand searches the space beside me, but the bedsheets are cold and empty. “Wings?”
“You okay?” Pitt asks, palming his face. “What’s wrong, butterfly? Is it another nightmare?”
“No, I’m fine,” I whisper, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Go back to sleep. I’m just going to join Wings for a midnight snack.”
He mumbles something about peach pie, but I slip out of bed before we disturb Bluff. It will be his first time going on a raid with the guys, and the last thing I want is for him to be too tired to focus.
I grab his flannel shirt off the back of a chair and wrap it around me, my toes curling on the wooden floorboards as I head downstairs.
The clubhouse is quiet, but I pause on the bottom step, drawn to Ark’s office like a moth to a flame.
The door is ajar and I peek inside, my heart fluttering at the sight of him behind his desk.
There’s a half-eaten burger at his elbow and his fingers are pressed into his temples as he leans over a stack of papers.
“Hey, it’s late,” I murmur when he looks up. “Are you okay?”
A slow smile spreads across his tense face. “I am now. Come here.”
I go happily, ignoring the visitor chair and sliding onto his lap. He smells like leather and crushed violets, and I nuzzle into his neck. God, his chest feels better than that feather bed upstairs. “Fuck, I needed this,” he growls, making my heart skip another beat. “But why are you awake?”
“I missed you.” I’m not oblivious to Ark’s burdens as president, but it still feels wrong that he’s down here worrying about the world while the rest of us are tucked up in our beds. “You’re working too hard, Alpha.”
“Mmm, but there’s a lot at stake. Not just for the omegas, but because of this new alliance with the Chains. If it works, it means no more Vipers. We can cut ties with them for good.”
I rub my face against his bristly cheek and hum. “That’s music to my ears.”
“I’m sorry I’ve been so wrapped up in it, though.” He runs his hands down my back until he’s cupping my hips. “I should be paying more attention to you.”
“I don’t need my hand held all of the time, but this is nice.” I rock over him gently, enjoying the heat growing between us, but too comfortable to do anything about it. “Maybe I can sneak in here sometimes and we can put that sofa to its intended use.”
He cocks a brow at the messy pile of papers covering its surface. “You mean as an extension of my disorganized desk?”
“The desk works, too,” I quip, leaning back until my spine is pressed against its edge. Caged by his arms and spread across his thick thighs, I’m fairly certain I’ve never felt so safe in my life. “I’m glad we got here, Ark. I never really thought we could bridge the gap between us.”
“I’m glad we got here, too.” He squeezes my hips. “Not sure I deserve it, but I’m too gone on you to let you go.”
I give him a pointed look as I clamp my legs around him. “Letting go is not an option, Alpha. You bite it, you own it.”
His eyes darken with arousal as they settle on my throat. “Can I tend my bite, Omega?”
“Please do,” I purr, pulling my hair aside so he has full access to my neck. “Unless you’re too tired, of course. Patch gave me some hormone wipes…”
“Fuck the wipes,” he growls, pulling me forward until my throat is inches from his mouth. He breathes on the sensitive skin, making my eyelashes flutter. I know exactly what it looks like up close, since I spent most of the morning studying it in his bathroom mirror. “I got you good, didn’t I?”
The satisfaction in his voice makes me smile. “Like you were trying to carve your initials into me with your teeth.”
“No one is ever gonna doubt that you’re mine.”
“And if they do,” I tell him softly, “I won’t hesitate to remind them.”
He hums his approval, wrapping a hand around my nape and finally running his tongue up my throat.
It’s slow and delicious, and his scent thickens as he circles my gland.
There are properties in a mate’s saliva that aid the healing process, but I hope it stays like this forever.
Red, and raw, and so sensitive it makes my toes curl.
“More?” he asks.
“Please.”
He hums again, his lips parting to suck on the gland. A shivery sensation swirls up my spine, ripples of dark bliss radiating from his bite. My toes curl to the point of pain, soft gasps of pleasure leaving my mouth as my thighs shake under his hands.
“Abbie,” he murmurs against my throat, “are you coming?”
I blink at him, my hands gripping his cut so tightly I can feel my knuckles throb. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll bawl my eyes out if you stop.”
He smirks as he goes back to licking my throat, small nips and longer swipes until I’m grinding on his lap. It’s probably heightened from having three bites so close together, but as I drench his lap in slick, he smiles like I just handed him a winner’s trophy.
“God,” I groan, slumping against his chest. “I didn’t come in here to get you out of your pants.”
“No?” he smirks, giving my scent gland a final kiss. “I’m pretty sure we’ve both got one-track minds right now.”
“Well, it wasn’t my main reason.” I climb off his lap, wincing at the wet spot on his jeans. “How about I get you a hot drink. Cocoa or coffee?”
He sighs and looks down at the stack of papers. “Coffee is probably best.”
Which means he doesn’t want to fall asleep at his desk.
I bite my lip, forcing a quick smile as I pad out of his office and into the kitchen.
There’s a light on over the range, and the security lights from the quad are shining through the window.
Rubbing my tired eyes, I’m stepping towards the coffee machine when I catch sight of rapid movement out of the corner of my eye.
I duck sideways, a hard, flat surface glancing off my shoulder.
It’s a dull pain, easily shrugged off, and Mimi hisses as she hefts the frypan a second time.
But I’m not about to get hit twice by the same bitch.
Blocking her strike with my forearm, my supporting hand clamps down brutally on her elbow.
My muscles are still nicely warmed up from my training session, and I quickly lock her arm, hyperextending the elbow until she cries out in pain.
She drops the frypan with a clatter, her face a vicious mask as I step in to finish her off.
A core principle of my fighting style is evasion, to never meet a weapon head-on.
Footwork and body shifting is designed to step outside the line of attack.
Disarm, disengage, create distance. But I’m not expecting Mimi to trade her cooking utensil for a carving knife, and when she swipes it off the counter, rage drives her forward so quickly I’m almost caught off guard.
Almost, because getting carved up by this venomous snake is not happening in my own goddamn clubhouse.
The rule of knife-fighting in Shorin-Ryu is to ‘defang the snake’ by neutralizing the attacker’s weapon-bearing limb.
It seems a fitting approach to take with a Viper, but my blood is up, and I want to do more than just block and disarm.
So, I snap forward with a fierce kick to her knee joint, and she crumples to the floor with an agonized scream.
The fact she nicks herself on the knife as she goes down is just frosting on the fight cake.
“What the fuck is going on?”
For a moment I forgot that I was meant to be making coffee, not street fighting in the clubhouse kitchen, but Ark’s furious face quickly snaps me back to the task at hand. “Mimi jumped me. Tried a frypan, then a knife, so I kicked out her kneecap.”
My attacker is still moaning and cursing on the floor, and Ark steps up to her, his heavy boot coming down hard on the hand still clutching the knife. “Drop it!” he snarls, a moment before he kicks it out of the way. “Don’t move another inch.”
“She attacked me!” Mimi wails, cradling the cut on her thigh. I can already tell it’s nothing major, but I’m pretty sure her knee might need reconstructive surgery. “I was just passing by, and she dragged me in here. The bitch is insane! I grabbed the knife off her after she stabbed me!”
I raise a brow at this bit of fiction, and I’m relieved to see a similar skepticism on Ark’s face. “You disarmed a karate brown belt? Come on, Mimi, tell me what you were really doing down here.”
I narrow my eyes, suddenly wondering the same thing. I’m about to lean down and slap her when she shrieks, “I’m so fucking sick of you and that slut! Parading around, acting like every alpha is just dying to give you a knot.”
I bark out a laugh. “Are you seriously designation-shaming me here?”
“What slut?” Ark asks slowly. “Are you talking about Wings?” Ice shoots through my bloodstream, quickly followed by an inferno of rage. I step towards her, but Ark stops me with an arm. “Answer me, Mimi.”
“He just won't stop going on and on about him.” Tears are bubbling up now, her scent bitter with resentment. “He was gonna bond me until that little slut started shaking his ass at him.”
In another world, I’d laugh at her delusional jealous streak. But it’s clear she believes every word, which just makes my rage burn that much hotter. “You think Wings was interested in Jackpot? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“He didn’t look at him twice before he presented,” she snarls. “But then he couldn’t stop talking about the slut. It’s some kind of sick fetish…”