Chapter 33
W atching Callie fall apart was fascinating. Watching my pack ruin her while she squeezed the life out of my knot was transcendent . My omega was draped across me, getting fucked in every hole, and her scent was the sweetest I’d ever smelled it. I could get drunk on it. Tart, sweet, candied apple that made my mouth water and my cock hard.
Amir tugged her closer until her nose brushed his stomach, and I knew from the choked-off sound he made that he was spilling down her perfect throat. It was ridiculous to be jealous of him when I was knot-deep in her, but I still craved having her every way at once even if it wasn’t possible.
I wanted all of her, every way, every day. I couldn’t get enough. The tension of the last while had been unbearable and I had no idea how to fix it. Fucking her was no hardship. Giving her pleasure was the easiest thing in the world, but I knew things went deeper. Wounds took a long time to heal, and even if someone else had inflicted them to begin with, we’d poured some salt into them. If this was what she wanted to clean it out, I was happy to oblige.
Tomorrow I planned to take her out, spoil the shit out of her, and get to know her more. In the meantime, I intended to get in my cuddles once she’d gotten everything she needed.
My knot was going nowhere fast with the way the others gave and took in equal measure until Callie’s perfume was drowning me. I felt the second she surrendered and Amir carefully extracted himself, arranging her on my chest while Kai came to his own finish and pulled out before his knot got him trapped in her too. She melted perfectly against me, and the others stretched out on each side, both taking one of her hands to lay on their chest. Callie hummed, the sound content and sleepy.
“How are you feeling, precious?”
“Hmmm, okay, I think. Nowhere near as deep as in the heat, but a little floaty.”
“Floaty is good. We’ve got you.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. You’re our omega, our Callie.”
She rooted against my neck and pressed a soft kiss to my skin. “I really want to stay. Don’t make me go.”
“Callie, we would never make you go,” promised Kai.
“I can’t do my old life again.”
Amir ran a hand down her back and she sniffled against me. “Eventually we will prove that lapse in judgment won’t happen again. We have to give each other a chance. None of us want you to leave.”
I threaded my fingers into her hair. “We love you being here, even if we haven’t figured everything out yet.”
“Can I have more people cuddling me, please?”
Kai and Amir tucked closer, each draping an arm over her waist and wedging the pillows so we were one big pile.
“Better?” Amir asked.
Callie nodded, taking a big breath and letting it go slowly. “It’s really scary liking all of you so much. I think you’re the only reason I survived what Jerry did, and I hate being scared that it could all go away.”
“You’re stuck with me forever,” Kai said with a touch of humor in his voice.
Callie wriggled around to face him. “I don’t want any of us to be stuck .”
“If I weren’t comfortable being bonded to you, I already would have discussed how we could separate out of each other’s lives once the bond wasn’t fresh anymore and we could stand to be apart. I think we’ll all fit well together; we just need time to grow and learn how to make this work for everyone.”
“I personally can’t wait to be bonded to you,” I told her. “I’ve been thinking about it since you sunk those pretty little teeth into Kai.”
Callie shifted again, the others lifting their arms so she could rise up enough to look down at me. “You really want to be bonded to me?”
“I would do it right now if we didn’t need a heat for it.”
A bond sounded so mystical. Being able to know another person that deeply, to sense their emotions and connect with them in a way that was unlike anything anyone else would know. I wanted that. Plus, bonding Callie would connect me to anyone else bonded to her. If Amir and Miles bonded her too, we’d have that unbreakable connection between all of us. A pack forever.
My omega’s kiss was the sweetest yet, soft and tentative. It was a bit of a marvel how she could go from desperate to fuck us to tentative as hell. In time that dichotomy should ease. If she and I were bonded, she would be able to feel how much I wanted to be with her. Maybe with all of us bonded, she would be surrounded with all the love she needed to feel secure forever. I wanted that for her.
Callie rolled her hips and when it became clear that my knot was no longer keeping her pinned, she slid off and settled back down against me. “Purrs?”
I didn’t have to be asked twice.
“I’m not ready to bond you yet,” said Amir, “but I think we’re growing on each other, and I definitely want the opportunity to get to know you better until we’re both ready to take that step.”
Callie nodded, drawing Amir in for his own kiss before she snuggled against me once more.
I lost track of how long we lay like that until a knock at the door alerted us to Miles’s return.
Callie adjusted only to drape the edge of a blanket over her exposed pussy. “Come in.”
“I see the four of you had fun without me while I was saving our asses.”
“That was your fault for leaving,” I pointed out.
Miles held up a handful of envelopes. “I have gifts for everyone.”
“Gifts?” Callie asked.
“The tips from the shows are run through a separate system from the regular pay, and with all of the chaos I never authorized the payout.”
Callie sat up sharply and twisted around, not seeming to mind in the least that she was naked around Miles. That probably boded well for the future. Miles passed her an envelope and she tore it open, pulling out a payment statement.
“ Miles ! Oh my god.”
“Like it? After the house took its cut and we accounted for taxes, you made $112,000.”
“Holy shit. How much does the house take?”
“20%. And that’s just your cut. You get as much as the performers combined.”
That meant our statements had around $37,000 on them. We hadn’t made tips like that on one show in our entire career.
“I don’t understand. Did they pay me again for the performance after the confusion?”
“No, sweetheart. That’s just your tips. People got very generous over the bonding.”
Callie burst into tears, clutching the paper to her chest. Amir, Kai and I gathered her close, her sitting on my lap.
Miles sat on the end of the bed. “We have enough to buy out both contracts if we want to now,” he said. “Or I can keep working on them while we figure everything out.”
“Push them for now,” I said. “I know we’re not going to do the contracted performances, but I hate the idea of letting them win. We’ll pay out the contracts when we’re good and ready.”
It was pure fucking villainy how much we had to pay to get out of our contracts. I would much rather we be able to figure out something sustainable before having to fork over that much cash.
“This made it into the correct account this time?” asked Kai. “The ex doesn’t get a fucking dollar of this?”
“I triple-checked the account numbers myself,” Miles promised.
We were all so careful with her the rest of the night, settling in for a movie that she fell asleep halfway through. We had a tentative path forward, she was more financially secure for the moment, and we were all dedicated to making this work.
By the time the morning rolled around, Callie was in a much better mood and the whole house felt infinitely more relaxed.
“Are you feeling up to going on our date today?” I asked.
“As long as part of it involves keeping me fed and hydrated,” she replied.
“Like I would ever let my omega go hungry.” I grinned at her. “I have a lot planned, so we should get going if you’re ready to rock.”
“I’m all yours.” She was dressed in a pair of hot pink shorts and a shiny, drapey white tank top.
“Hold up.” Amir marched in with a spray can of sunscreen in his hand. “Step outside so I can protect your pale ass.”
Callie pouted but obeyed, moving to stand on the front step, eyes closed and arms extended for Amir to coat her in the sunscreen.
Then he passed it to me. “Every two hours. If you bring back a lobster, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
“I’m not that bad,” she protested.
Amir raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You and Miles are pasty as hell. If you had been blessed with at least a little bit of melanin I wouldn’t have to worry, but here we are.”
“I’ll set a timer,” I promised. I did that right then so I wouldn’t forget, and Callie tucked the sunscreen into her purse.
Once we were in the car, I turned the AC on full blast and Callie preened in the cool air.
“You’ll notice he didn’t give a shit if I get sunburned,” I said with a laugh. “He likes you a lot more than he’s willing to say.”
Her cheeks flushed the prettiest shade of pink. “At least that’s not one-sided. What are we doing today?”
“Important things first. I really want you to stay, and the only way that’s going to work is if you feel at home here. Might take us a few hours, but I’m pretty sure by the end of the day you’ll be a lot closer to that.”
She looked at me curiously, but I didn’t elaborate.
The first stop was the dreaded DMV, but I had made an appointment and greased a few palms so we could get Callie an updated license. She would have to get a new one anyway since she was no longer living at her old apartment.
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“As a funeral,” I replied.
The whole affair was blessedly short thanks to my preparations. Most of the tasks today were tedious—getting her photos taken for a passport application so we could travel if we wanted to, stocking her up on any missing essentials, getting her signed up with the best omega clinic in the city that would handle all her medical needs, taking her for a trim and blowout at the salon Kai frequented to see if she liked it, and finally stopping by the local library so I could get her a card.
I watched her soften through each task, and she scanned the city with greedy eyes as she started to learn her way around it.
“I can’t believe you thought of all this,” she said between sips of the enormous sweet tea in her hands.
“The only way for a place to feel like home is to make it one. This way you have a bunch of services you’re familiar with.”
“It’s not very date-like,” she said, “and even though I am exhausted from people-ing, I actually really loved today. I think it’s probably the first time I’ve felt normal for weeks.”
“I’m glad. I know we won’t be in the ‘getting to know you’ honeymoon phase forever, and I want you to feel comfortable with the city. I hope it takes at least a few things off your plate.”
She laced her fingers with mine. “It absolutely does. A lot of it was things I was dreading doing by myself, but it was actually a little bit fun having company for it.”
“Well, I hope the rest of the evening is much closer to date territory for you.”
“What’s next?”
I turned into a parking lot, pulling to a stop in front of an enormous bookstore. “Next we spend as much time here as you want. I’ll buy you as many books as I can carry.”
Callie gave me an excitable kiss. “You guys really don’t play around with this courting thing, do you?”
“Absolutely not. If I could buy you the entire store I would, but we’ll start small and work our way up.”
Watching her move reverently through the aisles was a rare treat. She gravitated toward the fantasy, romance, and travel sections, flipping through pages and tracing her fingers down the spines. It took her a while to actually pick anything out, and I started adding anything she touched to the pile before she finally got with the program and added a few series to the stack. It was a damn good thing I worked out so often, because hauling that many books around was like clutching a bag of bricks.
“Do you have a top favorite of all time?” I asked.
“Not really. I’ve loved lots over the years, but I feel like my answer changes depending on what phase of life I’m in. Do you have a favorite?”
“I read one series as a kid about a little girl in an all-omega family who wanted to be a knight. I loved that one.”
“Oh, I read that one. I don’t think I ever finished the whole series, but I’m pretty sure it got, like, twenty books long by the time it was done.”
“It definitely did. I still read every single one. I used to stop by the bookstore on allowance day every week and see if there was anything new yet. I still have all of them in storage at my parents’ place.”
“That’s so cute.”
We talked while she perused, discussing different books we had both read when we passed the shelves containing them, or sitting on the floor in the travel section and looking at photos of places we both wanted to go. A lot of today had been mundane, but a lot of days in our future would be, and I liked knowing we could be just as happy on those days as the ones filled with excitement.
When we had traversed the store twice over, we finally made our exit with a grand total of twenty-three books. Before I took her home, we grabbed some drive-thru and drove to the outskirts of the city to watch the sun disappear behind the mountains, chatting and eating in the air-conditioning.
“You know, I was kind of skeptical about this place ever feeling like home. It’s just so sensationalized that I sometimes forget people actually live here.” She pulled me close, kissing me slow and deep as sunset gave way to night. “Thank you for today, for helping me put down some roots.”
“You’re more than welcome, precious.”
I would help her lay down all the roots in the world if it meant that she would stay with us.