22. Quentin #2
The three of them moan and whisper against one another as the trio undulate in a writhing of glistening bodies; Louise pinky-alabaster and smattered with freckles between Caz’s salt white and Seb’s rich deep bronze—the leagues of black and rainbow ink scrawled across Caz and Seb’s flesh seeming to dance with their slow, intense gyration.
Something inside me snaps—not the tether breaking jolt of orgasm, but the nascent epiphany that this overwhelming resonation, this near impossible unity and congruity—can only mean one thing…
Fated Mates . An unbreakable, unshakable mating bond that thrums like a single, near imperceptible note in the cosmic background noise of our very existence.
I would second guess myself, tell myself that there’s no way to be sure in this moment—but the inevitable feeling of our connection makes everything feel obvious—embarrassing to have missed in hindsight.
Do they already know too? Did it crystalize for them? Or, are they so close they cannot see the wave of the tsunami about to break over them?
I watch as Louise, Caz, and Sébastien breathe in one another—their grinding and gyrating nearing a fever pitch; Louise’s face turned to the side so that Both Sébastien and Caz can press their foreheads to hers.
Surely they must. Caz, pleading Louise’s case on our escape from Liberty city—insisting on her freedom. He may very well have been the first, whether he’s fully conscious of it or not.
“Louise, Sebby, I—” Caz gasps out before his body gutters against Louise’s back. His hips hook upward, deep inside as Seb’s knot forces both he and Caz as deep as they can go. Caz’s glutes spasm as he grits his teeth against his orgasm.
Seb barks out a sharp sound as his knot anchors them within. Louise shatters into a near liquid state, her eyes all white’s as she rag-dolls in their arms.
I cum as silently as I can manage, a hand clasped over my mouth as I pump ropes of pearly cum from my aching cock into the crumpled bed sheets beneath me.
Without revealing that I had seen their little pre-lunch show, I rejoin the others in the kitchen just in time to have Seb and Caz force Louise and I to have a bit to eat.
I want to blurt out my discovery about the fated mates, to insist that our pack celebrate right here on the table, to exchange bonding bites and lose ourselves in the rest of the heat; breeding and never leaving this magical place in the woods where we found each other for real—where we became family.
Maybe it’s because I’ve had too many sad endings in this life, or because I’ve so often been the deceiver that I believe my luck’s run up and I will surely find myself to be the deceived—but I hold my tongue.
I can’t say exactly why, but it has something to do with that unfamiliar gleam I sometimes catch in Frank’s eye—when I feel as if I don’t know the man staring back at me. I know Frank belongs to us, to the Saints, to our Lucifer—but that other man? I’m not so sure.
Instead of any grand proclamations, I sit in silence, as Louise actually falls asleep at the lunch table, head laid on her folded hands beside her soup bowl—Seb draping a small fleece blanket over her bare shoulders rather than trying to move her.
“Better let her get her rest where she can get it,” he chuckles softly before nodding over his shoulder at Frank’s feet—hanging over the edge of the loft above.
I try not to let it affront my omega dignity that Frank crawled right up that ship’s ladder and passed out as soon as he saw Louise’s eyes drift closed—without checking to see if I needed his knot beforehand.
Of course, Seb’s still up and about and can help keep me comfortable until Frank or Louise rallies, but still.
As if he’s caught wind of my thoughts, Caz leans over and squeezes my thigh just above my uninjured knee playfully.
“How are you holding up Q? Anything I can do to help you out?” he purrs, his soothing scent easing my nerves as he begins to gently perfume, those icy blue eyes drifting down to my ever-strengthening erection.
“I could ask you boys the same,” I lob back, an arch in one of my copper-brown brows.
“Eh? What do you mean by that, Tin-tin?” Seb drops into the empty bench seat beside me.
In that moment—the two of them, heads nearly pressed together as they regard me with such tender concern; black and gold—that’s when I decide I can tell them.
Coyly, I press my index finger upright against my sealed lips and nod to the door to the side of the cabin, the outdoor shower, and the hot tub.
“I don’t know if I can get back in that water, mon ami.” Seb scrubs a hand through his hair ruefully, “I’m still waterlogged from earlier.”
I get up and retrieve a pair of my pants, long abandoned over a rung of the ship’s ladder to the loft bed, stepping into them—carefully tucking my hardness up into my waistband before I pick up my sweater from its place on the floor and shrug into it.
“That’s fine,” I whisper—doing my best to ignore the rising heat in my face as I struggle against the undertow of my desperate need. “I just want to talk.”
Caz and Sébastien shoot one another a worried glance before following my lead—adding more layers, shoes and socks; the two of them slipping into heavy parkas before we step out into the gleaming sunlight and snow.
Seb offers me a cigarette and a light as I step from the cabin in only my thin sweater; tendrils of steam rising off of my body in the cast of golden sunshine.
Before I can say anything, Caz and Seb exchange another tentative look—Cazzy’s voice, small and tinged with fear as he murmurs, “You think he knows?” to Seb so softly I almost miss it.
Seb’s eyes cut guiltily from Caz to me, his brows set in a determined line.
“Look at his face, of course he knows.” Seb juts his sculpted jaw, dusted with stubble in my direction—a weary smile tugging one corner of his mouth upward.
“How long have you known that we were fated mates?” I ask, unable to keep the edge of anger from my voice.
“I had no clue until I saw the blood tests after the dart serum tests.” Sébastien holds up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Once we saw those, once the heat started—well…” He trails off sheepishly, and I understand completely the feeling of embarrassment at having missed all the signs before.
“I had the thought that day with Louise in the bath.” Caz clears his throat nervously.
“But so much was happening—and everything was so goddamn intense…” He turns away from us, his face blushing a furious crimson.
“Plus, I’ve always kind of thought… I don’t know.
” Caz shoves his hands down into his pockets and kicks a small stone toward the edge of the lake.
“I guess I always sort of thought that the whole ‘fated mates’ thing was kind of bullshit,” he laughs, high and thin.
I find myself nodding in agreement without realizing.
“If I’m honest, I felt much the same way.
” I let loose my own weak chuckle. “It’s so rare, so fantastical that most never even know someone whose mating bonds were ‘fated’—much less experience the magical happenstance themselves…
” I let the bubble of silence grow between the three of us until Seb bursts it.
“It was a hard sell for me too, and I know the most about the Penny’s research out of all of us.
Even conceptualizing the idea that they had found definitive proof of what I had always assumed was mostly a fairy tale.
” He shakes his head. “But I also feel like a fucking imbecile for not having known it sooner now that we’ve all…
well, you know.” He rolls his wrist in the air a few times, his cigarette tracing lazy loops of smoke in the frigid air.
For a good while after, the three of us just stand there, looking out over the frozen lake, no one willing to ask the next inevitable question.
I’ve gotten all the way down to the filter on my cigarette, pinching out the last bit of burning tobacco onto the snow beneath my boots—flicking the empty filter into a tall, rusty coffee can placed next to the side door to the cabin for just such a purpose before Caz puts words to our dilemma.
“Do you think Frank knows?” he asks quietly, tucking his nose and chin into the high zipped collar of his parka.
“I don't pretend I could say either way, yes or no.” Sébastien shakes his head slowly with a dry, skeptical laugh.
I know Frank thought he’d had a fated mate once… but I know how that turned out, and I don’t know if it’s my story to tell the boys—so I remain silent.
“Can’t be sure, but I don’t think so.” I give a noncommittal shrug.
“What about Louise?” Seb presses.
“I don’t think she knows—at least not consciously,” Caz is quick to answer, and I find that I agree with him.
Another pause, loaded with possibility, spreads its wings between us.
“So, what’s the over-under on how long it takes them to find out? Or is one of us due to play potentially-sacrificial-messenger?” Sébastien claps his hands and rubs his palms together, his trickster god features alight with potential mischief.
Before either Caz or I can offer our input, the door swings open behind me—nearly clipping my heels; Frank in his black jeans, bare-chested—his cut and stained leather jacket thrown on, open over his rippling pecs and abs; a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“How long it takes who to find what out?” he grunts, rubbing the sleep out of one of his eyes with the back of his hand.
Shit, shit, shit.
I am simultaneously relieved that I didn’t spill the beans about Frank’s history with ‘fated mating bonds’, and furious that I haven’t managed to communicate vital information to Seb and Caz before this moment has arrived.
Seb, ever the cavalier bad boy, crosses his arms over his broad chest and lifts his chin in Frank’s direction.
“Hey Frank, you noticed anything… different about this heat?” he begins, the leading question making both Caz and I cringe slightly.