21. Taro – Meaning Great joy and delight
21
TARO
(ANGEL WINGS, ELEPHANT EAR)
MEANING: GREAT JOY AND DELIGHT
OCEAN
________
I woke in stages. First, just noticing I wasn’t asleep anymore. Then noticing I was squished in a weird way. Where the hell was I?
A warm body pressed up against mine, and everything came back in a rush. We’d all fallen asleep on the couches last night. Micah insisted on curling himself around me, and I didn’t tell him no. Because I loved it.
My brain felt tired in that way it did when you slept hard . I don’t remember the last time I slept so deeply, even while being on a couch.
Slowly, sleepily, I opened my eyes. Micah’s skin was close, reminding me that he stripped his shirt off before wrapping us both in the blankets. I inhaled the rich scent of him—the sweet softness of chocolate and the bitterness of caramel. It was sharper right now. And further down our bodies, Micah was hard.
They wouldn’t laugh at me. I knew that now. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t nervous at the prospect of sex with three Alphas who were nearly fucking perfect.
Still, just being this close to him made me happy. There was a scar on his collarbone. I wondered how he’d gotten it. Micah had tattoos too, but they were on the forearms currently wrapped around me, so I couldn’t get a closer look. One peeked over his shoulder, but I wasn’t going to be able to look at that one either. I settled for moving as slowly as I could to touch the small scar.
A tiny imperfection.
It made me smile.
All at once a soft purr came to life in Micah’s chest, and because of the way he was wrapped around me, I felt it everywhere .
“Morning,” he whispered without opening his eyes.
“Morning.” I still had my finger on his scar, rubbing it with the tip of my finger. “I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“Mmm.” The sound was low in his throat. “I don’t mind. My wife is touching me. I don’t want to miss it.”
I was glad his eyes were still closed because my face turned red. “How did you get this?”
“Hiking with my brothers,” he murmured, shifting us closer so his lips brushed my temple. “We were being typical teenage boys and not at all careful. I decided to climb a bunch of rocks. Turns out those rocks weren’t stable, and I got caught in the mess of them sliding down the mountain we were on. Broke my leg, had a few other injuries. For whatever reason that one decided to scar. I have a few others if you want to see them.”
“You have brothers?”
Micah opened his eyes then. “I do. Three of them. One older, two younger. The younger two live back east, the older one is overseas with his pack.”
Suddenly, being with the three of them, even for a year, felt overwhelming. “I don’t know anything about you,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Moving slowly, he cradled my head with one hand, gripping my hair and releasing it like a reflex. “You can ask me anything, Ocean. Any of us. We have nothing to hide from you. I will answer any question you ask.”
“What’s your middle name?” It was on our marriage license, but everything about yesterday was a gorgeous blur.
“Thomas.”
“Micah Thomas Westbrook,” I said.
“Ocean Elise Correa Caldwell,” he said back. “I love your name.”
“Me too.” It was the truth. I’d always loved my name, unconventional as it was.
He groaned, shifting against me. “I should check your back, but I don’t want to move. You feel too good.”
Laughing quietly, I closed my eyes. “If you keep saying things like that I’m going to start believing them.”
“I certainly hope so, princess.” He did move then, rolling us on the couch so I was beneath him, and every hard inch of him was pressed into me. “When we told you we wanted a real marriage, it wasn’t because you were a body we would have at our disposal and therefore convenient. And not because you’re disposable . We chose you, remember?”
“It still doesn’t feel real,” I admitted. “And I don’t understand why.”
“Does it matter? Other than we’re ridiculously attracted to you and wanted you? Because even if your uncle hadn’t said yes to the deal, we would have approached you.”
I swallowed, my hands finding his shoulders. His skin was so warm and him looking down at me… it was a dream come true. Isolde was right. No matter what would happen in the future, I would regret it far more if I didn’t embrace this situation to the fullest. “I’m not used to anyone… not having an ulterior motive.”
“We wanted you. That was and is our motive.”
But only for a year .
The voice in my head stung, even though last night they’d said I could decide when the year was up. Maybe that meant they were open to more? Today wasn’t the time to think about it.
“Now,” he whispered. “Turn over so I can check your bandages before I strip you naked on this couch and start the honeymoon early.”
I laughed and twisted, feeling a little like a caterpillar in a cocoon with the blankets twisted in my legs. But I managed to get to my stomach and enjoyed the weight of Micah’s legs bracketing my hips. And the way his palms skimmed up my ribs beneath my shirt, not at all afraid of the way all my fat was bunched up and rolled because of how I was positioned.
“These look good. No blood through them, which is a good sign. We should still change them later. But now, we need to get up. We have plans.”
“We do?”
“We do.” He got off the couch and helped me to stand as the other two Alphas stirred now that we were speaking at full volume. “Well, we have an idea for plans. If you don’t want to do them, we won’t be upset.”
I narrowed my eyes in suspicion. “What did you have in mind?”
“That will require us showing you something,” Cameron said with a yawn. “Good morning.”
“Morning,” I managed. Cameron rumpled with sleep was a good look. The way his hair stuck up made me want to run my fingers through it. “What do you have to show me?”
“Why ruin the surprise, little nymph?” Everett’s arms came around me, hands roaming as his mouth fell to my neck.
Chills ran over my skin. The good kind. They were going to kill me. Fuck a year of marriage. I wasn’t even going to last a week.
He tugged the collar of my shirt to the side and kissed toward my shoulder.
“You said you had to show me something, not that it was a surprise.” My voice was breathier than I wanted. The symptom of his lips on my skin.
“Well, it is a surprise,” Cameron said. “Not for long though. And we didn’t officially ask you,” he looked at Everett for a second. “Touching you? Kissing you? Are you all right with it?”
I nodded. Probably too fast. “I’m not…”
The warning growl came from Everett, and he tightened his hold. “As our wife, you can do whatever you want, Ocean. The one thing I won’t let you do is talk down about yourself. It’s not what you really think, it’s what’s been repeated to you.”
The shock rolled through me. I had been about to say I wasn’t good at it. It wasn’t something that had been said to me, but everything else implied that. But it wasn’t the only thing. “I’ll say something else then. I don’t have much experience, so being with the three of you feels really overwhelming. I’m not saying I don’t want that. I just have no idea how to even go about it.”
Everett’s voice grew even darker. “Are you a virgin, Ocean?”
“No. But I might as well be,” I said with a laugh. “I’ve been with two people. I don’t want to talk about them.”
He kissed me below my ear. “Who do I have to kill?”
“No killing.”
“We’ll see. I don’t want this morning to be heavy, so I won’t ask now. But I’ll get it out of you eventually, nymph.”
I could barely breathe because perfume was pouring out of me. Being overwhelmed by them was going to become a normal thing, and I needed to get a hold of myself or I’d spend the next year doing nothing but staring and perfuming.
Everett walked me forward with his arms still around me. “Should I carry you to the surprise?”
“ No .” I pulled away from him quickly. “Nope, I’m fine.”
When I glanced at him, I saw something spark in his gaze, but he didn’t protest. Cameron took my hand and wove our fingers together. “Let’s go.”
And then we were running through the halls, him pulling me after him with a giant smile on his face. I laughed and couldn’t stop laughing. “Cameron, slow down.”
“Nope.”
“ Cam .”
We ended up back in my room, my wedding dress still draped over the bed where we left it. He grinned and spun me under his arm. “I love it when you call me Cam. Do it more often. We call Everett ‘Rett,’ too.”
“Rett?”
“Much to my annoyance,” he said, leaning on the doorframe. He crossed his arms, which put everything on display, and the tattoos I hadn’t been able to focus on last night. Several thick, black lines encircled one forearm, and thinner black bands bracketed the opposite bicep. They were stark, brutal, and fucking hot .
Cam made a face at him. “Don’t scare her. He secretly loves it.”
“Or maybe that’s what I let you believe.”
“Grumpy bastard,” Cameron muttered before he smiled at me again. “Do you notice anything, Ocean?”
I frowned, glancing around the room. As far as I knew, it looked the same as it had last night. “Like what?”
“Look carefully.”
I did, taking in the room. It was light and bright, filmy curtains over windows looking out toward the beach, past a garden and lawn filled with magnolia trees. But I didn’t think that was it. Was anything weird?
As I scanned the space, my eyes were drawn to the wall by the bed. It looked strange. There was a recessed piece of it that didn’t belong. “Is it that?”
“Why don’t you go find out?”
It just looked like a piece of wall, but as I got closer… was this a door?
Micah came with me, catching my hand and pressing a nearly invisible button just beside the panel. It slid back without a sound, opening into a dimly lit hallway.
“Let me guess,” I said. “This is where you keep the bodies?”
“Nah. We keep those in a fridge in the basement before we take them out to sea and dump them.” Cameron deadpanned.
A laugh fell out of me. “Oh.”
“Just kidding, sweetheart. We don’t have a basement.”
Most places on this coast didn’t, so that made sense. But I still didn’t know what was in front of me. “Is anything going to jump out at me?”
“No.”
There was a door to the left in the hallway, and one glance inside showed a bathroom. A second bathroom. The one connected to my rooms was on the opposite side. I’d already seen that. So why was there a second one?
Wait—
I nearly sprinted down the rest of the hall, dim lights turning on with my movement. The hallway opened into a round, cozy space filled with cushions. They were all white and basic, clearly not decorated. But this was a nest .
Now I understood why they had said every Omega needs their nest. Because they knew they had one here.
“Over here too,” Micah said, standing at the entrance, gesturing to a doorway I missed. It opened into another glass-enclosed space. A porch that faced the coast, but the windows opened, and there were more bare cushions. Like an extension of the nest where you could cuddle and still have sunlight if you wanted it. It was beautiful.
I went back to the inside and stood in the middle, turning around and looking everywhere. “This is mine?”
The three of them stood at the edge, watching me. Even Everett smiled in that small way he had. “It’s yours, little nymph.”
“I’ve never had one before.” I could cry with happiness and awe, but I didn’t want to stop looking at it.
They frowned, and Micah tilted his head. “The Caldwell Estate doesn’t have a nest?”
“No, it does. I just never used it.”
“Do we want to know why?”
I wandered to the wall and ran my hand over one of the cushions. “Probably not.”
It wasn’t just Laura and Frank. It was , but it was also because it was my mother’s nest. Part of me had wanted to use it because it was a part of her, if they had let me. Another part of me didn’t know how to feel about using the same nest as Mom. Yet another thing I’d mostly pushed to the side without feeling it.
“You said you had plans for today?” I hoped they’d let the nest thing go for now.
“Well,” Micah said. “If you want to. Call your friends. We want to take you shopping for the nest.”
I’d never sprinted for my phone so quickly.