28. Sunshine
Chapter 28
Sunshine
U nder the shade of the pavilion in the middle of the North Meadow, I sat down and set out my notes, laptop, and planner on the table in front of me, ready for my meeting with Holly. I also had some random sticky notes, and some napkins.
I was not organized. Lucky for me, Holly knew what sort of person I was.
Holly reached the pavilion shortly after I did, pulling her dark brown hair into a braid. She wore soft-looking jeans and a peasant blouse, managing to make it all look dressy and casual.
I stood up and we hugged for a moment before sitting down. Holly had been a fixture at the resort during our teen years. Holly’s parents were wealthy but self-focused, and they’d spent all their time traveling, forgetting she existed, unless they wanted to trot her out during fundraisers to show what wonderful parents they were and encourage donors to give more.
As a result, Holly had practically lived at my house, running around with Stella and me, and everyone in the family had treated her as an extra member of the Sullivan clan. When Holly’s parents had tried to buy her off to force her to attend the school of their choice but also never see us again, Holly had refused.
So they’d kicked her out. Raina had always acted like Holly was a surrogate younger sister, so the beta went from spending most of her time at our place to living with us. We’d started the event planning part of Cosmic Bonds partially because of Holly’s expertise, and the rest was history.
I secretly enjoyed having another beta in the family. Before Holly, the only one I’d been able to commiserate with had been my cousin Terran. And my younger cousin was a hunky bit of beefcake for a beta guy, so commiserating only went so far since he had to pry ladies off with a stick.
“Okay, spill. How’s it going with the pack?” Holly wasted no time at all before starting the interrogation.
I sighed, pulling out the cooler of food Logan had sent with me. We’d spend a sexy afternoon working on the menu and then having earth shattering sex on the kitchen island. “They’re amazing.”
“So you’re worried it will all end horribly.” Holly snatched up the Tupperware bins. “Oooh, look at all this food.”
“I’m going to get fat, dating Logan.”
“Hardly.” Holly snorted, picking up a pain au chocolat. “You need all the calories you can get between two alphas and an omega.”
“Especially during the heat?” I asked, figuring I would start with my selfish personal life before moving on to business, the actual reason for the meeting.
“Yes.” She sighed, chewing the chocolate croissant. “When’s Julian’s heat?”
“A week or so.” I coughed, taking my own croissant. There was also Croque Madam, aka a very fancy French ham and cheese sandwich, and mini quiches.
“Oh, girl. You better be exercising, and carbing up now.” Holly picked up her shiny pink phone and started tapping on it. “I’m going to send you some links. I should have sent these to you as soon as the dating became official.”
“I’ve already read a ton of stuff on the Internet.” ‘Betas preparing for a heat’ was a common topic, with advice that seemed akin to preparing for a marathon. Eating a diet high in protein and complex carbs, adding more stretching and cardio into the exercise routine, along with stranger and contradictory suggestions like ‘don’t have sex at all’ to ‘make sure you have sex with everyone in the pack’. No one could agree which was better for a beta’s hormones levels.
“What I’m sending are better articles with more practical advice.” Holly gave me the stink eye. “I know you forget to eat, and you probably aren’t doing any stretching.”
“Guilty.” I tried not to roll my eyes. When did I have time for that stuff? Never, that’s when. If I wasn’t doing a million things for Cosmic Bonds, then I was spending time with my guys.
“Seriously though.” I pulled out the Croque Madams, setting out paper plates. There was a cheesy white sauce poured over the toasted ham and cheese sandwich so we needed actual utensils to eat it. “Anything I should know? You handled Noah’s heat with just Aiden.”
Holly grinned, helping herself to the plates and sandwiches. “It sounds really impressive, but it was honestly just a marathon of sex.”
“Now who’s being modest?” I took a bite and melted cheesy ham goodness flooded my mouth. Logan was a genius.
“Aiden and Noah had tried having their heats alone before, since, you know, they’re not in heat at the same time.” Holly’s eyes lit up with mirth. “Aiden really likes kinky stuff like bondage and edging, so it was easier to manage Noah in the beginning. Then we all got swept away by Noah’s hormones and forgot to pace ourselves.”
She pointed at me. “Which is why I’m telling you. You have to prepare for it. You’re going to think you can have sex all the time for days on end, but if you haven’t got your fitness up, you’ll get to the point where you can’t move anymore.”
I frowned. “That sounds bad.”
“I was exhausted.” She shook her head. “Lucky for me, Aiden had enough presence of mind to come out of the hormone soup and we started taking breaks and tag teaming him instead of both of us at the same time. Also, we started eating and drinking more.”
I was glaring at my surrogate sister-cousin in exasperation before she finished speaking. “You could have texted us for help. We would have brought you food.”
“I know.” Holly held up her hands. “That’s what I’m telling you. You’re not thinking about food. Or sleep. It’s like being drugged almost, just nonstop need to be with your omega.”
“Hmmm, so how do alphas and omegas handle it?”
“They have more stamina than we do.” Holly smirked, and I figured she was remembering the benefits of that stamina. “The second heat was better. I prepared better, we knew what to look out for, and we paced ourselves.”
“Did your alphas help with that?” I tried to remember when Holly had brought Cole and Rafe, their alpha, into the pack, but I couldn’t remember.
“No.” Holly laughed, still looking exuberant. She acted like she was talking about Christmas morning. “Oh, they were there, but Rafe went into a rut almost immediately, and Cole wasn’t much better. I was more clear-headed and made sure my idiots didn’t starve to death.”
My heart sank. “So you were the helper.”
Holly nodded. “I was. But I felt so smug, being the one who made sure they didn’t die of starvation. Aiden said it was the best heat he’d ever had, because he wasn’t hanging on the edge of exhaustion as badly.”
I gave a weak smile, trying to seem positive. But I had hoped to feel more…needed during the heat, rather than like the designated driver who didn’t get to join in while everyone else is getting drunk and having a good time.
“It’s not like that.” Holly shook her head. “I can see by the look on your face that you’re stewing on ‘just’ being a helper. If Logan’s sick and you bring him soup, do you feel like a maid? A servant? Or are you pleased you can help him?”
“I’m pleased, of course.” I thought for a moment about the pleasure I’d felt buying Julian stuff for his heat even though he didn’t actually need anything.
“You’re most definitely still part of the heat, and you’re still needed as much as the alpha. More, in some ways. You’re not in a rut and you’re not in heat, even though you will be heavily affected by both. You’re there for the fun. On top of that, you get to care for your pack by being the person who makes sure everyone eats and takes care of themselves.”
I pictured interacting like that with the Kahele pack. I’d like that, to be there with them. For them.
Holly was rifling around in the things she’d put down when she arrived. Looking over at me with a little smile, she pulled out a stylish gift box and set it on the table. There was no brand name or label, so I looked at her expectantly.
“I went online and bought you some sex toys.”
“Um, thanks. But, Julian has a lot…” I started, before Holly lifted up a finger.
“Not like these. I bought you locks.”
I blinked. “Oh.”
“I was guessing you haven’t used them before.” Holly’s smile grew playful as she leaned in. “Julian will lose his mind. I’ve tried several and these three are the best ones for your comfort and his pleasure.”
After throwing a quick glance around, I lifted the lid with one finger. An alpha female had a lock instead of a knot. Effectively, her vaginal walls would clench tight to keep a male omega inside her. Again, all for the sake of breeding.
People could buy different sorts of alpha locks at sex shops or online. Most of them either flexed inside the woman or sat outside the vagina and triggered once the omega was inside her.
“Try them out. You might find you have preferences.” Holly gave me a wicked grin, and my cheeks felt like they were on fire.
“Thanks,” I muttered. I’d wanted to look at them, but I’d been too nervous to order them online without knowing enough about the different types. “Does it…hurt, having it inside you?”
That was what I was most confused about. My pleasure came from Julian’s cock inside me. If I had a lock inserted instead, wouldn’t that feel less pleasurable?
“Nope. Well…” Holly paused, tilting her head to the side. She took a massive bite of her sandwich, chewed it thoughtfully, and swallowed before talking again. “One brand I didn’t care for. But, it’s like having a hollow dildo inserted that’s designed to hold him in place once you decide it’s time.”
That made more sense.
“If I were you, I would play with inserting them before the actual heat.”
I pouted. “I wanted to…uhhh…surprise him.”
Holly laughed. “Sure, surprise him. But make sure you’ve had time to figure out how use them beforehand so you’re more comfortable.”
I let out a breath. This was better information than I’d hoped for. “Thank you. This is…this is perfect.”
As much as I loved the rest of my family, there were certain experiences they could only talk about as outsiders.
While I ate my sandwich, Holly walked me through the specifics of each of the different locks. Even though she was basically my sister, it was embarrassing, but I needed to know rather than be in the dark.
When she was done, she put them back into the box and slid it over to my side of the table. I rolled my eyes at her and tossed a note pad over the top, and then our conversation shifted to work.
I told Holly not to judge me then I launched into my workload and all the random and various tasks I was behind on. It was embarrassing in a whole different way, but Holly knew me well enough to understand that this was my normal operating procedure. I walked her through all of my clients, their special preferences, then the vendors and their intricacies.
Holly made notes in her scheduling software, updating everything with a cool efficiency I couldn’t help but envy. Every New Year’s resolution I made that this would be my year to get organized, I’d start off well, but by March everything would be going off the rails. It was now May, so I was fully in the raccoon-in-a-garbage-can mode of organizing.
Holly and I went through all my clients’ paperwork, then I updated my own scheduling software to synch with Holly’s, so that whenever she made notes on what she did, I would be able to access it quickly.
It was a productive afternoon, in more ways than one. We hugged each other goodbye, and I drove back to the pack’s house feeling like I was as ready as I would ever be for Julian’s heat.
If I was really going to try to be part of his pack, being with them through a heat would be a good test for me to see how I did. We had only been dating for a month, and planning a future seemed too much like hubris.
But I could dream, at least, about how we could learn from this first heat and use it to make Julian’s next heat in August better.
August felt like it was right around the corner, but also impossibly far away. I couldn’t help but wonder whether I would even still be dating Julian, Luca, and Logan or whether something might have happened by then.
I pushed the thought away, because it made my heart freeze in my chest at the thought of their loss. Better to focus on the here and now.