Chapter Twenty Two
“Shit, shit, shit,” Maverick was saying the next morning when I woke up, feeling sore but satisfied. “Lennon, wake up!”
“What?” I mumbled as I swatted his hands away from my shoulders, eager to get just a little bit more sleep. “I don’t have to be anywhere until later on today, Maverick.”
“I fucked up,” Maverick said and I wasn’t sure if he was saying it to me or to himself, but as he said it the oddest feeling settled in my chest. “Oh man I fucked up so badly.”
I sat up, rubbing my eyes with a frown. It was almost like I could feel the panic that Maverick was feeling despite the relative peace I’d been feeling when I first woke up.
Then the top of my shoulder throbbed.
Slowly, my hand came up to press on the tender skin there, finding the slightly jagged mark that could only mean one thing.
Maverick, at some point last night, had bonded me.
The alpha was up on his feet pacing from one end of the room to the other, his eyes wild as he raked his hands through his hair, muttering to himself about being chucked into Guantanamo Bay and my mother throwing away the key.
He was fully naked, and even though I knew it wasn’t the time, I couldn’t help but appreciate his lean physique in the early morning light that was streaming in through the hotel window.
Maverick’s crazed pacing came to an abrupt halt. “Are you seriously checking me out right now?”
I jumped. I had forgotten that bonds were a two-way street, so while he was freaking out and I could feel it, he could feel the attraction on my end.
“Maybe?” I said, my voice weak as my face flushed.
Maverick looked at me like I was insane.
“Is this not making you upset? I didn’t even ask your permission!
I was so wrapped up in it all that I lost control and…
oh, man, Zeke is going to kick my ass. Brooks and Dallas too.
I was the one who insisted we set firm boundaries and here I am bonding with you on day one! ”
I sat back in my feelings while Maverick resumed his pacing, revealing yet another side to his personality that was different from the stoic bodyguard persona that he had worked so hard to curate over the years.
It was panicked and flighty… and adorable. I liked that he seemed to be coming undone because of me, as toxic as that sounded.
“Stop that,” Maverick groaned, pointing a finger at me. “You’re not helping the situation at all.”
“I’m not mad at you, Maverick,” I told him firmly. “I like that you bonded me because you couldn’t help yourself. It’s actually kind of flattering.”
“Even if it complicates things?” Maverick asked, finally flopping down onto the bed. “Even if your mother fires me and catapults me into the sun?”
I snorted at that. “She won’t catapult you into the sun.”
Then I paused, considering his words.
“Well, maybe we can wait to tell her until after the election. She’s pretty stressed out and sometimes doesn’t make the best family decisions when she’s stressed.”
Maverick groaned covering his face with his hands and I quickly pried them away so I could look down at him, making sure he could look me in the eyes when I spoke again.
“Thank you for not pushing me away last night. You had every reason to.”
Leaning down, I pressed a kiss to his forehead, then his nose, and finally his lips.
Finally, I felt the panic and worry that had been swirling down the fresh bond begin to abate.
… only for it to spike again when someone knocked hard on the door.
“Mav? Are you up? We can’t find Lennon,” Zeke’s voice came from the other side of the door, causing Maverick to stiffen completely.
“Are we telling them?” he asked me in a low whisper.
I nodded. “Does it bother you that I want them the same way I wanted you?”
He seemed to think about that for a moment, complicated emotions tangling up and then smoothing out into acceptance. “No. Though they’ll probably be pissed.”
I grinned at him. “Then I’ll let you do the talking.”
He reached up and swatted my bare thigh. “Minx. Get dressed and then I’ll let them in.”
Fifteen minutes later Maverick and I were sitting side-by-side on the end of the bed while Dallas, Brooks, and Zeke stood in front of us like parents scolding their wayward children.
Maverick had finished telling them the gist of our activities the night before and Zeke had just finished a lecture that would have made my mother proud.
“You went on and on about professionalism over the past two weeks and then you go and do this,” Zeke said, gesturing to the fresh bond mark on my shoulder. “It’s pretty fucking hypocritical, Mav, and you know it.”
“You’ve said that already, Zeke. About twenty times,” Maverick shot back and I could feel his burgeoning irritation down the bond.
It was a trip to be able to see the calm, cool and collected alpha on the outside, just like always, but to feel the almost hurricane-like swell of emotions underneath. It was like I had VIP access to Maverick Onassis and it made me feel special.
“And you,” Zeke turned to me for the first time. “Showing up in a nightgown on a hotel floor where anyone can see you is risky as fuck, Lennon, what on earth were you thinking.”
I shifted uncomfortably, glancing over at the silky nightgown in question that was in shreds in the corner.
Maverick had given me one of the big fluffy bathrobes that the hotel had so that I wasn’t completely naked, but it was oversized and hard to keep from slipping off of my shoulder where the bondmark was.
“I wasn’t really thinking at all,” I mumbled, mostly to myself. I’d been running on pure instinct, letting my inner omega do all of the driving after the sheer terror of the afternoon.
My instincts wanted safety and security. They had known that Maverick would provide those things and boy had he.
Zeke pinched the bridge of his nose.
“So what’s the game plan? The two of you just ride off into the sunset together? The president has explicitly warned us that we’re supposed to maintain boundaries with you.”
I looked up at him and then at Dallas and Brooks who wouldn’t meet my eyes. Their feelings almost looked… hurt.
Zeke I understood. That kiss in the SUV had pushed us over the line to where I felt like I needed to really explain myself, but there was still a wall between myself and the twin alphas.
Brooks was sweet, but distant at times and I couldn’t get a read on Dallas if my life depended on it.
The day of the shooting in the Kennedy garden he’d almost seemed jealous when he’d been interrogating me about my relationship with Prince Henry… but things had taken such a sharp turn that I hadn’t been able to follow up on it afterward.
I was also a coward, truth be told.
Despite being a grown ass woman, I had wanted them to take the lead.
To court and woo me and do all of the work, but I’d realized at some point last night when I was staring at myself in the mirror and trying to psych myself up to go and walk down the hall to Maverick’s room that the dynamics just didn’t work like that with us.
Unless I was honest with them they would never be able to make the first move because of who I was.
Which sucked.
“I don’t want to just ride off into the sunset with Maverick because, I think…
” I took a deep breath, gathering all of the courage I had in my body and I felt a warm hand slide into mine.
Maverick gave my hand a reassuring squeeze, probably feeling the anxiety rippling down our shared bond.
“I think—no, I know that you guys are my biological scent matches and I would like you all to form a pack with me.”
There. It was all out in the open.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I wait, but the room is dead silent.
Finally Brooks spoke, and I was relieved to not hear any anger in the alpha’s voice. “So the suppressants don’t work for you either then?”
I open my eyes and find his expression softer than it had been before.
“No,” I said with a shake of my head.
“Can you smell any of the other agents?” Dallas asked, his voice hard. Unlike his twin, his expression had not changed from the hurt, angry one he’d been wearing since they had come into the hotel room to discover me and Maverick together.
“No,” I told him, shaking my head again. “Just you four.”
He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Is it varying levels between us or what you would normally smell from a medicated alpha?”
His voice was so clinical that it chafed against my nerves which were already raw from basically confessing my feelings for them.
“Dallas…” I started but he cut me off.
“Have you spoken with your primary care physician about the failure of the suppressants? Could it be you using the medicine too much and your body getting used to it?”
“Dallas,” Maverick barked, making everyone in the room stiffen.
The two alphas glared at each other.
“That’s enough,” Maverick told him. “You’re hurting her feelings.”
Dallas looked at me, his expression stony but his green eyes holding something deeper that I couldn’t quite understand. Then he turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.
“Jesus,” Zeke muttered, staring after the other alpha. “You’d think she just told him that he was being fired.”
“It’s not like that,” Brooks said, hurrying to defend his brother as he stepped forward and dropped down on one knee in front of me.
“I would really like to stay and talk about this more with you, Lennon. I’ve been waiting for months for this, truly.
But I need to go after my idiot brother right now. ”
“Okay,” I said to him, feeling a bit giddy from his words.
But what he did next sent butterflies swirling around in my stomach.
Gently gripping my chin in his fingers, he pulled my face to his and gave me a slow, chaste kiss on the lips.
It was my first kiss in front of the other guys, and really the first solid kiss in what I was hoping would be our pack moving forward.
“I’ll be back for more later,” he promised as he stood, his green eyes not leaving me until the door clicked shut behind him.
Zeke and Maverick, who had been watching the entire thing, looked almost impressed by their team member because Zeke just let out a low whistle.
“I didn’t know he had it in him to do that in front of us so soon. Hell, maybe this whole pack thing isn’t such a bad idea,” he said as he dropped a quick kiss to the top of my head and shot Maverick a look.
“I’m going to try to figure out how the hell we’re going to keep this a secret for the next two months. You get to figure out how to cover up that bond mark so those gossipy stylists of hers don’t immediately spill the beans.”
“Lisa and Landon would never,” I protested as Zeke headed for the door.
“People would do anything for money, Len,” Maverick told me, his expression grave. “Now come on, let’s get you back to your room before everyone arrives for the day.”