17. Gabe
Chapter 17
C oming down the stairs, they look like they’ve been up to something. I can smell the lust coming off Jacks and Candice, and Xan looks like the cat that ate the canary. Both of my packmates are sporting obvious wood, so I doubt they went too far. We’re all exhausted, and her perfume is making it hard to remember why we don’t all just go up, break in the new nest properly, and then pass out for the next twelve hours or so.
The thinking part of my brain knows why. We’re waiting for her to be good with it. We want her to want the whole pack, and we need her to understand what that means and be ok with us taking care of her. From what I hear, she’s been alone for a while now, and even before then it was just her and her gramps.
Lust is there, totally, I’ve been horny nearly all the time since I smelled her. But Jacks isn’t the only one whose alpha caregiving is riding him hard.
Trouble is, I don’t know what to do. Most of my care taking of people has been more about responding to a need than trying to look for one, and it means I have to think more than I normally do. Because Candice has done a great job of taking care of herself for a long time, and she has a damned good handle on it.
The obvious thing is her car. I could get under there and replace the axle now that the tires and oil are sorted. Xan was the one who saw the axle was nearly busted so I need to talk to him about it. Something just isn’t sitting right about it. Maybe after some food and rest my head will be a little less fuzzy.
Jacks has always been a great cook, but he really seems to be pulling out all the stops with her around. Sliced fruit, fresh squeezed orange juice, and I don’t know what the fuck a German pancake is–doesn’t look much like a pancake, but damn it’s good. Apparently she thinks so too, judging by the noises she is making.
Fuck, I’m hard again.
Didn’t I just take care of this in the shower.
Dammit.
The whole table has gone quiet except for Candice who doesn’t seem to realize the effect she is having on the rest of us. I put my head in my hands and try to focus on something else.
Think about baseball, taxes…getting a colonoscopy?
Nope, no good, now I’m just picturing her in a little nurse outfit.
Fuck.
“Thanks for the food Jacks, it was great. Just leave the dishes in the sink, I’ll take care ‘em later. I gotta crash.” I gotta take care of this hard on and sleep. I feel nearly fucking insane at this point and if I don’t get away from her scent, I am gonna crawl into that nest with her, and then I don’t know if we’ll get any rest.
Everybody’s looking at me… what did I miss?
“Sorry, I tend to ramble…I just wanted to thank you. Um, Jacks said you helped with the nest shopping, and I just wanted to say thank you…so…yeah…thank you…sorry.”
I blink through my sleep deprived and hormonal haze. “Oh, yeah, nah, that was almost all him, I just helped with the pickup, he did all the real work. Sorry I’m not more chatty, I really am dead on my feet. Get some rest omega.”
“Oh, ok. Sleep well,” she mumbles and I hear a loud sniff–and now everyone is glaring at me.
“Little omega, the only thing I want right now is to carry you up to your nest and lick and nibble on every inch of your body, knot you hard, and then fall asleep wrapped around you. But I am gonna be completely honest, I can’t. I can barely keep my eyes open right now. I am tired, I am sore, and if I crawl in that nest with you I’ll just fumble around. I want our first time together to be special.”
I reach over the table and wipe her tears away with my thumb. “Because you're special, and I need to be coherent for that, to make sure you feel good. But, I'll tell you what. If I don’t manage to fall asleep within 10 minutes I will come to your nest, at least to try to snuggle, Deal?”
“Yes alpha.” And I have to clench my teeth against the groan just from hearing that .
“See you in a few hours, omega. Be a good girl and get some rest.”
I make my way back upstairs to my room, and tuck myself into my big empty bed, barely closing my eyes before I’m out.
I look down and nearly come just from the sight of her kneeling between my splayed thighs. Her hair hanging over one shoulder tickles my hip as she leans down to lick the tip of my cock. I’m so fucking hard it hurts, and the sight of her little pink tongue flicking up the underside has me leaking like a fucking faucet. She’s holding herself up with one hand, while the other wraps around my knot and squeezes far too gently.
I groan when she takes the head in her mouth, tongue flicking over my slit, gathering what’s already there, and swallowing around my length. I reach down to run my fingers over her jaw and then into her hair, not forcing her down on my cock, but just for the added sensation of her hair wrapped around me.
“Oh fuck, baby, you feel so good.”
Her mouth is so hot and wet and I know I can’t last like this. She is making little whimpering moans in her throat and it vibrates my entire shaft as she bobs up and down, rolling her tongue like a wave against the underside of my head .
“Just like that, fuck. Please, baby, I’m gonna come, god, I’m so close. Fuck!”
I feel my balls tighten up, the vibration at the base of my spine, and I try to move her head, try to pull her back so I don’t come in her mouth. But she won’t stop and lets out a tiny omega growl that undoes me completely, and I can’t hold back. I moan as my release hits, hot jets filling-
Nothing–I just made a huge mess in the bed.
Well, Fuck.
Every night this week has been torture. Jacks put that fucking candle in my room, so everything smells like her. But this is the first fucking wet dream I’ve had since I was twenty two. Goddamn, what a mess. I get up and look around, the clock says it is almost 11, and the house is silent. I look at the bed, and I am gonna need to change the sheets completely. Which will take time, and I am still exhausted.
I pull on underwear, and drag the sheets off the bed, and stumble down the hall to throw them down the laundry chute–I can deal with them later. The bedroom doors are all open, except the one on the end, the nest. So I go and open it as quietly as I can. Candice is asleep in the middle of the nest–still fully covered in her blue flannel pajamas–her head burrowed against Leo’s chest, while his arm wraps around her shoulders. Jacks is pressed up against her back, arm around her waist. Xan mimics his pose, pressed against Jacks, arm stretched over his mate so that his fingers are brushing against Candice’s waist too.
“Well, fuck it,” I grumble to myself, crawling across the foot of the mattress so I won’t wake anyone up. I snuggle against her legs, wrapping my hand around her ankle, and am out before I can even worry if this is a bad idea.
Leo
T he alarm we set up goes off entirely too early. I rub my hand up and down the soft hair of the omega clutched to my chest. After Gabe left she was upset and felt rejected. She said she understood, and that it’s just hormones. I crawled into the nest while she was brushing her teeth, and Jack and Xan came in after their own showers. She was already snuggled into my chest by then, and asleep, snoring softly.
I detangle myself from her to shut off the alarm, and stretch. My foot catching Gabe in the chest where he’s curled around her legs in her sleep. I figured he would make his way in here at some point, but I didn’t want to argue with him about it.
I try to extricate myself from the group without waking anyone else up. With luck I can get dressed and take care of this damnable erection before anyone else wakes. Just being near this woman puts me in a constant state of arousal, and since we are not that far along in our relationship yet, it’s nothing but a useless distraction.
Sliding off the bed as quietly as possible, I pad down the stairs to the kitchen. I don’t want to risk running the coffee grinder so we will just have to settle with the bagged for now. Once the machine is prepped and brewing, I start back upstairs to my room, peeling off my shirt on the way. There isn’t much time, and I’ll need to hurry to take care of my own body before I get everyone else up. When I reach the landing and start down the hallway towards my room Candice is there, standing just outside the nest.
With her hair disheveled and her pajamas askew, she looks like she’s already been fucked and ready to fall asleep, and my erection gives another painful throb. It wants me to carry her back to the nest and give her a reason to look so rumpled. Her eyes drop to the tent in my sleep pants and I can see her pupils dilate. Her eyes flick back up to meet mine, just as I’m hit with the scent of her arousal, darker chocolate and sharper mint than her normal perfume, and my mouth waters. She takes a tentative step towards me, her head tilting back so she can watch my face, she is so tiny.
“Oh, I was just…Sorry, I woke up and you were gone.” She is still moving towards me slowly, and I need to move. My mind is not in charge right now, and anything she asks from me, I will gladly give. But we don’t know each other well yet, and I don’t want to rush into anything she might regret later .
I know the scent match means that we’re genetically the most compatible, but she doesn’t know much about our pack yet, and I don’t want her to feel like we weren’t honest up front.
She’s very nearly to me now, her hand reaches out and lands on my bare chest and I try to stifle my involuntary groan at the connection. She slides her hands up to my shoulders, which presses her chest to my abdomen. She is only nipple high to me at the top of her head, and it means that her soft breasts are currently hugging the erection straining against my waistband. She tries to pull me down to her height, but my body acts on its own, leaning down long enough to wrap one arm around her back while I scoop the other under her ass and lift her up to me.
She lets out a shocked gasp, but then wraps her arms fully around my neck, kissing me softly–I can’t stop the growl that erupts from my chest. She lets out a small gasp at the sound and I take the opportunity to flick my tongue past her lips and taste her more deeply. She still tastes faintly of mint from brushing before, but her scent of peppermint and chocolate is so pervasive I can hardly taste anything but that. She wiggles in my arms, her hot core rubs across my stomach and I can feel the dampness through her pajama bottoms. I turn, carrying her, and walk into my bedroom.
I nip her lip before pulling back and looking into her eyes, “Please, Dr. Leo…” and I let out a quick burst of laughter.
“Really, just Leo is fine, unless I’m at work.” She giggles and leans back in for another kiss, but I have to stop her .
“Candice, I want you, I do…but are you sure? You haven’t known us for long, and in case it wasn’t obvious, we have some issues. I don’t want you to feel forced into anything. If we are together, I need it to be because you want us, not because you feel obligated since Jacks made you a nest, or Gabe has your car–I need you to be sure, ok?”
It’s rare for anyone to be on eye level with me, even Gabe has to look up unless we are sitting on the couch. But she looks at me thoughtfully for a few moments, searching my face, before dropping her gaze. The most alluring blush suffuses her cheeks.
“Can I be honest, Leo, and you won’t hate me?”
“Of course, I could never hate you, Kitten.” I sit down on the edge of my bed, letting her slide down enough to balance on my thighs so I can tuck her head under my chin.
“I wanted you when we first met. I know it was horrible timing with Sunny and everything, but you being there helped. I mean, it was still horrible, and god knows I miss him so much. But you being near made it easier. I wish you had been with me when they took him away. I could have used a hug.”
And now I can feel her tears striking my neck and running down my chest.
Well, goodbye erection, at least.
She makes a wet sniffling sound against my throat. “Still, I do want you, all of you. It feels weird to say that, like someone is going to accuse me of being a slut or something, but I do. You and Gabe. Jacks and Xan. The four of you together, you make me feel whole. Like something’s been missing for as long as I can remember, but it’s there now. Does that make sense?”
“Well, from what little I’ve been able to dig up on scent matches, yes. There’s not much research on them, and they’re rarely talked about, but I know what you mean. It feels like there was a little piece of us that we never knew we didn’t have, until you came along, and now everything just feels…right.” I hug her to my chest again. “And I don’t hate you, pets are family and losing any family is an emotional experience. I wanted to be there for you as well, but I had to do my job…to keep someone else from losing their family. I was so worried you would be mad at me because I wasn’t there.”
She hugs me tighter and the tiniest omega purr vibrates against my chest when I kiss the top of her head.
“I could stay like this for hours, but unfortunately we do need to get everyone else up and go to work.” I smooth both hands up her back, trying to tame her wild hair on the way back down. She sighs against me and gives me one more squeeze before she slides off my lap.
“Oh, is this your room?” She looks around my personal space, light gray walls, the desk with my laptop on it. My degree hanging on the wall above it, and the few houseplants that I managed not to kill languishing in the corner.
“I’m not kicking you out, little omega, but I do need to get ready for work.” I stand and put my thumbs into the waistband of my pants to let her know what’s coming. “Or you can go try to wake up Jacks and see if he has an idea on lunch before we all have to go.”
She stares at my hands, cheeks pink with an adorable blush. Flicking her eyes up to mine before going back to my hands.
“Ok…I did warn you.” I turn and push the fabric from my hips, walking to my closet to get into a clean pair of scrubs, but when I turn back around, she is already gone. I wonder if she liked what she saw.