16
hannah
I wake up on the couch, and it’s still dark outside. Someone is knocking on my door.
Ellis? I think, getting up. I smell like all of them, plus my own ick. I never did pull the trigger on getting in the shower last night. Well, I guess it’s still night. I have no idea what time it is.
I open the door, still half-asleep, I think, because that’s not actually like me to open the door in the middle of the night to whoever could be out there.
I’m realizing, on the way over to open the door, that it cannot be Ellis, because Ellis is still in heat.
When I pull the door open, it’s Gatlin.
I am not expecting that.
“You’re probably wondering how I know where you live,” says Gatlin.
He holds up an envelope. It’s addressed to me, here, and I remember that I brought over a stack of mail to sort through at Ellis’s once because I was in a rush to leave here.
I guess I never did sort through it. Gatlin traced me here through my junk mail.
“Did you leave your omega while he was in heat?” I say.
“No, his heat broke, around midnight, and he fell right to sleep, and Kane did, too, but I lay awake thinking about you.”
About me? I waver a little in the doorway.
“I did, um, I called.” He holds up his phone. “I figure you must have your phone on do-not-disturb.”
“I do,” I say.
“I should take that as a hint to, uh, to not disturb you, but…”
“It’s okay.” And, you know what? It really is. I feel a whoosh of warmth at the sight of him. Then, I realize it’s rude to leave him standing out there, so I move aside and let him come in.
He spies the pharmacy bag on the counter right away, and I remember that I haven’t taken the Plan B pill.
I scurry over to get it out of the bag, saying, “Come in, sit down. I just need to take this before I forget.”
He’s eyeing me. “Wait a minute, is that a Plan B?”
“It is,” I say, opening up the box.
“You aren’t on birth control?”
“No,” I say, turning over the little blister pack with a pill in it. I guess it’s just that easy? You just take the pill. Should I read the instructions first?
“Can you, um, maybe not take that?”
I jerk my head up to look at him.
“Sorry,” he says immediately. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Go ahead.”
I tilt my head to one side. “You didn’t even come inside me.”
“I know that,” he says.
“Only Ellis did,” I say.
“Right,” Gatlin says, “but Ellis is our omega, and if we…” He clears his throat. “You don’t even know me, so this is ridiculous.”
I set the pill down on the counter. “You want me to have a baby? Like, for you?”
He gestures at me, with both hands. “That is not why I was up thinking about you, no. That is not what this is about. That’s…” He looks me up and down. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-four,” I say.
He winces.
“What?” I say. “It’s not as if I’m underage or something. I’m a grown woman. I have a college degree.” My parents pay for my apartment, though. I don’t say that out loud. “How old are you?”
“Thirty,” he says. “It’s not… that age difference isn’t bad, but Kane’s… I’m getting way ahead of myself.”
I come out around the counter. “You are. You really are, because Ellis fucking hates me, and he kicked me out of his house during his heat, and you and I don’t know anything about each other.
” Except that he’s beautiful without his clothes and he has a fantastically huge dick with that perfect big knot that I can rub my clit against while I’m bouncing up on down on it, and…
“Ellis will change his mind. He’ll apologize to you, and if you’re anything like Kane and me, you’ll forgive him,” says Gatlin. “But you’re too young to have a baby.”
“Well,” I say, “maybe when I was eighteen, that was definitely too young, and maybe even when I was twenty-two, that was too young, but if it happened now, I could handle it.” I look back at the pill on the counter. Then I look back at Gatlin. “You really want me to…”
He licks his lips. “No,” he says in a scoured voice. “No, take the pill. Forget I said anything.”
I do not take the pill. I stand there and stare at him, and I feel self-conscious because I’m a mess and I haven’t showered, but I can still smell him all over me, and that’s… nice in a weird way.
Gatlin gestures. “Take it. I’m serious.”
I lift a shoulder. “You said you were thinking about me?”
He gives me a small, sort of helpless, smile. “Uh, yeah, I was thinking that it was awful that Ellis sent you off like that, and that we didn’t fight him harder on it. It was my fault and Kane’s fault that you ended up with my cock inside you.”
“I think I share some of that fault.” I grin at him.
His smile widens, and he looks me over, and there’s a fondness in the way he looks at me, and I feel—which makes no sense, not really—as if there’s a connection between us, something already forged.
There isn’t a connection, not really. We were naked together, that’s all. But I find myself stepping closer to him.
When he sees that I’m coming to him, he comes to me, closing the distance between us in two steps, his movements sure and strong.
He takes me in his arms, and I feel small and engulfed against him, and I can smell him, and he still smells like vanilla or cloves or both or… I don’t know… but he smells good.
Then he kisses me.
I moan into his mouth, sliding my hands up to clutch his shoulders. I feel absolutely comfortable around this man. He feels safe and I feel wanted by him.
I don’t know why.
Some part of me cannot believe that Ellis could want me, and Gatlin is just as stupidly attractive as Ellis.
Well, maybe Gatlin doesn’t have that otherworldly element to him.
Ellis is so attractive he practically glows.
Gatlin is just a normal hot guy. But he’s very hot.
He’s muscled and nicely put together, and he’s out of my league, and I know it.
But it’s simply different, and I can’t explain why.
Gatlin and I kiss, our tongues tangling, and I plaster myself against him, and—
He backs away, his movements abrupt, letting out a string of swear words. He raises both of his hands. “Sorry, sorry. I can’t do that with you. I need—you need—we need to talk to Ellis first.”
“Ellis doesn’t get to say who I kiss!” I exclaim.
“No, I’m not saying that,” says Gatlin. “It’s not because you’re a possession and he gets to say who has access to you.
It’s because he’s my omega, and if I do something that I know will hurt him, it’s cruel.
I cannot do that to him.” A pause. “Of course, I shouldn’t have come here at all.
” Gatlin looks at the door. “I’m leaving. ”
“Wait,” I say. “You can’t show up here, tell me you’re thinking about me, ask me to have a baby, kiss me, and then leave.”
Gatlin winces again. “You’re right. This is fucked.”
We stare at each other.
I say, in a very tiny voice, “You were really thinking about me?”
“It was kind of a yearning feeling, as if you were a missing piece, that you should have been there with us, all of us together.”
I lick my lips. Wow. Okay. What would that be like? Me and three men?
I guess I wouldn’t say no immediately. Maybe I’d want to think all of that through.
“But it’s insane,” says Gatlin. “I’m not even straight. I don’t think I’ve ever been this way about a woman. I’m an alpha, and people with designations only have sexual orientation to a degree, of course. We’re all at least a little bisexual, but I’ve never been in a relationship with a woman.”
I make a noise in the back of my throat. “You’re gay?”
“I’m…” He rubs his chin. “I’ve been in a relationship with a man for six years, and before that, I was dating men exclusively. So, I mean, yeah?”
“Because that sort of figures. My only boyfriend was gay,” I say.
“Ellis? Because I don’t think—”
“No, not Ellis. Ellis is not my boyfriend.”
“Ellis said you were his girlfriend.”
“Well, he just said that. He and I never talked about any kind of commitment to each other. He obviously is incapable of committing to anyone except Calliope.” My voice is bitter.
“Let’s leave Ellis out of it for a minute,” says Gatlin.
“Okay, we can try,” I say, but I don’t feel very confident that we can make that stick.
“It’s not as if I don’t find women sexually attractive,” says Gatlin. “And you’re…” His expression changes, and the smile that takes over his face makes my stomach turn over. “There’s something about you, Hannah.”
“There is not,” I say quietly. “There isn’t. I’m plain. I’m vanilla. I’m nothing. No one ever notices me.”
“I notice you,” he says.
I believe him. I don’t know why. But there’s something about the way he’s looking at me that’s not like the way Ellis looks at me, and it’s not like the way I’ve ever been looked at before.
It’s about something else besides desire, but there’s desire in that look of his.
I like it. I could get used to being looked at like that. I go to him again.
We’re kissing again, and the kisses have this achingly sweet quality, and he’s so careful when he holds me, and I feel dizzy.
Gently, he pries me off him and moves me away. “Hannah,” he breathes. “Not yet. We need to talk to Ellis.”
“Okay,” I murmur. “Okay, fine.”
“You should come over tomorrow,” he says. “To Ellis’s place. We’ll talk it out then.”
ellis
My heat breaks sometime before midnight.
It’s probably mostly because of the suppressants, but it’s also because of my alphas.
Even though the heat is ebbing out, I don’t want them to leave me.
I ask them if they’ll curl up with me in my bed upstairs.
The nest is sort of oppressive at this point, full of too much scent, too much warmth, but I want them close.
They agree.
They always did what I wanted, though. I could lead these guys around by their dicks, and they’d just laugh affectionately at me and call me their pretty boy and shake their heads, shake them and shake them.
They like me, but I get the impression they think they’re better than me, and I guess I think they’re better than me, too. They have everything together, after all. Still, it’s nice having them here.
I guess they’ll leave in the morning.
Fuck.