32. Theo
Theo
The sunroom smells like warm blankets, cooling packs, cut fruit, and Alphas trying to hold themselves steady for me.
I’m in the middle of the secondary nest with one of Callie’s gray sweaters bunched against my stomach, my legs stretched across Sloane’s lap and my shoulders tucked against Idris’s chest. My skin feels too tight this morning, stretched thin over every pulse and sound, but Sloane’s hand keeps moving up and down my calf, and Idris’s thumb rests at the side of my throat where he can feel every change in my breathing.
“Open up, sweetheart,” Sloane says, holding a slice of peach between his fingers. His hair is messy from running his hand through it, and his shirt is wrinkled where I grabbed it earlier when the room got too bright. “Two more bites, then you can glare at me as much as you want.”
“I’m already glaring at you,” I say, but I open my mouth because his hand is there and his smile has gone soft at the edges. The peach is cold and sweet on my tongue, sharp enough to pull me back into my body for a second, and Sloane watches me chew like eating for him is another kind of touch.
His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth before he lets his hand fall to my knee. “There you go,” he murmurs, and the praise slides through me warmer than it should. “Good.”
My body knows them. It knows Sloane’s heat and turns loose under it.
It knows Idris’s voice and stops reaching for the edge of the room when he tells me to breathe.
It knows the weight of the blankets, the press of hands, the careful way they keep checking on me without turning me into a problem they’re trying to solve.
“Green,” I say before Idris asks, because I can feel the question forming in the way his hand settles more firmly at my throat.
His mouth brushes the side of my head, warm and quiet, and he tells me he hadn’t asked yet.
I press my cheek harder into him and admit that he was thinking it, which makes Sloane’s fingers tighten around my calf like the answer has steadied him too.
Idris kisses the side of my neck, slow enough that my eyes close. “Then keep telling us before we ask. I like hearing you know yourself.”
For a few minutes, I almost understand why everyone keeps telling me the heat will know what to do.
Sloane is warm beneath my legs, Idris is steady behind me, and the nest holds all three of our scents in thick layers that make my thoughts soft around the edges.
I want them. I want Sloane’s mouth at my wrist and Idris’s hand at my throat, and wanting them this much should make everything easier than it does.
Then Callie comes into the sunroom with a folded stack of cooling cloths against her chest and a pen tucked behind one ear.
She’s still wearing her cardigan over a soft blue shirt, and there’s a tiny line between her brows like she’s been reading the same student sentence too many times.
The moment she steps inside, the room changes around her.
Sloane changes too.
He goes still for one breath, then his whole body pulls toward her.
He shifts me carefully, one hand staying at my hip so I don’t feel shoved aside, and reaches for Callie before she can make it to the side table.
She barely gets the cloths down before he catches her by the wrist and drags her close, his other hand spreading at the small of her back as he pulls her mouth to his.
It’s a full kiss. Hungry. Possessive. Almost rough with how badly he wants her, though his hand is careful where it holds her.
Callie makes a surprised sound against his mouth and then melts into it, one palm braced on his shoulder, the other landing in his hair as if she’s been caught in the gravity of him and doesn’t want out.
Idris laughs behind me, low and warm, and the sound makes my chest loosen. It isn’t teasing. It’s affection and approval, the kind of laugh that says he knows exactly how gone Sloane is and likes him that way.
Sloane lets Callie breathe only because she taps his shoulder. His forehead stays against hers, his breath rough, his hand still wide on her back. “Missed you,” he says, though she can’t have been gone more than twenty minutes.
“I was in the dining room,” she says, but her voice has gone soft.
“Too far.”
That’s the only thing he says before kissing her again, shorter this time but no less hungry.
Idris’s arm comes around my middle while we watch them, and his hand settles over mine where I’m holding Callie’s sweater.
He doesn’t pull me away from the wanting.
He lets me see it. Sloane’s obsession, Callie’s answering warmth, Idris’s quiet amusement, all of it happening with me laid across Sloane’s lap instead of pushed out of the shape.
I reach before I think too hard about it, fingers catching the sleeve of Callie’s cardigan. She looks down at me right away. She always does that, comes back to me like my touch has a sound only she can hear.
“Hi, Star,” she says, breathless and flushed and still close enough that Sloane’s hand rests at her waist.
“I want one too,” I tell her. My voice is quiet, but the sentence comes out whole. “Please.”
Sloane goes still under me in a way that doesn’t feel angry. Idris’s hand settles at the back of my neck, steady and warm, and he says, “Take your time, Theo.”
“I know what I’m asking,” I say, because I do. My stomach is tight and my skin feels too full, but Callie’s sleeve is in my hand and Sloane is still breathing hard beneath me. “I want to kiss her.”
Callie bends slowly, giving me every chance to change my mind.
I don’t. I lift my face to hers, and when her mouth touches mine, the noise in my body dips for one clean second.
She tastes like tea and the apple slice she must have stolen from the kitchen, and my purr starts before I mean for it to, uneven and embarrassed.
Sloane’s hand tightens on my hip like the sound has done something to him.
Callie smiles against my mouth, and Idris’s thumb moves once at my nape.
She whispers, “There you are,” without pulling away, and I smile because for a minute the nest doesn’t feel like a test I’m supposed to pass.
It feels like all of them touching all of me, Sloane’s palm on my hip, Idris’s body behind me, Callie’s fingers resting on my cheek after she sits back.
Callie stays on the edge of the nest for a few minutes because I ask her to.
I don’t make the request pretty, and I don’t pretend I only want help with the cooling cloths.
I tell her everything feels less loud when she’s in the room, and her face changes with so much tenderness that I have to look down at my hands.
Sloane reaches for her again, slower this time.
He pulls her down until her shoulder rests against his chest, his arm wrapped around her middle while his other hand returns to my leg.
Idris passes Callie the water bottle first, and when she starts to protest, he only waits until she takes it and drinks.
She mutters that he’s bossy under her breath, but she leans back against Sloane while she says it, and Idris’s fingers briefly cover hers when he takes the bottle back.
I like the way they touch each other without thinking.
I like Sloane’s mouth at Callie’s temple and Idris’s hand at her lower back when he reaches past her for the temperature strip.
I like that when my foot shifts against Sloane’s stomach, he catches my ankle and rubs the bone there with his thumb, bringing me back into the circle without looking away from her.
The heat is still coming. I can feel it under my skin, patient and bright, a pressure that makes the blankets too heavy one minute and not heavy enough the next. I want the Alphas so much it scares me. I want Callie just as much, and that shouldn't feel like a separate confession.
Sloane’s phone buzzes on the side table, and his whole body tightens beneath me.
He looks at the screen, jaw flexing, then bends to kiss my forehead before his hand slides to Callie’s waist and holds there for one more second.
“It’s Kade,” he says, voice rough with reluctance. “I have to take this.”
“Go,” Idris says, though his hand smooths down my chest before he lets the moment change. “Keep it short.”
Sloane catches Callie’s mouth once more before he stands, a fast, deep kiss that leaves her blinking after him.
He touches my knee on his way out, then answers the call in a voice that already sounds less like the man who was feeding me fruit and more like the man who can make server logs confess their sins.
Idris waits until Sloane’s voice fades down the hall, then shifts me carefully off his chest. “The delivery should have been here by now,” he says. “I’m going to check the side entrance and come back with the cooling inserts.”
“I’m okay,” I tell him, though my hand catches his sleeve before he stands all the way.
He looks at my hand, then my face. “Say it again.”
“I’m okay,” I repeat, and I mean it enough that he nods. “Please come back.”
His expression softens. “I’m coming back, sweetheart.”
He kisses me slow, warm and steady, then touches Callie’s lower back as he passes her. The contact is brief, a question and a reassurance at once. She nods, and he leaves us with the nest half rumpled from all of us being in it.
Callie stays long enough to straighten the blanket near my knee and press the cooling cloth Idris brought against the back of my neck. “I really do have to grade, Star,” she says gently. “I’m right down the hall.”
“I know.” I make myself let go of her sleeve. “I’ll come find you if I need you.”
“You can always find me.”