Relief
Mack
The air in our little at-home gym smells like sweat and rubber.
The single bare bulb over the weight bench casts long shadows across the floor, catching the silver chain of the pull-up bar. My knees dig into the worn foam of the mat.
It's not the most romantic spot in the house, but it's got a door that locks and it's about as far from the bedroom as we can get without standing in the yard, so it'll do.
"Yes." Nico's fist tightens in my hair, and I take him deeper.
He tastes like salt and skin, his cock heavy on my tongue.
I breathe through my nose, as the crown pushes against the back of my throat, and I force myself to relax around him.
He's so damn tense, his whole body a coiled spring of muscle and anxiety. The tension rolls off him in waves, thick enough to choke on, and it has nothing to do with the blow job and everything to do with the omega sleeping in his bed.
I slide a hand up under his loose shirt, palm flat against the firm plane of his stomach. I drag it slowly up his chest, caressing him while I suck.
He's warm and solid beneath my palm, his heart slamming against it. I want to feel him come apart from the inside out, so I keep my hand spread wide over his chest and take him deeper.
I work him with my mouth, sloppy and wet, the way he likes it when he's keyed up like this.
My other hand grips the thick base of him, stroking in time with the bob of my head. I want him to forget. I want him to stop thinking about that injured omega, Owen’s pale face, and how the hell he’s going to fix all this.
I want him to relax, but his brow is furrowed, his eyes squeezed tight.
I pull off him with a wet pop and look up, keeping my hand moving.
"You're thinking too loud." I drag my tongue up the length of him slowly, watching his face while I do it. "I can hear it from down here, baby. Knock it off and let me work."
Nico huffs something that isn't quite a word, so I take him back down before he can argue, all the way, until my nose is pressed to the wiry hair at his base and my eyes sting.
I hold him there.
Let him feel the back of my throat flutter around his head, showing him how much I can take, because I know it drives him out of his mind.
"Goddamnit, Mack," he hisses, as his grip spasms in my hair.
Stop thinking, I tell him, without saying anything at all. For five minutes. Let me have you for five minutes.
"Like that." Nico’s hips jerk, a sharp, involuntary thrust that makes my eyes water.
I pull back enough to breathe, then take him again, deeper this time. My tongue swirls around the head, teasing the sensitive ridge, the way that always gets him, before I sink back down. The sounds are wet and filthy in the quiet room, punctuated by his harsh breaths.
"There he is." My voice comes out shot to hell, rough from him.
I mouth along the side of his cock, unhurried, in no rush at all now that he's finally paying attention.
"You taste so damn good when you stop fighting me.
Give it to me, alpha. I've got all night and nowhere I'd rather be than right here on my knees for you. "
"Fuck." His voice drops low and wrecked. The hand in my hair loosens, his fingers moving against my scalp instead of yanking.
My own cock's aching where it's trapped in my shorts, has been since he first grabbed my hair, and I grind the heel of my palm against it once, trying to take the edge off.
I look up at him, at the hard line of his jaw, the way his head is thrown back, the muscles in his neck standing out in sharp relief. His eyes are squeezed shut.
That’s it, alpha, I say in my head. Give me that cum.
Sucking in a deep breath through my nose, I go after him for real now, faster, my hands curled around his big dick, chasing my mouth.
Nico’s breath breaks into a pant.
His thighs start to shake under my palms, and his grip finds my hair again, tight enough to sting. He's so fucking close. I can feel him getting there, the whole big frame of him drawing up.
Then I feel it.
The slow, thick swelling at the base of his cock. His knot thick against my tongue, working my jaw wide.
I moan around him, and I'm not doing it for show. I love this part.
I love the stretch of it, the ache building at the hinge of my jaw as he thickens, the way there's suddenly almost too much of him to handle.
Curling my hands around the knot—my fingers not quite closing—I squeeze and work it while I suck him through, sloppy and greedy, spit slicking my knuckles. My own hips roll against nothing.
He's swelling in my hand, in my mouth, and I'm so wound up from the taste and the weight of him that I could come from only his cock down my throat.
"Come on," I mumble around his knot, thick and barely words. "Let go, big guy. I've got you."
And that does it.
Nico goes off with a groan, coming long and hard down my throat.
I take all of it, swallowing while keeping the pressure on his knot as he pulses against my tongue. I wring him dry until he's twitching and oversensitive and trying to squirm back from my mouth.
Once his cock stills, he hangs there a second, slack and heaving. Then the alpha eases back and his cock slips free. My jaw's screaming and my throat's raw and I feel pretty damn accomplished about both.
I sit back on my heels and drag the back of my hand across my mouth.
I'm hard enough to hammer nails, but I ignore it. This isn’t about me.
"Holy shit, Mack." He cracks his eyes open and looks down at me. The tension is gone from his face, replaced by a weary kind of softness. "Come here." His voice is so hoarse.
He reaches down and pulls me to my feet, his arms wrapping around my waist, his face burying in my neck. He's still shaking a little.
Good.
His hands roam my back, feeling the grooves of muscle there. "Fuck, I love this big body," he murmurs against my skin.
Then one of his hands moves slowly, sliding down from my waist and dipping into the waistband of my shorts. His palm finds my cock, hot and hard, and he starts to stroke me, his grip firm. Just the way I like.
My hips buck into his touch before I can help it, and for half a second I consider letting him jerk me off.
Fuck, it'd be so easy to let him. I'm already right there, leaking all over his fist.
I grab his wrist.
"I’m good," I say, my voice rough.
Nico pulls back and stares at me like I've lost my mind. His dark eyes drop to where I'm tenting my shorts like a teenager, then come back up. "Are you kidding me, Mack? You're hard as a damn rock."
I grin, then reach down and adjust myself in my shorts.
"This was about you. You've had a day." I roll my sore jaw, working the ache out of the hinge.
"Besides, a little edging never killed anybody.
Builds character." I catch him still frowning at me and shoot him a wink.
"You'll thank me when I'm insufferable about it later. "
A smile spreads across Nico’s face, then he grabs the back of my neck and kisses me hard. All the leftover tension pours into it, teeth and tongue and not much finesse.
I’m sure he can taste himself and he doesn't care. He kisses me deeper, one hand fisted in my hair like he's holding onto something in a current. I let him have it.
When he finally pulls back, we're both breathing rough, foreheads together in the shitty yellow light of the gym.
Then he sighs. Long and heavy, the kind that comes up from a man's boots. Then he shifts, pulling up his shorts and stuffing his semi-hard cock away.
"I gotta figure out what to do about this whole Lyra thing," he says to the floor more than to me.
"There’s no need to figure it out tonight." I thumb the crease between his eyebrows, the one that's been carved there since this whole mess started. "The girl's been asleep all day. It can wait until tomorrow. Then we’ll talk to her, figure out what we can do to help and go from there."
Nico drags a hand down his face. "It’s not that easy."
"Why not?" I lean against the weight rack and cross my arms. "'Cause from where I'm standing, we took in a friend of Owen's who got roughed up. Tomorrow, we find out who did it, track him down, and teach him that it’s not good to treat omegas like that. It ain't exactly rocket surgery."
Nico looks at me, unimpressed, the way he does when one of the crew suggests something that's gonna get somebody's hand caught in a saw. "She's a Van Houten," he finally says.
"Yeah, I know." I shrug. "We've got a rich girl in the house. Sounds like an upgrade."
He doesn't laugh. That's how I know it's bad, because Nico always throws me at least a courtesy snort.
"Her father is Aldric Van Houten." He watches me while he says it, like he's waiting for it to land.
"Yeah, I know who her daddy is." I sit down on the weight bench. "I was sitting right there when Renata went off about him. The Alliance, the news, ‘packs are the downfall of civilization’, all of it." I blow out a breath. "Believe me, I heard the whole sermon."
"And I keep thinking about what her father will do when he finds his daughter hiding in a house with four men."
"First off, nobody knows we're a pack." I hold up a finger.
"Not really. Not anybody who'd tell. Far as the world knows, this house holds a married couple, putting up with a few roommates, while a friend crashes on the couch.
" I hold up a second finger. "And second, she's what, twenty-two?
Twenty-three? She's a grown woman. Last I checked, grown women get to sleep where they damn well please.
Her daddy doesn't get a vote on that just 'cause he doesn't like it. "
Nico pulls in a slow breath and holds it a second. He does this when he has to explain a hard truth to somebody who isn't going to like it.
I brace myself.
"I get that you didn't grow up around omegas," he says in an overly kind way, like he’s worried he’ll offend me, "but that's not the way the world works when it comes to them."
His voice drops as he steps closer. "An unmated omega living under her father's roof isn't a person, Mack.
She's property. His property. Same as his car and his house and his money.
" His hands flex. "She ran, and Owen brought her here, and the second Aldric figures out where she went, this stops being about a scared girl on our couch.
In his eyes, and in the eyes of every court in this state, we didn't take in a friend. We stole from him."
My pack alpha’s words sit in the rubbery, sweaty air.
I open my mouth, but nothing good comes out, so I close it again.
This is the part I'm no use for.
I’m not good with serious shit. I’m better at parties or poker games.
Things like this make me uncomfortable, but I can’t do anything to fix it. So for once I keep my mouth shut and let it be as bad as it is.
"So." I finally say, all humor bled out of my voice. "Are you gonna kick her out?"
Nico’s head snaps up. "No," he practically snaps at me. "God, no. I told her she could stay, and I meant it. I'm not putting a hurt girl back out on the street because she’s got a shitty last name."
"Okay." Something in my chest eases. "Then what's all this about, if you already know she's staying?"
"Because letting her stay could blow up in our faces.
" He leans back against the bench and finally looks tired instead of wound up.
"All of us. Our jobs, this house, Owen's whole life at that library.
If her dad finds her and chooses to press charges, he could basically destroy our lives.
" He rubs the back of his neck. "She is staying," he says firmly.
"But this is a serious situation." His dark eyes meet mine.
"I don't want you to be blindsided later. "
Well, shit.
"Okay." I stand and pull him into me, chest to chest, my hand at the back of his head the way he did to me a minute ago. "Then we'll figure it out together," I tell him, praying it’s the right thing to say.
Nico wraps me up in a hug and squeezes hard, one arm banding across my back. He thumps me between the shoulder blades twice before he lets go.
"Thank you," he says low, and I can tell he means it. "I needed to say all that out loud to somebody who wasn't going to freak out hearing it."
"That's me," I say with an exaggerated grin. "Emotionally bulletproof." I roll my shoulder where he pounded on it. "Or too dumb to panic." I smile wide, waiting for the joke to land.
Nico lets out a courtesy snort, shaking his head.
I'll take it.
But then I think about Owen. I hope he’s okay. I've got no way of knowing on my own.
Nico's got a strong bond running straight into the beta’s chest. He feels every dip and spike of Owen from across the house. Me? I've got nothing like that. Even though Owen and I are mated, our mental bond never took.
It doesn't keep me up nights, I love the beta plenty without a wire in my skull telling me to, but it does mean that when it comes to what's going on inside Owen, I'm flying blind. And I’m not too proud to ask the guy with the map.
"How's Owen doing?" I ask.
Nico goes quiet a second, and I watch him check their bond, brow furrowed.
"He’s wrecked," he says finally. "He feels so guilty."
"For what?" I blurt out.
Nico shakes his head. "The beta’s got it in his head that he should have insisted she go to the hospital. He thinks that if anything bad happens to her, it’s his fault." His eyes narrow as he looks past my shoulder. "He’s somewhat calm right now. I think he might be with Adrian."
"He did the right thing,” I say firmly, suddenly feeling very tense.
"I agree," Nico looks up at me, deep worry in his eyes. "I hope it doesn't all go to shit."