Chapter 5
Avery
“Why do you smell like omega? You didn’t fuck one of our business associates, did you?
Or, god forbid, the clients.” Parker looked up from his coffee when I flopped down on the luxurious couch his interior designer had chosen for the kitchen living area in closest proximity to snacks.
Our chef didn’t like us fucking up the flow of the main kitchen, so we relied on this much smaller one for whatever we wanted outside of what was made for us.
One of the perks of having ridiculous amounts of money meant I had plenty of options to flop and wallow. I had no shortage of feelings after tasting perfection.
“You didn’t, did you?” Parker pushed.
“Of course I didn’t! I met an angel yesterday before work and we made my car smell like pure heaven.” I sighed dramatically, throwing my hand over my eyes.
Met and lost in an instant.
What kind of cruel fate was that? At least the sweetness of her scent had seeped into the leather of my car so I could indulge in it on the drive to my overnight trip and the whole way home too. The peony hints had faded, but the sugar lingered.
I knew Parker well enough to assume he was shaking his head as he grumbled. “Avery…if it wasn’t for the fact that I can smell her, I would think you’re talking out of your ass.”
“That’s because you’re a grumpy asshole who doesn’t appreciate the beauty of the world!”
Parker was gunshy when it came to gorgeous omegas, but luckily, his caution in that department had never rubbed off on me.
“You had incredible sex, and now you’re sad about it?” he asked with a confused frown.
“What’s Avery sad about?” Logan asked, striding into the room, making a beeline for the fridge and pulling out a sports drink.
He left dark fingerprints behind, but at least it was on our fridge and not the one our chef used so he wouldn’t get an earful about it.
His motorcycle baby was ancient and always needed some kind of attention, but he loved it and refused to get something made in this century.
“I lost an angel!” I cried, throwing my pack mate a pained expression.
Logan paused, bottle poised halfway to his lips, turning to Parker. “Is he on something or just being himself?”
Parker cocked his head to the side, trying to look serious, but his tiny smile betrayed him. “Unfortunately, I think he’s just being himself.”
“So…who was this angel?” Logan asked.
“She was a pretty pink ball of sass!” I beamed at my pack mates as they glanced at each other. “I found our soulmate!”
“Easy there, tiger. Should I be afraid of who you’d consider a soulmate?”
“Rude.” I pouted. “I have excellent taste.”
“Uh-huh, well, Hunter texted me he was on his way home a while ago, so he should be here soon, and you can tell us all about it.”
“He’s here now,” Hunter’s smooth voice called out as he entered the kitchen, grabbed himself a water, and joined us. “Why are we congregating?”
“Avery’s found our one true love.” Parker’s voice was laced with sarcasm.
“Well, that was quick work. Do we get to meet them, or are they a figment of your imagination?” Hunter leaned against the kitchen island with a smirk.
“She isn’t a figment of my imagination! It’s impossible to imagine someone that stunning and that great in the sack. It’s a statistical impossibility. So she’s got to be real…”
Parker raised his brows. “None of that sentence made sense. Did you hit your head?”
“Rude! Just because you’re a stick in the mud—”
“Maybe we should check his head for bumps,” Hunter suggested to Parker, barely holding back a smile.
“Yeah, yeah, make fun of me.” I waved them off, flopping back onto the couch. “You’re just bitter because I met our omega first!”
“Avery, when we meet our omega, it’ll be in a respectable way,” Parker said. “Car sex may be fun, but you have to question what kind of woman would sleep with a stranger she just met.”
I gaped at my pack mate. “Bite your tongue, you dirty capitalist bastard! If memory serves, you once got physical with a girl in a sorority bathroom during a party. If anyone needs their character discussed, it’s you, you degenerate manwhore!”
His ears turned as red as his hair. He shook his head. Parker knew exactly how to pull the stick out of his ass, but unfortunately for all of us, he preferred to keep it deeply wedged most of the time.
Behind him, Logan chuckled. “To be fair, we’ve been looking in all the wrong places. That dating app Parker suggested has churned out nothing but duds.”
“Nothing but gold diggers,” Parker agreed. “It’s supposed to be more discerning, but apparently, they’re slacking in their vetting process.”
A year or two ago, we had been feeling the lack of an omega, so we’d signed up for a fancy-pants dating app designed for the elite.
It was initially promising, and we had gone on several pack dates.
Only, after our fourth date with a woman who’d dropped all pretense and started asking us incessant questions about our business plans and nothing about us as individuals, we had quickly grown tired of it.
We wanted a life partner, not a business partner.
We had enough of those. Honestly, half the women on the app reminded me way too much of Parker’s mom, and while I loved her, I could only take her in small doses.
Small dosing our omega sounded like a nightmare.
We needed someone we were excited to be around, who would challenge Parker, entertain me, get Hunter to work less, and help Logan gain some confidence with the wealthy world we had to navigate.
Still, every now and again, we tried, mostly after I’d gone window shopping on the app. That would stop now because not a single person on there could hold a candle to my pink angel.
Logan fussed around in the fridge, grabbing himself a quick snack. “Maybe meeting someone out in the real world is the way to go. You can suss out their character in person.”
“And what does fucking in Avery’s car say about a person?” Parker asked dryly.
Logan laughed. “Well, for one, that she’s pretty damn ballsy. We need someone like that. We’d walk all over any other personality without realizing.”
“Would we?” Hunter asked, his tone somewhat unsure.
We all knew the answer deep down. A happy life wasn’t possible with someone who was afraid to call us on bullshit when needed. I wasn’t always spectacular at boundaries, and I wanted an omega who could kick me in the metaphorical dick about it, and then maybe kiss it better.
“With the way we dominate business dealings, it’s more than possible.” Logan sighed. “We don’t have much practice at being soft, so we need someone comfortable with pushing back. Besides, Parker would be bored as fuck with a docile omega.”
“Not at all,” he said primly. “I want a partner who can deal with our life and make things easier for us at home. My mother was that sort of person for my fathers, and I want that for us.”
I snorted. “A docile omega wouldn’t survive a week in our life. Have you met the women who live in this neighborhood? Piranhas, every single one of them.”
Logan grimaced. “The married woman down the street propositioned me the other day. I felt like prey. It was weird.”
“Mrs. Anderson?” Parker asked, and at Logan’s nod, continued. “You know she has some considerable business assets that could be of use to us.”
“I am not whoring myself out for business purposes!” Logan said, aghast.
“Shame.” Parker laughed, taking a sip of his water. “We could get a free tennis court out of it.”
“Was it the MILF?” I asked. We had a few cougars in the neighborhood prowling for their third or fourth round of pack husbands, not that we ever accepted their advances. “You got a thing for MILFs, Logan?”
Logan’s face turned red. “No! I…uh…I don’t have a thing for mothers. Where would you get that idea?” He finished gathering his snack and bolted for the door.
I gaped at him, my eyes narrowing sharply a second later.
The fucker was hiding something.
Leaping up, I dove at Logan, jumping and attaching myself to him like an annoying little backpack.
Big backpack. Nothing about me was little.
I was one of those massive hiking backpacks—big all over.
“What the fuck!” Logan dropped his snack, trying to shake me off him.
Parker and Hunter watched us with emotionless faces. They were used to my more extreme methods by now, and sometimes people needed to be jumped on when they were trying to be sneaky shits.
Logan grabbed the back of my shirt and whipped forward, launching my weight onto the couch where I sprawled out, grinning up at him.
“What the hell was that for?” Logan said, wiping his hands on his jeans.
“You’re hiding something.” I pointed an accusing finger at him. Logan was a private person, but he wasn’t a secret keeper, and the fact that he was trying to be one set off my internal alarm bells.
Logan waited to see if the others would intervene—they didn’t, I knew they were as curious as me—before his shoulders slumped. “Fine,” he muttered. “I may have met someone too.”
A disgruntled noise escaped Parker. “Please don’t tell me it’s one of the neighborhood husband hunters. You just said you turned another of them down.”
“No.” Logan shook his head. “She lives in the neighborhood, but I’ve never seen her before. She’s probably only a few years younger than us, if I had to guess. I saw her walking with a baby in a stroller.”
I cocked my head at him. “Did you get a name?”
While I was curious who had finally gained enough of his attention to bring it up to us, I knew she would be inconsequential compared to my pretty pink princess once he actually met her.
“Clover. No last name, though.” Logan’s lips turned down. “The baby had a diaper emergency, and she had to hightail it out of there. I wanted to follow her, but that would be a bit too stalkerish.”
“Who doesn’t love a little light stalking?” I laughed, clapping my pack mate on the shoulder.
He frowned at me. “Not funny. She’s a single mom. I don’t want to make her nervous.”
I shrugged. “If she lives in the area, you’ll run into her again.”
“Or her husbands,” Parker pointed out.
Logan shook his head. “No ring or visible bond marks.”
Hunter nodded. “Yeah, but someone had to get her pregnant.”
“Now why would you go and ruin it?” I asked, glaring at Hunter. “Let Logan have his fantasy until he meets our soulmate.”
“One of us needs to be realistic.” Parker shrugged.
“She doesn’t have a pack, just a baby,” Logan explained. “I didn’t get the full story, but it sounds like she’s not with whoever fathered the kiddo.”
Interesting. But not interesting enough to distract me from my angel. Once I’d tracked her down, Logan would forget all about the single mama.
“I haven’t had enough sleep for this conversation,” Parker announced as he sauntered past us and out of the kitchen. “You guys keep your obsessions to yourself, and we’ll find a realistic partner when the time is right.”
“There’s a difference between being realistic and being a stick in the mud!” I shouted at his retreating form. I’d bet my life that my angel was exactly the type of omega Parker needed. If anyone could pull the stick out of his ass, she could.