Five Days Until Christmas
Eden
When Eden wakes that morning, her mind feels clearer than it had in days. The scent of her pack was woven into the very air she breathed, the scent of sultry, spicy wood even stronger from Tenor's bicep pillowed beneath her cheek.
Her body is sticky and everywhere between her thighs aches, but it's not gnawing at her like it has for the past few days.
She stretches her body experimentally and she feels... good? Tired and hungry and sore, but good. Julius is curled around her back, and as soon as she moves, she feels his mouth at her throat, sucking and licking her skin in a way that makes the heat between her legs ignite back into an inferno.
When he lifts her leg onto his hip and starts gently nudging his cock against her entrance, she gasps and squirms and he pauses in response.
"Baby? You awake?"
"Hi," she croaks, and immediately finds herself pushed onto her back, Julius' icy gaze meeting hers before his face breaks out into a breathtaking grin.
"Fuck, I thought you were just having another wave. You good? You need to fuck?"
She blinks a couple times, her brain taking a moment to sort through the words. "No...?"
"Oh, thank fuck," he breathes. "My cock feels like it's going to fall off."
A memory of using her cardigan as a donut pillow after their rut flashes through her mind, but she decides not to bring that up because more memories flash through her mind in succession after that, memories of her mates responding to her every need during her heat, of them kissing her even when she snarled at them to fuck her harder, of them using their mouths and hands when her soreness had leaked through the bond towards them.
As Tenor and Luke start to shift with awareness, she becomes aware of an arm laying heavily across her belly and Luke's legs tangled with hers.
Her feet feel weirdly even stickier than the rest of her body, and when she shifts them she realizes there's pine needles stuck to them, probably because of the sap leaking from the evergreen tree that is still positioned at the end of her nest.
A manic giggle escapes her mouth but her arms feel too heavy to cover her face like she would otherwise.
She doesn't think she's ever felt this exhausted in her life.
This is what she imagines the day after a marathon would feel like, her limbs not fully under her command, her bones aching, her lips dry and swollen and her own tongue thick in her mouth.
Tenor shifts beside her and she feels the prickle of his facial hair as he nuzzles at the sensitive flesh beneath her ear.
His palm grips her belly with gentle insistence, and she can feel how happy he is beside her.
They feel even closer now, like her heat just tightened the bond, pressing them together in a tangle of mental limbs as much as physical.
But it's not uncomfortable, or scary, or stifling, or anything she might've thought it would be.
The closeness is perfect. It soothes all of her skin prickling, fills up all those empty spots inside of her that had ached so badly during her heat.
Then Luke is on top of her like a weighted blanket, his whole body covering hers and his half-hard cock digging into her thigh.
"You did so good, baby," he rumbles, his voice a bass growl that rolls through her entire body like an electrical current. "You feel knocked up yet or do I need to go again?"
He's so heavy she can't kick him, but it doesn't stop her from trying.