Chapter 9
RYDER
Ryder found Spencer in the shower.
It wasn’t hard to do—it turned out Spencer hummed obnoxiously as he rinsed off, loud enough to be heard over the regular buzz of the rec center’s locker room.
And while the designated men’s alpha locker room had an open shower area for those who just wanted a quick wash, a few cubicles were separate, curtained off for those who preferred privacy.
Spencer had chosen wisely—one of the private cubicles.
Good boy.
Ryder stepped in quickly, shucking off his trunks and leaving them in the corner near Spencer’s.
He was already half hard in anticipation of what was to come, and when Spencer turned at Ryder’s arrival—his loud humming cutting off abruptly—his gaze fell immediately to Ryder’s thickening cock.
Then to his thighs. Then his cock again.
Spencer licked his lips, his eyes still focused somewhere about three feet below Ryder’s face. “Where’s, um, where’s Ash?”
Ryder jerked his thumb to the left. “Shower next door. He doesn’t feel like getting messy with us right now.”
Spencer did that bobblehead nod Ryder noticed he did when he got particularly flustered. “Oh, cool. Super cool.”
It was disturbing how badly Ryder suddenly wanted to fuck him.
He’d been watching Spencer all morning—him and Ash both.
They’d raced each other like water demons and then both jumped between the pool and the loungers about a dozen times before Ash roped Spencer into a game of Speed on the loungers, the two of them dripping water onto Ryder’s favorite deck of cards.
It was good for Ash to have someone to match his energy that way. Ryder could keep up, but he was stationary by nature. More of a rock than a babbling brook. It had pleased him just fine to stay horizontal and sun-fucked while they ran around like children.
When Ash had finally dozed, he’d done it with his head slumped on Spencer’s shoulder as they lay side by side. Spencer hadn’t moved an inch after it had happened, staying frozen in place as if breathing the wrong way might fuck everything up.
It had kind of made Ryder want to kiss him stupid.
Instead, he’d gotten up slowly from his lounger, stretched his back muscles thoroughly, then leaned over Spencer, whispering in his ear, “Don’t worry, pretty boy. I’ll get you squared away before you leave today.”
Ryder had very obviously been referencing their earlier conversation, and Spencer hadn’t protested, hadn’t claimed he didn’t need relief or that he’d prefer to wait for Ash and his omega slick. He’d only flushed pink, swallowed hard, and given Ryder a jerky nod.
Ryder’s dive into the pool had been cool and triumphant and more than a little necessary to keep himself from getting hard in his trunks.
It had been a long five days of waiting for Ash to go into heat again. A long almost-week of Ryder remembering only too well exactly how Spencer looked and sounded when he came. Of remembering that Ryder hadn’t gotten a taste of that cock or that ass for himself.
But it had been Ash who’d broken first. “This is bullshit,” he’d said when he’d woken up pheromone-free for the fourth day in a row. “He’s probably freaking the fuck out and trying to talk himself out of it all.” He’d given Ryder a look. “I don’t need to be in heat for you two to fuck.”
And then he’d started the group chat, demanding Spencer’s pool attendance. And that had been that.
It was certainly one method of wooing. Probably not the correct method, but heaven fucking forbid someone try to tell Ash Teller how to do something he’d already set his mind on.
“Turn around,” Ryder told Spencer now. He let out a low chuckle at the slightly panicked look Spencer gave him. “I’m not going to fuck you,” Ryder reassured him. Not yet. Not here. “And we don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to. We can just share the spray.”
Sure, Spencer’s cock was now at full attention, jutting thick and heavy from the dark thatch of hair at his groin. But that didn’t have to mean anything.
“No, no,” Spencer said hurriedly. “I want to. It’s been forever.”
Again, it had barely been a week. But still. Poor, sex-starved baby. He needed a lot of touch, this one. Not just in a sexual way either. Ryder hadn’t missed how often Spencer scent marked his roommates, or how often he wandered around with hints of Noah’s ocean-air pheromones on his skin.
Spencer whirled around to face the showerhead, and Ryder came up behind him and pressed in close, his front to Spencer’s back.
They were about the same height—Spencer had an inch or so on Ryder, although Ryder had him beat for broadness—and they lined up beautifully, Ryder’s cock pressed snugly in the cleft of Spencer’s muscled cheeks.
Ryder wrapped his arms around him. “Lean into me.”
Spencer sagged back immediately, as if he’d only been waiting for permission to let go.
“I have a theory,” Ryder told him, his voice a deep, husky rasp. He let his chin brush against Spencer’s scent gland, transferring his forest-rich pheromones onto Spencer’s skin.
Spencer inhaled sharply, but he didn’t ask Ryder to stop. “Y-Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Ryder had one hand on Spencer’s toned stomach and one on his chest, and every breath he took was ripe with sweet, spiced chai. “You’re pretty, and cocky, and you’re an alpha with a nice dick.”
He could almost hear the confused smile in Spencer’s voice. “Three truths. Where’s the lie?”
“No lies.” Ryder pressed his hips forward and pulled his hands back, pinning Spencer completely. “My theory is that people want you to use it, that pretty dick. They want you to make them feel good, live up to your reputation.”
Ryder let the hand on Spencer’s chest wander, brushing against the barbell in Spencer’s nipple. He swept his thumb against it. “You don’t get taken care of very often, do you?”
More of Spencer’s weight fell into Ryder with the question, and Spencer didn’t sound the slightest bit smug when he answered, “No. Not often.”
“That’s what I thought.”
Ryder tugged gently at the barbell, pinched it experimentally between his fingers. Spencer let out a quiet groan, then grabbed Ryder’s other wrist and brought Ryder’s hand down to his cock. “Touch my dick. Please. I really need it.”
Ryder hummed, fighting Spencer’s hold to reach up and pump some of the university’s cheap conditioner into his cupped palm. He wrapped it around Spencer’s cock without further ado, grinning at the way Spencer bucked into his grip.
His cock felt good in Ryder’s hand—the weight of it, the soft skin where Spencer’s knot would inflate. How much Spencer wanted it felt even better. There was something terribly appealing about his desperation to be touched, his urgent need to get off.
Ryder had found it extremely interesting that Spencer hadn’t even put up a token protest about the exclusivity clause Ash had shoved in his face.
It wasn’t like Ash had been subtle or persuasive about it either.
He’d just steamrolled everyone, as per usual.
And Spencer had laid himself down on the ground and let him.
It was the trust aspect that did it, Ryder was pretty sure. Trust and genuine appreciation—that was what got to Spencer. That was what Noah and Chase gave him without question. That was what Ash was offering with exclusivity.
If a person—or persons—wanted to woo this alpha, that would be the way, wouldn’t it? Sex would be a tool but not the key.
That wasn’t to say sex was without its merits.
“Tell me what you like,” Ryder murmured, squeezing firmly at the hard cock in his hand.
“I like my neck kissed,” Spencer whispered back. “And my ears.”
For just a moment, Ryder froze, his fingers wrapped tightly around Spencer’s erection as something jolted in his chest, foreign and familiar at the same time. He’d been asking what Spencer liked in a hand job—pressure, speed, that kind of thing. He hadn’t expected such a sweet, simple answer.
The alpha kept surprising him.
Ryder hummed again, caressing Spencer’s slit with his thumb. “You like a little sweetness, pretty baby?”
Spencer let out a shuddering sigh, arching against Ryder’s frame. “Yeah. It’s nice sometimes, huh?”
Well, fuck. That was no hardship. Ryder ghosted his nose over Spencer’s shoulder and then placed a firm kiss to the crook of his neck.
He was rewarded with another shudder, paired with a bitten-off whine. Spencer was sensitive there. No wonder he liked it.
Ryder had never had to learn someone before, either in the bedroom or out of it.
First there had been a sea of indifference and disinterest, and then there had been Ash, bright and fierce and perfect, and Ryder hadn’t needed anything more.
With their history, he and Ash didn’t have to wonder what the other was thinking very often, or guess at what made them tick.
Their knowledge of each other was ingrained at this point, an unconscious kind of awareness that didn’t require any effort.
And whatever had happened between them as they’d grown older had been natural, an extension of a well-established dynamic.
But somehow in the past months Spencer had gotten under their respective skins, and now Ryder had a whole person to figure out anew.
Spencer was a new element, and surface-level knowledge wasn’t going to cut it for long if Ash really wanted to make something of this with the three of them.
Ryder needed to know him. All of him. Nothing less was going to cut it.
He started stroking the heavy cock in his hand, placing a trail of kisses along Spencer’s long neck, up to his ear. Ryder bit gently at the lobe, smirking at Spencer’s groan.
“Hush,” Ryder told him, rocking into him, trying to relieve some of the ache in his own dick within the firm globes of Spencer’s ass.
The friction wasn’t enough, so Ryder released Spencer’s cock, ignoring the alpha’s whispered yell of protest to squirt more conditioner on his own cock, sliding it experimentally between Spencer’s cheeks. There. That was better.
Ryder fisted Spencer’s erection again, circling an apology for the delay into the tender skin with his thumb.
“No one cares, by the way,” Spencer said, letting his head fall back against Ryder’s shoulder, his throat now displayed almost obscenely to Ryder’s alpha gaze. “About the noise.”
“You fuck in the showers a lot?” Ryder asked him gruffly, more curious than anything. He wasn’t going to waste his time getting jealous of Spencer’s past bedpost notches. As long as no one was trying to take what Ryder and Ash were claiming now, it was all good.
“Only—only sometimes,” Spencer gasped, pumping his hips along with Ryder’s movements, chasing the tight grip Ryder was teasing him with. “Hard to get alphas.”
“Easier for you than for some, I’d think.”
“Why?”
“Well, look at you,” Ryder said simply.
Spencer whined, gripping hard at Ryder’s wrist as his hips jerked again.
Funny how Ryder used to think praise would make Spencer too cocky, that he thought enough of himself already and didn’t need any more encouragement.
But that wasn’t the case, was it? Spencer was weak to it, in the way of people who didn’t get nearly enough.
Praise softened him. Sweetened him. Added a generous dose of sugar to his spiced-tea scent.
Ryder sped up his rhythm, kissing and licking at the neck Spencer had arched so obligingly for him, tonguing and nibbling at his ear.
“Oh shit,” Spencer moaned, quiet but not as quiet as he should have been given the circumstances. “I think—think I’m gonna come.” He let out a drunken-sounding laugh. “Fuck. What are you doing to my stamina, big guy?”
Ryder’s own balls were high and tight with arousal, his cock throbbing in the warmth of Spencer’s skin. He bit blunt teeth into the crook of Spencer’s neck, and the other alpha shuddered, spilling into Ryder’s hand.
Ryder let the spray rinse it off as he rutted against him. Spencer had gone boneless and pliant in his arms, but that didn’t matter. Ryder was close.
“God, your cock is thick,” Spencer slurred, nuzzling his nose into Ryder’s neck, his chai scent so rich Ryder could almost taste it on his tongue. “Can’t wait to take it.”
Fucking god.
It didn’t take Ryder long to come after that. He tensed and tightened his hold around Spencer’s muscled torso, his cock pulsing its release into the dip of Spencer’s lower back.
He looked good covered in Ryder’s cum.
But they couldn’t leave the locker rooms that way, so Ryder washed them both off lazily. Spencer gave him a dazed, goofy grin, looking as cum-drunk as they came. “You’re really committed to this heat situation, huh?”
Ryder contained his eye roll, but only barely. “I’m a very committed person in general,” he deadpanned.
Spencer yelped as the cubicle curtain slid open, revealing a towel-clad Ash. Ryder just shut the water off. He was surprised Ash had waited this long to begin with.
“Are you two done yet?” Ash asked with a scowl. “I’m starving.”
Impatient little fuck. Ryder knew exactly what Ash was doing, too, with his go, go, go energy this week.
Ash was avoiding. Not Ryder or Spencer, clearly, but the act of processing the major changes his body was going through. He was doing anything he could to stop from thinking about his new designation and what it meant for himself and his future.
That was fine. It would catch up to him eventually—maybe after the next heat, or maybe when his pheromones started showing up for good—and Ryder would be there for him when it did.
Ash could get pissed off or melt down or whatever he needed, and Ryder would pick up whatever pieces got fractured in the aftermath.
Ryder looked to Spencer, and Ash followed suit. Ash’s scowl immediately transformed into a wicked grin. “Look at you. Fucked stupid. Ryder’s got nice hands, doesn’t he?”
Spencer blinked at him. “This is the alpha locker room, isn’t it?”
Ash shrugged. “I’m undesignated. No one gives a shit. If they do, Ryder glares at them for me. What are we having for lunch?”
Spencer scratched at his chest. “Um, tacos?”
“Shit, yeah. Tacos.” Ash stepped forward and tugged Spencer into a filthy, open-mouthed kiss. Spencer barely got his hands on Ash’s hips before Ash was pushing him away again just as abruptly. “Get dressed fast, then. And leave your hair alone. We don’t have time for your vanity.”
And then he was gone, leaving the curtain wide open in his wake.
The confusion in Spencer’s pleasure-flushed face was a beautiful thing. Ryder couldn’t help his low chuckle as he tossed a towel Spencer’s way.
See? Steamrolled.