33. Four
Four
Taryn
The men’s SUV was stuffed to the gills with three alphas, a beta, an omega, and all the luggage and supplies we could fit in the space remaining.
The cabin was a ten-hour drive from Farendale, so after a frenzied afternoon packing, and Brooks and Lin going on a pre-heat grocery run, we’d started out bright and early the next morning.
I’d slept the first two hours while the sky was still dewy and gray. Now that I was awake, though, I wanted more from Caine. His middle-of-the-night declarations were beautiful, and such a relief. But I legit needed so much goddamn context. And, boy, was he delivering.
“Wait, so this whole time Brea’s been your therapist ?”
My mind was so fucking blown right now.
He and Brea sat in the captain seats, Lin driving and Brooks riding shotgun. I sat in the middle seat of the far back row, currently looking back and forth between Brea and Caine like they’d just revealed they’d Bonnie and Clyded the Farendale Trust Bank.
“Yeah,” he answered slowly, the closest thing to a smirk I’d ever seen on his face. “Though I don’t think that’s gonna work out in the end.”
Brea chuckled. “That’s assuming I’m not booted from the program for fraternizing with the clientele.”
Worry marred Caine’s face. “Wait, they better fucking not—”
“Kidding, Caine,” Brea assured him with a squeeze to his hand.
“I’ve kept Olinda updated every step of the way.
I, ah…I prepared a transition of care form when we sent the heat partner invite.
I’d intended to speak with you privately about it, make it clear that every bit of it was your call, but with everything that happened after…
” She swallowed, her pomegranate scent tart enough to my my jaw hurt.
But she continued a moment later. “The morning after the ballet, I went ahead and submitted it so that when we get back you can be paired with another resident.”
So much was assumed in that sentence. That we would get back. That when we did, we’d be in a position to resume our lives—go to work, go to therapy, go to dinner and ballets and grocery stores.
Caine’s scoff pulled me from my spiral. “Yeah fucking right,” he said.
Brooks turned from the front seat. “Don’t you mean, ‘yeah, fucking right you are!’” He tried for a stern expression, but the dimples ruined it.
I tied my hair up in a high messy bun to get it off my neck and pulled my sweatshirt off as Brooks and Caine and Brea bickered over each other about whether or not he’d continue therapy after all this was done.
It became background music as I stared out the window and watched the landscape rushing by.
A playbill from the show was still nestled in the seat pocket. I pulled it out and fanned myself, hoping for a rest stop and some fresh air soon.
Brooks
Theoretically, we should’ve had four or five more days before Taryn’s heat set in.
Practically, ten hours in the cramped confines of the SUV with three alphas was apparently too much for Taryn’s fragile hormones.
It was the universe, I was convinced, giving us the biggest and most ironic fuck you of all time.
We’d pulled off to refuel and stretch our legs around hour five, and Lin had shoved the keys into my hands. The alphas could already sense she was barreling toward her actual preheat, and when she did someone had to be behind the wheel who wasn’t at risk of going into rut.
So at hour seven, when Taryn’s first needy whine had broken through and she’d climbed into Brea’s lap, I was driving, forced to keep my eyes on the road.
I did mention the cosmic ‘fuck you’ at play here, right?
That hour was the hardest of my life, staring ahead into the dark, listening to first Brea, then Lin, use their mouths and fingers to soothe the increasingly desperate omega to climax. Her sweat smelled like salted toffee, and it made my cock ache to be soaked in it. She fell asleep in Brea’s lap.
Caine sat up front with me, not trusting himself still, even after all the revelations of the last few days.
My alpha will take over. I won’t be myself. I don’t know if he can share. I don’t want to hurt anyone.
Excuse, excuse, excuse, but no one asked me, so I kept my mouth shut.
Taryn woke halfway through hour eight, her perfume so thick it spun even my head a bit. Caine sat next time, hands clenched on the console and door handle, the tendons of his neck standing out sharp as he clenched every muscle in his body in response to her once again rising preheat scent.
“ Liiiin ,” she whined, slipping off her mate’s lap and into my mate’s.
“Ssshhhh, precious, we got you,” he answered, voice low and sultry.
“Need a knot, Alpha.”
Fuck me sideways and bury me upside down.
Next moment, and we were swimming in toffee and honey, blackberry and cream. The air positively dripped with their heightened scents, Taryn falling deeper and deeper into heat and Lin barely hanging onto the sane side of rut.
My cock stood up at the sounds they made as he fucked her, Taryn riding him with the prettiest sighs and moans I’d ever heard, as he brought her to the edge and then slipped his knot inside her right before they both toppled over. I breathed through my mouth and kept watch out the windshield.
Barely ninety minutes away from the cabin.
Behind me, sounds of kisses tingled my skin. To my right, Caine sat stiff and terrified, like he was staring into the barrels of a firing squad.
Still, his own blood orange and cinnamon aroma bloomed bit by bit.
“Need alpha,” Taryn mewled from behind us.
“Right here,” Brea crooned.
“Need all my alphas,” Taryn insisted through a whine that bordered on a sob.
I cut my eyes toward Caine. “Get back there, man.”
He gave a sharp shake of his head. “Can’t.”
“I swear to god if you don’t go back there and comfort that omega I will roll you down the mountainside.”
Caine growled at me, and I only stared pointedly at him longer than I should’ve before he finally unbuckled and scrambled over the center console to the backseat.
“Caaaiiiinnne!” came her ecstatic reaction. “You’re here!”
“I’m here, princess,” he answered with gentleness. “I’m right here.”
No further sex sounds emanated from the backseat, so maybe she’d just needed to be surrounded before drifting off. The others must have, too, conked out by the pheromones thick in the air.
Seventy minutes out.
If we hadn’t been scaling a goddamn mountain via winding ribbons of road, the wind often strong enough to rock the vehicle, I’d have gunned it. But I figured arriving alive beat arriving fast.
Fifty minutes out.
Fuck, the car smelled good.
Thirty-two minutes out, I heard stirring in the backseat. Someone was waking.
Next thing I knew, I couldn’t see the road.
“What the—”
“Kiss me, Brooks,” Taryn breathed against my lips. She pulled my face to hers, her tiny body straddling my lap with no issue.
Well, with one rather glaring issue.
“Fuck, sweetness, I need to see the road behind you.”
“Need you, Brooks.” She pressed downward on my lap, and my traitor cock stiffened.
Not good, not good, not good.
“Hey, backseat alphas,” I called out, “now would be a great time to tend to your omega.”
Lin leaned up between the two front seats, trying and failing to pry Taryn off my lap. “C’mon, Taryn, we’re almost to the cabin and Brooks can join in there.”
“ Nooooo .” She wrapped her arms around my neck and held on. On the one hand, she was now all but glued to my lap despite Lin’s and Brea’s and Caine’s best efforts. On the other, she was glued to my lap, and I could halfway see the road over her shoulder.
So, all in all, not the worst.
Until, that is, she rolled her hips against my still-hard dick and my vision damn near blacked out. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—”
“Taryn,” Brea barked. The omega sat up in my lap, and I leaned as far into the door as I could to see around her. “Come to the backseat. Right now.”
Omegas could resist alpha barks with effort.
During heats took even more effort, but she could have disobeyed if she truly wanted to.
Somewhere beneath the haze, though, she must’ve known she needed to listen.
That Brea wouldn’t have barked to begin with if her obedience wasn’t imperative.
So with a kiss to my cheek, she grasped Lin’s hands and scrambled off my lap and over the center console back to the alpha-filled backseat.
“Good girl,” Brea crooned behind me, pumping out buckets of pomegranate perfume. “That’s my good omega, listening so well.” Taryn’s scent blossomed too, and I thought I even heard her purr in satisfaction.
But my chest and my lap were cold.
Twenty-seven minutes out.