Chapter 6
Nadia
“Beautiful?” I stopped, blinked, then shook my head. No one had called me that in ages, but then my shoulders rolled back as my arms crossed my chest. “I guess since we’ve already been… intimate, an introduction is in order. I’m Nadia, and what the hell does someone’s looks have to do with it?”
When my therapist first broached the idea of seeing a sexual surrogate, I’d been horrified. In my mind, it was just prostitution dressed up in fancy language, but once I talked to Brendan, when he helped coax my fantasies out of me, I could see it was so much more.
“Sexual surrogacy is a legitimate service. Some people have…”
The descriptions of massive alphas in my books always gave me a thrill when reading, but the reality was something else. I was fairly tall for a woman, but right now I felt like a tiny little thing as they loomed over me.
And I kinda liked it.
That day, the way Tex seemed to know exactly what I wanted.
Those big hands picking me up like a doll and putting me on the workbench.
The way all of them touched me. I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly dry.
Without any prompting, any embarrassing conversations at all, they knew exactly what I wanted.
Part of me wished like hell they were employed by Good Vibes, because then I could walk right back into that consulting room and do it all over again.
But that wasn’t possible.
“Some people struggle with sexual issues,” I said finally. “They need help and there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“What did you need help with?”
Tex moved just a little closer, until I could almost feel the heat radiating off his body. Those blue eyes sparkled, the skin around them creasing, right before they started to turn silver.
“That’s not really…” My sharp reply trailed away as I considered the three of them. In light of what happened, perhaps they were owed an explanation. “I’m guessing you don’t normally have women wandering into your work sites ready to jump your bones.”
“Be a lot easier to get Tex out of bed if they did,” Ethan replied with a grin.
“OK, fine.” Staring at the elevator floor made it possible to get the words out.
“I… struggle to ask for what I want sexually when in a relationship. Sometimes it feels like that I’m there as a means for him to get off.
What I want, what I need, my pleasure.” I paused, because that came out in a strangled tone.
My fingers flexed, then formed fists before I forged on. “It doesn’t matter.”
Honest to goodness growls filled the lift carriage, and that forced me to look up again.
It felt like each one of them had grown twice as large as I saw three sets of silver eyes staring at me.
It’d been difficult the first time I talked about it with Brendan, but now the words just came spilling out.
“With my last boyfriend.” I shook my head.
“With all of them, it’d be so hard to ask for what I needed and then they’d…
” Other, far less pleasant memories rose and that had my eyes falling closed.
My head went backwards, resting against the steel wall of the carriage.
“They’d nod and go along with what I said.
” My brows creased. “Or they wouldn’t. Some shut the conversation down completely and I’d…
let them. The ones that pretended to listen, though, they were the worst. I’d feel hope, like things would get better, and then… ”
My eyes flicked open to see that each man had drawn closer. Fangs flashed as Tex’s lips pulled back in a silent snarl. I wanted to reach out, trace the shape of his jaw, feel the stubble on my fingertips, because his expression was a perfect manifestation of the anger I kept stuffed down.
“Of course, the next time we’d have sex, it’d be the exact same as it was.
Little to no foreplay for me, everything for him, and then I’d just lay there and stare as he rutted away on top of me.
His expression, his grunts, they were like punches to the gut and I just lay there, absorbing every blow.
” I couldn’t help but curl inwards, as if that would stop the pain.
“But I let him do that to me. I stayed. I—”
“Don’t do that.” Grey’s hoarse voice had me turning towards him. “Don’t. Don’t make excuses for that fuck.”
“But I—”
“He had your love, and that’s what he chose to do with it? Use you like a cock sleeve to jerk off in. What a cunt.”
I snorted at his frank language, then found myself laughing.
“I mean, yeah. My therapist didn’t put it that way, but…
” I nodded. “Grant was a cunt. We split up a while ago and I was determined not to make the same mistake again. That’s why I started talking to the people at Good Vibes.
And why…” I looked over at Tex. “I went up to a complete stranger and started stroking his shirt.”
“If that’s what makes you feel better.” I gasped when Tex took my hand in his.
I thought I’d imagined the way his skin seared mine, but I felt that heat again, right before he put my palm on his chest. My thumb moved without meaning to, feeling the soft nap of the flannel fabric. “Then be my guest.”
“I… can’t.” Pulling away from him felt wrong on so many levels, but I did. Shoving my hand in my pocket made it easier to stop from reaching out again. “What happened, it was a mistake and—”
“Doesn’t have to be.” Ethan looked all too pleased with himself right now. “Seems to me you came here for a reason, and while I’m sure Brendan is very educated, we were the ones that helped you get what you wanted.”
“Ethan…” Grey growled, shooting him a dark look.
“You want to find your voice, build your sexual confidence.” Ethan’s very impressive forearms crossed his chest. “To develop any skill, you need practice.”
“Which is why I started going to Good Vibes,” I replied.
“Why pay them a whole bunch of money?” He leant in closer, a hand hitting the wall above my head. “When you can have us for free.”
“What…?” I looked around me, that same feeling of unreality I’d experienced the last time I was in this building hitting me hard. “You want—?”
“Fuck, do I want.” Tex’s head tilted my way.
“What happened that day?” I braced myself for the worst, but was instead surprised by this.
“I’ve dreamed about it every night since, replayed the memory every moment I’m awake.
” My whole body jolted when one finger landed on the base of my neck.
His eyes bore into mine. “Did you dream of me, omega?”
“Yes.” That slipped out because he caught me off balance. Every time my head hit the pillow, the memory would resurface, forcing me to shift, writhe between the sheets as my subconscious walked us through what happened yet again.
“Of course, you did.” When Tex smiled, something lightened in my chest. “So whaddya think, omega? Want to make new memories?”
“If we do this.” Tex was all heat, but Grey was like a splash of cold water to the face. Something that I needed if my rapidly heaving chest was anything to go by. “Then there needs to be some ground rules established.”
“Ground rules?” I asked.
“You went to Good Vibes with an intention of developing more confidence sexually. That means communicating clearly with each other.”
“I know I’d fucking love a round two,” Ethan said with a smirk.
“But Nadia is still working out what she wants.” I glanced at Grey because there was nothing in his stony expression that led me to think he’d be my advocate, yet here he was being just that. His eyes met mine. “We need to explore what your limits are.”
“So she’ll come around to our—” Tex said.
“On neutral territory,” Grey said. “When everyone’s clear headed.”
I wasn’t in my right mind. If I had any sense, I wouldn’t have agreed to do what he said, something I considered minutes later when I got behind the wheel of my car, gripping the cool vinyl tightly. Was I…? Was I really going to meet them at a local pub and discuss my sexual do’s and don’t’s?
“I can’t,” I told my reflection in the rear-view mirror.
My eyes were wide, staring, and that familiar shade of brown, right before I saw something shift.
A faint glimmer of silver, there and gone again, right before my hand reached for the ignition, starting the car and then pulling out of the car park.
“I can,” I said in a very different voice, because those alphas were completely right.
With them, I was a different person. With them, I could ask, no demand, what I wanted.
My hips shifted on the car seat as I drove towards the pub.
It took a while for the ache Tex’s knot had left to ease, yet suddenly I was feeling the ghost of that sensation deep inside me, in preparation for more. “I can and I will.”
I had second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts about this on the drive over, yet when I pulled up the front of the pub, I stepped out of the car and walked inside.
There was no need to search for the alphas, because Tex and Ethan got to their feet as soon as they saw me.
Stopping to order a fortifying wine from the bar, I took a sip and then approached them.
“Nadia.”
Tex stepped aside, indicating that I should take a seat in the booth before him, then I felt the cushion shift slightly as he sat down beside me.
His thigh was a hard warm line, pressed against mine.
I fought the urge to place my hand on it by turning to face the table.
Ethan was watching everything with amusement, but Grey had his arms crossed on the table.
“So.” I shook my head and forced myself to smile. “How do we do this?”
The others went to reply, but Grey cut them off.
“You tell us what you want and don’t want to happen,” he said, staring at me intently.
“What your limits are. Some things you might love, some you might hate, and some things you might be OK with in certain circumstances. The men in your life before? They might’ve ignored everything you had to say about sex, but us?
” Was the look he gave his pack one of confirmation or a warning?
“If we’re to help you, we need to know about every single one of your fantasies. ”
This was what I had been working towards.
To ask for what I wanted and have someone listen to me, but still, that feeling to stay quiet, to just put up with whatever my partners dished out, rose up, ready to silence me.
Instead, I took a sip of my wine, savouring the dry, flinty taste before swallowing.
“Alright, where do you want me to start?”