Chapter 11
The room smells like the most delicious garden after a storm.
It should stink like cum and musk and sweat. But it just smells… safe. Like the place I didn't know I missed.
Intellectually, part of me knows that I should be panicking right now.
I'm still stretched around James' knot, completely filled and sated in more ways than one.
Thick, broad arms, dusted with light gold hair, are wrapped around me, encircling me in a way that makes me feel like I belong there.
Even though I'm literally locked onto the cock of a man I barely know—I couldn't run away if I wanted to—there's no tight tangle in my chest, no squeeze in my jaw, no prickle of hair standing on end.
My body and my omega are both telling my brain that I'm safe.
Ralph is resting his head on my stomach, sweat beading on his back, as I stroke his hair. A blissed-out smile smooths over his face. Even though I haven't known him anywhere long enough to know this, the way Allen keeps glancing at his face makes me think this isn't an expression he wears often.
The big, dark-haired man is behind him, wiping him with a tissue, murmuring quietly, his brown eyes shining when he glances up intermittently at our faces as he talks.
Sweat sheens across his olive skin, his lithe muscles glistening in the faint light.
"Don't get cold," he murmurs, bending to rifle through the large chest at the end of the bed.
Next to us, Zeke is resting with his head in Seb's lap.
He's facing us, not saying anything, but his eyes are taking all of us in.
His hand twitches towards my leg, the back of his knuckle glancing across the side of my ankle.
When I glance down at him, his eyebrows twitch up in a silent question.
I nod, a little smile dancing across my lips before I realise it.
The headboard squeaks slightly as Seb shifts so Zeke can see us better. He idly strokes Zeke's hair, closing his eyes as his mouth relaxes into a soft grin.
Something warm and tender and soft unfurls inside me. I lean contentedly back against James, wriggling to make myself comfortable, my pussy fluttering with pleasure as the movement twangs new nerves. A little shiver runs up my sweaty spine at the frisson of movement. He groans.
"Uh, you might want to keep still unless you want to be stuck there all night," he mutters.
A rough snort sounds from beside us. Seb's biting back laughter.
My face flushes with embarrassment. "Sorry 'bout that," I mutter, my hands twirling Ralph's short curls. It isn't enough to stop the occasional involuntary twitch of my hips, though.
A gentle finger runs over my cheek as James pulls me tighter into his embrace with his other arm. "You are glorious. Never apologise for anything like that." His lips drop to mine in a tender kiss, then his cheek rests against my head. "My lack of control is not your problem."
I blink a couple of times, processing the words.
When did anyone ever say something like that to me before? Apart from Loz and Aunty Di—
I melt around him a little more, unable to stop myself. James pinches his lips between his teeth.
The bed shifts as Zeke lifts his head off Seb's lap with a soft groan. There's a low rumble from behind me. "Don't move, Zeke." James' tone brooks no argument. Zeke stills, his expression turning wooden.
The lid of the box at the end of the bed closes with a soft thud as Allen stands up and shakes out a large green-and-red tartan blanket.
Ralph's little sigh of ease as Allen tucks the impossibly soft woollen blanket around Ralph's shoulders seems to make the room glow with warmth, but the sharp hiss of air from Zeke, when Allen smooths the blanket over his back, has James shifting behind me.
"Allen, I think Zeke needs a heat pack and some arnica, and, uh, I'm a bit tied up here…" James' rumble is low and gentle, but there's a hint of worry in his tone.
"Sure thing." His words are clipped.
I glance down at Zeke again. He's stationary, still lying in Seb's lap, but there's a stiffness in his posture that makes me wonder if he's not resting any more. The little furrow in Seb's brow makes me think he's noticed it, too.
Something tickles in the back of my brain.
I don't normally notice these little quirks of expression, especially not with people I've only just met—I'm normally too busy trying to fix whatever's urgent and broken or fill the awkward silences.
But there's nothing I need to fix right now, and my silence doesn't feel as awkward as it usually does.
And I'm not sure whether it's me noticing these little tells, or whether it's my omega. My content, sated, happy omega.
Allen's face has lost all of its gentle softness as he snatches a pair of boxers from the floor and marches out of the room. The rustling and the sound of a microwave beeping from the kitchen gives way to a soft hum and the hiss of a running sink.
From my—admittedly limited—experience, it isn't usually the alpha in charge who does the running around. One of the packs I found on Packr who "helped" me through one of my previous heats liked to instruct me on things they thought my education had been lacking in.
Ugh, I'm so glad I don't have to put up with those jerks again.
They, rather unceremoniously, informed me that it was always the person with the lowest standing who did the menial jobs. Usually me, unless I was completely out of it.
But even so, the faint memory of the Designation Relations health class I was forced to sit through in high school suggested something similar.
The thought always made my skin crawl. Maybe it was being raised from the age of eight by a single, elderly beta, but I don't think I'll ever really understand pack dynamics the way that everyone thinks they're "supposed" to be.
It wasn't just Pack Simpson posting that awful video of me begging for knots in the final semester of the master's I never got to finish that put me off the idea of getting packed up.
And while I get the sense that these men wouldn't have a bar of such misogynistic crap, I'm still confused. "Isn't Allen your pack alpha?"
Ralph chuckles from my lap. "Allen is a caregiver first, pack alpha second. And anyway, when it comes to recovery and aftercare, James is always in charge."
I feel James shrug behind me. "PT training has its benefits," he mutters uncomfortably, nuzzling against my neck. My pussy gives another pulsing throb, making me let out a little moan. He hisses quietly, sucking air between his teeth. "Please, Dellie." His low growl sounds pained.
Pulling the blanket around himself, Ralph nuzzles against my belly. I'm embarrassed by how his head sinks into the soft rolls, but his radiating satisfaction means that I can't bring myself to push him away. "This shouldn't be this comfortable," he mutters, snuggling into me.
Then he lifts his head and looks me in the eye, and pushes himself up so he is kneeling. The blanket falls from his shoulders as he cups my face in his hands. His storm cloud eyes lock onto mine. I can't look away. It's almost like an invisible filament is connecting us.
My lips part, a fresh wave of longing coursing through me.
The room seems to fall into stillness. His thumb strokes my cheek.
His lips are parted as though he is about to say something, but no words come.
He leans into me with a kiss that is gentle and tender and possessive all at once, making me clench and James groan.
Separate parts of me inside my chest are pulled together. I don't think I realised they had fallen apart before.
Ralph pulls away from the kiss and rests his forehead against mine. "Where did you come from?" he mutters.
That hair-thin connection, which I thought was just a metaphor I'd built in my head because of how I felt when Ralph looked at me, pulses.
What the…?
Long, windy fibres of discomfort tangle in my chest, swamping the little thread with unease. Turning my head away awkwardly, I shrug. "Balga, before it got bougey?" I joke.
There's a tiny rumble from behind me as Ralph sits back on his heels, a flicker of strain in his eyes. If I couldn't feel James' chest vibrate, I would've thought I'd imagined it.
Seb lets out another loud snort. I poke my tongue out at him.
"Don't pretend like you know where that is, Bondi," I giggle, and nudge him in the ribs.
Seb huffs an exaggerated sigh as he strokes Zeke's hair again. "Rude. I'll have you know I'm totally a man of the people. Salt of the fucking earth. I mean, totally truffle salt—"
Ralph's laugh drowns out the rest of his sentence as he clambers over James' lower body.
After helping me rearrange my legs into a less uncomfortable position, he pulls the blanket over me and James, then snuggles in next to us, my earlier moment of apprehension dissolving into the warmth of his body. His face relaxes back into contentment.
Leaning forward, James rests his head on my shoulder.
"Well, wherever you came from, I'm glad you did," he mutters into my neck, the soft tickle of his lips making me twitch around him again.
I wish I knew what to say to that; the silence that seemed so comfortable earlier now just seems…
unfilled. I'm grateful when my awkward stutter is interrupted by the rattle of the door handle.
Allen, clad in boxers and a purposeful smile, comes back into the room with a white tube, a stack of neatly folded flannels, and a faded blue heat pack that smells like baking bread.
"Comfortable?" Allen asks as he gently places the heat pack on Zeke's back. Zeke hums in agreement as Seb continues to idly stroke his hair.
"Yes," I whisper, before I can think. Softness sweeps over Allen's face. I'm not sure whether it's contentment or relief. Or whether I'm just reading something into it.