44. Roman Osprey #2
He gives her exactly what she asks for. Wes worships her with the patience of a man who has waited his entire life to be invited. He keeps her at the edge until her thighs shake around his shoulders and his name breaks apart on her tongue.
I lie beside her, kissing her whenever she reaches for me. She pulls me close enough that Wes’s hand finds my body while his mouth remains on her. Pleasure draws the three of us tighter. Scarlet comes with one hand buried in Wes’s hair and the other gripping mine.
Before the tremors finish, Wes rises over her.
She reaches between us, guiding him. “Please.”
His gaze locks on hers as he presses inside.
The first movement is slow. Scarlet’s lips part, and her purr turns ragged.
I kiss her while Wes finds a rhythm, one hand braced beside her shoulder and the other holding her hip. She keeps me against her mouth, her palm sliding down my body until I groan into the kiss.
Wes reaches for me too. His fingers close around my cock and stroke in time with the movement of his hips. Scarlet feels what he is doing and smiles against my lips.
“My greedy omega,” Wes says.
“Ours,” I reply.
Scarlet makes a needy sound.
The answer pleases her.
Wes draws back before his knot can swell. Scarlet protests, but I move into his place behind her. She rises onto her hands and knees, looking back at me over her shoulder. Her trust strips every clever word from my mouth.
I enter her slowly. Wes kneels in front of her and catches her face between his hands.
She kisses him while I move inside her, her body shifting between us.
Wes’s hand reaches down to stroke her clit and my shaft as I drag my dick out and back in.
The sensation tears a rough sound from my throat. Scarlet arches her back.
“More,” she says. “Give me both of you.”
Wes kisses her harder as we shift.
I hold her hips and move onto my knees, pulling her up, while Wes gets into position. Two slick strokes and she squeezes around me, her pussy working my cock as she comes. I hold her steady until her breathing softens and then I help her straddle Wes.
She takes hold of him and wastes no time, taking his thick cock in one go. I move between them as Wes wraps his arms around her and curls her onto his chest. He slips out, and I take his place.
Together, we take her apart between us. The contact is slick, hot, and intimate.
Pleasure moves through their scents. Mine answers.
Our strokes find a rhythm until we’re panting, our bodies sliding together in a coordinated push toward oblivion.
Scarlet purrs as though she has found the center of the pack and intends to remain there.
She comes again with my name against Wes’s mouth, and I can feel his urge to knot in the bond.
I pull out and stroke myself to the sight of Wes driving back into Scarlet, his knot already swelling.
He roars as he comes, and I spill onto the rounded swell of her ass before curling over her to press kisses to her back.
Scarlet trembles in an orgasm so big that she keens in pleasure before going limp on his chest.
There is no distance left between us. Wes’s purr fills the nest, no restraint holding back the deep sound. It vibrates through her and into my chest.
“Alpha.”
Wes stills. Even now, balanced at the edge of instinct, he waits. “Tell me,” he says.
“I want your bite.”
His forehead presses against hers. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. I want my pack.” Scarlet’s hand reaches back to close around mine.
Wes bares his teeth near her gland. He doesn’t bite.
She turns her head and offers the vulnerable curve of her neck. “I choose you as my Alpha,” she says. Her words shake. Their meaning does not. “Protect me without possessing me.”
Wes’s control breaks with a sound that is almost grief and rocks her on his knot. Scarlet cries out as pleasure crests through her body. Then his teeth sink into her bond gland.
Scarlet goes completely still, and the room fills with cedar.
I feel his terror from when the bullet struck his vest and Scarlet screamed his name, the loyalty and devotion of his years with me, and the fierce, reverent joy of finding the omega he didn’t believe he was allowed to need. All of it pours through our new bond.
Scarlet gasps. Her eyes find mine, wider than they were during pleasure. “I feel him.”
Wes releases her skin and licks gently over the bite. His body shakes against hers.
Scarlet holds his face. “You came back to me,” she whispers.
“Always.” The word enters the bond before it leaves his mouth.
Scarlet cries. The bond carries the reason.
She spent her life believing closeness meant waiting for the moment someone decided she was too strange, too dangerous, or too difficult to keep, and fearing that if someone stayed, it would cost her herself.
Now she knows that Wes’s bond doesn’t feel like a lock.
It feels like an open door he will guard but not block.
The emotional force of it moves through the three of us, even though my connection to Scarlet isn’t yet complete.
She reaches for me. “Roman.”
I shift to her side, moving closer until my forehead meets hers. Her fingers trace my bond gland. I expect her to ask me to bite her next. Instead, she looks at me with tears bright on her face. “I want to choose you differently.”
My breath catches. “How?”
“You spend your life translating for everyone else. You make space. You help people say what they need.” Her thumb moves along my skin. “I want you to be the one receiving.”
Understanding breaks through me with enough force that I can’t form words.
Scarlet looks up at Wes. He is still knotted inside her, his arms secure around her waist. His eyes meet mine, and love passes between us. Permission is not the right word. Welcome.
Wes kisses my mouth. Then he murmurs, “Let her claim you.”
Scarlet turns back toward me. “Do you want my bite?”
I didn’t expect her to ask me that. It’s possible but not an assumed part of pack structure. It’s a gift she wants me to accept.
My voice fails on the first attempt. “Yes.”
Scarlet cups the back of my neck. “I choose you, Roman.” She sits up as much as the knot will allow, pressing her forehead to mine.
“I choose you because I love the way you see the world. You make me laugh when I want to disappear. And your hands know how to hold every broken piece without treating me like I’m broken. ”
My eyes burn.
She kisses me once. Softly. Then she bares her teeth against my gland. “Mine?” she asks. The possessive word from her feels like being found.
“Yours,” I say. “And his. And my own.”
Scarlet bites, and pain flashes. Then the bond opens. Sage and rain flood every part of me.
Her fear. Her humor. The budding hope she protects beneath suspicion. Her love for Wes, vast and bright. Her love for me, no lesser, no softer. My place in her heart has its own shape. My name lives there.
The realization tears through me more powerfully than pleasure, breaking open the last hidden part of me that feared being the beta meant remaining slightly outside the center. Scarlet’s bite pulls me in. Wes’s hand closes around the back of my neck.
The bond between Wes and me, built over years, blends and weaves its roots through the new connections. Cedar threads through sage and rain. Cardamom and cinnamon rise between them. The pack bond settles as a living circle.
Scarlet releases my skin and licks the mark.
I’m crying. There is no point pretending otherwise. She kisses the tears from my face.
Wes leans around her and presses his forehead to mine. Through the bond, I feel them both. Scarlet’s fierce joy. Wes’s relief. My own love returning to me from two directions.
“My pack,” Scarlet says. The words vibrate through the bonds. Wes purrs against her shoulder, and I wrap my arms around them both.
We remain joined in the nest until Wes’s knot releases and the intensity softens into warmth. I clean Scarlet’s bite while Wes brings water, and she tends my neck. Then Wes settles against the headboard and draws her into his lap. Scarlet goes willingly.
I lie beside them, and she stretches her legs across mine.
The cottage holds cedar, cardamom, cinnamon, sage, and rain.
It smells like the home we will spend the rest of our lives choosing.