5. Lincoln
Lincoln
She first refused food, then ate half a sandwich while glaring at it.
She had refused water, then finished a bottle after Hudson told her dehydration would make the cramps worse.
She had refused the nest, then nearly snarled when I tried to move a pillow that had slid toward the edge of the mattress.
Now she sat cross-legged in the middle of it, hair in wild waves around her flushed face, lips parted. The robe had slipped off one shoulder. Beneath it, the black dress rode high on her thighs.
She looked young and furious. She also looked like ours.
I looked away before that thought could put me on my knees.
Hudson set the tray carefully on the desk instead of the bed. “Drink first.”
“That’s how they get you.”
“Who?”
“Men. Doctors. People with clipboards. Mafia men who want to kidnap you. They get you with one sip of water from a dodgy bottle, and then you’re in the back of a van, eating a banana for your electrolytes, and being shipped to god knows where.”
I shook my head, wondering if she was delirious. “There are no bananas and we’re businessmen not mafia. You watch too many movies.”
Hudson picked up the orange juice, opened it, and poured a small amount into a glass. “One sip, and then Lincoln can stroke your back again.”
Mary’s gaze slid to me. Her scent deepened and the violet pulled tight around my lungs.
“That’s bribery,” she said.
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“I respect your honesty.” She took the glass from him and drank.
Hudson watched to make sure she swallowed. “Good.”
“Don’t sound pleased. It makes me want to be difficult.”
“You have been difficult for two hours.”
“And yet I feel I have untapped potential.” She lowered head to the nest and grinned.
“You really do like being a brat, don’t you?” I quite liked it too, but I wasn’t going to tell her.
“Yes. Give me the coat,” she said.
Hudson stopped with the glass halfway to the tray. “Which coat?”
“The one on the chair.”
“You have my shirt.”
“I need more.” She put out a hand and made a small imperious gesture. “Lincoln’s sweater is doing all the work in here. It will burn out.”
Hudson lifted the coat off the armchair and handed it over without further comment. She pushed it down the side of the nest, patted it twice, and looked enormously pleased with herself.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m not keeping it. It’s just temporary.”
“We know,” Hudson said.
I sat on the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb any textile territory under her control. “Can I touch you?”
Her banter stalled.
For all her mouth, for all the heat pouring off her skin, that question still made her pause. I was glad of it. I wanted that pause. I wanted her mind in the room with her body, every time.
“Yes,” she said.
“Where?”
Her fingers tightened around the glass. “My back.”
I shifted behind her and placed one hand between her shoulder blades, over the robe. Her skin burned through the thin fabric. She shuddered, then leaned back into the pressure with a sigh she tried to turn into a cough.
“Subtle,” I said.
“Silence.”
I rubbed slow circles over her back. Hudson took the empty glass from her and set it aside.
A cramp rolled through her. Her body went rigid, then curled forward. The sound she made wasn’t witty or controlled, not dressed up in anything. Pain broke through cleanly.
I moved with her, one arm around her waist, keeping her from folding too far. “I’ve got you.”
“It hurts.” The words were small, and they tore through me worse than any joke.
Hudson was in front of her, his hand hovering near her face. “Mary, look at me.”
She shook her head.
“Look at me, sweetheart.”
Her eyes lifted.
“Do you still want us?” he asked.
She stared at him, breathing hard.
The cramp eased enough for desire to rush in behind it. I saw the shift in the way her thighs tightened, in the slick heat of her scent, in the tremor that ran through her where my arm held her steady.
“Yes,” she whispered as her hand reached between her thighs and she pulled it out, soaked with slick.
“Tell us again,” Hudson said.
Her eyes flashed with irritation and need. “I want you both to touch me. I want you to make the pain stop. I want sex, and if either of you asks me again, I will bite.”
“No biting tonight,” I said.
Her head turned slightly toward me. “Coward.”
I smiled against my better judgment. “Honorable coward.”
“That’s the worst kind.”
Hudson reached for the tie she had stolen from him and set it aside with care. “May I move this?”
Mary watched him. “Fine,” she said. “I thought you might use it to tie me up.”
“Or gag you.” He placed it on the pillow beside her, safely within nest territory. And then he touched her face.
Mary held absolutely still as he held his hand careful against her cheek. He brushed his thumb over the sweat at her temple, and his scent changed, restraint fraying at the edges. Blackberry, rain, whiskey, and that answering violet he couldn’t hide now.
“If we do this,” he said, “we go slowly until your body tells us otherwise.”
Mary swallowed. “My body is currently shouting at you to go fast.”
“Then we’ll listen carefully.”
“You must be deaf,” she murmured.
I pressed my mouth to her shoulder through the robe, not skin yet. Fabric first. A warning. A question.
She arched back into me. “Lincoln.”
My name in her mouth nearly finished me. “I’m here.”
“Touch me properly.”
Hudson’s eyes met mine over her shoulder. He nodded.
I slid the robe from her shoulders.
The black dress beneath was thin and soft, clinging to her fevered skin.
She had no bra on, and the sight of her made my mouth go dry.
Full breasts, heavy and tender under the fabric, nipples tight enough to show through.
Her shoulders tried to curl in, even while heat made her press back against me.
I put my hands on her waist, nowhere near her chest. “You’re beautiful,” I said.
She made a noise of disbelief.
“No,” I said near her ear. “All of you. Not pieces. Not the parts idiots stare at because they don’t know what else to do with themselves. All of you.”
“I’m too fat.”
“You’re perfect,” I whispered.
Her breath hitched.
Hudson bent and kissed her. Mary surged into it with a hungry sound, one hand fisting in his shirt.
Hudson caught her jaw, steadied her, and gave her the pressure she was asking for without letting the heat take the reins entirely.
His control was a beautiful thing to watch.
He kissed her like he had already decided she was ours.
I kissed the side of her neck. Not where I wanted to bite. A lower, safer place. Her pulse pattered under my mouth. I licked her skin, until I felt the tender place where a claiming bite would sit and only kept my teeth away from it by force of will.
Mary shivered.
“You can,” she whispered.
I stilled.
Hudson broke the kiss at once. “Can what?”
Her eyes were dazed, but she was there. “Bite me.”
The word went through me like a blade.
I rested my forehead against her shoulder. “Not tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re in heat and in pain, and as much as I want it. I’d never do that.”
“Oh. You don’t like me.” Her voice sounded so young.
“I like you. A lot.”
Hudson brushed damp hair from her face. “A bite is for when you can choose it without your body screaming louder than your mind.”
Mary’s lips parted. For one fragile second, she looked less like a sassy little storm and more like a woman being protected from something she hadn’t known she needed protecting from.
Then she blinked like she had brought herself back from somewhere else. “That’s annoyingly decent.”
“We do have moments,” Hudson said.
“Don’t let it become a habit.”
“Too late,” I said, and kissed her shoulder again.
Her laugh broke into a moan when my hand slid over her stomach and down to the hem of her dress. I paused there.
“Yes,” she said before I asked.
“Again.”
“Yes, Alpha. Please.”
I pushed the dress up her glistening thighs. The scent of her slick hit the air, and I had to close my eyes. Hudson’s breath left him in a controlled exhale that sounded very close to surrender.
Mary heard it. “Still calm?” she asked.
“No,” Hudson said.
“Good.”
I touched her over her underwear first. She bucked into my hand and caught herself, embarrassed even now.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” I said.
“I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking about it.”
“Stop being perceptive.”
I laughed against her neck and pressed my fingers more firmly to her. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Demanding.”
“Dying.”
“Dramatic.”
“I am. Dead almost. Just finish me now.”
“Is that another way of asking us to enter your nest?”
She hissed. “Yes!”
Hudson moved down the bed, slow and deliberate, giving her time to understand his intention. He kissed her knee. Her thigh. The inside of her leg, just above where my hand worked her through the soaked fabric.
Mary stared down at him. “You’re going too slow,” she said, voice shaking.
Hudson’s mouth curved against her skin. “I’m trying to be gentle.”
“I’m about to explode with need here. I need your mouth on me.”
Then he hooked his fingers in her underwear and looked up. “Then may I?”
Mary’s breath caught. “Please do.”
He drew them down her legs with impossible care. Not that Mary was happy about that.
I kept one arm around her, one hand on her hip, holding her steady when she trembled. Hudson spread her thighs and kissed her once, gently, as if greeting something sacred rather than starving.
Mary made a broken sound, and then his mouth settled properly between her thighs.
Her head fell back against my shoulder. “Oh, God.”
“Hudson,” I said, because she needed the name.
“Yes, Hudson, not God. That would be weird, me being a good catholic girl and all. Well, not right now, but—“ she wittered, but then stopped when he rewarded her with his tongue.
The heat changed from pain to need so fast she shook, and I held her through it, one hand cupping her breast after she dragged it there herself.
The sound she made when I touched her was raw and sweet.
I kept my palm broad, my touch firm, no grabbing, no making her feel like parts.
She was all of it. Every inch. Every sharp word. Every secret softness.
Hudson worked his tongue on her with devastating patience.
But Mary didn’t have patience. “I need more,” she gasped.
He lifted his head. His mouth was wet with her slick, his eyes darker than I’d ever seen them. “You need to come first.”
“I need you to stop managing me. I know what I need.”
“No, you don’t.”
She growled.
I nipped her shoulder through sheer reflex, and her body went taut.
“There,” Hudson said, and put his mouth back on her.
“No… Yes… No… Oh my…” She came hard.
Her scent burst through the room, violet and blackberry and slick heat, and her whole body arched in my arms. I held her as she shook. Hudson kept his hands on her thighs, and I watched his tongue slide through her folds.
She went boneless. Then the heat came back. Her eyes opened, wet and furious. “You stopped.”
I pressed a kiss to her damp temple. “You asked him to.”
“If I say no. Ignore me. No means yes from now on.”
“Understood,” Hudson said as he moved up the bed and wiped his mouth with a towel that Mary immediately snatched back because it had become, apparently, part of the nest.
The nest, she didn’t have.
“Good.” She looked between us. “Clothes off.”
My body reacted so violently I had to breathe through it. I wanted to tell her we were in charge, but this omega was something else.
Hudson didn’t move. “Mary, once we start, it may be harder for you to stop.”
“I know. And I don’t want you to stop.”
“Say the rules.”
Her frustration flashed. Then she saw his face and understood he wasn’t being difficult. He was building the ground beneath her feet before the heat took more of it away.
She sighed. “Okay. Once we start, it may be harder for me to stop,” she said.
“If I say stop, you stop. If I panic, you stop. If I freeze, you stop. If I pass out, you stop and call a doctor, and if I die, I want it noted that the hotel towels were scratchy. Oh, and my sister Maeve needs to collect my body and take it home, not Ireland, her home in Surrey where she will bury me in her garden, so her kids can visit me and her dog can pee on my grave as punishment for being the only stupid omega who died during her heat.”
“Very specific but you’re not dying or going to die,” I said.
“You don’t know that. I might burst a blood vessel. My heat is already causing my blood pressure to spike, and—“
“Are you always this dramatic?” Hudson leaned in and kissed her forehead to interrupt her.
That undid her more than his mouth between her thighs had.
Her face changed. Softened. She looked away quickly, but not before I saw it. She wasn’t used to tenderness arriving without a reason.
I stood and stripped off my shirt.
Mary watched. Her lips parted.
I’d been looked at by plenty of people in my life. Rugby crowds. Doctors. Strangers. An ex-wife. But no one had ever made me feel it quite like she did, feverish and half furious.
“You both have such good bodies,” she said. “I thought you’d be a little dad-bod-ish.”
“Oh, I do apologize.”
“Please don’t. I love that you’re both buff.” Her eyes lowered, and she bit her lip. “And so big and knotty.”
Hudson laughed.
I went back to the bed and cupped her face. “Last check, Mary. Are you sure?”
“If you ask me one more time, I’ll start charging you a consultation fee.”
“Mary.”