46. Atlas Flower – Meaning Charming Enthusiasm, The variety of your conversation delights me
46
ATLAS FLOWER
(FAIRY FANS, RED RIBBONS, SILK FLOWER)
MEANING: CHARMING; ENTHUSIASM, THE VARIETY OF YOUR CONVERSATION DELIGHTS ME
OCEAN
________
I snuggled down into the plush couch and glanced out the windows. The sun was setting once more. It was sad, because we were going home tomorrow, but at the same time, I was glad to be going back.
My husbands needed to get back to deal with the fallout of the Extasis launch. On a call earlier today Raina said she had something for them, but because of the sensitivity, she was hesitant to share it without being in person.
I had a few events coming up I needed to prepare for, and I wanted to see the progress my hybrids had made. But just because I was happy to be going home didn’t mean the last few days hadn’t been pure bliss. They had.
There was the sex, and working the way through the toys like Cam had promised. But it wasn’t only that.
They took me all over the city. To more and different ruins—no sex this time. Restaurants where we were photographed, and a gorgeous symphony with the temple mountain lit up in the background.
Pictures of us were still everywhere.
That photographer that had been following me was annoyingly persistent as well. Wherever we went, he was there. He was obnoxious, but since he wasn’t doing anything illegal, we did our best to ignore him.
A picture even surfaced of Everett and I post ruins. The comments were still awful, though when I looked, I saw more good ones than had been there before.
Amazingly, I didn’t care. Focusing on them and no one else allowed me to breathe and let go of those fears.
Micah sketched on his tablet across from me, and Cameron had his arm slung around my shoulder as he read a book. Everett was on his laptop, probably answering emails. The silence was easy and comfortable.
And in that comfort, I wanted to get to know my husbands more. I knew them. The way they fucked and the way their moods changed. The different kinds of smiles. I now knew that Cameron was an endless abyss when it came to eating pasta and Everett, though you would never guess it, went wild for anything sweet. Bonus if there was any kind of ice cream involved.
I learned the way Micah saw colors before anything else, and his favorite shades were jewel tones.
But I wanted more than that. History and family. The kinds of things I would have learned if we had courted and dated and not gotten married because of a contract.
Well, it was still a contract, even if it didn’t feel like it anymore. I needed to remember that. Hard to do when it felt like they were everything I’d been missing. Still, I wasn’t going to focus on it. I was grabbing onto this temporary happiness with everything I had.
“I want to play a game,” I whispered.
Everett looked up from his screen. “What did you have in mind?”
“Twenty questions. Also known as a way I get to ask you whatever I want.”
Tossing his book to the side, Cameron chuckled. “I have a better idea. How about truth or dare? You still get to ask questions, but it’s more fun.”
“But you’ll all pick dare and not answer anything.” I pouted.
He nuzzled into my neck. “Maybe we make the rules that we pick truth and you pick dare.”
“Are you going to tell me that you won’t just dare me to do something sexual that will derail the game completely?”
Cameron’s grin turned hungry. “We’ll go first. So you’ll get at least three questions. But no, I don’t promise that.”
I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. “Fine. You first.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Tell me how the three of you met?” Micah smothered a laugh, and Everett looked like he was holding one back. I looked at them. “What?”
“I think it’s actually better if Cameron doesn’t tell this story, little nymph.”
Cam scoffed and used the arm around my shoulders to pull me into his lap. I stiffened, the instinct of not wanting to be too heavy rising hard and fast. I usually sat next to them. Not on them. If I was on their lap I straddled or laid across it. Not placing all of my weight directly on their legs.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I was doing a marketing presentation for a product we made for a marketing class. A waterproof phone case. So we had to test it. These two were interested in it after I finished the demonstration, and we just clicked.”
“Okay,” Micah said. “Now can I tell the real version?”
I tried to move, but Cameron held me fast as he sighed. “Fine.”
Micah looked at me and smirked. “He was doing a demonstration for his product. But what he’s leaving out is that it was at a frat party, he was nearly blackout drunk, and his idea of a demonstration was filming him jumping off the roof of the frat house into the pool with his phone in the case.”
My jaw dropped open, and I twisted so I could see his face. “Is that true?”
He shrugged, but there was a smile in his eyes. “They’re exaggerating.”
“Are we?” Everett turned his laptop around. A video was on the screen. Small, shaky, and grainy, but there was music and college kids drinking around a pool. And suddenly, there, on top of the two-story house, was a younger Cameron. Shirtless and in swim trunks. “HERE WE GO, BITCHES.”
I burst out laughing and clapped a hand over my mouth.
The Cameron on screen leapt, doing a somersault in the air before landing feet first in the water. There was a momentary silence from the crowd before he surfaced and crowed with victory. The crowd followed suit, and he climbed out of the pool with the biggest smile on his face.
He stumbled to whoever held the camera and held up his phone in the case. Showed it working. Clearly he was very drunk, swaying on his feet, but he pulled up what looked like a logo.
A thousand-watt smile straight at the camera. “Good as new, no matter what you do.”
The video ended, and I couldn’t stop staring. “Holy crap.”
“No matter what these dickheads say, that worked. We sold out of our entire stock when we put out the video.”
Everett laughed. “And Cameron DuPont, marketer extraordinaire, was born.”
“But that still doesn’t tell me how you met.”
I tried to move again, and Cameron slid his arm around my waist. “Stop trying to get off my lap, sweetheart.” My mouth opened, and he kept speaking. “And if the next words out of your mouth are about crushing me, I’m going to go get those leather cuffs we haven’t tried yet, put them on you, and the only getting off you’ll do will be as you sit on my face.”
Desire poured over me, and now I was squirming for a different reason. But I closed my mouth. That was exactly what I’d been about to say.
“We were at the party,” Micah said. “Saw the stunt, and when we ran into him later, congratulated him. We felt the pack bond click in. Thank fuck he remembered enough of the night to remember us.”
“You guys had already met and formed the pack?”
“In a manner of speaking,” Everett said. “Though I was a business major and not marketing, I had to take that same class and we created a product. We decided on a coloring book based on the college itself, and we needed an artist.” He shook his head. “I got volun told I was going to be the one to find them. So I went to the art department and ran into Micah nearly tearing his hair out over a piece he was working on. But his style was exactly what we needed.”
I looked between them. “And that’s when you knew?”
“Yes and no.” Micah this time. “We felt the beginnings of bond, and were pretty sure it was one, but it didn’t fully snap into place until Cam.”
The thought of them in college made me smile. “Are there any other videos I should see?”
“No,” Cameron said at the same time as Everett said, “absolutely.”
Behind me, Cam grumbled something inaudible before he kissed my neck. “I think that’s more than enough for a dare.”
“No,” I moved off his lap on purpose this time. “That was all your question. I want more.”
“Greedy?” He asked with a smirk, knowing exactly what I was remembering. He called my body greedy, and for them? It absolutely was.
He reached for me and I danced out of his reach. He would get me eventually. But I was going to play the game. “Okay, Rett. I know Micah has siblings, but I don’t know about your family.”
Setting the laptop aside, he leaned forward on his elbows. He was wearing a t-shirt, so all that did was make his biceps strain against the fabric of his shirt and put his forearms on display. The dark rings on one forearm and the opposite bicep were visible when they usually weren’t, and I loved them.
“My biological mother has passed,” he said. “But my biological father is alive, along with one additional father and mother. One older sister.”
I stopped to think, and my eyes went wide. “I… they’ve never met me. All the stuff they’ve seen about me?—”
Everett reached out with a hand. “They don’t think anything bad about you, little nymph. We let them know we were getting married. All our families.”
Cameron smiled. “Beta parents here, only child, and Micah comes from one of the biggest packs I know.”
“They’re happy for us,” Micah said softly. “But they understand why meeting you right away couldn’t happen.”
I took a breath slowly, pushing down the instinctual nerves and fear. “Do you want me to meet them?”
“Of course, princess.” Micah caught me by the waistband of my jeans and pulled, spilling me into the overstuffed armchair beside him. The tablet he’d been working on had a drawing program open, and beside it was… one of the photos he’d taken on the beach.
We’d been so exhausted when we came back upstairs I’d forgotten about them until just now. I looked ethereal. Eyes closed, head tilted back, hair wet and wild across my face while a glowing wave struck my stomach, but stopped just before Micah’s glowing handprint right over my heart.
“Wow.”
“Here.” He took the tablet and opened the album with the rest of them. There were so many . More than I realized he’d taken. And they really were pretty. I looked pretty.
Maybe Trinity and Isolde were right and I actually could do a boudoir photo shoot and look good while doing it. Or maybe it was because it was Micah who was taking the photos, but I couldn’t stop staring at them.
“Do you like them?”
All I could do was nod.
“You’ve got one more question, sweetheart,” Cameron said. “Make it a good one.”
“What if I have more than that?”
He chuckled. “We’re not going anywhere. You can ask us questions any time.”
As Micah turned the tablet off and set it to the side, I snuggled into him. For the first time, I really felt like it might be true.
“Why did you choose art?”
He took my hand and turned it palm up, tracing the lines with his fingers. “Cam’s right. I come from a big family. And believe it or not, they’re all a lot more like Cameron. Loud,” he smiled. “Boisterous, outgoing. I’m none of those things.”
“You’re not exactly shy.”
“No, but in comparison, when you’re in a pack that has six people, and you’re one of four kids, it can be a stark difference. Everyone was always talking, and honestly, it started with writing. If I couldn’t get a word in, I would write down what I needed and hand someone a note.” He laughed and lifted my palm to his lips. “Then I started doodling with those notes. It just… grew from there.”
I liked picturing a young Micah holed up in a corner with a sketchpad while the rest of his family created chaos around him. The image was so true to who he was. “I’m glad.”
“All right.” Cameron slapped his thighs as he stood. “Your turn for a dare. But I’ll give you the chance to earn one more question.”
“What’s the catch?” I narrowed my eyes. My husband was already grinning, preparing to play.
“Make it to the bedroom before I catch you.”
I was out of the chair before he finished speaking, sprinting for the bedroom with him right on my heels. But I didn’t run as fast as I could, because I wanted him to catch me.
And he did.