Chapter 44 Nelly
NELLY
Wade's mouth claimed mine with galvanizing intensity; it both urged me onward and assured me he would safeguard my heart. His lips were tantamount to a spoken promise.
I’ll wrap you in a protective layer of my own design.
Like zinc coated around pitted steel.
I’ll make you impossibly strong, Nelly.
His kisses, offered so feverishly, nearly overpowered the voracious, volcanic ache of my heat.
God, his mouth was softer than I'd ever imagined, contrasting with the rough stubble that scraped deliciously against my skin. I melted against him, my legs threatening to give out, as his tongue swept inside my mouth, trying to twine with my tongue so we never had to stop kissing. Our kiss was a dance. It was beautiful. He was as good as any dancer I’d ever had on stage.
Despite his fervent need, Wade didn’t lose control. He remained the man with the healing hands, tending pregnant animals and nursing near life.
My fingers tightened in his hair, pulling him closer, desperate for more contact.
The kiss deepened, our breaths mingling as Wade groaned against my lips.
The vibration traveled through me, settling between my thighs where the slick had already soaked through my jeans.
His large hands spanned my waist, fingers pushing into my flesh as if he feared I might disappear if he loosened his grip.
Yet, still, when I whimpered as he tightened his grip too greatly, his hold relaxed.
He didn’t want to hurt me, even while lost in passion.
"Nelly," he breathed against my mouth when we briefly parted for air. His pupils had expanded so far that only a thin ring of green remained. "God, you taste like everything I've ever wanted."
I didn't have time to respond before his lips recaptured mine, more insistent now. The temperature in the barn seemed to rise ten degrees as Wade pressed me against him, his hardness evident the middle of my stomach. He was so tall. They were all so tall. Muscles for miles. Veritable giants. My body, now conformed to Wade’s, made me suddenly realize how very small I was in comparison.
My heat surged in response, another cramp seizing my abdomen.
It wasn’t horribly painful anymore, instead brimming with urgency and demand.
I whimpered into his mouth, arching my back and pushing my pelvis forward so drastically that Wade’s hands rushed to the small of my back to help me tilt and support me while leaning further forward to keep us smashed savagely together.
“Don’t stop kissing me,” I moaned against his lips, eyes closed. “Don’t ever stop.”
But seconds later, he was stopping. A third, enormous hand suddenly gripped my shoulder.
I knew it wasn’t Wade’s, because his hands currently kneaded my spine.
I was pulled backwards, my lashes parted in surprise.
I let out an animalistic wail of protest, my Omega wanting to finish what Wade and I had started.
Finish it until we were both stripped bare, panting on the floor of the barn.
A bolt of fury ignited in my chest, but the feeling quickly fizzled as I was twirled around, so quickly my head spun, to press against a new ridged, solid chest. A wall of strength. Line after line of muscle. Wyatt.
Wyatt, who’d shown me a hint of darkness beneath his charismatic exterior that morning in the kitchen when my Alphas were hiding the truth about the Eros email.
When he’d nearly lost it about the empty percolator.
When he’d pulled away from me like I was his enemy.
Right now, his expression held that same sort of thinly checked ferality.
The forest of his eyes was burning down, tree trunks turning into ash.
The way he stared at me took my breath away.
Like I was the only water that could douse the forest fire.
Like I was the very clouds in the sky, pregnant with rain and salvation.
"My turn," he growled, voice pitched so low it was barely human.
Where Wade had been gentle despite his hunger, Wyatt was an all-consuming force.
He crashed his lips against mine like this was his only chance to kiss me, and he planned to make the most of it.
One of his hands wrapped around the back of my head, capturing ginger strands and positioning my head exactly where he wanted it to be with gentle tugs of my hair.
His other hand spilled across my upper back, keeping me as close as possible.
His tongue did not dance, it slayed. It stole territory, conquering me with decisive resolve.
I surrendered completely—the twinging cramps in my stomach, the gushing slick, the radiating heat, the brain fog that made everything seem surreal and dreamlike. My body kept responding, with no end in sight.
Fresh floods of wetness.
Breath catching as my lungs struggled to gasp for air through minuscule gaps between our mouths when Wyatt repositioned us.
Wyatt’s taste was spicier than Wade’s but held the same base flavors.
These men, these Alpha twins, were impossibly wonderful. Impossibly mine.
My hands found purchase on Wyatt’s shoulders, nails digging into the hard muscle there as he continued to plant flags of ownership with every undulation of his gloriously firm tongue.
He was just too tall. I found myself lifting as high as I could, wishing for pointe shoes, wishing to be taller.
When Wyatt finally pulled away, arms dropping around my waist and hands knitting against my lower back, we were both panting like we’d run a marathon. I collapsed against him, grateful for the circle of his arms as my knees threatened to buckle.
A second pulse, added to the one currently racing through my veins, pounded between my legs.
My body was greedy…
Unsatisfied…
More, was all my brain could think.
"Please," I whispered, not even sure what I was asking for anymore. Everything. All of them. Now.
“Wyatt?” Wade’s voice behind me sounded, the cadence of his voice clearly making his twin’s name a question.
Wyatt's eyes flickered over my shoulder to Wade, something unspoken passing between them. Wyatt’s gaze tightened almost imperceptibly.
I turned within the safety of muscled arms and watched as Wade cocked his head to one side, his own gaze narrowing.
Their silent communication, flowing through the air for several heartbeats, ended with nearly identical nods.
I didn’t know what decision they’d made. I only knew that Wyatt dropped his arms from around me. My legs shook, my inner Omega screaming at the sudden loss of touch, but I remained standing somehow.
Wyatt walked around me, moving toward his brother. When they stood side by side—like one of those ‘find the difference’ puzzles that, at first glance are identical, but then careful inspection reveals numerous varied details—they began to undress, eyes locked on my face.
Their movements synchronized without effort.
Shirts came off in one fluid motion.
Light from the weathered, honeycombed roof snagged on tanned skin and hard ridges.
Their sagebrush tattoos seemed to glow with new colors as the brothers tossed their shirts aside, biceps flexing.
My jaw dropped watching the show.
Herat barely beating.
Lungs barely breathing.
Boots kicked off.
Belts undone, pulled from loops, dropped with metallic clinks to the hard floor below.
Jeans unbuttoned. Unzipped. Pulled slowly, achingly, torturously down their powerful, thick thighs.
More tanned skin. Scars I’d never seen. A baby cow tattoo on Wade’s right calf.
At any other time, I would have laughed in delight.
Yet the clever ink just made me want to drop to the ground and lick every inch of Wade’s lower body.
They didn’t remove their skintight briefs after the jeans, and I wanted to scream at them to finish or maybe race forward and pull the underwear off myself.
I wanted to see the promise between their formidable legs.
It was torment, knowing that the lengths of their manhood were hidden just behind thin cotton.
Every part of me fizzed and popped with anticipation.
Wyatt and Wade were hard, their dicks pressing against the meager leftover material to create massive mounds that made my mouth water.
They could fill my every cavity, flood seed into my waiting womb, and provide the answer to this heat taking me over.
Wyatt turned to the side, giving me the slightest peek of a jagged, long-healed wound running from just below his right, rounded ass cheek, down to the back crook of his knee. He gazed behind him and his twin at the other three Alphas in their pack.
No, our pack.
My pack.
I watched as Boone, Cooper, and Levi moved forward, drawn like planets trying to align around a new sun.
A sun. A star.
I could be their star.
Bring a piece of Seattle to Wyoming.
Sagebrush Ranch’s Lucky Star.
Guiding them in the darkness.
Keeping them in my orbit.
Their eyes never left mine as they began shedding their own layers.
Boone’s incredibly broad chest bore tattooed symbols that reminded me of hieroglyphs.
Arrangements of triangles, lines, solid black squares and diamonds curved down from each shoulder, rivered beneath his pronounced collar bones, and met in the middle of his chest to then trail down in a straight line, disappearing beneath the hem of his boxers.
I unconsciously took one step toward him, hands flexing, wanting to touch those markings.
Cooper drew my attention next, his lean torso rippling as he pulled his henley over his head, exposing a thick patch of dark blonde hair nearly shaped like a heart and all of the silly, endearing food tattoos.
Beside him, Levi also methodically undressed, offering me a hairless torso and pronounced Adonis belt.
The sight of that sculpted V-line made things curl in my belly.
I wanted to kiss every inch of it, work my way down to his hardness, and wrap my lips around his manhood.
Licking my lips, I hitched in a breath.
The world fogged as a lovely layer of new lust washed over me.
I shook my head a little, trying to stay in the present, to not miss a single detail.
With predatory movements, my Alphas surrounded me.
These five mountainous men, with eyes hooded and faces flooded with hunger, made my legs tremble so hard that I was surprised my teeth didn’t chatter from the vibrations.
The slick between my thighs was ridiculous.
The jeans were damp all the way to my knees.
"Your turn," Wyatt said, his voice roughened with desire.
For the first time since the full violence of my heat hit, I hesitated.
They’d see the imperfections without barrier.
They’d see them all at once.
Twisted feet, gnarled from a lifetime of dancing.
Toenails that never grew quite right after being mercilessly abused by pointe shoes.
Hips that were permanently misaligned from the repetitive extension and rotation necessary for ballet.
The slightly exaggerated curvature of my spine, as if I had moderate scoliosis, from arching back and swooping forward again.
All the flaws that came from a lifetime of seeking gracefulness. Of working towards a career that hemorrhaged to death after one bad landing.
God, they’d see the accident.
They’d see the surgical scars.
My entire life was written on my body, telling a story just like Boone’s Arapaho tattoos. I gazed down at it, still hidden beneath the borrowed clothing.
“Nelly.”
I blinked up, finding Cooper’s face so near mine that my heart skipped a beat.
“Do you know how beautiful you are?” He asked the question as if he had been privy to my inner thoughts.
The barn, and everything in it, narrowed down to the color of his eyes.
Deepest blue.
Sparks of metal.
There was no lie in his gaze.
"Yes," I whispered back, though my answer was a lie. I'd spent years looking at my body in unforgiving studio mirrors, cataloging every flaw, every deviation from perfection. I’d compared myself to the other dancers, to how much prettier they were, how they danced better. Geoff hadn’t helped that, when he’d moved on to Lisette. "I just—"
"You don't need to hide from us," Cooper continued, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from my face. His touch was feather-light but sent electricity racing through me. "We want all of you, Nelly. Nothing left out."
The twin pulses, one a product of my heart, the other a product of my craving for them, made decision making nearly impossible. All I could feel was how they’d flutter in one moment, a gentle pressure, then intensify the next, pounding so hard my head hurt.
My Omega instincts wanted nothing between my skin and theirs, while my human insecurities screamed caution.
“We’ll help you, Nelly.” Boone approached from behind Cooper, his face gentle despite the fire in his eyes.
“Just tell us if we should stop.” Levi appeared, shimmering into view.
I nodded, surrendering to the inevitable. To what I desperately wanted despite my fears.
Boone’s fingers slipped beneath my shirt, calloused fingertips leaving trails of fire across my abdomen as he slowly lifted the fabric. Beside him, Levi’s heated gaze tracked every inch of skin revealed, his hunger palpable in the thickening air.
The sweetness of my heat created a scent cloud around us, doming us into our own private universe. As Boone gently freed me from the shirt, sliding it over my head and tossing it aside, I felt a singular moment of clarity pierce through the haze of yearning.
This was right. This was where I belonged. With them.