Chapter 38
Luna
Consciousness comes back in pieces.
The first piece is motion. I’m being carried. The second piece is smell, radiating off the chest I’m pressed against. Bram.
The third piece is the heat.
And I mean it literally. A rolling boil starts behind my navel and radiates outward until my skin feels too tight to hold it in. My omega is screaming, thrashing around the inside of my skull, demanding the thing we just lost.
“I’ve got her,” Bram says. His voice rumbles through my ribs.
“Bed’s ready,” another voice says. Ash. Sharp, controlled. But the cedar and chocolate in the air are spiked, frantic.
“Here.” Reed. Woodsmoke and musk.
I open my eyes. We’re in a big room I’ve never seen. The heavy curtains are pulled against the sun. Ash stands by the foot of the bed, chest heaving. Reed is at the side, pulling back the heavy quilt. Both of them are looking at me, and their irises are swallowed by black.
Bram sets me down in the center of the mattress. The moment his hands leave my skin, my body arches off the sheets. A whine rips out of my throat, loud and desperate.
Empty, my omega shrieks. Fix it.
“God, she’s burning up,” Reed says, a hand hovering over my stomach.
“Heat spike,” Bram says. He sounds wrecked. “I pulled out and she just... went under.”
Ash steps in. His hand is cool against my forehead. “Sweetheart. Can you hear me?”
Focus. I drag my eyes to his. “Yes.” The word scrapes out of my dry throat.
“How do you want us?” Ash asks. “Tell us.”
Knot, my omega supplies. Now, babe.
“Knot,” I gasp. I reach blindly until my fingers tangle in Ash’s shirt.
Reed is already moving, shucking his shirt over his head. Bram steps back, his chest rising and falling fast.
“I’ll give it to you, sweetheart,” Reed murmurs. He drops his jeans, and the sheer size of him makes my breath hitch. He climbs onto the bed, crawling over my thighs.
“Wait,” I choke out.
Reed freezes. “Too fast?”
“No.” I look at Ash, then at Bram. My omega is a greedy, feral thing, and right now, she doesn’t want just one. She wants the whole pack. She wants to be so overwhelmed by sensation that the panic doesn’t have room to breathe. “I need all of you.”
Ash’s jaw flexes. Bram takes a sharp breath.
I swallow. “Reed,” I gasp, my vision blurring. “I need you inside me right now. Knot me.” I turn my head toward Ash, who is still standing by the pillows. “And Ash. Give me your cock. Bram, please watch us.”
Silence drops over the room. Heavy. Charged.
“I need the noise gone,” I whisper, staring at the ceiling. “Drown him out. Overwhelm me until I can’t hear anything else.”
Ash’s eyes go dark. He steps out of his clothes in two fluid motions, revealing a thick, heavy length of cock, pre-cum already gleaming at the tip. He gets onto the bed near my head.
“Open,” Ash says, soft yet absolute.
I part my lips, and Ash guides himself inside. The taste of him is salt and cedar, and the stretch is immediate. I groan around him.
At the other end, Reed settles his weight between my open thighs. “I’m coming in, sweetheart.”
He lines himself up against my slick, swollen entrance and pushes. He fills me in one long, relentless glide. I cry out around Ash’s cock as Reed seats himself to the hilt, stretching me wide. The woodsmoke and musk of his scent crashes into Ash’s cedar, and my head swims.
Reed begins to move. Deep, dragging thrusts that pull a constant stream of slick from my body. With every inward push, his hips snap against mine. With every retreat, my walls clench, begging him to stay.
Ash’s fingers tangle deep in my hair to hold me steady while he takes my mouth, setting a brutal, matching rhythm. Every time Reed pulls back, Ash drives deep past my lips, hitting the back of my throat.
Oh.
The sensory overload is absolute. There is only the rough friction of Ash in my mouth, the heavy, claiming pound of Reed inside me, and the overwhelming scent of alphas drowning out the rest of the world.
“Christ, Luna,” Ash grits out. His hips stutter. “You feel too damn good.”
Bram moves into my line of sight. He’s shed his clothes too, all heavy muscle and broad shoulders. He kneels beside the bed, watching us with dark, dilated eyes.
“Bram,” I mumble around Ash. I reach a hand out blindly.
Bram catches my hand. He presses it to his chest, right over his racing heart, then leans down. His mouth traces a line from my hip bone up my side. He catches my nipple in his mouth, sucking hard, and the jolt of electricity shoots straight down to where Reed is currently wrecking me.
I scream. My jaw goes slack, and Ash pulls back just in time to let the sound out.
“Don’t stop,” Ash says, his thumb pressing into my cheek. “Take me back, sweetheart.”
I open for him again. I swallow him down, my tongue working along the underside of his shaft. Bram slides his hand down my stomach, his fingers reaching past my hip to find the swollen nub of my clit right above where Reed is thrusting. He presses his thumb down, rubbing in tight circles.
The coil inside me snaps tight.
“Ash,” I whine, my hips bucking up against Reed.
“I’ve got you,” Ash growls. His thrusts turn frantic. “Take it.”
Reed’s groan vibrates through the mattress. “Knotting,” he grits out.
Reed drives forward with a brutal groan, sinking deep enough that his swelling knot finally breaches the tightest part of my anatomy. The thick bulb forces its way through, seating itself firmly inside me, and we are completely locked together. My walls clamp down around him violently.
“Yes,” Reed snarls. He throws his head back as his hips lock.
Ash’s grip in my hair tightens. “Swallow, Luna. Good girl.” He hits the back of my throat one last time, spilling hot and fast over my tongue. I swallow it down convulsively.
Bram’s thumb presses harder, and I shatter.
The climax rips through me, turning the edges of the room white.
I scream a name—Ash’s, Reed’s, Bram’s, maybe all three.
My body spasms uncontrollably around Reed’s knot as he pumps his load deep inside me.
The honey and gooseberries of my scent explodes, coating the walls of the bedroom in pure, unfiltered omega satisfaction.
When my vision finally clears, my chest is heaving. Ash is pressing a kiss to my forehead. Bram is kissing his way up my neck, resting his chin on my shoulder. Reed is slumped over my body, his heavy weight a comforting anchor pinning me to the mattress.
“How are you feeling, sweetheart?” Ash murmurs, smoothing my hair back.
My omega is purring so loud it rattles my ribs. My body feels bruised and well-loved.
“I don’t,” I manage to whisper. My voice is rough. “I don’t think I can move.”
Bram chuckles against my neck. “You don’t have to. We’ve got you.”
Reed shifts slightly. His knot is still firmly locked inside me. He buries his face in my hair, his woodsmoke scent a heavy blanket wrapped securely around us.
Mine, the feral thing in my head says, settling down to rest.
I don’t argue with her.
***
I open my eyes to find the room’s dark now. Someone’s set a lamp on low in the far corner, and the rest is heavy shapes and heavier wood. It’s nighttime, which means I was under a lot longer than it feels like.
And the air. The air is so thick with the three of them I could shut my eyes and point.
It’s the smell of a place I used to invent on bad nights and never once let myself believe was real.
“Hey.” The chest under my ear moves when it says it. Bram. A broad hand spreads warm between my shoulder blades. “There she is.”
And then all three of them are up and careful and quiet, moving around me.
“Water.” Ash, and the glass is at my mouth before I’ve finished deciding I want it. “Small sips, sweetheart.”
I drink. It’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted, which tells me how long it’s been better than any clock could.
“And this.” Reed, on my other side, a plate held out flat. Crackers. Cheese in slices. A clementine peeled and split into segments. “Eat, beautiful.”
I do. For a minute there’s nothing in my head but citrus and the three of them warm on every side.
Then, the math starts running itself. “Oh, no,” I say, getting up on an elbow. “The cider. You’ve got a thousand bottles due by December 1 and you spent hours in here with me, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, you should be at the press, not babysitting me while your whole—”
“Luna,” Bram says. “There is nowhere on God’s earth any of us would rather be than this room. We’ll make the time up.”
“But that was a heat spike,” I say. Slow. “Which means the actual heat’s coming. Soon. And it will run like a week. How will you make up the time then?”
I wasn’t due for three months. I tracked it down to the day, but I guess the three of them bumped me up the calendar. Damn.
“You are not an inconvenience, you know.” There’s no give in Bram anywhere when he says it.
“We know about a week,” Ash says. “A week will not sink this.” And he smiles. “We’ve got it handled, sweetheart.”
How, I don’t ask. By squeezing every minute of every day when you’re not fucking me? Seems highly inconvenient.
Mark my words, there’s no way I’m letting them screw their deal up to sate me.