Chapter 43
Reed
“Tell me you’ve got eyes on him,” I tell my friend on the phone.
“Petey’s parked at the gas station where the county road meets the nine. Matt has the bridge. Anything rolls through that doesn’t belong out here, we’ll know inside a minute.”
“Don’t forget,” I say. “It’s a gray Silverado with a dent in the tailgate, driver’s side.”
“You said it twice,” he says. “Don’t worry man, we’ve got it.”
I hang up.
Bram’s a few feet down the rail, phone to his ear. He’s got the deputy voice on, flat and even.
“Appreciate it, Hutch. I mean that.”
He pockets the phone and, for a second, neither of us says anything. There’s a man out there who put his hand on her tonight, and part of me wishes he’d be in Tate’s truck, waiting on him.
“It’s handled,” Bram says, probably using his brotherly powers to read my mind. “Warrant by morning. There’s nothing left worth doing out here that we can’t do better in there.”
In there.
The hall to the master door’s open, the light’s on, and I lose the thread of whatever I was going to say back to him.
Because there’s Ash, shirtless, hauling the spare comforter in both arms, and past him, up in the middle of the big bed, on her knees, is Luna.
Building.
She’s conscripted the whole cottage. Pillows, blankets, the quilt out of the hall closet and what looks like Ash’s shirt. She’s fast, tucking and shoving and pressing things flat, and even from the hall the smell of her comes down and takes me by the spine.
“More,” she’s telling Ash. Not asking. “I need more. The gray throw, the big one, it’s in the—”
“Living room. On it.” He turns, his eyes a little wild.
“Reed.” Her head comes up, her eyes landing on me, glassy, blown black. “Good. You’re wearing exactly what I need.”
“Beautiful, I’ll wear nothing at all, you just have to—”
“Your shirt. Off.” She makes grabby hands at me. “Yours too, Bram.”
My hands are already at the hem.
I drag the shirt over my head and hand it across and she snatches it and buries her face in it, eyes shut, and the sound she makes pulls something loose in me I didn’t know was tied off. She works it down into the pile against the headboard and smooths it flat.
Bram’s already got his off, folding the thing, before he hands it over. She takes it and weaves it in beside mine. Then she sits back on her heels and looks at the two of us crowding her doorway, half-stripped and dumb with it.
“Out,” she says.
“Out?” Bram asks.
“I have to finish. I can’t do it right with you all standing there looking at me like that.” She shoves the hair off her face.
Ash, just back with the gray throw, opens his mouth.
“Ash, my love, out.”
He sets the throw down at the foot of the bed and we all go. She shuts the door on the three of us and we stand in the hall like the world’s horniest job applicants, listening to her move around in there.
Then the door opens six long minutes later. We file in. And, yeah.
I’ve spent my whole life around things built to last. The barn my great-grandfather raised. The press my dad put back together by hand.
But this is the best thing I’ve ever seen, and it smells like home.
“It’s beautiful,” I tell her, rough.
She lights up, her chin lifting, a small pleased curve coming to her mouth.
I’d burn the whole orchard to the dirt before I’d let anything take that look off her face.
“Come to me, alphas,” she says, and we don’t need to be told twice.
I get to her first, up onto the mattress, and she’s already climbing me, her mouth finding mine sloppy and frantic.
“I’ve got you,” I say into her mouth. “I’ve got you. Slow down a second—”
“Don’t want slow.” She’s wrenching at my belt, my fly, clumsy with it. “Reed. I need—”
“I know. I know what you need.”
I shove my jeans down enough and lift her and she sinks herself onto my already hard length in one greedy drop. I forget my own name and there’s not enough blood left north of my belt to go looking.
She rides me with no patience in her at all, forehead dropped to mine, breath sawing in and out, and I hold her hips and let her take it, every bit of it.
Past her shoulder Bram and Ash are stripping out of the rest of their clothes, and any other night I’d have something to say about my brothers’ bare asses in my eyeline, but there’s nothing here right now that is enough for her.
“More,” she pants, turning her head, reaching. “All of you. I need all of you—”
Bram, wrecked, comes up at her back, both hands sliding up her spine. Ash folds in at her side, she gets a fist in his hair and drags his mouth down to hers. The three of us close around her until there’s no inch that isn’t held.
She breaks off Ash’s mouth, dazed. He stands on the bed and she takes him in her hand and then her mouth, still moving on me.
Bram’s got his mouth at the back of her neck, one big hand spread flat on her belly, holding her steady in the middle of all of us, purring so low I feel it come up through the mattress.
“That’s it,” I grit out. My knot’s already swelling, fighting to lock us, and I feel her clench around me every time Ash’s hips stutter. “That’s it, beautiful. Take what’s yours.”
She’s close. I can feel it building in her, the shake and the tightening. She pulls off Ash with a gasp and drops her head back on Bram’s shoulder and she begs.
“Bite me. Please, one of you, I need it, I need your teeth, make me yours, please—”
Everything in me throws itself at it. My teeth ache with it. Every instinct I own is screaming to put my mouth there and never take it back.
I find Bram’s eyes over her shoulder. Then Ash’s, beside me.
We don’t.
It’s the hardest thing I have ever done, and I’ve walked into houses that were on fire. But not like this, not with her this deep under her heat haze. When she takes our bites she’s going to know she’s doing it, clear-eyed, looking right at us.
“Not yet, beautiful.” My voice splits straight down the middle. “Soon. I swear to God, soon. Right now I give you everything else there is.”
I get a hand down between us, find the place she’s chasing, and she breaks apart on it, crying out, clamping down so hard my knot locks us tight, and that’s me gone too, pouring into her, holding her through every last pulse while Bram murmurs things into her hair and Ash strokes her face.
For a minute the only sound in the room is the four of us breathing.
She goes loose against my chest, boneless, her face tucked up under my jaw, and the purr rolls up out of me on its own. Bram’s hand lands on my shoulder. Ash has his forehead at her temple. Nobody moves.
But not a minute later, she stirs, whines and starts moving on me again, my knot barely down.
“Okay, that’s—” I look at Bram, half-wild. “Unexpectedly still hard.”
“Your body merely wants to serve your omega.” Bram says, a devilish look in his eyes. “And so will ours.”
It goes on like that for hours. We lose ourselves entirely to her heat, burying our knots into her one after another, matching her relentless pace.
We take care of her until we are all slick with sweat and shaking with exhaustion, the frantic edge of her need slowly softening.
Then Bram makes her drink water, holding the straw to her lips and weathering her glare when she demands knots before refreshments.
Ash breaks off a corner of something and feeds it to her bite by bite.
She’s halfway through trying to pull Ash back down on top of her for another round when her body finally cashes the check. She drops off into sleep mid-reach.
We get her down into the hollow she made and settle in around her.
I lie there in the dark with my omega asleep on my arm and my brothers breathing on the far side of her.
There’s no place I’d ever rather be, I think, pressing my mouth to the top of her head.