40. Idris
Idris
Dash follows the sound upstairs with his eyes long after Theo disappears with Callie in his arms. For several seconds, none of us moves. The kitchen still smells like all of us and whatever was supposed to be dinner that never made it past the beginning.
The silence breaks with Sloane’s heavy breathing as I twist to find him standing near the island with one hand braced against the counter, his head lowered, his mouth parted. His scent is rough, but beneath that is relief so sharp I feel it against my own ribs.
Dash exhales first. He reaches for the dishtowel on the counter and wipes the edge where Callie had been moments earlier. Then he moves to the sink, washing his hands and face, bracing himself there for a moment before turning around. “She’s going to be spoiled rotten,” he says.
Sloane lets out a low sound that is almost a laugh and almost a purr. “She deserves it.”
“She does.” Dash folds the towel over once and wipes another spot that does not need wiping. His voice stays even, but his scent warms when another sound drifts down from upstairs, Callie’s voice breaking around Theo’s name. “So does he.”
That pulls my attention from Sloane to the ceiling as a high-pitched moan filters through the plaster.
I do my best to ignore my own growing need, the temporary bite I keep putting back in Theo’s shoulder giving me a direct link to his desire.
I shake my head and lean back against the wall, staring at Dash.
“Can we talk about how we got to you eating out our Beta or is that too weird?” I ask as Sloane coughs into his fist.
Dash clears his throat, blinking a few times before turning toward us. “She took a seat up there while I was preparing dinner. It just happened. Fuck, I’m not explaining this to you.” He drags a hand through his hair before looking around the counter and grabbing his glasses to put back on.
I stifle a laugh as I move toward him to wash my own hands, Sloane following a second later.
Dash reaches for one of the abandoned ingredients to put back in the fridge. “Theo looked at her like he had just found his entire world.”
“He’s been doing that all day,” Sloane says. He pushes away from the counter and carries the plates to the sink, but his attention keeps lifting toward the stairs. “At Blackline. In the car. The second he woke up, he wanted her.”
“He woke up missing her,” I say.
Dash looks at me. I set the fruit back in the fridge and close the door softly. “After his first heat, she was gone. His body remembers that even when the rest of him understands why. He mentioned that sometimes when he wakes up, he looks for her.”
Something changes in Dash’s face, as he glances toward the stairs again, where Theo’s low groan follows Callie’s breathless laugh, and his shoulders settle with a kind of recognition that does not need to be explained.
“I don’t have a problem with him hanging off her every chance he gets,” Dash says.
“I’d rather that than him trying to make himself small around me. ”
“He won’t do that long,” Sloane says. He grabs a plate to rinse though he starts scrubbing it a little too hard, his hands slower than usual under the water. “He’s shy until he decides he isn’t. Then he’s impossible.”
Dash’s mouth curves faintly. “She smiles differently with him.”
The sound of the house seems to grow around the silence after that. Upstairs, the nest shifts with a dull thump, followed by Callie’s breath catching hard enough that Sloane closes his eyes. His scent deepens so quickly that mine answers before I can stop it.
Dash looks between us, then down at the towel in his hand, and there is enough restraint in him not to make the obvious comment too sharp.
“Bigger,” he says instead, finishing the thought he began.
“Her smiles are effortless with him. Like she isn’t checking whether anyone is waiting for her to apologize for being happy. ”
Sloane’s purr slips out before he can lock it down. It rolls through the kitchen, as he shifts his stance a fraction. His hand drops to the edge of the sink, his fingers flexing once against the counter. When he opens his eyes, they are fixed on the stairs.
“Fuck,” he says quietly. “I can’t sit here listening to them.”
I let my gaze move over him, the set of his shoulders, the heat beneath his skin, the visible effort it takes not to follow the sounds upstairs. “You are not sitting.”
He huffs once, but the humor barely softens him. “You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
Another sound reaches us, softer this time, Theo’s voice wrecked and pleading around something I can't make out. Sloane’s breath catches on it, and the answering pull in me is immediate enough that I have to set both hands on the back of a chair and wait for my control to return.
Dash laughs under his breath, the sound dry at the edges and tired in a way that makes room for all of us to be ridiculous without turning us into a joke.
He tosses the towel into the sink and reaches for the whiskey bottle on the sideboard like he already knows none of us is going to eat dinner now.
“I was going to offer a drink,” he says, “but the two of you look about three minutes from making that unnecessary.”
Sloane drags a hand over his face. “Callie is so fucking happy.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Dash mutters.
I look toward the stairs again, listening past the obvious sounds to the shape of them.
Dash pours two fingers of whiskey into one glass and then seems to reconsider the purpose of it.
He takes a small sip himself, sets it down, and steps back from the counter.
His gaze moves once toward the staircase, then to Sloane, then to me.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think this is goodnight.”
Sloane’s mouth tips up at one corner. “Running?”
“Choosing peace.” Dash picks up his phone and keys from the counter, then points the keys toward the living room without looking at the couch. “Don’t fuck on my couch.”
“It’s Callie’s couch,” Sloane says.
Dash pauses at the doorway and looks back at him. “That makes the warning stronger.”
I manage a smile, Dash’s expression softening for half a second, the guardedness thinning before he turns away. “Goodnight,” he says. Then, after a beat, with his voice lower and less dry, “Have fun.”
I grimace at that before twisting to see my Alpha, whatever control Sloane had been using to stand still beginning to fray the moment there’s no one left to witness it except me.
He reaches for me before I reach for him, his hand closing around the front of my shirt, pulling me in with enough force to make the dishes rattle on the counter beside us.
His mouth meets mine hard, and I kiss him back just as hard. Upstairs, Callie cries out again. Sloane breaks the kiss against my mouth, shuddering. “Shower.”
“Yes.”
I gladly take his hand and lead him up the stairs to the shower beside Theo’s room, their thickened scents only making it harder to focus. We strip quickly as I reach to turn on the water, Sloane not settling until he’s under the spray, his head bowed to my shoulder.
His breathing comes out in growly puffs of air, his need spurring me on until I lose my own control, gently gripping the back of his neck. I kiss him again, slower this time, and he opens for it with a sound that pulls the last of my restraint apart.
Steam wraps around us the moment the glass door closes. Sloane moves back under the spray, his cock already hard, heavy against his stomach, and when my hand brushes it he shudders hard enough that the sound escapes before he can stop it.
Sloane reaches for me the way he always does, trying to pull me closer, trying to take. I catch both of his wrists and pin them above his head against the wet tile. He resists for half a second out of pure habit, then goes still.
“Stay,” I tell him.
I keep his wrists pinned with one hand and use the other to map him.
The tension in his shoulders. The tight line of his abdomen.
The places where weeks of holding everyone else together have settled into muscle.
When my fingers close around his cock he groans low and rough, his head tipping back against the tile.
Another sound drifts down from the nest and Sloane’s hips jerk forward into my fist.
“She’s happy,” he says, voice wrecked. “Fuck, Idris—she’s so fucking happy.”
I stroke him slowly, tightly, watching every reaction. “I know.”
“I missed this.” The words come out broken, almost angry with how much they cost him. “I missed you wanting me when there was nothing left to fix. I missed being something you reached for because you wanted it, not because the pack needed managing.”
I lean in until my forehead rests against his and my hand keeps working him under the water. “I missed it too.”
Sloane’s eyes close as a tremor runs through his whole body.
I release his wrists only long enough to turn him so his chest is against the tile, then press in behind him.
My cock slides along the seam of his ass, slick with water and the precome already leaking from my cock.
He pushes back immediately, but I hold him there.
“Patience, Sloane. I don’t want to fucking hurt you.”
He grunts, thrusting back against me. “Sometimes I wish I had slick to make this easier. Fuck, Idris, just use spit. I need you inside me.”
I chuckle, spitting enough into my hand before stuffing two fingers into his hole. He cries out at the intrusion before rocking back slowly. I open him up, roughly scissoring my fingers inside of him before adding a third and then a fourth.
A guttural sound leaves my lips as my knot starts to swell and I replace my fingers with my cock. I cover Sloane’s hands braced on the wall with mine before slowly pressing inside of him, knot fluttering against his ass.
“Color,” I ask against his ear.
“Green. Fuck—green. Move.”
The rhythm starts controlled. Deep, steady thrusts that force him to feel every inch as water pounds over both of us. Steam thickens until the rest of the bathroom disappears. Every time another soft, wrecked sound carries from the nest, Sloane clenches around me and I feel it in my spine.
His usual stream of words dies until only rough moans and my name remain. I reach down and wrap my hand around his cock again, stroking in time with my thrusts. His head drops back against my shoulder.
“Idris—”
“I got you.”
My knot begins to swell as I push deeper, forcing the thickening base past the tight ring of muscle until it locks us together.
Sloane comes the second it seats fully, hard, shaking, a raw sound tearing out of his throat as he spills over my fist and against the tile.
The rhythmic clench of him around the knot pulls my own release out of me in long, heavy pulses.
I bury my face in the side of his neck and let it take me, my hips giving small thrusts against the lock while I empty into him.
I wait until the swelling softens enough to slip free, then keep him pressed to the wall while I clean us both with slow, thorough hands. I soap my hands and wash us both, checking the marks I left as I go.
Eventually a small, breathless laugh escapes him. “Dash told us not to fuck on the couch,” he says, voice wrecked and almost giddy with relief. “We technically obeyed.”
I press a kiss to the wet skin behind his ear. “Technically.”
“You think Theo’s going to let up on Callie so we can cuddle them tonight?”
I chuckle, pulling him into a soft kiss just as another moan hits my ears. “I think we might have to wait a little. Seems Theo’s still taking care of her. It just means I have a little more time with my Alpha.”