I sat against the wall of the nest and watched Esme sink into sleep against Luke. “Hell,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. “That was…”
“Intense?” Ben asked.
“Yes. And incredible.”
None of us had ever been part of a heat before, so we were just as new to this as Esme was. We’d heard the stories, of course. But now I knew none of the stories remotely compared to what it was like to be in the same space as a perfuming Omega and hearing her beg for you. Or seeing how sweetly she submitted.
We all looked at each other blankly. This was the farthest thing from what I expected when I woke up this morning. I wasn’t upset—I was fucking ecstatic—but I felt just as tired as Esme seemed to be from the whirlwind that was the last few hours.
She hadn’t lied in the bathroom. It seemed like she liked it soft and gentle as much as she liked it rough. I looked forward to exploring every aspect of this with her.
“While she’s sleeping,” I said. “We need to make sure we order food. I don’t think any of us are going to have the time or desire to cook, and we’re not putting everything on Rylan because he’s a Beta.”
“I appreciate that,” he said with a grin. “I do have to watch the time to make sure I call Eva for the check-in.”
“Where did Addison put our gifts?” I directed the question at Ben. Since I’d been taking care of Esme while they fixed the nest, I hadn’t seen where they ended up.
Esme had noticed we were leaving at the store one by one, but she didn’t know we’d done that to choose our individual gifts for her heat, and the first of our courtship. Mine was an incredibly long pair of soft socks. On Esme, I estimated they’d reach her thighs and the image in my head of her in one of our shirts and those socks made my mouth water.
The nest was drenched in the scent of her heat perfume, which was her beautiful scent only more intense. Mouth watering and alluring, it made me want to bury my head between her thighs just like Ben had done and make her scream my name.
“Addie said she left them in the living room. I don’t think she moved them. But I’m honestly not sure since things were so chaotic.”
“Okay, I’ll check. I’m going to go grab us some water and order food to be delivered. Anyone want anything in particular?”
Ben looked at Esme. “I wish we knew what her favorite food was.”
“We can ask her when she wakes up,” Kade said. “She’ll be hungry.”
I nodded, slipping into the hallway and into the bathroom where my clothes were. I found my phone in the pocket of my jeans and started ordering Chinese. A fucking mountain of it. None of us had eaten lunch in our hurry to get to Esme’s house, and it was closing in on dinner time. Not to mention the ravenous appetite this amount of sex would bring.
Orange chicken, sesame chicken, fried rice, egg drop soup, steamed dumplings. I looked through their whole menu and ordered two of everything that looked remotely good. And I knew the guys’ tastes well enough to know what they liked and what they didn’t.
The kitchen was too quiet and still with everyone in the nest. There was an itch under my skin to get back to her, get back to her, get back to her, but this was helping Esme too, and she was resting comfortably with Luke.
We had water, but we were going to need more of everything. There was no way any of us would be willing to leave the house to go get groceries. So I scheduled a grocery delivery for the next day with everything we could need for the next week. I didn’t know how long Esme’s heat would last since this was her first real one.
Just the thought of her alone in her room, writhing in pain because she didn’t have what she needed, made rage prickle under my skin. I was—we all were—going to make sure she had everything she needed regardless of whether she was in heat.
That was how quickly something could change. Barely two days since meeting her and I couldn’t imagine her disappearing and never seeing her again. She was ours. We all knew it. Now we just had to convince her, and drive the knowledge so deep she would never question it.
Just like Ben said, our gifts were still in bags in the living room. I found my socks, a shade of dark gray I already knew would look incredible on her. I was tempted to put them on while she slept, but I didn’t want to wake her. The heat would do that soon enough.
Grocery order submitted, I went back upstairs carrying the water bottles, unable to stay away from her and her scent for any longer.
Luke was no longer holding her. Rylan was now curled around the little Omega, and her head rested on his chest. She looked peaceful and content, the little lines of worry which seemed to always be there now completely gone.
I handed out the bottles, the last one to Luke. I set Rylan’s at the edge of the nest—the small strip of bare floor which allowed the door to open.
“It doesn’t seem real, does it?” Luke asked. “That she’s here? That she exists at all?”
Kade was leaning against one of the cushioned walls. “I get what you mean. Almost like a fever dream.”
I’d briefly told them her boundaries, few as they were, when I’d left her in the bath. But there was more to compatibility than simply being okay with the other’s boundaries. And the moment she begged Kade to pin her down, the air in the room changed.
Not because of what she liked, but rather the way she fit. Kade was rough around the edges. He loved to chase and the more feral aspects of his Alpha nature. I hated to even think about anyone else but her, but over the years, all of us had a girlfriend or two, and we’d seen evidence of that in Kade.
Esme submitted to Luke too, and I already knew she liked being cared for in the way I loved. It was like she really was made for us. There was something beautiful about the idea that one person was always meant for you. Like you were going to find each other no matter what, and it was inevitable.
She moved a little, and all of us looked, turning at once like she was the magnet all of us were drawn to. She settled again, curling up tighter beneath the blanket.
“When the heat is over,” I said, “I’d like to ask her to stay for the courtship.”
“Stay here?” Ben asked. It wasn’t a condemnation, but a clarification.
I nodded. “She’s terrified. The heat is setting the feeling aside, but it will come back. If she’s here with us, there’s the chance to show her we’re hers just as much as she’s ours. Not to smother her, but I never want her to have questions. I just—” Shaking my head, I stopped speaking. There wasn’t a way to articulate the feeling in my chest.
Luke finished drinking the water in his bottle. “I get what you’re saying, and I agree. When I went upstairs at her house she was in so much pain, and all she could think about was that she didn’t want us to see her like that.”
Rylan reached down and stroked her hair. “That makes sense. Given the way she’s watched with Eva and the media making her out to be some kind of cruel heartbreaker… not only, but her family. You know who her father was? Elias Williams.”
My eyebrows rose into my hairline. Everyone knew who Elias Williams was. A businessman with a reputation for being ruthless yet fair, he’d helped make Slate City into the place it was today, and much of it for the better. But that kind of family, the money and the fame, it made sense her mother had hired a matchmaker. The stories about Esme in the press would only be considered a burden.
“Her whole life has been in one spotlight or another, and from the little clues she’s given, not many people have bothered to look deeper than the surface. I’m not remotely surprised she chooses to sell her paintings under a fake name.” Slowly, Rylan shifted Esme’s head off his chest so he could roll closer to her on his side.
He was the youngest of us, and we often treated him like it. Not in a mean way, but the way I would treat my own younger brother if I had one. But the way he looked at Esme, and the insight he had, there was nothing boyish about him now.
“I agree,” Kade finally said. “I want her to stay.”
All of us agreed, as we often did on the important things. It was one of the reasons we were a good pack. We could fight, but in the end, we always found a way to come together.
Ben chuckled softly. “Avery, I think you and Rylan are up first for the next round. Make sure everyone gets a turn.”
“No.” I took a sip of my water bottle. “I mean, I’m not going to say no, but this is her heat. She’ll need who she needs, and I think she’s going to need all of us in different ways.”
My phone buzzed in my hand. The food was here. I set down her socks on the nest and downed the small rest of my water bottle. “Food’s here. I need to grab some pants.”
The nest was one thing, but I didn’t need the food delivery guy traumatized. We were going to need more than one delivery.
