Page 22 of Pack’s Prize
“I need you to back me up on this,” he said under his breath. “Whatever Michael says, she’s staying here.”
“Okay, that’s fine, but–”
Ava stepped out of the hallway and into the living room, smiling uncomfortably at me. She too held a cardboard box, this one unlabeled. I hurried over, lifting the box out of her arms and handing her a coffee, instead. “I’ll take that, Ava.”
The three of us were still standing in the hall outside of the kitchen when Michael arrived from his home office, apparently also drawn by the omega’s presence.
“Hello, Theo… Ava.” He looked between the two of them, and then at me. I shifted the box I was holding. “You were supposed to take her home, Theo. I thought that we had agreed on dinner tomorrow?”
“Yes, well,” Theo sniffed, “I thought that Ava might like to stay here for a bit.” He looked at me, clearly trying to get me to say something.
I looked back and shrugged.What?I don’t know what’s going on, and anyway, I’m pretty preoccupied trying to hide the boner growing in my pants,I tried to convey. I didn’t know how well it translated, given the heavy box in my arms.
“I did. And then I took her back here. you didn’t see her apartment, Michael. It’s a dump–worse than the place in Amsterdam.” Michael cringed.
It was things like this that reminded me of their time B.E.: Before Elias. Before I’d met them in Copenhagen and made their little twosome three. They’d thought I was Danish, at the time; Michael hadn’t realized until I’d touched down back in NYC that it was my grandparents who were Danish, not me, and I was from the faraway land of suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota. I’d long grown used to the idea that despite our closeness, they had a shared history without me, and a shared present, too: they were both artists, and I couldn’t tell a Renoir from a Rembrant. I just hauled the boxes they came in when they got delivered to the gallery. Anyway, since I’d known them, there had been no one else. Not a Dane or an Italian or a Portuguese, no women, no men, just… me. Us. Michael, Theo, Elias.
Until, well, last night.
Last night.Ugh, thinking of last night with her back here, in my home, her fruity scent teasing into my brain, didnothelp my boner. I forced myself to concentrate not on the way her wide eyes reminded me of how she’d looked in Theo’s lap, the way her slightly parted mouth looked so sweet I could nearly taste it already–
No, no.I shifted my weight on my feet behind the box.
“It’s not possible that we would allow an omega we were actually courting to stay there,” Theo continued. “No omega we were seriously courting would be staying in a room like that, and besides, she hasn’t even unpacked. She can unpack just as easily here as there, and while she’s here, she can do some apartment shopping for a real apartment, not a hole in a wall in a…” he searched for the word. “Atenement. That’s part of this deal, right? We’ll pay her rent? Well, maybeyouwouldn’t be, but youraccountantwould be embarrassed to know how cheap that place must be–”
I hadn’t seen Theo this animated since Michael had threatened to buy some weird dead-shark-in-a-tank sculpture for the gallery, and I smiled at his rambling. He was cute when he was indignant.
“Fine,” said Michael.
“And, of course, we’ll have to–” Theo stormed on, then stopped. “Fine?”
“Sure,” said Michael, “if Ava is alright with the change in plans, of course. We have the space. It will look good, like we’re really taking this seriously. I don’t know who you’re trying to convince.” He raised one eyebrow. “Ava, this is okay with you?”
She was still holding on to her mug of coffee, but I hadn’t seen her take a sip yet, she was too busy looking back and forth at Theo and Michael with worried eyes.So much for ‘making yourself at home.’
“I don’t think I have much choice, do I?” she said after a long pause.
“Of course,” I said, just as Theo said, “No, you don’t.”
“Of course you do,” Michael said, and Theo shot me a glare.
“I don’t want to get in the way,” she said, hesitating, covering her blush with a sip of coffee at last. The sight unexpectedly shot straight to my cock.
I made her that coffee,I purred.I gave it to her, and she’s drinking it.
But as Michael assured her she would not, offering up Theo and I to carry her things to guest room–fine with me because I really didn’t want to put this box down and show off the embarrassing bulge there–she nodded, slowly, and tension eased from her shoulder, the quiet purr of my alpha instincts grew to a roar.
With the omega living with us… I shifted the box again. This was going to be a long, hard summer.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Ava
“We’ll still go outfor dinner tomorrow, since it’s important we be seen,” Michael said as I perched on a stool at the wide butcher block kitchen island, “but tonight, we’ll stay in and cook, let you get unpacked.” He had a glass of wine in his hand and was stirring an enameled dutch oven on the stove with the other, the rich scent of wine and beef rising in clouds of steam to fill the kitchen.
“That’s fine,” I said. I had already unpacked; I’d only brought a few necessities with me. “Need any help?”
“No, but thank you,” he turned to an open shelf that held a wide variety of spices in jars, selected one, and added a confident shake to the pot. “You can just relax. Do you want some wine? There’s an open bottle. Glasses are on the bar.”