Page 64 of Pack’s Pledge
“Yeah?” I asked, and he scowled.
“That’s not what you’re supposed to say,” he tutted. His cock slipped from me, and I whined, pulling him on top of me, his legs on either side of one of mine.
“What am I supposed to say, Adrian?” I goaded, lifting my hips up to grind on his thigh.
“I love you,” he said.
“I love you, too,” I answered, and I smiled at his smile. At the warm trickle of happiness that eased over the bond, at the smell of coffee from under the doorway. Conall was making it, he always did, even here at the cabin. At the firm press of his hips against mine as his knees spread mine wider and he coaxed his cock back into me, and at the gasp, the short sharp breath he snatched as I came, my body tightening around him, pulling him over the edge with me.
“I love you,” he said again, as his head dropped to my shoulder, his mouth moving over the marks there. “I’ve been wanting to tell you, but it never seemed like the right time. But—I don’t know how long we have, before—”
I nodded.
“I wanted to tell you before then. So you know it’s me. You. Not Beau, or pack shit, or hormones, or—”
“I love you, too, Adrian.” I kissed him, slow and lazy, heedless of our morning mouths, until his kisses grew more insistent, his cock thickening again against my thigh where it had slipped from my slick channel. “But Iwillbe sore if we keep going again, and more importantly—” I wriggled away from reach, scooting to the edge of the bed and pulling the sheet with me. “We need to eat. This could be our last meal for who knows how long.”
“You’re right,” Adrian said, rolling onto his back, naked and unselfconscious, his hand rubbing his abs. He watched me watching him, and grinned. “I thought you were going.”
“I am,” I laughed, “I am!”
I didn’t make it far.
“Good morning,” Conall said as I stepped out of the bedroom and into the main room of the cabin, still dressed in my sheet.Conalllooked entirely presentable, dressed in a flannel shirt, freshly showered, his hair wet with comb tracks still traced through the strands. The corner of his lip twitched upward, and he hid it behind a coffee mug.
“Thick walls, here,” Beau said, glancing around at the little cabin. The log walls were familiar to me now, the worn rug, the charmingly shabby furniture. Even the smell of it: mint and juniper and coffee. He raised an eyebrow. “Thin doors though.”
“Good thing we’re all pack, then,” I said, and Beau smirked. His cheeks were pink, his skin seeming to glow.Close, now,I thought, although the alphas would know better. “I’m going to take a shower,” I explained, drawing the sheet around me. “Beau? Want to join me while it’s hot?” Yesterday he’d shivered through a freezing cold shower and emerged clear-eyed but grouchy, cursing the cabin’s ancient water heater and himself for suggesting we decamp here for his heat.
“Tempting,” he said. “Do we dare?”
“You know, we could just get a better water heater,” Adrian said, emerging from the bedroom at last, his pajama pants slung low on his hips. Beau’s eyes flickered over the alpha’s body, his tongue darting out to lick his bottom lip.Very close, then.“Then we could have as much hot water as we want.”
“Hmm, but where’s the fun in that?” Beau purred, as Adrian muttered darkly abouthell to pay if there’s no hot water left for him. “What do you think, Britt, how many times do you think you can come before there’s no more?”
“Don’t even think about it,” said Adrian darkly, and I laughed at his narrowed eyes.
“No, really,” Conall said, “don’t even think about it. You know this is the first time we’re—”
“I know,” Beau said, going to his alpha, sitting beside him on the couch. “I know. I’m sorry, I know you’re worried.”
If I’d thought that our bonding would cure Conall’s habitual worrying, I was wrong. He just had different things to worry about, now: “If anything goes wrong, if Britt taps out, we don’t have a backup out here, we’re miles from a hospital, let alone a heat center—” Conall repeated, and Beau nodded seriously, taking Conall’s hand.
“We practiced this, remember? It will be okay. Britt is here. We’re enough. You’re enough, Conall,” he said. “Alpha. You’re enough.” He leaned in, and Conall turned his face to the omega, letting Beau kiss him chastely.
I watched the two of them together. It’d been six months since our bonding, and in some ways, it felt like nothing had changed. I’d moved into the penthouse, but I still had a job as a bartender, although it wasn’t at Ardor. My mouth still went dry when Beau brushed against me in the kitchen, when Adrian looked up at me as I entered a room and said, “hey, baby.”
I still got butterflies when Conall smiled at me, when he pulled me close and kissed me.I’m kissing Conall, I’d think again.Conall.
But my addition to the pack had changed things, too.
It had happened slowly, so slowly I don’t think any of us realized it, but the love I had for Conall and Beau and Adrian had filled me so completely that it began spilling out between the three of them, too. It was small things—a hug where once there might have been an awkward fist bump. Beau crawling into bed with Conall instead of Adrian, while the two of us were out on a late dinner date, coming home to find them tucked together like two spoons. A kiss over coffee in the morning, and a smile in return. Adrian and Beau had always flirted and fucked and teased each other, but there was a sweetness there now that hadn’t always been there; Beau leaning into Adrian’s chest as the alpha held him, chatting with Conall as he cooked dinner for the four of us. Conall was more generous in his affection, and Beau drank it up greedily, pushing the alpha further, further, testing the boundaries of the alpha’s friendship. Finding that there wasn’t a boundary there, any more, and suddenly, we weren’t roommates.
We were pack.
They—we—didn’t go to Ardor any more, either.
“All I needed was a little bit of love,” Beau had said, when I pointed out that his instincts seemed to have calmed, pulling me into a showy embrace that had me laughing as he peppered my face with kisses.