Page 75 of Heat Clinic

“I have an idea,” Sam says. “Put a door up between the den and the staircase landing and turn that into her room. The room she’s using now can be a nursery.”

Oh, hell yes.That’s what I want. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted before in my life. One giant nest to cuddle and sleep and fuck in and then later, to have our babies in. It’s perfect.

Tom considers it, and I hold my breath. That’s a big change to ask them to make. A pretty permanent one. I’m not sure if framing out walls and adding doors is what Tom and Marcus had in mind when they mentioned redecorating.

And then Tom smiles and talks to Jamie about delivery dates, and my pulse quickens and I know this is real. Really real and permanent, and it’s scary and wonderful and I want it so badly my chest aches. And I no longer care if it’s only been a week and they were strangers, because they’re mine and I’m theirs and this nest feels right. They’d have to pry me out of it with force.

Sam climbs into the nest and flops on his side, grinning at me, and I’m too happy to bother scolding him about wearing his shoes on the model bed. I lean down and press a quick kiss to his lips as a thank you for making the suggestion.

When Tom and Jamie have hashed out the details, the omega takes the paper to the register for them to start the ordering process. Grudgingly, I clamber out, and we head to the walls to pick out bedding and decorations. They let me take my time, feeling each one and showing them the ones I like so they can appreciate my choices even if they don’t understand them. When I’ve picked through the entire store, ignoring my growling stomach as we push past a late lunch and edge into dinner time, we walk to the register.

The cashier taps my long list of specifics into the computer. If she thinks my nit picky attention to detail is odd, she doesn’t show it. Maybe it is normal, and I’ve just never had the luxury to really care before. She rings everything up and sets the delivery window. A month seems like forever away, but also a short amount of time. Don’t home renovations usually take several months? I’ve watched enough home repair reality TV shows to know that’s true.

Outside, I continue to float in my bubble of happiness as I cling to Tom while we walk and Sam carries my cloud pillow for me. I wouldn’t let them bag it with the rest of our order. It has a smiling face embroidered on the front and a sad face on the back. Stuffed felt raindrops hang from it on braided string.

Tom bundles us into the Town Car he ordered then slips in with us. “Are you ready for your surprise?”

Sam and I exchange looks. “That wasn’t it?” I ask.

“No. That was all the necessary stuff that had to get done. This next one’s for fun.”

I’m not sure what could top a wild spending spree in Nested, but if anyone could do it, it would be Tom. We travel across town until the car finally stops, and we all file out. The surprise is a used bookstore. A fat and obscenely fluffy orange cat sits in the store window, watching the pedestrians walk by, and a bell tinkles overhead as we push the door open and step inside.

The shop smells like old books and coffee. Shelves line the walls with carts and tables making up the middle, and it seems to go on and on. The store is impossibly large on the inside. The further back we go, the more we find. Rooms have been devoted to entire subjects. Natural history, women’s studies, poetry. It keeps going.

While Tom and I browse, Sam gets us drinks and brings them to us. I sip my cappuccino and pull out one book after another, flipping through them.

“Hey, look at this one,” Sam says.

I look over and see he’s holding up an old leather-bound book with a plate-printed image of a Japanese woman being fucked by an octopus. Her head is thrown back in ecstasy as its tentacles writhe inside her while waves crash behind them.Of course he found porn.I shake my head and bury my smile in my coffee cup as I search for my own rare finds. One by one, I pull them out and make a stack that continues to grow.

“Find anything good?” Tom asks, coming back over with his own selection in his hand.

“A bunch of them.” I point to my stack. “What about you?”

He holds it up for us to see. “It’s a first edition of Beatrix Potter. I figured… for the baby.”

My heart clenches as he opens the aged volume, turning the pages so we can see the drawings of bunnies and mice and geese. He stops on a page with a hedgehog wife hanging up her family’s laundry on a clothesline staked out on tiny twigs. It’s precious and perfect, and it fills me with longing.

“I love it,” I say as I lean up and kiss him.

He adds it to our towering stack, and we shop until hunger finally drives us out into the rapidly cooling afternoon air. We’ve shopped all day, and I’m tired and happy and hungry for something other than food, so when Tom asks where we should go for dinner I sayhome.

I’m good in the Town Car and all the way home until we get into the elevator, and Tom’s hand settles on my ass and then I can’t take it anymore. My desire is a fire that’s been fed and stoked all day with every compliment, every shy smile and brush of hands. I grab him by the shirt and pull him down for a kiss that’s anything but chaste.

Sorry, Bobbie.

The doorman pretends he sees nothing as I hook my arm around Tom’s shoulders and swallow his tongue. It only takes a moment for his surprise to mellow and for his hand to grab my ass for real. He slips it into the back pocket of my jeans and rocks me back against the elevator wall, the old thing squeaking and squealing in protest.

Sam drags us both out when neither of us notice we’ve arrived at our floor. Bobbie leaves us with the brass luggage cart loaded with packages and plastic-wrapped clothes, and Tom barely gets the door open and everything inside the foyer before he’s on me again, kissing and groping me.

He walks me back until my ass hits something solid, then sweeps his arm out and knocks the stuff on top aside. At least one delicate trinket shatters against the floor. And then he grabs me by the hips and spins me around, pushing me down so I’m bent over it.

The button pops off my jeans as he yanks them open and unzips them, shoving them and my panties down to my knees. The first touch of his finger on my wet, needy slit makes me moan. Tom doesn’t waste time. He probes me enough to make sure I’m slick and ready, and then he’s pushing inside of me and I didn’t even register him undoing his own pants.

He sinks in deep and takes me hard, the force of his thrusts driving me up the table. Another knickknack falls and cracks against the hardwood floor. I push back against him, urging him to go deeper.

“Fuck, that’s hot,” Sam says as he flicks his jeans open and drags his zipper down. “Hold her down and pull her hair. She’ll like it.”

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