Page 91 of Want It All
‘Has it happened before?’ I swiped some up with my fingertips, then licked them clean with a purr of enjoyment.
‘No, but I looked it up online. Apparently, it’s not uncommon.’
My gain.
She was swollen and pink and looked very much as if she’d already come a number of times – possibly the same number of times that Byron had come insideher. The faint sweet scent of her slick filled my senses; I groaned, needing to taste more.
I started gently, mouthing at her swollen folds, licking softly at her sensitive clit. She shuddered, rocking slightly as I mapped her with my tongue, indulging in my own need and pushing it inside her. Chocolate and salted caramel flooded my mouth; my cock jerked in my shorts, the material already damp with precum.
Fuck yes.
Rose whined, and I switched my attention to where she wanted it, sucking gently on her clit. She shivered, her knees tightening around my head, and I made sure to keep my mouth gentle and slow so I wouldn’t make her sore. She circled her hips slightly, starting to lose herself to the feeling.
A moment later, she went still.
I looked up; Tristan was next to her, stroking her cheek. ‘Can I kiss you, omega?’ he asked gravely.
Oh.
‘Oh,’ Rose breathed, as if echoing my thought. ‘I … Yes, please.’
‘I need you to know,’ Tristan said steadily, ‘that it isn’t about him. That I want to kiss you foryou.’
I returned my attention to between her legs; Rose bit off a moan. ‘U-understood.’
I didn’t watch them kiss, but I heard it. Tristan was unhurried and thorough; Rose was increasingly desperate, her whimpers and pants caught by Tristan’s mouth as my own worked between her legs. When her body tightened, I thrust my tongue back inside her, desperate to feel – and taste – her climax; while she was still shuddering, I fished beneath my waistband and brought myself off with two quick pumps of my hand.
‘I want you to move in here,’ I said, when Tristan helped her climb off me and she collapsed on the couch, still catching her breath.
She blinked at me, startled, but it didn’t take her long to answer. ‘Yes. If that’s okay with both of you.’ Her eyes flickered to Tristan, who was halfway to the bathroom, grabbing a towel to clean us up. ‘But we need to fix this, Seb.’
I knew what she meant bythis: our pack.
The only issue was that I had no ideahow.
Rose went back to her room only to gather her things. It didn’t take long with Tristan and I helping; she didn’t have a lot to move. The three of us made some unspoken agreement to sleep in the nest instead of my bedroom, and something about it feltright, as if that was where we should have been from the start. Tristan had bought the largest nest-bed he could find, and even with the three of us in there we could sleep without touching.Rose and I went through her things and mine together, choosing what would stay in there; we added her sea-green blanket to the end of the bed, and some of her cream cushions atop the pillows. Her fairy lights were pinned to drape with the netting, and her scented candles went on the bedside tables. We moved some of my cushions out, and swapped the abstract painting I’d hung for a set of vintage botanical prints of coastal plants and flowers we found online. I was glad I’d already made some changes; Rose seemed to like it, humming happily every time she stepped into the nest.
Tristan ordered all her favourite snacks and practised making chai tea and lattes just the way she liked them. He emptied out some of our shelves and helped her arrange her favourite books. Within a few days, he knew what she needed when she studied; knew which foods would tempt her to take a break; knew the temperature she liked her baths and which oils to use in her water; and would time exactly how long she needed to be left alone in the mornings until she felt human again.
If I hadn’t already been wildly in love with him, those actions would have tipped me over.
Watching him with Rose made me realise just how much I’d taken for granted. I’d thought that he just had an instinct for knowing when I needed something, when in reality he worked hard to know and to anticipate our wants. Rose bloomed under his care and attention, her smiles frequent and beaming.
‘You’re the best alpha in the fucking world,’ I murmured to him one afternoon, after he brought Rose and I hot drinks as we read through a chapter on medical anthropology.
His cheeks went pink, and I was glad I’d said something.
He and Rose hadn’t kissed again, though she was happy to snuggle in his arms. Tristan blushed every time he pressed his lips to her hair. I wondered whether that was all it would ever be – packmates didn’t have to be sexually intimate, after all – butI suspected there was a spark between them. It was a quiet one, steady and slow-burning, but I had a feeling that when it finally caught alight, it would flare hot enough to scorch.
Byron and Rose saw each other every day, studying after class and occasionally retreating tohang outin his apartment. I assumed they spent theirhanging outtime fucking like rabbits, which was what I would do in their situation, but Rose was careful to shower before she came home; she whispered one day that she was worried she’d upset Tristan if she came back smelling like Byron again. I worried even more about Tristan than I did about studying; he was pale, distracted, and anxious. I did everything I could to make him feel wanted, but I remembered how it felt not knowing where Rose was, and I knew it was a problem I couldn’t solve. Rose and I talked about it at length – I even called my dads for help – but Tristan and Byron had to sort it out for themselves.
I just hoped they wouldn’t take too long.
It was mid-term break when it started.
I had a light stomach ache, just enough to wonder whether I’d pulled a muscle, or had eaten something that didn’t agree with me. I didn’t spend much time thinking about it – it was easy to ignore – but it persisted through the drafts of my final essay, then through its submission, and into preparation for the end-of-semester exam. It grew worse on the night of the pre-exam party, which saw Rose and I dancing in the First Year Library again, but this time, my heart wasn’t in it. I was agitated and anxious, and my clothes rubbed the wrong way on my skin. The smell of scent cancellers made my nose hurt, and every timesomeone brushed against Rose – accidentally or otherwise – I had to hold myself back from growling.
Tristan watched me, frowning; eventually, he suggested we went back to our apartment, a suggestion I was only too happy to take, for his sake, as well as mine. Byron had been at the party, chatting and laughing easily with Pravin and Chul. The other two alphas had bonded the week before, proudly wearing their bites with content expressions, their hands always touching.
