Page 86 of Bound By Pain
I meet his questioning brown eyes and nod. “Mostly.”
“You need cuddles to center you the rest of the way,” Ridley promises, passing me a plate. I groan with delight when I see the steak, potatoes, and mountain of veggies waiting for me. It smells amazing and tastes even better.
“Did you make this?” I ask Orion, glancing up at him when he steals a bite off my fork. “I thought you were ordering in?”
“We were going to, but nothing sounded good.”
I offer him a bite of steak, drooling when his perfect lips wrap around it. Fates, now I’m a horny mess. The flip from sullen and cranky to needy and leaking slick like a broken faucet is jarring sometimes.
A hand presses against my temple, pulling away when I turn. “Your fever is gone,” Shiloh tells me, offering me a bite from his plate.
I maintain eye contact as I take it, knowing it will rile him as much as feeding Orion did me. He shifts subtly, adjusting himself, and I grin.
“Speaking of your heat,” Lex hedges from his spot on the far end of the massive couch.
“Will you be here?”
“Do you want me to be?”
Scoffing, I set my nearly empty plate aside and crawl across Shiloh and Ridley’s laps to stare into Lex’s stormy gray eyes. “Of course, I do. But if you aren’t ready, that’s okay, too.”
“Fates damn, sunshine. Stay just like that. I love the way your ass looks when you hover over me like this.”
Ridley easily breaks the tension. Laughter fills the air as I scent mark Lex and settle across all of their laps. Only Creed isn’t touching me. Or so I thought, but when my hair tugs, I glance over Lex to find him smiling as he carefully untangles the messy strands.
“Okay, butterfly, what are we watching?”
“Are you nervous?” Orion asks.
I’m curled on his side, sprawled across one corner of the couch. We made it through exactly one teen drama before Shiloh and my other mates overrode me. Something they deemed a ‘classic’ action film plays on the TV now.
“About what?”
“Your heat.”
Turning to tuck my head into the crook of his neck, I shrug. “Yes. No. I don’t know. Worried, I guess? My scent glands aren’t fully formed, yet, so my scent is still weak.”
“You’re afraid we won’t be able to recognize your need?”
“It’s silly, I know-”
Orion grabs my chin and makes me look up at him, gripping tighter than I am used to from my quietest Alpha. “Your fear isn’t silly, butterfly. You went through something horrific, and it left scars. On your body, your heart, and your mind. Don’t downplay how you feel because you don’t think it’s worth the stress.
“As for us knowing what you need, your scent isn’t the only way we can tell. For those of us bonded to you, we will feel it. For Shiloh, well, he has an uncanny ability to predict your needs as is, so I doubt he will suddenly falter just because you are in heat.And Lex can barely keep his eyes off of you any time you are in the same room. We’ve got you, Omega. I promise you won’t deal with this heat alone.”
Tears well in my eyes, but I wipe them away. His words strike at the root of fear. “Thank you. I… Having my scent so diminished bothers me a lot. More than I’ve expressed.”
“I can only imagine how off-kilter you feel. Our scents, and the scents of our mates, are so ingrained into our senses that not being able to smell one of them would bother anyone on a good day. Let alone an Omega on the verge of a heat.”
His hand soothes up my back, between my shoulder blades to my neck, then back down again. The comfort of the contact steals the strength from my muscles, leaving me a pliant pile of goop in his arms.
Throughout the rest of the night, I am passed between my mates. Each of them whispering promises and massaging different parts of my body. Sleep rests so heavily on my eyes, I have to pry them open to make sure all of my mates are still nearby.
Lex hesitates at the edge of my nest. Only when his eyes meet mine does he cave and crawl inside, stealing me from Ridley. I sprawl across his chest, soaking in his summer twilight scent and the rugged purr that vibrates through his chest.
“Sleep, brat. We’re all here. We’ve got you.”
Sunday afternoons are meant to be lazy. Yet my Alphas woke me before lunchtime and rushed me out the door.
