Page 26 of The Alpha: Part One
Michael finds something to tell me about that actually is helpful. "I put a new blanket in the dresser last week. It's light purple with gray spots."
"Is it fuzzy or smooth?" Michael is always finding things that I might like for a nest, and whatever he finds is almost always perfect.
"Fuzzy. It has a silky border, just like the blue one you like. I like the shade of purple it is, too. I think you'll like it."
Ben starts telling me about his plans to wash and detail his car, in great detail, and that's almost as good as thinking about the nesting materials I have folded in the dresser at their house. By the time he's finished going through how he's going to clean every surface in the car the spike is over. I'll definitely need a change of clothes I brought with me, but it's over.
"Okay. I'm good now. Thank you," I tell them. "I'm leaving here as soon as I change. I'm going straight to your house. Do I need to stop and pick anything up for the house?"
"No," Michael says. "Please, just go to the house. Please, okay? If you need anything, text us, we'll get it. And if we need to leave early, just let us know. Don't forget to let Mateo know what's going on. We don't need him worrying himself to death and beating down the door again."
No, we do not. That night is still one of the single most embarrassing moments of my life. During one of the first heats I spent with the twins, Mateo didn’t realize I was with them. He had been waiting for me to get home, pacing the floors for who knows how long, and by the time he started pounding down their door he had worked himself into a rage with worry. I’m confident he was as horrified as I was when Michael answered the door in nothing but a towel while Benny was making me scream. Horrifically scarred. From that moment on, we made sure to let my brother know when I was staying with them, heat or not.
"Okay. I'll check in with you in a little bit. You guys are wonderful. Bye." I end the call and send a text to Joli, she should still be at or around the desk, to ask her to bring my bag to the room I'm in. Then I send another to my brother. He never knows how to respond to me going into heat even though he's had five years to adjust to the concept. All I get back from him is an order to go straight to the twins' house and to text him when I get there.
I do what Michael and my brother asked me and go straight to the house. I was tempted to stop and pick up some easy foods for the next few days, but I got a little twinge of a cramp while I was sitting at a traffic light and broke every speed limit sign to get there as fast as I could. I text everyone as soon as I lock the door behind me and head straight to the extra bedroom in the back of the house.
The back bedroom is where I keep my things. If I lived here, it would be my bedroom. I have extra clothes here, and all my nesting materials are in here, folded neatly in the heavy black dresser that belonged to their mother. My abdomen keeps pinching with small, stinging little cramps every few minutes. I'd normally take a shower after work, but I find the new blanket, a fuzzy blue one, and the brown throw with the satin edges. And I need to see if I like the new purple one. I keep falling deeper and deeper into the never-ending task of finding the next necessary thing until I hear the door unlock.
I look around me to find my nest half built, but not where I usually make it. I always make it on the floor in Michael's room, under the window. I always pull the mattress off his bed and drag it over, then I stack, weave, and tuck things around it until it's perfect. I've always done it that way, ever since my first heat. I vaguely remember how worried Benny was the first time, about me rearranging the room by myself. I mostly remember Michael leaning against the door frame, smiling, watching the process and staying out of my way while I pushed and pulled Benny out of it.
The nest I've just built is in the back bedroom. And it's huge. It's so much bigger than the nests I usually put together. It takes up almost half the room. And somehow, inexplicably, both Michael's and Ben's mattresses are at the base of the nest. But I need something better than a couple sheets to hold them together. "I'm back here!" I call out and sit back in the middle of my creation to wait for them to come see what I've made.
Michael stops in the doorway and Ben peers at me from over his shoulder. "That's a much bigger nest that you usually make," Michael says, smiling. "Do you have enough stuff for it? Want me to bring you some things?"
I nod, looking around me.
"Okay," Michael says. "Benny, let's go get some more things for Desie's nest. Can you get the flannel sheets from the winter closet? I have a few things in my closet that might be good. We're going to order some food, Desie. What sounds good to you?"
"You know what I like," I say, my attention going to the unacceptable crack between the two mattresses. I set to work trying to fix it while the boys come and go, bringing me all kinds of different things with different textures that all smell like them. No matter what I add, the nest still seems incomplete. And loose. I can't fix the crack.
"Desir'ee!" Benny barks, making me jump and whirl around to yell at him for yelling at me. "Desie, baby. I need you to eat this food. I heated it up for you again. Please, just half of it. Michael and me already ate, I promise. Here, come on." He tugs my hand, trying to pull me over to the dresser where he left the plate of tacos, the scent of them heavy in the air, polluting the mixture of smells of us coming from the nest.
Any other time I'd be more than happy to eat a plate of tacos. I turn back to the nest, pulling against his hold. "I need to find something to hold them together first. Then I'll eat. I promise."
"Eat now, Desir'ee." Michael says it softly, but every syllable is crackling with an alpha command and my feet take me across the room to the plate of food without my permission. I shove a bite into my mouth and glare at him while I chew it.
"I'm sorry, Desie. I am," he says, still speaking gently. "We just need you to eat while you can. We've been trying without the command for hours, but you're stubborn as hell when you want to be. What do you need? Tell me what you need, and I'll bring it to you."
I usually put on a show of being angry and offended whenever one of them uses the alpha tone on me, but secretly, I love it. I love it so much. I don't know why, but it makes me happier than it probably should that they have the ability to do that to me. And he's always been good at finding the right things for my nests, another thing that makes me so happy. "I need to wrap something around the mattresses so they'll stay together. I tucked a few sheets around them, but that won't work."
I watch his eyes drift to the side as he thinks, then comes back with a smile. "I have rope in the trunk, and some bungee cords. Would either of those work?"
"Why do you have rope in the trunk?" I ask with my mouth full.
"We were going to kidnap you."
I choke. I sputter. I cough. Then I squeeze my thighs together in an attempt to contain the flood of slick that drips down them.
Michael laughs. "We can still kidnap you, baby. Tie you up, throw you in the trunk, drive you off into the sunset and do all kinds of unspeakable things to you."
"Wicked, awful things," Ben chimes in.
"Go get it," I whisper. Then I ask, "when were you going to kidnap me?"
"Week before last," Michael says before he walks out the door, nonchalantly, like it isn't the first time he's talked about it.
My eyes keep straying from the food to the nest. I've eaten half the food, my stomach might rebel if I eat anymore of it. "Why were you going to kidnap me? I'd go with you without being kidnapped."
