“Hey there, big guy…You were growling and stinking up the place.”
Stinking up the place?!
“Pardon me?” Jay growls, raising an eyebrow.
Leo looks pink-cheeked, and his cinnamon scent is much less angry/disappointed and way more fuck-me-now.
“What Leo means is: three enigmas pumping out let’s-fuck pheromones would be bad, given Grayson and Ro are both on track for a rut in the next month. We can’t afford that right now, yeah?” Gideon says, his voice strained.
Jay sees that everyone in the room is hard and sweating.
Grayson staggers into the bathroom with Finn on his heels.
“Is he okay?” Jay asks Gideon, who has Rowan on his knees with Gideon’s hand in his hair, counting backward from a thousand in German.
Gideon nods. “He will be. He’s such a good boy.” The words send a shudder through Rowan, but he only counts a bit louder and closes his eyes.
When Grayson and Finn come back five minutes later, there is a bit more color in Grayson’s cheeks. Finn reaches for a glass of water, his lips red and puffy.
“No, don’t ask me,” Finn says, then puts his hand up and sucks back another full cup of water.
Jay looks to Grayson, who is heading back to bed with Jay, but Leo intercepts the enigma and pulls him down on his lap. The scent of vanilla-basil floats by on a soft breeze.
Oh, come on.
“Focus on your shoulder, Alpha,” Finn suggests.
“Easy for you to say. Since when is a bullet wound supposed to be a cure for a hard-on?”
“Too soon,” Rowan says as he stands up, kissing Gideon’s palm.
“Fuck, sorry.” Jay is getting tired of doing shit he’s truly sorry for, so he changes the subject to the most pressing matter of where the hell are his mates.
“What’s the plan now?”
Leo sighs. “We get them back.”
“Duh,” Grayson huffs from his lap and wiggles his butt.
There’s a growl from the end of the bed, and Rowan clenches his jaw to get the noise to stop. “I say we march in there and take the bastards out.”
It has an appeal: teeth and claws, and Carnell’s heart in his hand.
Gideon’s phone rings, and when the alpha pulls it out, his eyebrows go all the way to his hairline. “Lauren.”
“Gideon,” she intones, and even over the line, it’s clear that her superiority rankles Gideon’s wolf.
“I thought you’d want to know that Nix and Luca are locked in Carnell’s wine cellar as of ten minutes ago. They’re fine, but hungry.”
That makes Rowan growl and jump to his feet.
Gideon visibly swallows his pride. “How do you know that?”
“He has a phone he…borrowed from a dead man.” She sounds proud.
Just hearing his omega has made his mark on his abductor causes pride to fill that achy place in his heart.
“Do you have any suggestions?” Gideon asks. He sounds uncertain and a bit defeated.
