A purr starts up in my chest and I feel myself just let go, sag back into him.
His fingers work into my scalp and I lose the plot entirely. Tip my head back into his hands and let him. He turns me by the hips to rinse the soap off my front, and we end up face to face under the spray, his hands loose on me, and that’s how it gets out before I can stop it.
“Do you mean it?”
His brows pull. “Mean what?”
I do it anyway. “When you implicitly act like I’m yours. Out in the field, in the nest...” My voice goes thin and young and I hate it. “Do you mean it, or is it just the biology talking?”
And there it is, right on schedule, the voice I packed and carried out of my old life, sliding in.
Men like that keep what’s useful. You’re useful right now. Stick around for the part where you’re not.
Everybody leaves you eventually.
His mouth opens, then closes as his half-smile goes. He reaches back and shuts the water off, so there’s just the drip of it and the steam.
“Luna, it is not the biology, and it’s not your heat scent, as delicious as it is,” he says, his jaw working as his eyes lock onto mine. “I have wanted you from the exact second I saw you across that bar, before I ever had your name or your scent. I’m not yours because you smell good. I’m yours because you’re funny, you’re smart, and you’re infinitely resourceful. I’m yours because you are the only person on this earth I don’t feel like I have to perform for.”
Just there, the cruel voice has gone quiet, because it doesn’t have a thing to say to that.
And the thing I’ve been holding behind my teeth, the thing I won’t let myself feel because feeling it is the most dangerous move I know, comes straight up and out of me.
“I love you.”
I watch it land on him. I genuinely did not know it was coming until it was already out.
His whole face opens.
“And I love you, Luna.” His forehead comes down and rests on mine.
The bathroom door suddenly clicks open.
Bram stands in the doorway, looks at the steam and the two of us soaked and wrapped around each other, and lets out a low, rumbled purr.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Bram says. “But Reed and I just got back from the press. We smelled love, and quite frankly, we’d like to know if we can join the shower party.”
At the sound of Bram’s voice, the heavy, sweet fog of my heat haze snaps back with a absolute flourish.
“Get in here,” I gasp, my omega practically clawing at the glass to get to him. “Both of you. Right now.”
45
Luna
The wave recedes. The knot-need is still there, gnawing at me, but I can think in whole sentences again.
I’m in the middle of the nest with my three alphas. All of them stripped down, all hard planes and muscle, sprawled around me and waiting.
The sight alone sends a cramp tearing through my lower belly. Heat floods down behind it, pooling, and I’m suddenly, stupidly aware of how empty I am. I double over. A thin, high whine scrapes out of my throat before I can catch it.
They go alert at once.
Bram gets there first. Big hands scooping me up off the pillows, settling me into the center of the nest, easy. “What do you need, sweetheart?”
I look up at him. “A knot,” I say, my voice shot to gravel. I push up on my hands and meet his eyes, then Ash’s, then Reed’s. “And your bite. All of you. I want all three of you to claim me.”
Every muscle in the room locks. I guess this is awfully straightforward for such a big thing.
