“Wow.” Reed’s voice, rough at the edges. “You two are gonna sit there, scent mark each other up and leave me out?”
And the second he says it, my omega pivots like a compass needle. I twist toward Reed and press my nose under his jaw,into woodsmoke and musk. He groans, his hand clamping down on my thigh.
Ash’s teeth graze my throat on my other side. A soft nip, right over my pulse, and I moan in pleasure.
“Damn, girl,” Bram says, his voice low. And that’s when I know it’s not enough. My omega wants the scent threading in from the front seat, too, which is currently maddeningly out of reach. I lurch forward against the seatbelt, up between the front seats, and lick a stripe up the side of Bram’s neck.
He lets out a huge, broken groan, and his hands flex white-knuckled on the wheel.
“Bram.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Get us back. Now.”
His eyes flick to mine as he turns his head—dark, amused. “With pleasure, ma’am.” A beat. “But you’ll want to behave yourself back there in the meantime. Wouldn’t want to leave the deputy feeling left out.” His voice drops a register. “Get rowdy enough, you might just earn yourself a pair of cuffs.”
Congratulations, Deputy. If the goal was to get me even more worked up, you nailed it.
***
The drive is twenty minutes of the longest foreplay of my life.
Bram takes the orchard road too fast, gravel spitting under the tires, and the second he throws it into park the rest of us come apart at the seams. Doors fly open, and Ash has my mouth before my feet hit the ground. Reed’s hands are at my waist, turning me, and I’m being passed between them, frantic, mouths and hands and not one coherent thought left among the four of us.
Then I’m off the ground entirely.
Bram. He’s scooped me clean off the gravel, one arm under my knees, one across my back, carrying all five-foot-five of me toward the cottage.
And—oh. Oh, that’s nice. My face finds his chest and before I can stop it I’m purring into him.
Good thing there’s not one soul out here to witness me getting hauled to bed like this.
Reed gets the front door open and shoves it wide. Warmth rolls out, and Bram carries me straight through.
“Upstairs,” I say as Ash finds the lobe of my ear with his tongue, tracing it. By the time Bram is three steps in I’ve got exactly one clear thought left.
But as we pass the kitchen island, my brain stalls out.
Because on it, where this morning there was nothing, is... a bag. And not just any bag.
What. What is it doing here?
“Mm?” Ash follows my stare, his voice thick.
“Put me down,” I say. “Bram. Down.”
I cross to the island, and that’s when I see the rest of it: a single sheet of heavy hotel stationery sitting on the soft leather. The handwriting, I’d know anywhere.
You forgot this.
Three words. That’s all it takes.
Little slut. You think you can just walk away from me?
Derek’s voice, so loud it’s in the room with me.
“What the fuck,” I hear myself say. “What thefuck.”
The fizz in my blood is gone. All that gorgeous heat from the truck, every last drop of it, flashes to ice. The kitchen pulls in at the edges, narrowing down to a tunnel.
He knows where I am.
