Page 39 of The Florist and Her Alphas

“We would love to be there.”

My apartment has never felt so full and also so small.

That night, four alphas, six-foot-plus each, broad shoulders, long legs, are all sitting around my tiny red dining table as we eat lo mein.

The radio plays low from the kitchen counter. Something old, something with a saxophone and a woman’s voice that sounds like she’s singing through smoke. The curtains billow in the evening breeze.

I’m still in the red dress, with my shoes off, toes curling against the cold hardwood.

Julian talks the most. He’s telling a story about Pepper and a business meeting that went catastrophically wrong because the parrot learned the word “bankruptcy” and shouted it at precisely the wrong moment. August is laughing, his bright blue eyes crinkling behind his glasses, his honey scent warm and golden in the close air. Cole eats in silence, methodical, his slate-blue eyes moving between his brothers and me with that watchful calm that makes my skin prickle.

Ezra doesn’t talk much. He eats. He listens. His eyes find mine across the table every thirty seconds, hold for two beats, then drop away.

Each look feels like a touch.

Each look makes my stomach flip, my pussy clench, slick gathering between my thighs, eager for something that’s right there but also out of reach.

I shouldn’t be feeling like this.

My scent blockers have been fading every hour.

The rose scent of me fills the apartment, mixing with their scents of bergamot, lemon, black tea, and honey until the air feels heavy with it, charged, like the moment before a storm breaks.

I am less lonely than I have been in three years. The realization hits me in the middle of Julian’s story, and I have to look down at my noodles so no one sees the sudden wetness in my eyes.

Julian raises his glass.

“To Marsh Florals,” he says. His dimple is deep, his hazel eyes warm on mine. “To Liana. To building something beautiful out of nothing and keeping it against all odds. For her not taking the money.”

“To not taking the money,” August echoes, smiling.

“To the shop,” Cole says simply.

Ezra raises his glass last. His gray eyes hold mine across the table, steady and certain.

“To you,” he says. Quiet. Just that. To you.

The stress is gone. And it feels good. The weight I’ve been carrying since that cream-colored envelope arrived, the dread of losing everything, the constant calculation of how many days I had left. Gone. Replaced by something warmer, lighter, buzzing under my skin like champagne.

My pussy throbs. Hard. Slick soaks through my underwear, warm and wet against the red fabric of my dress where I’m sitting. I shift in my chair. Press my thighs together.

Oh my god, they can probably smell me right now.

I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me as I clench my thighs tighter as they talk.

The pain starts as a twinge.

Low in my belly. Just below my navel. A dull ache I’ve never felt…

Oh.

Oh no.

It comes again. Stronger this time. A cramp that rolls through my lower abdomen and settles deep, low, in the place where my womb sits. Heat. I’ve been around alphas before but never felt like this. It could have been caused by their scents and how attracted I feel towards these brothers.

I set my fork down. My hand is shaking.

“Liana?” August’s voice. Concerned. His honey scent sharpens.