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“At the risk of you teasing me mercilessly,” Eli exhaled, “There’s not been anyone I’ve wanted to knot. It’s primitive and takes away your ability to do anything for a while. It’s meant to keep,” he coughed lightly, the reddish undertones in his brown skin brightening, “everything… inside and I’ve never thought about… it’s just not very convenient.” He rushed out, shrugging.
“It’s meant to keep everything inside.”
Right now would have been the best time for me to be honest with Eli, to have the hard conversation. We were already talking about something that could easily segue into the reason why I was crying the day we met. Instead, I focused on one thing he said, finding that to be more interesting than the knowledge of my medical condition. “There’s never been anyone you’ve wanted to knot until me?”
“Yeah,” Eli hummed softly as he massaged my scalp. “Dunno what you did to me Laney, but I’m not complaining. Why did you choose to focus on that? Is it because…” he trailed off, gasping facetiously. “You like me?!”
“I didn’t say that!” I protested.
“At this point, seeing as how we just heat shared—”
“You only fucked me through the worst of it. It’s not like you were here from day one,” I argued, my cheeks reddening under the accurate observation.
“Irregardless!” Eli exclaimed.
I groaned loudly, “That isn’t a word.”
“It’s in the dictionary.”
“Morons.”
“Irregardless,” Eli continued, “We heat shared even if it was for a few days. You asked me to come over and, what did you say yesterday, ‘fuck you into the mattress’?”
I smacked his chest, complaining, “If I did like you, I definitely don’t now.”
“Well, I like you. A lot,” he stressed, a smile lending a melodic lilt to his voice.
Tucking loose curls behind my ear, I ignored the fluttering of my heart to state, matter of fact, “I know.”
“Aaand…”
“I, maybe, like you too,” I rushed out.
Any sense of joy I felt when Eli loudly cheered, before smothering my face in kisses, was overshadowed by the heavy sense of shame and guilt as I held tightly onto my secret.
I’ll tell him before things get too serious.
Chapter Twelve
On occasion, after the restaurant closed for the night and the staff had all gone home, I’d have, what I affectionately referred to as, “pack bonding” with Jason and Jonah.
Although, I didn’t know why I continued to enforce these gatherings when Jason liked to state throughout the night that he “didn’t do bonding” and Jonah liked to point out that we weren’t actually a “pack”.
“I’m just stating that even though we’ve been friends for the past twelve years, we technically do not fit the government requirements for an actual pack. And seeing as how our government doesn’t recognize ‘pack’ as a legal family any longer—”
Jason interrupted, mumbling as he took a sip of beer, “Damn government.”
“Let’s not get started on that issue.” Jonah rolled his eyes.
“Please, let’s not,” I wholeheartedly agreed. There was something I wanted to discuss with them. “I wanted to talk to you guys about—”
Jason glanced at me with a knowing smile. “What would you care to discuss with us, Elias?”
I regarded Jason warily, my eyebrow arched. “Absolutely nothing that would have you making that face.”
“Are you sure? Because lately you’ve smelled like…” Jonah paused to sniff the air, finishing his sentence with a smug smirk, ”... jasmine.”
“Probably that omega he’s seeing but pretending he’s not seeing.” Jason tipped his beer in my direction, but continued to address Jonah. “Did you know that when the poor dear asked Eli if he already had an omega, instead of answering, he told the guy, ‘I prefer not to disclose such sensitive information over text’.”
