Instead, he took the camera bag off his shoulder and tucked the camera inside, then sat right there in the snow while Briar and I rubbed our scents all over him. Briar climbed into his lap, purring while I walked around them, rubbing against them both, chuffing and sniffing as I rubbed my cheek against the side of Leo’s head.
“Guess I’m the center of attention now,” Leo muttered as he petted us with gloved fingers.
I’d refrained from mentally communicating with Briar the way we typically did, just in case Leo picked up on it and felt left out. But the scent of him was beginning to cause my lower belly to cramp and ache with need.
Briar? Do you smell that?
You’ll have to be more specific.
Leo, do you smell Leo?
I smell you both, and it smells like you might be going into heat soon and dragging Leo right along with you.
Me? It's him! I think he’s an omega too. Remember biology class, when they explained that most humans were betas and never experienced the mating pull, but that there were many omegas among the humans, as well as numerous alphas, who might even have latent shifter genes way back in their family tree?
Vaguely, you always paid more attention in class than I did.
Only because you preferred hands-on classes where you learned things with practical applications, while all I cared about was keeping my grades up so I could spend as much time with you in your grandmother’s kitchen as my folks would allow me to.
True. Are you trying to say that you think Leo might have had an ancestor who was a shifter?
I don’t know about that part, but I’m getting super turned on just rubbing against him, and it smells like he’s reacting the same way.
Yeah, I am picking up on some of that from him, but I’m also picking up on something else that I’m not sure is a good thing.
What?
Not sure; I've never smelled it before, but it’s kind of pungent.
Please say it’s not a skunk; the last time we got sprayed, it took forever to get the icky stench out of our fur.
In all fairness, I did try to warn you to turn around after I got sprayed, but oh no, you had to barrel right into it and get sprayed too. I hope it was a real skunk and not a shifted one, or I’d bet we owed it one hell of a therapy bill after the way we scared the shit out of it.
“I get the strangest impression you two are having a whole-ass conversation that I’m not privy to,” Leo said as he wrapped an arm around me and tugged me until I was half on his lap too.
Our mate was super perceptive, so instead of continuing our conversation, I scent-marked just beneath his chin and purred loudly.
“Uh-huh, I’ll take that as a yes,” Leo remarked, gently stroking his hand over the fur on my head and down my back. “I hope you’ll share whatever it was later. I’m not a big fan of being left in the dark.”
"Murph!"
“It’s gonna take me awhile before I’m able to interpret some of the sounds you guys make. You might have to help me out, though. Was that 'murph'a yes or an adorable attempt at distracting me?”
I had to hand it to him; his imitation of me was super cute, even if it didn’t come anywhere close to the sound I’d made. I murphed again, this time closer to his ear, scent marking more aggressively as my belly tightened again the moment his hand drifted from the small of my back to the base of my tail.
“Hmmm, now it's truly starting to feel like a distraction,” he murmured in my ear. “And I don’t mind the least little bit.”
We need to get moving; whatever that smell is, it’s getting closer.
Chuffing, I slid reluctantly out of Leo’s lap, shook my fur, and did a little sidestep, sniffing to see if I could pick up the scent Briar was referring to, but all I could smell was Leo and the spicy undertone of Briar’s rut scent beginning to creep out the longer he remained in our mate’s lap. Oh yeah, things were going to get interesting if we didn’t get our tails in gear and put a little cold snow and distance between ourselves and our mate.
“Murrrrrr!”
Briar’s grumble as he moved away was a sure sign that he knew it too. We led Leo further down the path, picking up on the sound of water crashing against rock, and veered that way. Not only would it offer him plenty of opportunities to take pictures, but it would provide the perfect backdrop for our picnic too.
“Whoa,” Leo muttered, keeping his voice low.
I loved the soothing tone of his voice and the way he understood that our hearing, especially in this form, was far keener than his and super sensitive. We circled his legs, then bounded over to a flat, snow-covered rock and scrambled up on it, getting comfortable in the hope of conveying that this would be the perfect spot for our picnic, once he’d gotten his fill of taking pictures. Ice crusted several sections of the large waterfall, but water still splashed into the pool at the base of it, where other rocks were covered in amazing ice formations, having frozen while some of the water was still in motion. The crystalline perfection of it was stunning.
