“What the fuck? Mywhat?”
“Ah.” Matthew cleared his throat, eyes wide as he took in my expression and hopefully realized he’d said something completely insane. “Um. Your best…friend? Do you not like that term, or something? Is closest friend better?”
“Neither one is better! Buggering fucking gods, Matthew, my best friend? Nate? You’re out of your mind!” I had my hands on his shoulders, and I gave him a shake on every other word for emphasis. “We work together, and we’re brothers-in-law, but we’re not…we’re not…”
Except that not only did we work together, and live close together as family by marriage, but we also ate lunch together. And went into town together to run errands. And when I had a fight with Matthew, I made a cup of coffee for Nate and a cup of tea for me, and I bummed a cigarette off of whoever was in the mechanic shop, and Nate and I shared it down at the end of the garden while we bitched about our mates, and…
“Oh no,” I gasped, and put my hands over my face. “Oh, fucking hell.”
“Wow,” Matthew said, and started to laugh, violently enough that it bounced me up and down on his lap and sloshed the water around even more. I took one hand away from my eyes to smack him in the chest, and he caught it in one of his, kissed it, and kept laughing like a brain-damaged hyena. “You really didn’t know? How could you not—Nate’s usually the oblivious one. Oh, shit, does he not know either?”
If he’d known but not clued me in, then I’d be using some particularly unpleasant magic to cause itching in hard-to-reach places.
Then again, how would I have reacted to Nate announcing that he’d decided I was his best friend?
The thought gave me a warm, glowing little ember of a feeling in a weird corner of my ribcage.
Fuck.
Left with no other option for escaping the conversation besides jumping out the window and running away, something I’d already tried once to get away from Matthew and come to regret, I wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed the idiot laughter off those firm, perfect lips.
I’d meant to distract him, but it backfired, because by the time he finished exploring me with his tongue and nibbling my lower lip and sliding one hand under my ass to squeeze me and slip a finger between my cheeks and tease at my balls, I’d forgotten what I’d been intending to distract him from.
But I’d kept a slight handle on reality. He released my mouth and moved down my neck, sucking marks into the curve of my throat, and I had the presence of mind to say, with great regret, “No knotting.” He hummed a sound against my Adam’s apple that sounded like disagreement and moved his fingers with intent. I squirmed on them, the head of my cock rubbing over his wet stomach and sending tremors all the way through mine. “Seriously,” I gasped. “They might need me if Jessica orone of the kids takes a turn. Getting unknotted in a hurry to go do more healing isn’t going to work for me. I won’t enjoy it if I’m worried about it the whole time.”
“No worries, then,” he murmured, sliding down and pressing kisses across my chest and down my stomach. “Kneel up and brace on the tub.”
“I have excellent balance, I won’t need to brace myse—oh!” I toppled forward and barely caught myself on the edge of the tub as Matthew wrapped his lips around the head of my cock and sucked, hard, lashing at the tip with his tongue.
Matthew grinned up at me wickedly around his mouthful, eyes gleaming alpha gold under his dark lashes, and then pulled me in, letting me sink all the way into his throat. I’d spent fifteen years thinking alphas never sucked cock, and then I’d met Matthew. The first time he’d touched me, when he still hated me and I still feared him, he’d ruined me for any other man. Hell, he’d ruined me for any other man the first time he’d smiled at me, I just hadn’t known it.
Nate the oblivious one? Maybe. But he had some stiff competition.
Getting stiffer, because Matthew kept sucking me like his life depended on it, the rough stubble on his chin scraping the sensitive skin of my balls, and a fingertip now sliding inside me, providing enough pressure to give me something to ride while I fucked his alpha mouth.
If he hadn’t been holding on to me while I lost it, turned inside out, and came so hard I saw stars, I’d have slid down into the water and drowned. Everything went all sideways and slippery and hazy.
“Get the water warmed up so you don’t freeze,” Matthew said softly, pulling me against his chest, and I sent a pulse of magic through the tub. I cracked my eyes open, watching fresh steam rise in lazy curls. He had one arm around me, my bodystraddling his again and my head on his shoulder, with most of me submerged in the hot water.
Heaven.
Something nudged under my thighs. Right. He had his other hand under there, and he’d started stroking himself off, the thick head of his cock poking between my cheeks.
“Just the tip,” he said, voice gone all rough—maybe from swallowing my cock and every drop of my come, and maybe from his own arousal. “I want to come inside you. If I can’t knot you, I still want you to feel me.”
Well, since he’d asked so nicely and given me the blowjob of the century first, fine.
I spread my legs a little wider and tilted my pelvis, giving him a better angle for entry. It wouldn’t have worked for fucking me, but he shifted around and got himself wedged against my hole.
He clamped his other hand down on my hip, held me in place, and thrust up.
I couldn’t help my shudder and moan as his cockhead pried me open and popped inside. It didn’t hurt, but it felt…uncomfortable, in a way Matthew’s body joining with mine usually didn’t.
That discomfort, perversely, nearly got me hard again, narrowing my consciousness down to every nerve ending in that sensitive, needy part of me.
Nate wouldn’t need my help in the next half hour, right? Matthew could knot me. I could slide down his cock and have him all the way inside me, pulsing in my core…Matthew growled, bit down on my neck over the mating bite, and spurted into me, bucking up and making half of the remaining bath water splash over the sides.
We both collapsed. My body slid off of his cock, and it pressed between my legs. I wriggled and squeezed him, and he groaned and held me close.
