Well, hot damn!
In under a minute, I was just as naked as Chuck was. Five minutes later, we were tangled in a dirty ying-yang symbol on the oversized sofa, both intent on making the other blow his load first. Fast forward another ten minutes and we were propped up on the couch, jay-bird naked with the pizza between us, Terminator loading on the tv, and cold beers in our hands.
As I’d promised, all traces of awkwardness were long gone. In fact, I was so comfortable after we’d shoved the remnants of the pizza onto the coffee table and opened a second round of beers that I apparently dozed off.
~*~
The first sign that I wasn’t where I ought to be was when I shifted on the lumpy mattress beneath me and it gave a pained grunt.
“Watch it,” a deep voice growled sleepily in my ear. “I like my balls attached.”
It took a second for me to place the voice and realize I was draped over Chuck’s naked body on the couch, a light blanket covering us both. It was way too intimate of a position to be in with a hookup, but for some reason I wasn’t really in a rush to resolve it. From the way one of his big hands was cupping my ass cheek, I was pretty sure I wasn’t exactly cramping Chuck’s style, either. Still, the polite thing to do was to get out of his hair, so I aimed for casual as I shifted against him more carefully, trying to gain enough purchase to get up without smashing any more of my host’s naughty bits.
“Sorry. I must have fallen asleep.”
Chuck grunted what sounded like an agreement, but his hand on my butt tightened when I shifted my weight.
“I should probably go,” I said quietly. “I’m sure you need your sleep.”
Chuck yawned and then nuzzled into my neck. “You have to be somewhere early?”
His yawn was contagious, so I had to wait for mine to pass to respond. “Not really.”
Chuck grunted again, this one sounded more like satisfaction. “Then why don’t we relocate to the bed so we can go another round in the morning?” He pressed a light kiss to my cheek. “Maybe we can order another cold pizza.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “If you’re sure, that sounds great. Much better than going home at this hour but I’m not sure I can handle cold pizza for breakfast. Maybe just coffee since I’m not a kid anymore.”
Chuck’s laugh rumbled under my chest as he shifted to sitting up, easily taking me with him. “You and me both,” he agreed, pulling me to my feet. “You and me both.”
When the time came to part ways the next morning, we’d traded another round of orgasms, shared a pot of coffee, and exchanged kisses and cell phone numbers with no way to know that it wouldn’t be long before fate threw us back together.
ChapterFour
Part Two
March 27th, 2022
Chuck
The knock at my closed office door had me groaning irritably. I wasn’t sleeping well lately.
As it turned out, everyone had been absolutely right about how insanely much work was going to be involved in bringing on seven new Omegas at one time. Especially when you factored in the unanticipated special needs of two of the seven. Then there was the nationwide political unrest following the severely divisive election, the rash of violent uprisings in nearly every corner of the country, and the worldwide insanity of the Covid 19 epidemic that continued to kill humans by the thousands every day. If that wasn’t enough, despite the newly-approved vaccine and the finally decreasing infection rate, a new conspiracy theory blaming shifters for the pandemic had a group of local Hunters hassling us despite evidence that showed it had probably originated in a freaking bat half the world away.
Saying there was a lot on my mind didn’t come close to covering it.
And it didn’t help that after over three months of regular text flirting with Julian following what Jeremy kept referring to as our holiday meet-cute, the last ten days there had been complete radio silence, leaving me to wonder what I’d said wrong. Or not said right. Or, and the last option bothered me more than I liked to admit, if I’d just been a way for Julian to kill time until he found someone more his style.
Not that that had anything to do with my trouble sleeping or so I kept telling myself.
“Come in.”
“Hey, Boss.” The strange edge to Kade’s voice didn’t bode well. Neither did his continued loitering in the open doorway instead of collapsing into one of my visitor chairs with his usual lack of grace.
“What’s wrong?”
“I got a call from Rafael Borrero,” Kade began, his jaw twitching. “The lead inspector with the Council of Packs Security Division?” When I nodded that I knew who he was talking about, Kade continued, “They’re starting to have problems with gangs of humans attacking shifters over this fucking virus there, too. You remember the play Leia was in?”
I nodded again, my chest starting to tighten. The play itself had been a hoot and then at the end when Jules and I ran into each other after the curtain call, well, let’s just say that we’d managed to sneak in an encore of our own in a supply closet. “Yes, of course.”
