I shifted from foot to foot. “If you’ll excuse me, I have quite a bit more work to finish this afternoon. I’ll see you later, Heath.” And then, I fled with only marginally more dignity than Jez had managed.
I’d chosen the airy, open-plan space adjacent to the main floor library as my office shortly after purchasing this property. At the time, it had seemed like a serene place to get work done—not that I’d spent much time in this house since buying it a couple of years ago.
Now, I cursed myself for not choosing some cramped, remote closet space in far corner of the attic, and having it soundproofed to professional music studio standards.
First, I heard Heath conferring in low tones with Gage and Tony. Then the elevator doors opened and closed, after which I could make out the sound of cables and pulleys as the car descended to the basement level. Shortly afterward, the sound of a tentative door-knock filtered up from almost directly below me.
More voices, the exchange indistinct. The conversation rose and fell, Jez’s voice gaining volume until I clearly made out the words, “I already tried to kill him! Am I supposed to add sexual assault to the rap sheet now?”before growing too quiet to be intelligible.
I ground my teeth together and cursed alpha hearing... alpha smell... alpha possessiveness—
Basically, all things related to being an alpha.
Everything had seemed so simple before Jez came along. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t desire things that I couldn’t have. I wanted my sister back... but she was gone. I wanted to take down the Vozzina gang, and all the other people like them... but I couldn’t do that without legal proof that seemed impossible to obtain. I wanted to save as many omegas as I could from the same fate that had claimed Maria... but no matter how many we rescued, there were always more that we couldn’t help.
Now, though, the object of my desire was in a room directly below my feet, surrounded by the rest of my pack. Unattainable only because I’d decided she should be.
The conversation downstairs trailed off to silence. With a sigh of relief, I turned my focus to the very real pile of work that genuinely did need to get done. I opened the first email...
... and I was still staring blankly at it ten minutes later. I hadn’t even made it past the first sentence. It was soquietdownstairs. What were they doing?
I returned my fractured attention to the urgent message from my customs contact in Canada, trying not to picture Jez wrappedup in the others’ arms, seeking comfort from them inside her cozy nest.
An hour passed, as I doggedly worked my way through the backlog of important communications piling up in my inbox. The silence in the house stretched. Had they fallen asleep? It was still afternoon—but Gage and Tony were recovering from serious injuries, and Jez might have crashed pretty hard after her earlier adrenaline dump.
“Nngh...”
The wordless moan teased the edges of my hearing, and my fingers stilled on my keyboard. Was someone having a nightmare?
“Ah... ah... ah!”
More moaning. Not Jez. Tony? The anguished sounds grew louder, before being promptly muffled. Silence fell again, only to be broken by more low conversation that I couldn’t make out.
A louder cry punctuated the indistinct muttering—sharp and startled. That wasdefinitelyTony, and if I was working on the assumption that no one here would actually torture our resident beta, that really only left one other possibility.
My cock, which had spent my entire adult life not giving a flying fuck that other people around me were having sex, jumped to full hardness so fast that it left me lightheaded.
A second, different cry pierced the walls—this one in a higher register. It, too, was quickly cut off; but the damage had been done.
MATE.
The word echoed through my body like a clarion call, dragging me up and out of my chair without prior approval from my brain. I didn’t remember deciding to leave the office. I didn’t remember choosing to walk down the winding central staircase to the basement level.
Ididremember the feeling of slamming face first into the invisible wall of Jez’s sex-soaked pheromones. Except this time, there was no convenient dampener shot waiting for me. Only espresso and burnt sugar, the odor of a desperate omega silently begging for a knot.
My dick throbbed painfully against my trousers; the sensation multiplied a hundredfold compared to how bad things had been in the back of the limo. My feet carried me down the darkened hallway to the half-open door that was the source of both the sounds and the pheromone cocktail.
Wet, gagging noises came from inside, interspersed with Tony mumbling things like, “More!” and “Please!” while sounding like he had marbles in his mouth. Then came Jez’s muffled scream, and I was in the doorway, staring shamelessly at the sight of Jez convulsing in ecstasy on Heath’s lap while Tony jerked his own cock with frantic movements as Gage fucked his face.
Heath froze abruptly. Gage looked up, meeting my gaze without surprise.
“You gonna come inside, Knox... or just skulk in the doorway?” he asked. “Because I get the impression Jez is happy to invite you into her nest. We probably ought to have a quick word about some other things, though.”
Abruptly, every eye in the room was on me. Or, rather, every eye except Tony’s, since Gage was still holding his head down, choking Tony on his cock. The sound of Tony coming broke the sudden silence. He sobbed, his hips jerking as he spurted jizz onto the cushions below him as though he might never stop.
“Looks like you’ve got Tony’s seal of approval to be here, too.” Gage’s voice had gone hoarse. He eased Tony’s mouth off his jutting erection with a murmured apology. Tony collapsed against the edge of the couch, panting hard and looking likeall his bones had dissolved. Gage murmured soothing nonsense and stroked his thick, dark hair.
“Jez,” Heath said, sounding cautious. “Would you like Knox to come inside and join us?”
