And to make matters worse? I couldn’t even really watch because my dumb ass had offered to drive.
Brooks, however, had cranked his head around from the passenger seat next to me and was busy rubbernecking with glee at whatever the hell was happening back there while all I could do was listen to and smell the utterly fucking delicious cherry-wine scent of an omega—myomega in heat.
…even though I hadn’t fully surrendered inside of my head that I was allowed to consider Lennon mine yet.
I really hated being such an indecisive bastard sometimes.
It was never something I had been able to work out in the therapy that I’d forced myself into after we’d finally gotten on good health insurance and tried as the well-meaning therapists had, I was pretty sure I’d be a contrarian until the day they put me in the damned ground.
When Lennon told us that we were her scent matches, the first thing my brain had done was immediately denied it. There was no way that could be true even though my own nose and instincts had been telling me the same thing for ages.
As cliche as it sounds, it was like there was an Angel Dallas and a Devil Dallas on both of my shoulders and Devil Dallas was a fat asshole who always held the weight of my childhood trauma, so anything that Angel Dallas had to say was drowned out and Devil Dallas always got to speak first.
Then after I had denied the connection to her out loud and seen how much my words had hurt her, I’d gone into panic mode and was too embarrassed to walk back my words… so I ran.
Now here we were and I hadn’t even apologized to Lennon yet for being such an asshole that day when she’d confessed her feelings to us. How the hell was I supposed to ask her to let me be with her now when she was in such a vulnerable state when I’d rejected her like that?
I didn’t fucking know and I wasn’t even sure if I had a place in their so-called pack at this point anyways.
While I was distractedly beating myself up in my head, the moans from the back of the SUV started to grow and I heard Brooks growl next to me at whatever he was seeing.
Then they were cut off abruptly as the vehicle shook.
“Is that better, baby?” I heard Zeke whisper.
“Yes,” Lennon answered, her voice barely above a breathy exhalation before the sound of lips meshing together filled my ears.
I had half a mind to pull the entire damn SUV over to the side of the road, but the GPS was saying that we were only twenty minutes out, so instead I just pressed harder on the gas pedal and cracked my window so I didn’t accidentally get thrown into a rut and crash the whole car.
Soon we were pulling up to the ornate front gates of the coastal community where the Holloway cottage was and I was rolling down the window for the gate guard.
“Code?” the man asked suspiciously, his nose flaring as he probably got a whiff of what was going on in the car.
I turned to Brooks who was scrolling through his phone.
“010669,” he supplied, reading off of his phone.
The guard typed it into the tablet he had with him. “And ID?”
Brooks handed him Lennon’s ID along with his own.
Lennon, who looked more put together than I thought she would be considering what I had just been listening to, peeked in between the seats to smile at the officer.
“Ms. Holloway,” the guard said, immediately recognizing her. “Your grandmother said you’d be taking ownership of the cottage eventually. Good to see that finally happening.”
“Thank you?” Lennon replied, her cheeks a bright cherry red color as the guard nodded and gestured for us to pull through the gate.
“How often do you come out here?” Maverick asked once Lennon flopped back into the middle seat between him and Zeke.
“Not much anymore, we used to come out sometimes for the summer but their house in upstate is much bigger for the family. This place only has three small bedrooms and it’s pretty old school. It was my grandparents first house after they got married,” she answered, her voice sounding suddenly nostalgic.
Holloway cottage was situated on the edge of the gated community, backed up against the ocean which was barely visible in the dim light of the late evening, the sun long having set, leaving the last bits of twilight in the sky.
The house was already lit up and waiting for us as I pulled the SUV into the half-circle driveway and parked, throwing my door open so I could get out of the ridiculously cloying scent of Lennon’s heat.
“It’s cute,” Brooks commented as we all got out and stared up at what could best be described as something between a beach house, an English cottage, and a doll house standing proudly in front of us.
The facade was made up of white cedar shingles that looked like they had been recently redone because there was not a single one out of place.
