An alpha’s purr is meant to calm an omega down, and I’ve never been subjected to one before. It’s… not the worst thing in the world, feeling his chest vibrate as he kisses me and drowns out my whine with his comfort. It’s enough to make me forget why I even whined in the first place, why I was so worried about the room and the nest.
The nest doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I have Asher, Rourke, and Mason here with me.
And I don’t have to stay away from them. We’re going to fuck, and it’s going to be amazing.
The kiss lasts for an eternity, and it’s only when Asher’s chest no longer purrs and I’m no longer whining that he tugs his mouth off mine and gives me a deep grin. “Your lips are softer than they look.” His hands still cup my face, and though his mouth isn’t on mine, he’s still so close I can feel his hot breath blooming across my skin.
“Oh, yeah?” I whisper. “Have you thought about how soft my lips might be often?” As I ask the question, I lean into him, and I wish so desperately I could smell him and commit his scent to memory.
But I can’t, and I’m always going to be missing that part of us. It sucks.
“Honestly? I noticed your lips the first time we saw each other at the park. You were all bundled up and trying to hide, but those lips have always been calling my name,” he tells me. “I did my best not to stare, but…”
“I think you did well, then. I had no idea.”
He smooths my hair down. The blue has faded with multiple showers, but it’s still a nice color. “I can’t believe we’re here, after all this time. It doesn’t feel real to me. Does it feel real to you yet?”
My lips tingle from our kiss. It takes everything in me to not focus on that lingering tingle and answer his question, “No, and I don’t know if it ever will. Out of all of the possibilities I dreamed up, I never thought this would be one of them—not that I’m complaining. I’m not.”
Just like that, a little talking and a nice, heated kiss, and I’m calm. The fretting Jess is gone. Imagine that.
Asher then says something that catches me off-guard: “I don’t deserve you. Not after what I did ten years ago. I was such a little jerk. I never thought you’d give me a second chance, let alone agree to be… to be mine.”
I never thought that, either. Heck, I didn’t even think he’d respond to my message in the beginning of all this, but I am so damn glad he did. Having him here, being with him… it’s like coming home after being away for years and years. He’s both familiar and new at the same time, and I cannot get enough.
“I can’t believe you and Mason agreed to form a pack with Rourke,” I whisper. It’s been days, and yet that knowledge still sits in my mind, refusing to become normalized, and it probably won’t be normal until it actually happens.
“I guess it’s true what they say: when you know, you know. Besides, I think Mason has been looking for some purpose for a long time, and Rourke? Maybe we didn’t have the best introduction, but the guy’s pretty level-headed when it comes toan über. He… he definitely has my respect. I think the four of us will make a good pack.”
A smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “I think we’ll make a good pack, too.”
Asher gives me a gentle kiss on my forehead. “Now, I came up here to ask what you want for dinner. Any special requests?”
“Surprise me,” I say. I’ve found that his cooking is the best when he’s following his heart and not a recipe. I, personally, need step-by-step instructions on how to do things; it’s probably why I’m having such a hard time with these pre-heat symptoms in the first place. The uncertainty kills me.
“Will do.” Asher carefully steps around the pillows scattered on the floor, and once he makes it to the door, he tosses me a look before he disappears down the hall.
I sink to the floor. The layers and layers of blankets beneath me create quite the cushion. I can’t imagine how much laundry will need to be done once my heat is over. This room, these blankets, even the pillows; nothing will be untouched. An omega’s heat is a marathon of sex with heapings of bodily fluids. Slick and cum will be the names of the game.
Asher was right. It is a comfortable nest. It’s not bad, not bad at all. I don’t know why I was freaking out so much.
I can do this.
Ihaveto do this. Really, I have no other choice.
It’s a funny thing, when you think you have all the time in the world left to prepare. What’s not so funny is, more often than not, the truth of the matter, and the truth of this matter? The first pangs of pain in my lower gut start in the middle of the night two days later, when I’m busy tossing and turning on the floor. I stopped sleeping in the large bed the day I pulled off all the sheets and pillows.
I’m awake, so I’m aware of when it begins, otherwise I might’ve woken up to it the next morning: a low, dull ache in my lower half. Almost in my stomach, but lower than that. That ache doesn’t go away with time, like most stomachaches do. No, it intensifies as time crawls on, to the point where I start to sweat.
Is this it? Has to be. My mouth is dry, and my hands and feet are clammy. Combine that with the pain in my lower half, and there is no other explanation for what’s happening to me.
I don’t want to bother the guys until the morning, until breakfast has been eaten and they have some time to prepare themselves for what’s next, so I call upon all the willpower I can muster up.
Problem is, I don’t have anything to distract myself with. No TV, no phone, no endless scrolling to take my mind and attention off the current churning of my gut. It makes time crawl by at a ridiculously slow pace, and since I have nothing else to focus on, the pain intensifies rather quickly.
It gets to the point where I moan and grunt as I toss and turn, where sweat dots my hairline and I can’t think of anything else other than the alphas in this house and how relief is so close by.
So close, and yet so far.
