The idea that so much of what made memerelied on a few milliliters of biologically active chemicals should have been deeply disquieting. Fortunately, I couldn’t be bothered to focus on that worry either.
Right now, I was too busy obsessing about the nest. This was the first time I’d ever used the same nest for multiple heats. It should have been instinctually reassuring, but instead, I was hyper-focused on the fact that I didn’t know what we were going to do whenever we finally left the haven of Nikolayev’s estate.
Kam and I were fugitives. So were the alphas, for that matter. But even if they hadn’t already been outed as underground operatives, they had no money to speak of. They’d been subjugated—slaves in all but name. Only the fragile protection of the military alpha program separated them from the thousands upon thousands of victims of the alphomic slave market. Fair payment for their hard and dangerous work wasn’t part of that deal. Beckett might have protected them from the more repugnant legal requirements like chemical castration, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t been secretly passing them money under the table.
I paced the nest, chewing on a fingernail as I ran through increasingly unlikely scenarios related to where and how we would live, once we were mated and out from under Nikolayev’s umbrella of safety and comfort. Would Alex stay with us, wherever we ended up? Or would our mating drive her away from her two packmates?
A hand reached out and snagged my arm as I waded restlessly through the sea of pillows. Kam was seated on the stylish semicircular couch that surrounded half of the sunken nest. He tugged me onto the plush upholstery at his side.
“Stop, odama,” he said. “Your brain is going to start spewing smoke out your ears like an overheating engine.”
I let out a massive sigh. Some of my tension drained out along with the air in my lungs. Curling against Kam’s side, I nipped at his neck and tucked my head against the crook of his shoulder. “Sorry.”
He stroked my hair back. “Don’t be sorry. Just try to focus on the important things, yes? You’re going to be mated.” He quickly corrected himself when I drew breath to chastise him. “We’regoing to be mated, I mean. Who could have ever foreseen such a thing?”
It was true. I nodded against his neck. “You’re right. Good god, Kam—we’re going to have a pack. A proper one.” I shivered—excitement, nervousness, and anticipation swirling together in my stomach along with the liquid heat of my growing arousal.
“Yes, we are,” he agreed. “They’ll be here in a few minutes. Want to see if we can shock them?”
The warmth in my belly surged, overtaking my jitters. “You’re on.” Thinking for a moment, I straightened away from him and tried to put on a commanding expression. “Clothes off. Get naked and kneel on the floor. I want them to find you eating me out when they open the door and walk in.”
Kam rose with a dancer’s grace and faced me as he started on the buttons of his shirt. “For so many years, I thought I was the depraved one in this relationship, odama.”
I smiled, my earlier cares falling away. “If I’d known how things were for you, I would have embraced depravity long ago.”
Gooseflesh erupted across my body, and anticipation washed over me as more and more smooth olive skin appeared. Kam was still ethereally beautiful, scars and all. I drank in the sight of him, watching avidly as his trousers and underwear joined the pile of discarded clothing, leaving him bare to my gaze.
He dropped to his knees in front of me, looking up at me through long, dark lashes.
“Hands behind your back,” I whispered hoarsely, letting my legs fall open to make space for him. I was wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt that smelled of alpha sweat, which left me fully exposed to his simmering regard.
Until the alphas, I’d known next to nothing about sex. Or, rather, I’d known nothing about the ways that sex could live inside the mind, rather than in the body. And, in some ways, I’d known nothing about the omega who’d shared my life since we were both wet-behind-the-ears interns at the Foreign Affairs office.
Kameron Patel didn’t want to be worshipped. He didn’t want to be adored.
No—Kameron Patel wanted to be put on his knees and used over and over until he was a quivering, exhausted wreck. It was the only way he could escape from the awareness of his damaged body and retreat into the place in his mind where he was still whole... still a sexual being.
The first time I’d seen it done to him, I’d been shocked, even though I was trapped beneath the mindless haze of my heat when it happened. Since then, I’d come to understand that if the goal was to give Kam pleasure, I couldn’t simply treat him the way I’d want to be treated. I was an omega, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t help the others use him the way he longed to be used.
With his hands clasped behind him, Kam shuffled forward on his knees until he could kiss his way up my inner thigh. When he got close enough that the pressure of his lips and the rasp of his tongue became a tease rather than a pleasure, I slid my fingers through the thick, dark strands of his hair and fisted it, twisting until I felt him gasp and shudder.
“Get to work, odama,” I said, using my grip to move his mouth where I wanted it.
Kam had a talented tongue, and not just in the sense of diplomatic acumen. I moaned approval as he brushed his lips over me, teasing open my folds like someone teasing open a lover’s lips in a languid kiss. I was already perfuming in great clouds of honey and orange blossom. Before long, I might be able to catch a hint of Kam’s subtle ginger and lemon, as well.
Until then, I relaxed into the nerve-tingling sensation, letting it unknot my muscles even as a new tension grew inside me. My grip on Kam’s hair tightened until he whimpered. He redoubled his efforts, lapping up the slick I was churning out and sliding his tongue up to circle my clit. I gave another warning tug, and his lips closed around my sensitive nub, his tongue flicking rapidly. He sucked lightly, and the tightening spring inside me burst free.
I arched and jerked out my first orgasm just as the door to the nest opened, and the scent of two horny alphas wafted in.
“Holy fuck,” Flynn said, sounding hoarse.
“I got tired of waiting,” I managed, trying for a teasing tone and only managing breathiness.
“If we’d known what we were missing, we’d have been here sooner,” Jax said.
Flynn was already stripping. “Jax, get the toys and the lube out for me. Ginger Tea, you are in so much trouble for starting without us. I’m going to make sure you stay filled at both ends until you don’t even know which way is up.”
Kam made an approving sound against my clit.
