He rolls Nix over, and Gideon can’t believe how beautiful he is. When he’s free and happy, he’s irresistible.
But, alas, Gideon must resist.
He leans in for a kiss, and his omega’s pupils blow wide, sweet sugary vanilla blooming between them. But before he can connect, Gideon says softly, “Kitten better get his cute butt out to the kitchen. We have that birthday surprise for Jay to prepare.”
Instead of his lips, Gideon lands a kiss on Nix’s cute nose instead.
Nix climbs to his feet with the cutest pout. “You’re a terrible tease.”
“Nix, this was your idea. Come on, up you go.”
Nix climbs onto his back, and Gideon has a tiny regret that he didn’t forgo the party preparations for a bit of frottage on the gym floor. With his hands supporting his butt, Gideon can feel that Nix is wet through the fabric, so he pulls him around to the front to make it easier to press his fingers into the rear-seam of his pants.
But Nix is having none of it.
“Nope. You had your chance, mister. Could have had me ass-up on the gym floor, all wet and ready, and you said,‘No, thank you, Nix, I have better things to do.’”
Nix boops him on the nose, jumps off, and scampers away. It’s not quite a run, but Gideon stops at the entrance to the living room just in case hiswolf gets any ideas about running him down.
Gideon watches as Nix slips out the side door, running across the yard to where Finn is sitting with his cup of coffee beside Grayson on the rose bench. He sits down side-ways on Finn’s lap and slurps his coffee, only to make a disgusted, scrunched-up face.
Why he thinks it’s going to taste different every single time, Gideon will never know.
Instead, he grabs a bowl of sliced fruit and water for an after-training snack and carries it out.
He quickly figures out that whatever is happening in the yard must involve the dog and Rowan, and that is always interesting.
The dog is, bar none, the ugliest dog Gideon has ever seen in his entire life. That’s not just because he is, most assuredly, a cat person. No, it’s because she is gray and furry, with one ear that flops up while the other hangs down—and they are never the same from one moment to the next.
Her eyes are close together, almost like a person’s, and her legs are gangly with feet the size of saucers.
But there is something much worse than her decidedly odd physical attributes.
The worst thing about the dog is that she likes him—loveshim, even.
In the past twenty-four hours, she has dragged Gideon’s clothes, his shoes, the book he’s been trying to finish for the past month, and one of Luca’s toys from Gideon’s room down the stairs and into her dog bed.
He is sure he has closed his bedroom door every single time, and he’s come to suspect Rowan or Finn are facilitating the culprit—the little shits.
Gideon slides the glass door open to the deck, and in the next instant, he is holding his mate’s snacks high in the air.
“Dammit, dog. No. Not for you. Stop licking me. Kitten! Call your dog,” he yells.
Nix just whistles, and with a last lick, the dog gallops off to chase the tennis ball Grayson is throwing to entertain her…and Rowan.
When Grayson throws the ball, Rowan is right behind the dog, leaping and—most times—losing out on the prize.
Gideon’s mate is playing fetch—and losing to a puppy.
He watches as Rowan is shoulder-checked by the leaping dog, taking them both to the ground. Rowan growls low, under his breath, but Gideon can still hear it from forty feet away.
She wrangles the ball away from him as he wrestles with her—rolling over and over, tucking her into his arms with a laugh. Rowan lets the dog win—on purpose, probably—and flops onto the grass with a grin.
Nix howls with glee from his spot on Finn’s lap, clapping and cheering the dog on, trash-talking Rowan in the sweetest of ways.
Putting his empty cup on the ground, Finn holds Nix with both hands, nose pressed between his shoulder blades.
Rowan must have won at some point because instead of throwing the ball from across the lawn, he runs over to drop it into Grayson’s hand.
