“You’re confident,” he murmured.
I squirmed some more, but all it did was rub my pussy across the prominent bulge in his pants.
“It’s the truth. Why wouldn’t I be confident in that?”
He hummed instead of responding, trailing one hand down from my hip to slide across the bare skin of my thigh. I gasped, arching into the touch. Mercury took it away just as quickly.
I let my eyes close, hoping he would do it again.
He didn’t, and I waited a minute full of long, tense seconds before I resorted to begging. “Mercy, touch me. Please? Or did you not want to?”
“Mercy? I thought you only called me that because you were drunk.”
The alpha touched me despite calling me out for the nickname. His fingers trailed down my torso, tickling the flesh of the exposed part of my stomach.
“If you don’t like me calling you that, I don’t have to,” I said breathlessly.
He growled softly, shifting until he’d pulled me to his chest and his lips were against my neck. “No, I enjoy it.”
There wasn’t time to savour the spark of exhilaration that lit inside me at his acceptance of the nickname. The ache in my core was compounding too quickly. I whined against him, opening my eyes, and nuzzling my nose into the crook of his shoulder.
“I need to come,” I murmured.
His teeth grazed my neck and I moaned.
“No, you don’t.”
The realization of what he’d said was like the scratch of nails across a chalkboard.
“What?”
“You’re on the precipice of heat. Any sexual activity could push you over the edge. Do you want to go into heat right now?”
I nibbled on my bottom lip. Was I completely against the idea? Not at all. From a practical standpoint, I should hold off. There was no telling when our next date with the Ashby pack would be, and we needed to continue to play that game until Leighton had figured out what else to do.
“I’ll answer for you,” Mercury said. “You don’t. Your alpha isn’t home yet, and you want your nest to be finished before you go into heat.”
The mention of the nest was enough to have me shifting in his lap for an entirely different reason. He was right. It wasn’tfinished.“I need to figure out what it’s missing,” I said.
“Alright, little omega. Let me help you.”
He released me and I bounded to my feet, brushing down my robe to cover myself again. My moods were changing faster than the winds on a tumultuous day, but trying to control it was pointless. Maybe it was good he’d shaken off the arousal for the time being.
Mercury stood up after me with an impassive look on his face. I paced the living room until he grabbed my hand. “Show me the nest, and we’ll find what it needs.”
I flushed but nodded, tugging him back to my nest in Leighton’s room in the hopes that I could find what was needed to complete the makeshift place of comfort.
FORTY-SIX
LEIGHTON
I had no idea how long I slept, but I woke up to the sound of my phone dinging with a fresh notification.
The Ashby pack was ready for their next date.
Tomorrow night.
Sooner than we’d hoped for, but it was only a date. We weren’t expected to bond them yet, so if we could find something suitable to offer Noah Connolly, we could go to him the morning after the pack date and put a stop to future ones.
