“I asked you a question. If you answer it, you can come.”
I cursed under my breath. She could definitely see my blush now, and so could Kiara. The omega’s eyes were bright as she watched, the toy still knotting her.
“Yeah. I did,” I admitted.
“No wonder you’re such a brat, if you’re this much of a pain slut too.”
I didn’t have any sort of rebuttal or comeback. All I had was a moan, because her hand slid down my length. She only stroked me three times from base to tip before I came.
My head swam, the orgasm wiping my brain but simultaneously not feeling like enough. I needed more after all the pain my body had endured—after how much I’d suffered to come, just once.
Leighton released me, though.
I wasn’t getting another, and that was part of my punishment too.
“Lay down beside Kiara,” she said in a soft tone.
I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself if I tried. My body was jello, my limbs barely listening to my commands. All I could do was drop onto my hands and knees, crawling up to my omega and curling myself against her side.
My eyelids fell half closed as Leighton worked the knot toy out of Kiara. She moaned, but didn’t beg for another orgasm. She turned to me instead, pushing her head against my chest. A blanket of tiredness draped over me, and I was half asleep by the time Leighton crawled off the bed.
“Where are you going?” I asked, a hint of panic sliding down my spine.
She couldn’t just… leave me. Not after that.
She smiled, brushing a strand of black hair back from her face. I loved her smile—it wasn’t something I’d seen before Kiara. I was used to her stern expression and frowns.
“We’re not cuddling with a dirty dildo,” she said dryly. “I’m going to clean it and grab a towel to tidy up some of the mess. I’ll be right back.”
“Oh,” I mumbled.
Kiara hid her chuckle by pushing closer to me, our sweaty bodies curled against each other. Leighton spent a few minutes in the bathroom, coming out with a towel as promised.
I expected her to press against Kiara’s other side when she joined us in the nest.
She didn’t.
Instead, she laid beside me. Her side pressed to my back, and it wasn’t exactly cuddling in the traditional sense, but this was closer than I’d dreamed of getting. The alpha didn’t seem like much of a cuddler. It took far too long to calm down my racing heartbeat as she laid beside me, but eventually tiredness won out and I drifted off into a blissful nap.
FORTY-EIGHT
LEIGHTON
“There’s no way she can leave this apartment,” Ambrose said the next day, staring at Kiara.
She was curled up in her makeshift nest on a pile of blankets and clothes. My omega had barely spent any time awake since Ambrose and I returned home from the warehouse. There had only been the brief interlude of wakefulness with Dash. She’d stolen clothes from all of us, and insisted she always have someone in the nest with her.
Every time I touched her, her skin was flushed and hot. Her heat was no longer creeping in—it was sprinting.
“No,” I agreed. “I’ll go on the date by myself. They’ll have to understand.”
Kiara whined, one hand on her lower stomach and the other clutching the arm of a fluffy stuffed animal.
I hadn’t had any in my house, but we’d received a large shipment of the things this morning, along with more blankets and various pillows. Mercury had grudgingly explained that Kiara had found something wrong with her nest, and they’d ordered her all sorts of nesting material to hopefully fill the void.
“I’m fine,” she said, looking around her space. “I have to go. My father will be furious if I don’t. He won’t listen to you tomorrow if he’s furious.”
“Does he not understand how heat works?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. “You could go into it at any moment. Having you wandering around a high-class restaurant of all fucking places is flat out ridiculous.”
