Page 38 of Follow Your Instincts (Fairview City Omegaverse)

Ben

L achlan and I hadn’t had a proper conversation since the day Maggie had come to stay with us and it sucked.

With Lucas and Maggie on their way to her follow-up doctor’s appointment, and Soren at work, I was going to force him to spend time with me whether he liked it or not.

“I think you might spend a little too much time in here,” I said, popping my head in the room. He wasn’t on a call, but he did jump a little. He was wearing his usual uniform: button-up and dark jeans with bare feet. Not wearing shoes was his only concession to working from home.

“Jesus Christ, you’re going to give me a heart attack,” he said.

“You’re not that old,” I said. “Have you eaten anything today?”

“I had some coffee,” he said dismissively.

“So, no. Come on, let’s get you out of your cave.”

Lachlan gave me his best serious businessman look. “I do actually work all day, you know.”

I scoffed. “You are such a workaholic. From what I can tell, your company basically runs itself. Don’t you have people who manage everything for you?”

“That’s… so inaccurate. Do you have any idea what I do for a living? At all?”

“No, as soon as you start talking about it, I start disassociating. But seriously, what’s the point of being a CEO if you can’t take a break every once in a while?” I said.

“Fine. I’ll go to breakfast,” he grumbled.

I bullied him into walking to the diner around the block, despite the chill in the air. I ordered chocolate chip waffles for both of us before he could protest.

“Cheers,” I said, clinking my coffee mug against his.

“Chocolate waffles? I am a grown man, you know,” he said.

“Yes, oh my god, we get it. You’re a big, serious Alpha. Spare me. We both know you watch Real Housewives ,” I said.

“I do not watch Real Housewives ,” he said, then hesitated. “I watch Below Deck .”

“Whatever, it’s still on Bravo ,” I quipped. “Can’t you just enjoy a morning with your favorite packmate?”

He grumbled something about enjoying it more if he got to have an omelet.

I chattered about my clients from that morning. First was a woman who’d been on a reality show a few years before and was desperate to make a comeback, and an influencer who was quite popular on gay social media.

“All he wants to do are hip thrusts and bicep curls,” I griped. “Which is very annoying because he already has a great ass but his calves are super weak and he’s going to make me look like an amateur.”

Lachlan looked up sharply. “What’s this guy’s name?”

“Why, you want to follow him?” I joked.

“No… just curious,” he said. He looked away from me.

“His name is Alex, and you might have seen him around the house,” I said casually. Lachlan was the most buttoned-up of all of my packmates, and I couldn’t miss a chance to tease him a little.

“Why?” The server arrived with our waffles, and I made a show of slathering both of our plates in syrup. Lachlan huffed in annoyance.

“Oh, we hooked a couple of times. That’s how I became his trainer,” I replied.

Lachlan choked on his coffee. “You WHAT?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m not engaging in any extracurriculars anymore. Maggie’s honor is safe. Although I will say that having her in the house is making me a little crazy. I feel like a teenager, just horny all the time ,” I said.

Lachlan turned beet red, and a piece of waffle fell off his fork.

“What, are you not walking around with a perpetual hard-on?” I asked innocently. “We’re going to have to talk about this kind of stuff now that Maggie’s around. I mean… during her heat I’m definitely going to watch you fuck her.”

His knee jerked under the table hard enough to rattle our plates and slosh coffee over the side of our cups.

“We… you have to… we’re in public ,” he stammered, his green eyes not meeting mine.

He was still blushing, and my plan backfired a bit because those very pesky feelings for him were starting to bubble up again.

I tried to shut them down and smiled coyly.

“Whoops,” I said. I took a big bite of the waffle and hummed in delight.

Despite his grumbling, Lachlan ate every bite of breakfast and let me bully him into splitting a piece of pie. I was enjoying him being back to his normal, grouchy self rather than the very depressed Lachlan of the previous couple of weeks.

We walked back home slowly, letting the food settle. “You know… we’re going to have to work out now after such a rich breakfast,” I said, as if the idea had just occurred to me.

“Oh my god, you little shit,” he said. “Is that why you made me eat candy? So I’d let you torture me?”

“Okay, first of all, chocolate chip waffles are not candy. And don’t be so dramatic,” I said. “It’s a workout, not torture .”

“It is when you’re in charge,” he said under his breath.

“Go check on your work or whatever, and then it’s time for some fun,” I said as we got back home, rubbing my hands together.

“This is only fun for you, ” he said, but then groaned in defeat. “I’ll meet you upstairs.”

Lachlan and I had met when I was his trainer, and back then I’d been firm but generally professional and polite, following his lead. But once we became a pack? All bets were off. There was nothing I loved more than pushing my packmates to work out harder than they wanted.

I headed upstairs to the gym area and put on some drum and bass music. I started warming up while mentally preparing a workout to take Lachlan through. He hated leg day, so that’s what we would do.

I saw him in the mirror as he emerged from the stairs, and my heart rate kicked up.

He was shirtless, which made no sense because he usually wore expensive workout clothes that I made fun of him for.

I stared at his chest, lightly sculpted with just the right amount of dark hair, then forced myself to look away.

“Are you hot or something?” I asked, trying for nonchalance.

“What? Oh. I need to do laundry,” he said, looking down at his bare chest briefly. “So what are you going to do to me?”

I pushed down the dirty thoughts that immediately popped up. “Oh, you’re going to love it. Go ahead and hop on the treadmill to warm up.”

I did my best to keep my mind focused on setting up the weight rack for squats, but that was incredibly difficult with Lachlan shirtless and starting to glisten with sweat ten feet away.

My eyes kept being pulled almost magnetically to his chest, or the reflection of his back in the mirror, his muscles shifting beneath smooth skin.

This is what you get for talking about watching him fuck Maggie , I thought. Get it together.

“Alright, let’s get the torture underway,” I said and beckoned him over from the treadmill. His breathing was just a bit heavier. “It’s leg day. ”

“Fucking hell,” he said.

“Squats, four sets of ten,” I said. “I’ll go first while you stretch out your hips.”

I tried to focus on my form, I really did. But watching Lachlan was so much more interesting. Hip stretches did require a lot of thrusting.

As we swapped out and he took my place for his first set, I tried not to stare at his ass, or the way his forearms flexed as he gripped the bar, and failed spectacularly. This had to be some kind of spillover effect from Maggie. I had been doing so well, thinking of him just as a packmate.

I added a significant amount of weight to my final set, mostly to show off. I also stripped off my shirt, because… reasons.

“One day, if you do legs regularly, you might be able to squat this much, too,” I said, grinning at him while I tossed my shirt aside. He rolled his eyes and I laughed.

But clearly my wandering eyes were distracting me, because after 6 reps, my knees wobbled and I faltered when I tried to stand up. I grunted, and Lachlan was there, his hands catching the bar and helping guide it back into the rack.

“You okay?” he asked, looking at me in the mirror with real concern. His hands dropped from the bar to rest on my hips, and my brain short-circuited.

“Huh? Oh yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “My pride, on the other hand…” He didn’t remove his hands, and their warm weight was making my knees weak for a whole other reason. He kept my gaze for another long moment, then finally stepped away.

“It would serve you right to hurt yourself by being a showoff,” he said, then smiled when I flipped him off in the mirror. He smiled so rarely that each one felt like a gift. The scar on his mouth pulled on his lip, so his grin was always a little crooked. I had to catch my breath and look away.

The rest of the workout proceeded as they usually did. Lachlan cursed at me, called me the devil, and generally complained the entire time. It was delightful .

“Alright, let’s stretch out your hamstrings,” I said after he finished his last set of glute bridges. “Yes, yes, I know, I’m a monster. But if you don’t stretch, you’ll be too sore to properly fuck our Omega and that would be a real shame.”

Lachlan was flat on his back and gave me a spectacularly dirty look. I knelt in front of him and threw his right leg over my shoulder. I leaned forward, pressing his knee gently back towards his face. He gritted his teeth and groaned, squeezing his eyes shut.

Shit , I thought as my mind twisted the image so his groan of pain was one of pleasure instead. Suddenly, our position seemed like a lot more than an assisted hamstring stretch.

“Ben, that’s too much,” he groaned and my cock decided that was an invitation to join the party. I could NOT get hard while stretching Lachlan’s hamstrings. He’d never be able to look me in the eye again.

I eased off and let his leg drop. As I went to grab his other knee, I lost my balance and fell forward, catching myself with a hand on either side of his face. Which meant that my cock, now very hard, pressed against him.

His eyes widened, and he blushed so red I was worried he might have popped a blood vessel.

“Ah Jesus, Lach. I’m sorry, but I am just a human,” I said, shrugging in an attempt to sell my nonchalant act and leaning away from him. “I can’t help it if your stretching groans sound more like something else.”

“I… that’s not…” He trailed off and stared at me blankly, his fingers gripping the mat beneath him. “Ben?”

Before I could respond, my body registered the scent of spiced peaches, and I looked over to see Maggie at the top of the stairs, her mouth open in shock.