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CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

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Pack De Clare’s hasty departure from the Italia Grand Prix didn’t go unnoticed. Neither of the racers participated in what is usually mandatory post-race media. However, no fines have been levied after a statement from Team Paragon revealed that Vanessa Lennon had gone into heat. It currently isn’t known if she began her heat during the race or before it. Regardless, even those who aren’t Vanessa’s fans are calling a podium while under heat influence impressive.

FORMULA WORLD NEWS

Time did that slipping thing again. The combination of their scents in the car was so much more potent now. I unzipped my racing suit, desperate to get out of it. It was too hot and they were all right here. I needed them.

Elias caught my hands. “Hold on, Nes. We’re almost on the plane. Can’t strip before we get you there.”

But getting on a plane meant getting off a plane, and that meant more clothes. I didn’t have that kind of time. “We can just go to the hotel,” I said. “I know it’s probably a short flight, but I can’t make it the whole way.”

“You won’t have to.”

The car came to a stop, and I saw the plane. We were on the tarmac with it. Not a regular plane then. A private plane. Gotcha.

I tried to climb out of the car, but my legs were jelly. “I’ve got you.” Elias slid an arm under my shoulder, somehow sensing that I didn’t want to be carried onto the plane. Planes like this had rooms with doors that closed. Planes like this had beds .

Turning, I pushed into Elias’s neck while he guided me to the stairs. “You smell so good.”

“Right back at you, beautiful.”

The plane was nice, but the room in the back was nicer. I was right, there was a bed. A really big bed. I whined. “I need it off.”

“Okay, Nessa. You can take it off,” River said from somewhere behind me.

The suit almost tore in my hurry to strip down to my skin. Fuck , cool air felt so good. Colder with the sweat clinging to me. River was the closest. I grabbed him by the collar of his racing suit and pulled him to me. “Knot. Now.”

He just smirked and shook his head.

My stomach fell, and panic followed too quickly for it to be normal. It was all the heat. But sudden desperation and fear clung to me like a second skin. “You’re not going to help me?”

Tears gathered in my eyes.

River stepped in, cupping my face. No more smirk now. “Shh, of course I’m going to help you, baby.” He kissed me softly. “We’re all going to help you. Gray’s just going to help you first, all right?”

Hands dragged up my ribs from behind, Gray’s key lime whirling around me and growing stronger. Oh . River had smirked because a knot was already on its way in the form of Grayson.

Those strong hands on my hips guided me to the bed. Pushed me down onto it. His warmth was behind me before I could think about anything else. His weight pinning me down as his legs knocked mine apart, cock brushing my entrance where I needed him. Please .

“Yes. Please. Please , Gray.”

Gray’s palms slid up my back, until they rested just below my neck, gripping and pushing me into the blankets so my ass was in the air and pressed against him. His voice was dark. “I’m going to give you exactly what you need, little one. No matter what. But you are going to fucking promise me that you’ll never do that again.”

“Drive while in heat?”

“Drive while in heat without telling me .”

“But—”

He nipped my shoulder, that tiny scrape of pain igniting the fire further. As soon as he fucked into me I would turn into an inferno and we both knew it. I needed the inferno. I needed him .

Pain swept through me like a tornado, pulling a hiss through my teeth.

“No. We—” He cut himself off just like he’d cut me off before kissing my neck above where his hands held it. “When your heat is over we will talk about it. Just promise me, Vanessa.”

Through the hazy veil of need and fire, I heard how distressed and raw his voice was. My Alpha needed me. “Okay.”

“Good.”

Gray drove into me with one brutal stroke, filling me, making me take every inch of him. His piercing hit deep and exactly where I needed for it to shatter me. “ Yes ,” I shouted the word. Moaned it. Fought to move and rock back against him and take more more more . But Gray had me pinned with his hands, keeping my head and chest pressed to the bed with my legs spread around his while he took what he wanted.

My vision sparkled and disappeared. It was hard to call it pleasure because it was so much more than that. All-consuming and burning. What was this? Why did it feel like this? My heats weren’t this hot. If anything, they were mild. I’d barely call them spicy. This was the kind of fire you avoided at all costs and yet I wanted it to burn me alive.

I reached back, managing to brush Gray’s thigh with my fingertips. All he did was lift one hand from my neck to catch my wrist and fold it onto my back, pinning me further. Oh god .

Right now. Right now in this moment was when I realized just how much of Gray I hadn’t seen or felt. We had sex. We had great sex. But this was more than that. In between races and our schedules, when there were a hundred things on our mind other than sex, he wasn’t able to truly let his Alpha free. None of them were. But now we had nothing in front of us but time and there was nothing in front of them but me .

I spent so much time ignoring Alpha energy and pushing it away. In the paddock it was necessary or I’d never get anywhere. Here? Even without seeing his face, I felt Gray’s Alpha. His instincts matched mine, driven by my scent and the heat roaring in my veins.

My Omega wilted in relief.

If there was any time to let go and embrace the duality of being an Omega, it was now.

The sound that came out of me was somewhere between a sob and a whimper. Gray’s low growl answered, making every hair stand on end. Friction. Depth. His piercing striking the deepest parts of me like a bell…

I came again, shuddering beneath him and relaxing into their strength. They were here too. All our instincts alive and well and speaking to each other.

Gray never slowed and never stopped, hips slapping against my ass until he groaned. His knot swelled and locked us together. The second it did, my mind calmed. It didn’t hold back the raging blaze already trying to break free again, but I could think more clearly.

Maybe.

Releasing my hand and my neck, Grayson let himself ease forward, pinning me with his weight instead. “There you are,” he whispered. “Thank you for trusting me.”

“I already did.”

He smiled into my skin. “I know. But you felt it.”

“Yeah.” I turned my head to the side, letting him smooth the hair off my face. “You’ve held back so much.”

Tears pricked my eyes again. God, I hated this part of heats. Where every emotion was so close to the surface that you couldn’t stop it even if you tried. “Have you all been doing that? Hiding?”

River appeared next to the bed, now naked.

Melted chocolate .

The thoughts from the car came roaring back, and I squirmed on Gray’s knot. More. I needed more even though I ached.

“We’re not hiding, Nes.”

“Feels like it. I don’t like that.”

River took my hand from where I had it tucked against my body and pulled it across the bed. “You’re not the only one who has to be two things at once. Every day you’re an incredible racer who takes no shit and doesn’t let anything get in her way, and when you’re with us, you let your Omega free. But for us it’s the same. Every day we have to keep ourselves in check so we don’t punch someone for looking at you wrong or making a joke behind your back, and when we’re with you, we can let those instincts free. But,” he said with a smirk, “Ours are a little harder to pull back once we let go. We’re not hiding, baby.”

They were keeping themselves in check. Now, with the summer break, they didn’t have to. Add my heat into that and I was sensing them more fully at the same time they were able to fully embody every possessive instinct they’d had since the day we met.

No wonder it was overwhelming. “Oh.”

“Yeah.” He chuckled. “ Oh .”

Gray’s knot shrank. Way faster than normal. That wouldn’t work. I needed another one. Now. I wasn’t meant to be empty. I was meant to be filled and fucked and pleasured. Perfume exploded into the air, all four of my men cursing with the new wave.

Suddenly I was on my back looking up at Gray. He began to purr as he stared at me. That sound was everything.

“I love you,” he said. “I love you even when you scare the shit out of me, little one. I love you when you’re kicking ass and I love you when you’re melting under my cock. I love you .” Emotion flared in his eyes. “Just promise to talk to me, okay?”

I love you even when you scare the shit out of me .

Oh, fuck.

Gray told me his worst fear was something happening to me. And I’d driven a race when I wasn’t fully coherent. It was fine, but there was a chance it might not have been fine. That was why he was asking me to promise. Because he’d been terrified the whole time I drove.

I nodded, trying to show him I understood. “I promise.”

“Thank you.” He crushed his mouth to mine.

“I’m sorry.” I spoke so only we could hear the words.

The shaky sigh he let out had me wrapping myself around him. “I know. And I’m never going to be the man that stops you, Vanessa. But I am still a man who will try to protect you. Both as your boss and your Alpha.” Brushing my nose with his, he smiled, his eyes clearing and filling with heat. Just the thought of it had me burning without relief. “Now, before I let you up so you can pounce again.”

“I do not pounce .”

Gray raised an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me you’re not going to lunge for someone else’s cock the second I let you go?”

My skin flushed and suddenly I was breathing air so hot it felt like lava. “No.”

He chuckled. “Right. We’ll see. But first, I need you to tell me what you want in your nest.”

“What do you mean?”

“Colors, love.” Beck’s voice came from somewhere behind Gray. “What colors do you want? Pillows? Blankets? Lights? You don’t have to tell us everything now. Just a few things.”

I blinked. A nest.

“Do I get a nest?” My stomach did a happy little flip .

Gray kissed me, though we were both smiling. “You get a nest, little one. It’s all yours. It will only ever belong to you.”

Another thing my Omega wanted that I’d simply pushed aside. I didn’t have time for nests. Not when I traveled so much, and before this season, barely had enough money to have a one-bedroom flat, let alone a place with a nest. I’d never let myself daydream about having one, because there wasn’t much point in focusing on things I didn’t have.

“I don’t know.”

“Start with your favorite color,” Elias said.

“Black.” The answer was automatic. My entire life I’d been in colors someone else chose for me. The life of a racer. So when I dressed for myself it was refreshing to wear almost no color. “And silver.”

“When you’re not begging to be fucked,” Gray said, “we’ll have you pick every single thing you want. Right now, we’ll have someone set it up with some basics, all right?”

I was already nodding before he finished speaking. “I just need all of you. And your clothes. And… other things.” Their scents spilled on every inch of fabric and skin.

Fingers of flame wrapped around my ribs, causing me to arch my spine off the bed against my will. Whatever calm Gray had fucked into me was gone and I needed more. “Help me.”

Elias pulled me from beneath Gray and leaned me back against him, helping River with my legs and pulling them back. Holding them open. Holding them captive.

“Once we get you to the nest,” he said, dragging his fingers through my slick and the mess Gray left behind, “you’re going to be covered in us.”

“She likes to be messy,” Beck said, referencing what he’d said to me that morning in bed. The morning we’d never finished.

I glared at him, and froze at the sight of him sitting naked, one hand around his hardened cock, stroking it like he had all the time in the world as he watched. “I do not.” My mouth was dry, voice raspy.

One side of Beck’s mouth tipped up. “I don’t believe you.”

Pleasure streaked through me, pressure on my clit. River slowly used the head of his cock against it, teasing and circling. My eyes rolled back in my head. “That feels so good.”

“I’m with you, baby. Fuck .”

With one hand gripping his shaft, River moved faster. I gushed new wetness, making him slip and slide and every movement of his hard length against my clit feel that much better.

My eyes closed, but Elias tightened his hands where they held my thighs. “Watch him, Nessa. Watch him get you off with nothing but the head of his cock.”

I writhed in his hold, trying to make my hips reach further because I needed more than just this. I needed him inside me. I needed him to fuck me so hard I saw stars.

“Oh, I’m going to fuck you, baby.” River responded to words I hadn’t heard myself speak.

The way he moved over my clit—I gasped. “Right there. Right there.”

“Right here?” His voice cracked as he pushed himself harder into my clit. Back and forth and around, dragging wetness up from my soaked entrance to help that delicious friction already tugging at that place deep inside where orgasms were born like stars in the heart of a nebula.

“Fuck, you’re gonna make me come too.”

The image painted itself in my mind. River driving himself to the brink by doing nothing but this, and climbing up my body just in time to come across my tongue. Chocolate and mint. I swore I could taste his scent in the air and I wanted him to shove his cock all the way down my throat?—

I came. The orgasm took me off guard. A tsunami from a direction I hadn’t been looking. My body bucked and shook, seeking more of River’s perfect pressure. But it wasn’t there anymore. He was sliding down. Sliding in .

Pain and desperation grew. Every orgasm added fuel to the flames and my need to be filled until I couldn’t be anymore. “River I can’t. I can’t.”

“I’m not going to last long,” he promised. “My knot is all yours.”

It was. I sank beneath the waves of a hot, sparkling sea. Every thrust carried me deeper on the tide of pleasure until I was just breathing it. Who needed oxygen when you could have this ?

When had Elias let me slip to my back? When had River gotten close enough to moan in my ear? Why did that sound turn my Omega feral?

I squeezed down on his cock and was rewarded with more desperate noises. “I’m about to come.” The words were against my neck. “Can’t stop. Fuck, it’s so good, baby. Fuck .”

He slammed deep, coming hard enough that I felt it before his knot locked into place. God, yes. There was no way to describe the satisfaction of that feeling. A rightness nothing else could match. Knotted and claimed. Over and over and over again.

How was it possible that being knotted by them made me want even more? The coals of my heat hadn’t calmed at all. Instead, they were growing. “ More ,” I begged.

“We’re already in the air,” River said, purr rumbling through both of us, relaxing me. “Not even an hour flying and we’ll be there.”

“That’s so long.”

Elias sat next to me and held his wrist to my nose. “How feral does this make you?”

The sweet, soft, berry scent overwhelmed me, and I wanted it. I wanted him. But it didn’t have my body arching and begging in the same way because I knew he didn’t have a knot. That didn’t keep fire from rushing over me and my body drenching River’s cock. “Pretty feral,” I admitted. “Like one step down.”

He grinned. “I’ll take it. We’re going to kick the big bad Alphas out for the rest of the flight so you have a chance of getting to your nest in one piece.”

“But I need all of you.” I hated how small I sounded.

“You have all of us, baby,” River whispered. “That’s not changing.”

He held me until his knot released us, kissing me slowly. “Let Elias take care of you. Once we get to the nest, you’re not going to want to stop.” Then he smirked. “You might not be able to stop.”

Elias took his place, not letting me think or worry. “I have something,” he said, smiling and holding up his hand. A small hoop that I recognized. It was a fake knot he could put on his cock.

I couldn’t think straight. Knots were what I wanted, but I wanted Elias too. He didn’t have a knot, and it didn’t matter. “I don’t love you less because you can’t knot me,” I blurted out.

Elias’s smile grew. “You love me?”

That was the first time I’d said it. “Of course I do. I love you. And I don’t need a fake knot to do so.”

“I appreciate that,” he said. “And I know. But during your heat, if you need it, I’m happy to use it.”

“Maybe later.”

I wanted him because he was mine. No other reason. Toys were great, and maybe we would use them, but I didn’t want it now. I just wanted my Beta.

Setting the toy aside, he sat back so his knees rested on either side of my hips. “Lift your arms.”

I did, and he slid a shirt over them. Soft and warm. It smelled like him. Those berries had a creaminess to them that reminded me of ice cream. I’d eat an Elias flavored ice cream.

But he didn’t put the shirt on me. Instead, he pulled it down over my eyes, my arms still tangled in the holes. “Elias?”

“Here.” He moved my arms, shifting them so they were above my head and I was holding the opposite elbow. The result was me being trapped in the shirt, unable to see. Only able to scent and feel.

“Stay just like that.”

I did, feeling the way he stroked his hands over my body before he settled between my hips and thrust in. Not hard. Slowly and gently. He kissed me then with that same slowness, and even though need raged beneath my skin, craving raw and rough and fast, being surrounded by Elias’s scent kept it at bay.

He drowned me with him, fucking me slowly, before jerking his hips in harder, sharp thrusts that made me gasp before we came back to slowness. Where he was pierced, it was another dichotomy between soft and hard. Sharp bursts of pleasure and soothing movement. And he kissed me. Just kissed me, fucking my mouth with his tongue just as slowly.

At some point I felt the swooping sensation of the plane descending, but I couldn’t focus on that when he had me like this. Even as slow as he moved, pleasure still rose beneath my skin. It stretched long limbs like a cat, letting it gather until I couldn’t hold it back anymore.

One moment it was building and the next I cried out into Elias’s mouth, shaking, falling through every bit of delicious ecstasy he’d taken the time to push into me. It also lit the fire all over again. His scent was no longer calming. It was fuel.

He came, groaning into my neck. “Keep holding on, beautiful. We’re almost there. When you’re not in heat I want to do this again.”

I couldn’t even speak to tell him fuck yes . If I did, I worried about pouncing, exactly like Grayson had said I would. I was a time bomb with a trigger waiting to go off. If I was careful, I’d be able to keep it in. Not for long, but hopefully long enough.

The plane bounced, hitting the runway, and I breathed out one long, slow breath. Almost there. This was like the longest edging session in existence, if edging consisted of multiple orgasms that were only to soften the wait for when they could tear whatever remained of our clothes off.

Elias didn’t bother to move the shirt or take it off. Instead, he wrapped me in the comforter, t-shirt and all. I stayed in the dark, burning like a banked coal waiting for kindling.

We were almost there, and once we were, they would set me aflame.