Page 100 of Omega's Heart

He smiled.

I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “You’d come right across this apartment and try to carry me off to your bedroom, wouldn’t you?” I’d somehow ended up in his bed the morning after Full Moon. Not to do anything, just to be held and to talk a little. Plans, hopes, dreams. He was always a proper alpha, to my great relief, though this close to our mating I was starting to wonder if I was just being ridiculous.

His smile widened. “As soon as I got my leg on.”

I sighed and pretended to be put upon by alpha silliness. “You’d just put your back out,” I scolded him as I walked toward the bedroom door. “I’m still not sure how you talked me into this.”

“You’re in here all the time, fussing and cleaning things that don’t need to be cleaned. A little cuddle time seems appropriate.”

I stopped in front of him and shook my head. “You’re not in the army now, soldier. Or if you are, it’s my army.”

“Yes, sir, Captain,” he replied smartly.

“Smarty pants,” I said as I leaned in to kiss him. “I suppose I have a little time.”

“Good,” he said and yawned until his jaw cracked. “I’m going back to bed.” He turned and started hopping away. “Some saucy omega kept me up way past my bedtime last night.”

“I wasn’t aware the senator was an omega,” I countered, remembering the hours-long phone call that had eaten up most of our evening together, and he grunted faint amusement over his shoulder. I held back a sigh while I watched the way the muscles bunched in his back and his rear as I followed him back to his bed, and questioned my sanity in agreeing to crawl in beside him. If his mother hadn’t been arriving today, which would for an absolute certainty put an end to our inappropriate carryings-on, I might have changed my mind and taken the safe course of not following him into the bedroom. The temptation to cheat, just a little, just by a couple of days even, was growing stronger every day.

No, I could do this. Kaden told me I could. Not that it ever stopped him from poking the wolf and seeing how long it would take to make me growl. I stripped my shirt off and kicked off my shoes, but left the jeans in place, more to remind me to behave than to keep him from going farther than I wanted him to.

“Move, Hunter.” I nudged the pup, who was lying on my side of the bed with his head on my pillow, until he reluctantly crawled down to the foot of the bed, making disgruntled noises all the way. “You’re teaching him bad manners.”

“He was in his bed when I went to sleep,” Kaden protested and pulled me in so I could rest my head on my shoulder. His finger and thumb played over the back of my neck, soothing me almost to sleep. “I guess there won’t be much of this for the next week.”

“I guess not.” I was going to miss this, these mornings when he wanted just to hold me and let the conversation drift wherever it needed to. “I was thinking I should go to White River a few days early. I could take your mother with me.”

He raised his head. “You sure you want to do that? You’ve been wound up tighter than a new private on inspection day.”

“I want to make a good impression,” I told him. And if things weren’t going well, I thought I could count on my mother to smooth any rough patches.

“I don’t care what she thinks.”

“I do. This is your family, Kaden.”

“You’re not worried about what your family will think of me?”

“They’re going to love you,” I told him firmly. “Cas… I dunno.”

He snorted a laugh and closed his eyes. “I’m more worried about turning Pip and Hunter loose on them.”

“Hunter knows to behave.”

His fingers traced the top of my spine. “You haven’t mentioned Pip.”

“I’m going to have a chat with Pip before I go, I think.”

“Raleigh won’t mind?”

“Raleigh has threatened to glue her hands together if she builds anything else out of his good silverware.”

Kaden grinned, eyes still closed. “I think Quin needs to start pointing her at an engineering school. It’s the closest I can think of to Mad Scientist School, which is really where she belongs.”

“One of my brothers is like that. Tinkers with everything. He keeps the greenhouses going.”

“Um hmm?” Kaden murmured. The movement of his hand on my neck slowed to a stop, then started again. He was falling asleep, which was good. He’d run himself ragged last night; he needed the recovery time. I let my eyes drift closed in the comforting warmth of his arm around me and promised myself I’d only doze for a few minutes before I got up to finish cleaning the cupboards.

Then I heard a whine and my eyes flew open, but it wasn’t Kaden. Hunter was staring up the bed at us, eyeing Kaden with the saddest expression I’d ever seen. I frowned at him, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me—he was entirely focused on Kaden.