Page 17 of The Pack Next Door (The Wolfverse #4)
Briar
I shouldn’t be doing this. I certainly shouldn’t be drawing Jace’s head closer, even as Mads came to stand at my back.
Fingers lifting the damp strands of my hair away from my neck, then a fingertip slid downwards.
I definitely shouldn’t be feeling a whole body shiver in response.
These men were not my alphas. But what if they were?
That’s what my wolf, my heart, cried. What should have hurt transmuted into a vicious kind of pleasure due to my heat.
My fingers trailed along Jace’s nape, and a low growl told me exactly what he thought of that. In case I needed confirmation, his eyes burned bright silver, right before he flashed his fangs at me.
Yes, that.
His lips nuzzling my neck, making the skin exquisitely sensitive, then giving it a little nip.
A prelude of what was to come. My thighs clamped together as a frantic pulse started up.
Him, pinning me down on my childhood bed, forcing my hips up, my cries smothered by the coverlet as he worked his knot slowly but surely inside.
Mads cradled my jaw in his hand, then turned his head my way.
“Wait your turn, brother…” Jace snarled.
“Don’t think I can.” I followed the path of a droplet of sweat as it ran down the side of Mads’ face.
His smile faltered as we each stared at the other.
“Been thinking about kissing those lips since I hopped over the fence and found your teeth sinking into them.” My mouth fell open as his thumb brushed against it.
“Up half the night thinking about it.” He shook his head slightly.
“If I’m gonna have any chance of sleeping tonight, I’m gonna need… ”
His mouth hovered over mine, that heady woody scent of theirs multiplying by the second. I let out a thin whine, making clear what I wanted. As Mads’ head dipped lower, his hot breath fanning over my lips, Jace’s hand slid up my throat, feeling my pulse flutter, just before?—
“What are you doing?”
Gideon’s voice was like a bucket of ice water dropped over all of us. As I sprang back, his brothers reached for me, but the moment was over. I nearly… I could’ve… I shook my head, but that did nothing to dispel the faint red haze that clung to my field of vision.
Gods, I was getting worse.
“Spade’s in the shed.” I almost barked that out. Perhaps because my wolf was digging her claws in, trying to stop me from taking a step backwards. “I need to…”
My cheeks burned as I bolted for the back door, slamming the screen door behind me as I leapt inside.
“That you, Briar?” Mum called out from the kitchen. “Come and give me a hand with lunch.”
“Can’t, Mum.” I took the steps two at a time, using the wolf’s strength to get me to my bedroom in record time. “A work thing has come up.”
I didn’t intend to work at anything other than trying to tamp down the fire burning inside me, but when I opened my laptop to try to find the site with all the sexy stories I liked, my inbox popped up on screen.
Emails, so many emails, the subject line growing more and more hysterical as I scanned them.
The latest shipment of highly sought after ceramics had arrived with half the vessels cracked after an idiot delivery driver dropped the pallet.
Breath in, breath out, I fought to slow each exhale down, grabbing at calm and then I opened the first email.
“Briar.”
I’d picked my phone up blindly, assuming it would be Emma. With the flurry of replies I was sending back to her and Seb, I expected a call. Instead, I glanced down at the screen and saw it was a video call from Candy. Shaking my head, I tapped the screen to answer it.
“What’s up, buttercup?” She grinned through the screen, obviously perched on her balcony outdoor setting, looking a little worse for wear. “How’s things in Hick River?”
“Moon River,” I corrected, pushing the laptop onto the bed.
“Moon, Hick, hicks that howl at the moon.” She shrugged. “Same diff. Now, you rang?”
“Ahh… Riley said something about working on a heat suppressant?”
“Meh, Fanta Pants is always working on something. She got this whole weird focus on the job thing going.”
“A work ethic?” I said with a snort.
“Yeah, that.” Her face screwed up in an expression of disgust. “Yuck. So why this sudden interest in…” Calling Candy was a mistake.
She might do a very convincing impression of an idiot, but you didn’t get to work in one of the premier research facilities in the country without contributing something significant.
The phone was jerked closer and suddenly I could’ve counted every pore on her nose.
“Why would you want a heat suppressant, Briar? Tell me everything.”
I sucked in a breath, wiping yet more sweat from my brow.
“Well, I’m going into heat again and it's months too early.” A big huff of breath and my shoulders started to droop.
“So, it’s masturbation leave time again? Can I just say how cool it is that you omegas get that? I ran the idea of adding that to the leave entitlements of employees at Crowe Corp, but the boss was not having it.”
The camera swung around to where Mr. Knotty sagged from where his suction cup was stuck to Candy’s coffee table. His googly eyes listed to one side, making him look somewhat tragic.
“I even tried to claim Mr. Knotty as a dependant and said I needed mandated time off with him, but HR said that ‘sex toys don’t count as family members.’ I tried to fight that as discrimination against silicone-based lifeforms but didn’t really get far.” Her face swam back into view. “Rude.”
I couldn’t help but giggle. While I’m sure Candy was lying, it was so easy to imagine her doing just that, earnestly wobbling the dildo at her poor defenceless HR rep.
“Soo… Briar.” Nothing got past this woman. Her focus sharpened exponentially as all traces of weekend languor were wiped away. “Why do you need a heat suppressant?”
“Because it's the middle of an Australian summer and it’s hotter than Satan’s arsecrack?” I suggested.
“Nuh uh.”
“Because I’m supposed to help my mother, not spend the entire trip getting fishy fingers.”
I wriggled mine for emphasis.
“Going back to the bad old days of pretending you’re just ‘having a really long shower’ does make sense.” Candy made a show of tapping her chin. “But nope, my Spidey sense says that’s not it.”
“Your Spidey sense convinced you that you could climb a wall the night of that gala, after you got really drunk on company booze,” I shot back. “Instead of webslinging, you ran straight into it.”
“Pretty sure they laced the punch with LSD.”
With a shake of her head, she refocussed on me.
“Briar.”
“Candy.”
“Briar.” I looked meaningfully at the screen, ready to say her name again.
“Bitch, we can spend the afternoon calling each other’s names, but I’d much rather do that with masculine company.
Thanks, babe.” A masculine hand passed her a drink, and she took a sip, eyeing him hungrily before turning back to me.
“So tell me what the fuck is going on and then I can get Mrs. Roboto on the case for you.”
That was one of the many pet names Candy gave Riley.
My hands rose and fell helplessly.
“I’m in heat and I shouldn’t be.” Her silence was somehow worse than her constant stream of bullshit.
“It’s making me really uncomfortable and is super awkward.
” A glance around the room and I was confronted again by the artefacts of my childhood.
“I mean masturbation leave in your mother’s house?
It was bad enough when I was a teenager, her constantly barging in ‘to have a talk.’”
I could hear the cicadas whining and the sound of a spade hitting the dirt, and the wolf was straining inside me, wanting to take a peek over the window sill.
We just knew all three alphas would be stripped to the waist, sweating in the sun.
Up here I’d be able to take in every inch of their glistening skin as I…
“But most of all…” I didn’t want to have this conversation, I really didn’t, but what happened by the shed meant I must. “There’s a town full of alphas, and if I knew that, I wouldn’t have come down at all.
” My head swung from side to side. “I’d pay a nurse to bring Mum up to the city for a visit and to see specialists here. That way…”
The town square was clear in my mind, not my phone screen.
Everyone’s eyes on me, right up until Gideon made sure I was the only one he focussed on.
Those amber eyes were a beacon, helping me find my way.
My spine went perfectly straight as that memory was replaced by me grinding on Jace as Mads went to kiss me.
“I wouldn’t have to go through another heat surrounded by alphas, knowing none of them are my mate.”