“It’s not sickening.” My eyes dropped, and I worked my thumbnail into a seam of the chair I was sitting in. “It just puts me on edge.” I looked up now, able to meet her steady gaze without effort. “I just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Rick was sweet at first, bringing me flowers, taking me for lunch on my breaks. If Peter… If they…” There it was again, that cold hard sensation where it felt like my breath froze in my lungs. “I can’t…” My voice was little other than a squeak amongst the deafening rattle of my heart in my chest. “If they choose to hurt us, they’ll kill us, and I won’t be able to stop them.”
The roar that came from me was earth shaking, filling the room to every corner. I was out of my chair, pacing, feeling my body coil like a steel spring, ready to leap into action. I watched in horror as my fingers contorted, long talons starting to protrude.
“That’s enough now.” Ophelia stood before me, her eyes glowing phosphorescent green. Her voice was calm and even, but still, I could feel the power throbbing within it. “You’re showing Flick that you’ll protect her. That is good, but you’re scaring her right now. She needs time to adjust before her shift. Do not bring on her first heat. Not yet.”
It felt like a tide inside me receded, pulling whatever that had been back deep down, until I was all that remained. I blinked and looked around the room, feeling hollow and light, and then burst into tears.
Ophelia sighed and then pulled me into her arms, holding me as I sobbed.
I cried because I had no choice, and I cried because I did. I cried because it was all so bloody confusing. If I hadn’t been shovelling the emotional fallout of Rick’s attack, I’d still be struggling with this strange new world, and right now, it was another burden. Yet I cried because the burdens I’d been so used to carrying had been taken away from me. I cried because I’d never been allowed to, because I could right now with impunity, and because the door opened and Peter rushed in and wrapped me up in his arms. I cried because I wanted to abandon myself completely to his monolithic strength, to grow around him like a vine on a tree.
But I’d never let myself. I needed to be my own tree.
12
We settled into a bit of a groove after that.
Peter and Aidan moved in, bringing more and more belongings over, until there was nothing more to bring. We didn’t mark it in any way, but they lived here now, in our quiet house. We all slept together in my bed, though Kade had begun to slip out and sleep back in his own after the nightmares stopped. We lived in a serene bubble of endless movies on the TV, lying curled around each other on the couch, always a steaming cup of tea on the coffee table, just resting, healing, waiting.
The first morning I’d woken to find myself in bed with two attractive men had been a difficult one. I’d stretched sleepily, clad only in one of Peter’s shirts again, before opening my eyes to see Aidan—not Kade—watching me. He didn’t move, didn’t say anything, but those hazel eyes studied my face, then skimmed down over every part of my body that was revealed by tossing off the covers during the night. But his eyes returned to mine, searching for signs I was OK, I was willing to bet. They did it a lot when they thought I wasn’t looking, touching base with each other with some kind of secret guy language.
I stared back, which was better than letting my eyes wander. The guys were wearing less and less to bed lately, stripping down to what felt like the flimsiest of sleep shorts. They weren’t really, but the stretchy grey material—that I’d seen many women on social media call male lingerie—clung to both their muscular forms.
Not that I looked. Whatever a pack was, we had it going on in here, with Kade at the centre of it. I made sure to keep my eyes above the waist at all times.
But Kade wasn’t here right now.
Aidan smiled, slow and lazy, the sleepiness not entirely gone from his eyes, his breath coming in long and even, almost as if he breathed me in. His hand slid across the bed, stopping well short of touching me, but the offer was clear. Then I heard the groan.
My eyes went wide when a hand went around my waist, flattening against my stomach, and Aidan’s eyes followed its progress. They went even wider when I felt lips against my neck, a strangled gasp fighting its way out of me. Aidan’s head jerked up, and he rolled into a seated position, ready to intervene, but my hand slid out and grabbed his.
“Experiment and play, Flick,” Ophelia had said at one of our sessions. “You are entirely safe. Consent is queen in Sanctuary. All boys and men are taught no means no from a very young age. Both of them would be delighted to let you explore things a little, I’m sure. What do you have to lose?”
“But what if they—”
I stopped, all of a sudden feeling awkward talking about sex with someone who could have been my grandmother.
“Get hard? Want to have sex? That’s their responsibility, isn’t it? If they feel out of control or uncomfortable, they’ll withdraw. Consent is for men as much as it is for women. If you don’t want to have sex, don’t. If you don’t want to touch them, don’t. But I think you do.”
Those merciless grey eyes cut straight through me, through all my excuses and explanations, until there was just me.
Aidan cradled my hand between both of his, nodding his encouragement as a sleeping Peter grew bolder. If you’d asked me if one hot guy would egg me on in responding to another hot guy before I came here, I’d have thought you were on crack, yet here I was. His eyes shone with a curious mix of lust and compassion as Peter thrust something weighty and hard against my butt, his hand pushing me back to meet him. And I wanted him too—that was the shocking part. His sandalwood scent filled my nose, drowned me within it, until my eyes closed and I just felt. The kisses grew into sharper, nipping things, something that had the burning venom filling my mouth. His hand slid down, nestling so close to where I needed him to be, making me ache that much harder.
This was a beautiful, hard, clean thing. It was so different to my other sexual experiences as to be almost something else entirely. I wasn’t nervous or worried, thinking about all of the flaws in my body while trying to ignore his. It wasn’t a brutal act of dominance, to hold me down and insert himself in me, or just plain, banal, loveless exchanges of fluids. Had I ever wanted it this much? Had my body ever responded so completely and enthusiastically? I just wanted Peter’s fingers on my clit and Aidan’s mouth on my lips and then one of them to peel down their shorts and—
“Mum! Aidan?”
Peter jolted awake with a snort, my own eyes flicking open to see Aidan’s gone hazy with need. He moved his arm quickly to hide his straining hard-on, but I caught sight of it. I cocked an eyebrow, something that had him grinning again. Peter, however, wasn’t so pleased.
“Oh shit, Flick!” he mumbled, wrenching his hands, then his body away as if stung. He scrambled off the bed, jamming on a pair of jeans. I rolled over on my back, only remembering to push the hem of his shirt down when he paused, his eyes sliding up my bare legs.
“Mum?”
“I’ll go,” Peter said abruptly, then he was out the door in the next breath.
I frowned, feeling a pang deep in my chest, but Aidan pulled me towards him, pushing my hair back from my face.
“Don’t overthink it,” he said. “Pete… Let’s just say he has his hang-ups as well.”