“Good, baby?” Fire asked, a similar noise escaping her as she pushed her cock back in. For a second, they were all still, as if needing to adjust what they were doing.
“So good,” Blur said, huffing out, and when he looked down at the alpha, I started to see what he was getting from this.
Blur stroked the alpha’s face with a kind of loving intensity I knew so well. As if to remind me, long fingers trailed through my hair, forcing me to turn around to see it again. And sure enough, Tristan stared down at me with eyes shining unearthly bright, entirely fixated on me, not able to see anything else, and as the participants began to move, wringing greater and greater cries of pleasure from each other, Tristan kissed me.
Glacially slow, so I could feel the tremor of feeling in his mouth, in his hands, he did what I’d seen no other man do—kissed me with his whole soul. It went on and on, along with the rising sound of the three of them as they made love to each other in a way that kinda made my head spin, the nature of it so alien.
Except it wasn’t.
I looked over my shoulder, saw that people had taken what they’d been born with and mixed it a little, rather than letting biological determinism rule them. Wearing a Feeldoe didn’t make Fire any less female and punching it into the alpha with every snap of her hips didn’t make her less of an omega. She was just expressing it in a way that wasn’t socially sanctioned, something I knew already. I turned back, stared into Tristan’s eyes, and saw something I’d always wanted to and feared we never would.
He was home. This, this place and its dizzying array of depravity and delights, it was somewhere he could be who he wanted, where he could discover exactly what that was through trial and error. As I looked over his shoulder to where Len loomed, I felt something I never had with any alpha—fear. I didn’t like it, those knowing eyes, the slow nod of acknowledgement I received. Somehow, this random guy who’d walked into our lives by mistake, he knew a part of Tristan better than I did. I buried my face in Tristan’s shoulder, hugged him hard, so hard, it must’ve hurt him somewhat, and when I pulled back, eyes wet, he had questions in his eyes that I couldn’t answer.
As I turned to face the stage, seeing that the three of them had gotten what they needed for the exchange, I had to face an uncomfortable reality. Fire and Blur moved around, unhooking the alpha, rubbing his arms and hands as they undid his cuffs. Then they settled him down on what looked like a way too small stool, offering him water and hugs and sweet petting motions as a form of aftercare.
“Do you need some help grounding him?” someone asked from the crowd. Blur looked up, tired lines forming on his face now, and he gestured for them to come forward, the person joining them incongruously dressed in jeans and a striped sweater. “Just gonna give you a hug, big guy. You cool with that?” The alpha nodded, seeming to collapse into the three of them as they surrounded him with cuddles.
They and Tristan had the freedom to step free of social norms, to become whatever the hell they wanted, whether it was just here or in the world at large, but for the first time in forever when with Tristan, I felt the cage door closing, not opening. He might have broken the lock, my family might let me dance beyond its confines, but coming home and announcing to my father that I was going to take mates in a scenario like we’d just seen, could never, ever happen.
My jaw tightened so painfully, it felt like the enamel of my teeth would surely crack under such pressure. My father wouldn’t be able to see it, the way the three of them worked together to pull back, bring themselves back down to earth, back to reality. All he’d see was wrongness. Alphas were strong, go-getters, the providers for their families, with betas their loyal sidekicks. And omegas? I swallowed hard, seeing Fire as she threw back her head and laughed, riding some kind of high now that her Feeldoe had been tossed to one side, the alpha’s arm wrapping around her shoulder as he pulled her in and purred. That couldn’t be me, no matter what Tristan thought, his mind ticking over the whole time we’d been here.
Chapter 16
Tristan turned to Jackson and Len, and for a second, just looked at them. I wondered if they could see the gratitude there. His eyes flicked down, but he forced them back up again and swallowed hard, before saying, “I want to see more. No…” His frown formed and then was gone again. “I need to. I feel like I need to see everything.” His gaze roamed now as he hungrily tried to do just that.
Len snorted, then shook his head. “You can’t, not here. There’s floors and floors of it.” His eyes flicked up to where the top levels were above us. “Some you won’t want to. Fringe kinks, rea
lly fringe kinks, they all find their place here. As long as people are of age, consenting, and no lasting harm is caused, there’s a safe space for it. It’s not about seeing everything, it’s about finding what you want.” His eyes slid over us slowly, the heat in those steely eyes making me flush, a low growl forming in Tristan’s throat. “What do you want to see?”
For a moment, all you could hear were the sounds of the music, the people, the crazy around us as we considered an idea so freaking foreign, we couldn’t find the words. We had to dance through so many hoops at Apothecary to find alphas willing to play our much simpler games, who would actually make the experience pleasurable, but here? I think I felt some of Tris’ elation. Right now, it was like we could commandeer one of those platforms, shout out to the crowds what we wanted, and a horde of smoking hot alphas would push forward, wanting to be exactly what we described.
But if that need was fulfilled, what then? What of the many other ideas Tris and I had talked about in hushed tones late at night, barely able to voice them? I wondered then if this was how birds felt, when liberated from their wire cages. Did they look at the great open sky with a curious mix of longing and fear, not knowing what the hell to do with it but wanting to fly with every fibre of their being?
“I’ve got an idea,” Jackson said. “If you’re not feeling it, then cool, but there’s some players…” He shrugged. “Let’s take a look and see, then find something else if it doesn’t work for you. Sound good?”
Len stared at us, watching for our responses, but what was there to see but potential? He nodded, then moved forward, wrapping his arms around our shoulders, the heavy weight something I didn’t realise I needed until I got it. He was an anchor, keeping me in place for as long as I wanted but able to be tossed off when no longer required. So he steered us through the crowds, after his beta.
Jackson stopped in front of a podium that looked like a scene had just been completed. A tall woman, wearing only a tiny little pair of green sequined knickers and sky-high emerald stilettos, wiped her brow with a cloth before tossing it to the floor. Then she turned to face us, perhaps sensing our gaze, but she smiled when she saw Jackson.
“Jacks! I haven’t seen you in ages. Where the hell ya been?”
“Good, Glint,” he said, walking up to the edge of the stage. “Is Tai around?”
The woman, Glint, her welcome expression changed, her smile becoming something sly and feline. Her long fingers clenched into a fist, something she watched with satisfaction.
“Oh, she won’t be too far off. She might flitter away, my little omega, but she always comes back for what she needs. So what’s with the entourage?”
“Tristan, Kit, this is Glint,” he said by way of explanation. The woman dropped down into a perilous squat on the edge of the stage, but she seemed to be in perfect control of her body, and by the look of it, she always was. She was completely relaxed as she extended a hand to us. Tristan shook it, then I did. Alpha, that hit me hard and fast in the gut, a sure sense of it, but she was left quizzical in response to us. “And this is Len.”
Glint’s mouth formed a perfect O of understanding as her eyes slid to Jackson, catching the moment the beta went pale before she took Len’s hand. For a minute, both Tris and I stiffened, the hungry way she looked him over making us uncomfortable, but we needn’t have worried. He took his hand back after shaking hers, tilting his head and rumbling, “Lady alpha,” before taking up his spot between us.
“Oh, he’s just perfect, Jacks,” she said, straightening up with a wicked smile, then something else caught her attention.
Her demeanour changed, becoming the steely focus of a predator. She searched the crowds, the milling people, until her girl strode forward. Wearing a floor-length green velvet cape and standing a head taller than most of the people here, she stalked like a damn catwalk model towards that stage as everyone skittered out of her way. Her hair was clipped close to her elegant skull, dyed a deep sultry emerald, her eyeshadow all in complementary shades.
“Speaking of perfect…”
Glint’s voice was a ragged ode of longing for the approaching woman. She grabbed a big squeezy bottle of lube, putting it next to something that looked a little like the bed in an OB-GYN’s office, then she stalked over to the edge of the platform right as the green-haired chick threw off her cape, revealing acres of slender, pale skin.