“Them. Not me, not yet, but I’d like to see if that could change.” He tilted his head slightly. “With your permission.”
He looked back at the guys, and that was what sealed the deal for me, that look of longing. I wanted to know exactly what for and why and how, when he looked at me, it didn’t change a bit. A selfish part of me preened as it seemed to get only more intense as he stared into my eyes. A low alpha growl rumbled in his chest, those long sensitive fingers reaching up and tracing the shape of my lips.
“I’m very much hoping that you’ll allow that, Kit.”
My father’s words, they came back to me, reminding me of how little choice I had in the matter, but I nodded before peeling myself off his lap, liking the feel of his fingers as they ran across my skin, tempted to hold me back but not willing to, not yet.
But soon, a dark voice insisted inside me.
Soon, I promised myself as I moved forward, prising Len and Tristan apart, only to see all that hunger directed at me. I smiled as they dragged me in closer.
Chapter 21
“We’d like to date the two of you,” James said.
We’d kissed, the three of us, until our mouths were swollen and red and we finally had to admit defeat or continue things as they were. I was firmly in the camp of the latter option, but Len had quelled that idea with a growl. We’d pulled on our clothes, needing some sort of barrier between us and the two of them, and with that came a calm.
“Patience,” Tristan had insisted when I turned on him, then he’d smiled in a way that was all too familiar. His eyes glittered with a feral light before he darted in, kissing me lightly to soften that blow. “If we’re doing this, building something, we need to take our time.” He glanced back at the others. “That’s what this is, trying to see if we can make something here?”
Len’s expression was pure molten gold as he moved closer, the rumbly sound in his chest so bloody satisfying, but the forehead kisses that came afterwards? He grinned when he saw us sit there, similarly stunned.
“You know where I am with this. I think more needs to be done to explore the dynamic here, to discover how it might work, but if you’re asking if I’m in, I’m one thousand percent in.” He let out a huff of a breath, those big hands flexing. “I dunno if I could keep away if I tried.”
My hand shot out to take one of his, and we both looked at each other when Tristan did the same, then snorted. Empathetic omega instincts every damn time. But that left James to respond. We looked at him much more shyly, less certain of his response.
“I let my family know I’ve put in an offer for Tristan as well as my intention to court Kit. I’m not sure what they’ve read into that. They’d have to be idiots, having commented on my mooning after your portrait many times, not to know what that meant, but…”
He swallowed, raking those beautiful hands through his hair, then pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose in a way that made me want to crawl closer and slide them off. When I shot a sidelong look at Tristan, it felt like he was feeling the same way.
“I thought I knew what I was getting myself in for.” He smiled wryly. “Two feisty omegas who had turned my world upside down, but even that has proven more complex. But I feel…more certain now. This is a voyage of discovery, one we’ll navigate together, and apart.”
The two of us stiffened at that.
“At the very least, to placate Kit’s family, I’ll need to attend some of the season’s events with her as a potential beau. Anything less would be seen as an insult to the family, like she’s something to be hidden from the public eye.”
Little growls came from Tristan in response to that.
“I assumed that would make you unhappy, and believe me, that pains me.” The way James said that made me frown. There was more knowledge of what that word meant in his tone than there should have been. “How can we do this? How can we, I, make that up to you, Tristan?”
Sometimes Tris loved being the centre of attention, and sometimes it seemed like it was his cross to bear, like it was right now. He faced them down, never backing away from a fight, even if he didn’t know whom he was fighting. I focussed on his hand, stroking the back of it, rubbing my thumb across the bones and the tendons.
“Perhaps you…” This was going to hurt, I knew it from the tentativeness in his tone, but I just breathed through that. “Perhaps you could take me out on my own, or Len could. Anything other than leaving me alone in that fucking room of mine. Or…” I felt his eyes on me before I looked up. “Or you could bring us here, let us be together, just us some of the time. Draw us, if that’s what it takes to legitimise that, but…”
He pulled me close, pressed his lips to my forehead as I reached out and hugged him.
“We have no right to request to be with each other, aren’t allowed to spend time together unless an alpha OKs it. I’m not asking you to take on the political rights of omegas in the parliament, but if you could use the fucking freedoms you take for granted to help us do what we need to, well…” He shrugged. “Let me have enough of her, for the first time in my fucking life. Let the aching subside, let me be satisfied, and then I can stop worrying about that all the time and think about letting others in.”
James and Len looked at each other for a long moment, then nodded slowly. Provide, protect first, then possess.
“I’m amenable,” James said, reaching out a hand, one that Len gave a firm shake to.
“Me too. We’ll need to communicate, a lot. I think I get it. This situation, that night, it’s already messing with my head, and you two have been bearing that for how long?” Len shook his head. “But I can go out, get pissed, blow off some steam. I can go anywhere I fucking want, but you…you’re left waiting on the goodwill of others. Tristan will need to know everywhere you take Kit, what you do, and…I think I need that too.”
We were extending our network of pain, and I could see both alphas balking at this on an instinctual level. They were not team players, preferring to carve their own paths, their success at that defining their place in society, but I think the walls around our hearts cracked a little when they agreed to that.
That was the way this would be—each of us bending, bending, until we reached the other person or we broke. Even as I was conscious of the risk, I couldn’t help feeling a flush of the most exquisite pleasure.
I’d grown up jaded and feeling out of sync with my whole world. I’d been shown the door of the cage I was born into, but for the very first time, I felt like I might be able to step free of it, out into what…? I smiled as I considered it. Into something I couldn’t even get my head around, and wasn’t that lovely?