“And two…” I didn’t look away from Colt, even though I wanted to. I didn’t really want to say this, the feeling inside me so naked and raw, it felt vaguely obscene to bring it to the dining table, but here it was. “What happened with Colt and me? I feel like I’ve waited my whole adult life for that. Like, I’ve never ever been more aware of something that I’ve waited and longed for than I was last night.” I forced my eyes down at that, focussing on my breakfast but not really seeing it. “You want me to do this, to be with each one of you? Well, that will feel like this does now. That this is really precious and fragile.” I sucked in a breath, my chest feeling tight before I glanced up at the rest of the table. “You can’t talk shit about us or what happened. I don’t even know if I can talk about it at all.”
I was yanked away from my seat then and into Colt’s lap, his nose going into my hair, one arm wrapping around me and holding me still when I went to move, the other drawing my breakfast closer.
“Just stay, Riley,” Colt said, his voice muffled by my hair. “Please.”
“So you’re gonna give this a go?” I looked up to see an awfully pale Blake staring across the table at me. “These fucks need to learn to shut the hell up anyway, but…” He swallowed hard. “You’re gonna try things with us?”
I studied them all then, every eye in the place on me, and that was a weird sensation. No, it was a familiar one, but one I could have sworn I’d let go of. But here we were, the adults in the room now, and it was us that had to make the decisions.
“You’re going to hurt me—”
“No, Riley,” Fen said with absolute certainty, but I held up a hand, indicating I needed to finish this.
“You have an omega out there. Who bloody knows, maybe when you’re out and about in the city, some girl who would’ve become an omega in Bordertown but has been stuck here will go through a late reveal and then you’ll find her. But…”
Colt’s hand stroked up and down my thigh, his other arm holding me tight, so tight around my waist. I was done fighting, done doing the old alphas’ jobs for them. Whatever this was, it’d proven to me that we at least deserved a chance to try things.
So that was what I told them.
“You’ll never regret this,” Fen said, a gentle smile spreading across his face. “I promise you that. If I have to ride every one of these fucks—”
“And we ride you,” Ryan muttered.
“Then this is the way it is going forward. And you should fucking know better, Haze.”
The man himself sat back at that, arms crossed, every scrap of amusement drained from him. His skin looked too pale, his eyes too bright as he faced the rest of us.
“I should. I do. I did.” He shook his head, then chanced a sidelong look at me. “I’m sorry, to both of you.” A series of snorts around the table at that. “I crack inappropriate jokes when I’m bored, uncomfortable, sometimes even when I’m pissed, but today?” He straightened up then, loosening his arms across his chest. “Today I was jealous as fuck. I wanted to be in that bed. I wanted to walk in here half naked and reeking of her. I want her on my lap.”
Which to me just raised a whole other set of issues. They might be the only alphas in the world dating a beta, but I had literally no idea how to build a relationship between five men without hurting someone.
The thing was, I might not, but they did.
Colt pressed a kiss to the back of my neck and then loosened his hold on me.
“Go to him,” he said.
“But, Colt—”
“Go to him. It’s fine.” I turned in his lap to look at him over my shoulder, and he stared up at me. “I was walking on air when I came in here, but what you just said?” He pulled me close then, twisting me around until my head rested on his chest. “It means that there’s potential for more times like this. So many more. Throw Haze a bone. For all our bullshit, we know how to share, and you don’t.”
And with that, he pushed my breakfast across the table for Haze to collect.
Getting up and walking away from Colt was hard to do, especially as everyone watched me move, but Haze reached for me, taking the need to make decisions away from me as he pulled me onto his lap.
“I’m sorry, Riley girl,” he said, just to me, the usual chatter starting up again across the table. “I’d love to tell you I won’t do it again, but…” I snorted at that, knowing very well what Haze was like. “This makes it easier, I’ll say that.” He rubbed his hand up and down my thigh, then continued, “Now eat your breakfast before Blake twists my head off like a bottlecap.”
Eating brekky perched on someone’s lap was kinda weird, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to find my own seat. Blake started ferrying over platters of food, placing them on the table, and everyone helped themselves, a much more companionable silence settling over the table, until Fen broke it.
“You’re not getting Riley today either,” he informed Haze. “I’m taking her out for the day.”
“Some would say it would be useful to ask the woman in question first,” I said, not daring to look up at him.
The thought of going out one-on-one with Fen? It sent through me a thrill of fear, anticipation, and something else that was hard to define—something he seemed to sense as he caught me taking a sidelong look at him.
“You know how this works,” he said, green eyes burning into mine. “It’s within my rights to demand you sit on my lap, not Haze’s. If we are actually going to do this, as you said, then it means spending time with each one of us, and today is my day.”
“The others didn’t get a whole day,” I replied, and this drew chuckles from around the table, Fen seeming to smile despite himself.