“What about me?”
“What about what you need?”
I sighed then, feeling my body sag as I did so, every iota of energy sapped from me. I slid down the hallway wall, coming to sit on the floor.
“What about what I need?” I replied. “That’s the thing you need to learn about being a parent. It’s not about you.” My shaking hand went to my brow, rubbing the skin there. “I needed sleep so badly when she was born. Evie was difficult to settle, no matter what I tried. Dummies, rocking her, co-sleeping. I get migraines when I don’t get enough sleep, ones that make me feel like an ice pick is stabbing into my brain over and over, but that didn’t matter. Evie needed me. I was her mother, and I was the only one who could hold her, console her, keep her close. I had a migraine when I was still on the ward, just after she was born. I had to be careful about what medications I was taking because I was breastfeeding. I ended up having to shove Evie at a nurse as I went to throw up not once but twice and, when I was done? I had to take her back again. Right when I was hurting the most, I had to step up and be her mother, because that was the decision I’d made, bringing her into this world.”
“So what you need doesn’t count?” he asked in a low growl.
“It does when I can fit it around her,” I replied. “When she’s OK, when she’s settled, when she’s…”
Happy. That was what I wanted to say, but couldn’t. I let out a long shuddering breath because while Evie had this awful hangover after an outburst, so did I, though with none of the catharsis of being about to shout my pain to the world. But as if in response to my unspoken plea, a gentle knock came at the front door and then it creaked open.
“Ben?”
“I’m still here,” he said down the phone line.
“So who’s…?”
Jasper appeared in the doorway, looking pale and wide-eyed. He took one look at me before locking the door behind him, then dropped down to where I was. Arms went around me and I was pulled against a big broad chest, my head tucked up underneath his chin.
“Jasper made it?” Ben said with a chuckle. “You said I couldn’t come around, but you didn’t say anything about my brothers.”
“I believe that was implied,” I said, before darting a look up at Jasper. The big alpha smiled tentatively before his arms tightened around me.
“Be explicit with what you want from an alpha, that’s your first lesson for today,” Ben said. “The second is let us look after you. No matter where we end up relationship-wise, we’ll always want to look after you. You’re our mate, and nothing will ever change that.”
Jasper took the phone from my fingers and ended the call, then snuggled me in just as tight as I’d bound Evie up in her blankets. I was beginning to see the appeal of it, the pressure allowing my muscles the opportunity of finally unlocking. Then Jasper picked me up, just like his brother had done with our daughter and carried me to bed with much less protest. But then he started to remove my sandals, then my dress and I began to squirm, remembering who and what he was.
“Shh…” he said, just like someone would a child, before removing my bra with a kind of well-practised ease that concerned me.
“Jasper, we—”
He leant down, pausing for a second, then brushing his lips against mine, waiting for them to part breathlessly before he went in for more. Just a sweet kiss at first, a touching of mouths, before his tongue tested the seam of my lips, finding them slick and mobile. He groaned as my mouth opened and he surged in.
“Let me look after you, Lily,” he said. “I can feel how badly you need this. You don’t have to do this on your own, not anymore.”
I blinked, then shook my head, trying to clear the sensual haze that clouded my mind.
“Don’t say no,” he said, punctuating each word with a kiss. “Stop pushing us away when we have everything you need.”
I should’ve. I never had alphas over and the kind of all night romp most of them wanted was not a great idea right now, but I’d like to say my defences were down. I was tired, feeling achy, and when he pushed me down onto the bed, I melted into him and it.
“Evie…”
“The cub won’t know,” he said, then kissing me again, much slower and more thoroughly now. “Ben will get her ready for school and I’ll look after her mother.” He pulled off his shirt then, revealing a lean, taut body. Jasper smiled as I followed the lines of his muscles with my eyes. “Just say yes. Mothers are allowed to say yes sometimes too.”
I snorted at that, his wheedling a much deeper, sexier version of my daughter’s.
“Yes,” I said, right before he threw himself at me.
Chapter 37
"Fuck, you smell so good.”
Jasper was spending an inordinate amount of time kissing along my neck. He drew in great big lungfuls of me as he did so. “I thought it was your perfume, but…” His teeth nipped at my skin, then he sucked in a mouthful, almost hard enough to give me a hickey, instead just leaving a little sting that he licked away. “I’ve been breathing you in all day and now...”
My hands went up, sliding up the hard planes of his ribs, feeling the muscles and the bones shift until he grabbed my hands and put them above my head.