Page 20 of Crave

But not anymore. They mightn’t want us anymore, but I was trying to give Susannah everything she’d ever desired, and I was going to start with these two Alphas.

My inner Omega whined. Maybe not just for Susannah.

“Do you guys remember that watering hole, up past the Olsen house? The kids got banned from going there about five years ago when one jumped off the rocks and broke both legs?”

Murphy nodded. “Of course.”

“Can we go up there? I don’t want to go home and sit inside hiding from the world.”

Merrick and Murphy shared a look. “It’ll be busy on a hot day like today, but we have somewhere better,” Merrick said with a grin. “You’re going to want to hold on—the trip is a little bumpy.”

Susannah was giving me a confused look, and I shrugged, leaning over to kiss her cheek. “Better hold on, babe.”

She shook her head. “Damn Omega hormones.”

12

MURPHY

We’d found this swimming spot once when we were doing a perimeter check for the Legion. It was the most perfect swimming hole you could ever ask for. Large boulders hid it from the world, and you had to squeeze through a tiny gap to get down to it. But once you got there it was spread out before you like a hidden world. It was on a tight bend in the river, so the water pooled into a small rocky outcropping. A tree grew up from a gap between the stones, like it had pushed its way to the surface just to provide the perfect amount of shade to cool some of the stone for swimmers to escape the blazing summer heat.

Merrick and I had sex under that tree more times than I could count on two hands.

Quinn spun in a circle. “This is amazing,” he murmured softly, and my Beast preened at his words. We’d put that note of wonder in his voice. We’d done that.

“The water drops to quite a deep pool, so you can swim properly,” I told them, taking my shirt off and setting it on the ground so they could sit on it. “It comes from the mountain, so most of the time the water is pretty cold, but I like it.”

The scent of desire swirled around us, and I bit back the grin that wanted to consume my features. Unbuckling my belt, I pulled it out with a one-handed snap and laid it beside my shirt, my pants quickly following until I was in nothing but my boxer shorts and a smile. Quinn was looking at me as if he wanted to lick me like a lollipop, and I was so close to obliging him.

Susannah swallowed hard, dragging her eyes from my naked chest to my face. “You should know that Quinn is going off his Omega masking meds, so he’s a bit more…”

“Volatile?” Merrick supplied.

Quinn snorted. “Horny. All those denied urges are just racing back to the surface, so I apologize if I stare at you like you’re a piece of prime rib.”

I gave him a cocky smirk. “Anything you need, Omega. You just have to ask.”

Quinn blinked in surprise at the honorific. We often called people by their designations as a sign of respect, or sometimes in the bedroom. I would never call Merrick “Alpha” while he was fucking me, but if Susannah was beneath me, whispering “Alpha” to me as I fucked her?

Mmph.

Crap, my cock was getting hard. I needed to get in the water ASAP to cool down a little before everyone got an eyeful.

Merrick rolled his eyes at me. “Apologies, Quinn. We won’t refer to you as Omega if you don’t like it.”

Quinn shook his head. “No, it's not that. It's just… weird, is all. I wasn’t really an Omega for long before I started taking the pills and pretending to be a Beta. It’s just weird to hear it directed at me.”

Susannah snorted. “You aren’t kidding.”

I laughed, wading into the water until it was deep enough so I could dive in. The frigid water made me surface with a gasp, but my body relished the cool that it hadn’t felt in so long with this damn heatwave.

I groaned. “This is so nice.” And it had a positive effect on the hard-on I was beginning to sport.

Susannah was never one to be outdone. She stripped off her shirt and wiggled out of those tiny cutoffs that had made me hard for at least sixty percent of the day. We’d been to the swimming hole with Susannah a lot when we were teens, but this wasn’t my teenage fantasy in front of me. Susannah the woman was everything I’d dreamed of and more. Soft curves that weren’t nearly as sharp as they’d been when she’d lived with Wilkie’s Pack, which added credence to my guess that he’d been starving them both. She had full boobs in a white lace bra, and I wanted to bury my face between them and never emerge. Soft thighs that were way too biteable. Fuck, I was getting hard again, even with the cold water.

She tiptoed in, hissing a little at the cold, but continued to wade out until the edge dropped away and she was forced to swim. “Holy fuck, that’s cold,” she grumbled at me, and God, it was adorable. “You’re a fucking liar, Owen Murphy.”

It was weird hearing her say our given names. No one used them. Merrick and I didn’t even use them with each other. We’d always gone by our surnames, and the only people who used our given names were our parents, and Susannah.

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