Page 74 of Fight or Fly

TWENTY-SEVEN

Leo

WE SPENT THE next fourdays with the world locked outside the doors and did nothing but rest, eat, and connect. Alpha healing meant that Flynn’s bruising subsided to slowly fading greens and yellows, and the ugly furrow left in Jax’s thigh by the passage of a bullet scabbed over.

The doctors tutted over Alex’s back and hand when Kam put his foot down and insisted she let them look at her. He’d barely left her side, and I was pretty sure Jax and Flynn’s newly solicitous behavior toward their pack leader was slowly driving her insane. I liked to think the pendulum would swing back to more of a happy medium that everyone could live with, given enough time.

I didn’t think I’d ever been so lazy in my life. I slept nearly as much as the people who’d been injured—sometimes in the nest, sometimes in the bedroom I’d claimed as mine. I wasn’t willing to flaunt it in front of Alex while she was grieving her own loss so sharply—but privately, the sponge baths I’d promised Jax and Flynn had turned into slow, gentle sex on three occasions, twice separately, and once together.

It was a different experience, having the alphas sleepy and passive beneath me as I took my time, caressing skin with slow strokes and taking them inside me with tender care, riding them until they groaned and spilled, knots locking me in place—exactly where I wanted to be.

It was too late to protest that I couldn’t mate them, and we all knew it. There was still one thing holding me back, though.

“I’m asking again,” Flynn said at one point, when I was draped boneless across his torso. “I warned you I would.”

His knot sent shivers of pleasure up and down my spine with each slow breath I took. I pushed up on my elbows so I could look at him, being careful to avoid the raw electrical burns still littering his chest.

“That’s playing dirty,” I told him, as liquid pleasure shifted and sparkled inside me.

A half-smile tugged at one corner of his lips. “Only way I know how to play, sweet thing.”

I sighed, swallowing a moan as the small movement shifted him inside of me. “You already know I’m going to say yes eventually.”

The smile widened. “I knew that a long time ago, Leo.”

“But I won’t break up your pack by only mating you and Jax, leaving Alex out in the cold,” I went on, before he could get too smug about it. “For one thing, I’m pretty sure Kam’s in love with her, even if he hasn’t quite realized it yet. And I... care for her a great deal,” I finished, thinking of the noble alpha who blamed herself for not somehow knowing the unknowable and doing the impossible.

Flynn pulled me down and ravished my mouth with a kiss so deep and thorough it left me dizzy. “And that’s one of the reasons I love you. Okay, so it’s all or nothing. That’s also one of my favorite ways to play.”

I nodded. “But Alex isn’t remotely ready to talk about the subject, much less act on it. Plus, she may have no interest whatsoever in me—though I think she does in Kam.”

Flynn looked like he might argue, so I put a fingertip over his full lips, silencing him.

“If she doesn’t want me, we can revisit the subject and figure out what that means for all of us,” I said firmly. “But she needs to be part of that conversation, and right now she’s not in a position for that. You say ‘all or nothing,’ but that’s not it, exactly. I’m not a diva. I don’t need all of this to be about me. Maybe Kam bridges the gap between Alex and the rest of us. Maybe we have a strategic mating for pack cohesion, even if it’s not a love match. Or maybe she never wants to hear the word ‘mate’ again. But she needs to have all those choices open.”

Flynn gave an easy shrug beneath me. “Course she does. I hear you, Leo. You know me—I’m patient. Just hearing you say yes instead of finding a million words that don’t include no makes me happy.”

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