Page 56 of The Omega's Alpha
The last spasms of his orgasm wrung through him and he clung to Holland, crushing them together. Holland hung limp in his grasp, leaning against the wall as if all his muscles had stopped working. “I love you,” Quin said, finally able to make his mouth form the words.
“Love you too,” Holland said quietly, the words raw and unformed, as if his mouth didn’t quite work properly.
Quin stepped back and bent to scoop Holland up in his arms. He kicked off his pants and carried his limp and sated mate down the hall to their bedroom. There, he laid him on the bed and stripped the last of his clothes off him, dropping them carelessly on the floor along with Quin’s shirt and crawled into bed to gather Holland up in his arms.
Holland sighed, his eyes still closed, and wrapped an arm around Quin’s waist. He burrowed his face into the side of Quin’s neck and they lay together quietly, the scent of sex and each other in their nostrils, the smell of wolf slowly fading.
He was hovering on the edge of sleep when Holland twitched and Quin felt Holland’s lips curl up in a smile. “If I’d know this was what being mated did for you, I’d have run away with you ages ago.”
Quin snorted softly and pressed a kiss to the top of the dark head. “Next time, o wise omega, listen to your Alpha. We know things.” He expected a punch, or some smart comment back. Instead, Holland kissed him, in the hollow above his collarbone, and said, “I’ll keep that in mind, o my alpha.” He draped his leg over Quin’s and curled closer. “Now go to sleep, because I have to get up with the pups in six hours.”
“Both of us. Remember that.”
Holland’s grip on Quin’s waist tightened momentarily. “I do.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Iwokeup late the next morning, aching in all the right places, and completely buried under more than two hundred pounds of alpha. And I absolutely would have stayed there except for one, single,tinypuppy giggle that sounded too far away to be coming from one of the bedrooms. Actually, it wasn’t the giggle so much as the dead silence that followed it that got my attention. Which meant I had to get up and see what those two were up to. “Off,” I muttered and shoved at the dead weight—delightful weight—pinning me to the bed. I wondered if later I could convince him to pin me to the bed again—this being mated thing was fun. But first, someone needed to find out what the pups were up to. “Off,” I said again, louder this time, and shoved at his shoulder.
“Whuh? Why?” Quin burrowed back in, his nose buried in the hair behind my ear. “You smell good.”
“So do you. But the pups are up and suspiciously quiet.”
“They’re probably just watching TV,” he mumbled and relaxed against me.
I loved my mate, but he really needed some more time in close proximity to young shifters. “That, or they’re playing with your knives.”
That woke him up, and I hid a grin as he threw the covers off the end of the bed and bolted for the bedroom door. I heard his footsteps tearing down the hall, then I heard, “What on… Oh.” And, “Holland, come out and see this.”
Well, that didn’t sound so bad. I climbed out of bed and padded down the hall and into the living room.
There was a lopsided blanket fort built using the couch and the low table that Quin and I put our drinks on when we managed a night in together. Cushions peeked out from underneath the pups’ blankets and at least one—no, two—of the kitchen chairs had been pressed into use as support for the structure’s roof. “What do we have here?”
Dorian giggled and Agatha stood up from behind the blankets. “Tada!” she cried. Her face was covered in—something. Damned if I knew what, and my stomach sank, wondering what I was going to find under, and in, the blankets.
“We made breakfast,” Dorian said. “Come in!” He ducked under the sheets and disappeared and Agatha took Quin by his finger and pulled him forward.
“I don’t think I’ll fit, Aggie,” he rumbled in amusement.
“I’ll hold the roof up,” she promised solemnly and continued her persistent tugging.
Quin glanced up at Holland, shrugged, grinned, and ducked underneath the blanket. It bulged where his head bumped against it, and then Holland could see Agatha holding it up, her little hands clearly outlined against the fabric.
“Did you make this all by yourselves?” Quin said from under the blanket.
“Uh huh,” Dorian said. “I picked out the berries.”
“Holland? You coming in?”
Well, it didn’t sound too bad. “Be right there.” I found a corner of one of the blankets—Agatha’s—and lifted it up, hunting for a way into the little cave. Finally, the giggles led me in, and I found them in a small, hot, dimly lit cave with random furniture sticking out into the space. In the middle, my entire bag of frozen strawberries sat melting in a bowl with what looked like the contents of two bags of cookies and some bread. The juice from the berries dribbled over the side of the bowl, staining the floor and the edges of the blankets. And the puppies’ pajamas, I noted, but kept my dismay to myself. After last night, I wanted them to feel safe and accepted. The food could be replaced, the stains scrubbed out—I hoped—but their gleeful expressions were worth it all.
“So, breakfast, huh?” I asked, and settled cross-legged on the floor next to Quin.
Dorian looked at me and his head tilted to one side. “Where’s your pajamas? Are going to change to wolf?”
I looked down my own body, then across at Quin’s. “Sometimes adults don’t wear pajamas. Pups wear them to stay warm.”
He seemed satisfied with that answer, even more so when Agatha added, “It’s warmer when there’s two people too. It was warmer when Teddy and I shared our bed.” A wave of sadness washed across her face, but then her expression cleared and she held out bowls to each of us. “Eat your breakfast.”
