Pack of Lies, page 28
Damn it, Thorn. Be angry, not horny.
“Go inside the fucking house,” he grunted. “I’m shocked they let you come out here alone to talk to me.”
“They didn’t, but I’m not going to continue living without any answers. Marlowe can’t protect me from you forever if we’re going to be a pack, and I handled you well enough at the apartment.”
He didn’t quite hide his surprise in time.
Did it really shock him that his pack’s actions were enough to overcome his assholery? He must not know them very well. Or maybe it was me he didn’t know. This man had no clue what I wanted. He’d never tried to figure it out. All he’d done was assume I would hurt his omega in whatever fucked up way.
“You would never be in a pack with me in it,” he said cockily, like he was calling my bluff. “And I don’t plan on cleaving, sweetness.”
“Oh really? What else do you have to tell me about what I would and wouldn’t do? You seemed pretty confident I would hurt Marlowe before, and I would fucking never.”
Abandoning my arousal with great effort, I tried to square up to him, to make myself seem bigger than I was. More confident than I was in challenging him. I wanted to know his endgame.
Instead of being cowed by my very omega attempt at intimidation, he just made himself larger. His legs spread apart, his arms crossed so his muscles bulged. I was tempted to back down at the size of his aura. Ginger and molasses was nearly suffocating me in the tight space.
“Anything happening to you would hurt Marlowe, and you were in danger from the fucking beginning. You’re right that you might not do it intentionally, but you’ll hurt him if we don’t save you.”
I blinked a couple times, putting together the logic in that sentence.
I would hurt Marlowe… if they couldn’t save me.
After Ava, Denzel didn’t trust himself to save anyone, let alone an omega in hiding from an underground experimentation institution.
His trauma was heavily influencing his actions, to the point where they didn’t make fucking sense anymore.
“You’re going to save me,” I said.
The antagonism vanished from my posture. He stared down at me, emotions flickering through his blue eyes. Denzel was a protector. He took it way too fucking far, into controlling territory, but his instinct was to protect. Being the oldest brother of a sibling pair that had ended up at an orphanage, I had to imagine that was an instinct honed from a young age. Hard to shake.
This pack would only work if he acknowledged he needed to change, though.
“There’s no guarantee of that, which is why I didn’t want you anywhere near Marlowe,” he said.
“I believe you will.”
“You shouldn’t.”
The growled words were so full of emotion, I imagined he hadn’t meant to say them.
“Maybe not, but I do,” I said.
His scent heightened some more, his aura pulsing. I might have been scared if he weren’t my scent match, but as it was this was only serving to arouse me. I should probably leave.
Instead, I reached out to touch his arm.
With a growl he had me pinned to the wall, a hanging gun banging against the wood beside me. I gasped, a sliver of panic sneaking in beside the arousal. His body pressed against mine, not nicely, but not so rough as to hurt.
“We already failed once,” he said under his breath. He was staring through me, his expression distant. “I know why Reese went rogue on the man in that room. His scent was all over you. Heavy, sickly fucking smell. If we’d been a minute later, you wouldn’t be saying you trust me right now. Think about that. Think about what could have fucking happened, all because we failed.”
My mind flashed back to that moment. The hands touching me. Scent surrounding me.
But there were a lot of things that I could blame on Denzel, and that wasn’t one of them.
“You wouldn’t be to blame for that,” I murmured.
“Like hell!” he snapped, his gaze coming to meet mine, no longer distant. “They had you because we let you be taken.”
“That’s not—”
I was cut off by the shed door slamming open.
Denzel was torn off of me and thrown back against the far wall. Reese’s aura was trembling with rage, the rogue part of him threatening to go off the rails. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed, placing himself between Denzel and I. “Touching her? I thought you were better than that.”
“Reese, it’s fine. He wasn’t doing anything.”
My reassurance fell on deaf ears. Fury was rolling off both men, but I couldn’t tell if Denzel’s was because of our conversation or because he was being challenged by Reese.
I tried to make my aura soothing again. It had worked on Jubilee. Possibly. I might be able to calm two alphas about to fight each other.
“Reese,” I said his name slower this time.
My careful step forward had Denzel’s attention focused on me, his head giving the tiniest shake.
Was he worried Reese would hurt me? He wouldn’t. If he was going to hurt me when he went rogue, he would have done it in the trafficker’s warehouse. Not now. He hadn’t been pushed over the edge into an episode yet, or Denzel would already have a bloodied nose and broken ribs.
“Reese, he wasn’t doing anything. Let’s go back to the house.”
I touched his back, then ducked under his arm to put myself between him and Denzel. His jaw was tight, eyes dark with rage. He was responding to my touch, though.
“We’re going inside,” I murmured.
My hand touched his, clasping our fingers together. He looked down at it, then back at Denzel.
I swear to God, if that asshole does anything to antagonize him more right now…
It appeared my fears were unwarranted because Reese was pleased with what he saw. He clasped my hand in return and pushed me in front of him on the way out of the shed without another word.
While we were on the small patch of grass between the shed and the porch, a cheery ‘Hey!’ had me peering to the side. On the other side of the brown fence, a beta man was giving us a wave and a grin. A neighbour. I was unsure if I should respond or leave it to Reese, who was coming down from almost going full rogue on Denzel.
My choice was made for me when Reese possessively moved me to his other side, farther from the man.
It was then I realized my hat had been displaced during my face-off in the shed, leaving the friendly neighbour with the clear view of my face. Ducking my head, I let Reese call a greeting back and usher us inside.
Not even the backyard in the evening was safe from the chance of being recognized, and I may have just blown my own cover in addition to blowing up pack relations even further.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THORN
Reese’s wheat and hazelnut scent surrounded me as he curled against my side, our bodies pressed together as we laid on top of the covers. My chest heaved with laughter, a grin splitting my face when he finally removed his fingers from my sides and let me breathe.
“You’re horrible!” I exclaimed. “Tickling was not part of the deal when I agreed to spend the night with you.”
He rumbled with a gentle purr, wrapping his arms around my torso to tug me back. My ass came in contact with the prominent bulge in his pants, but he didn’t try to rub against me. It was casual affection of the kind I never thought I’d have. Not as a hated gold pack omega.
“There was no deal. Only that we didn’t have sex.”
I hadn’t realized how difficult it would be for me to follow through on that end of the deal once we got close like this. Scents had never affected me much before but being this close to his for an extended period of time… it had slick pooling between my thighs. If I hadn’t been convinced they were my scent match pack by Marlowe’s reaction to his alphas’ betrayal, I would have been convinced by this.
For an omega with one sixteenth the sense of smell I should have, only my match could affect me like this.
“Tickling me is a cheap way to get skin on skin contact,” I complained. “If you’d asked me to cuddle, I would have done it without you pinning me down to the bed for a tickle battle.”
“I wasn’t sure if you would.”
Reese’s voice had gone even deeper than usual, more melancholy.
Regret.
He hated that he’d lied to me. They all did. Denzel too, in his own way.
“You were listening to your pack lead. Looking back, I can see the moments where you didn’t want to.”
“I’m not blameless. I should have challenged him for the position when he pulled that bullshit.”
Reese would make an amazing pack lead, but he didn’t want it. He preferred blending into the background and being a silent protector. The spotlight of being the decision-maker visibly made him nervous and wasn’t a burden he wanted to bear.
“It’s over now. I know everything,” I said.
His body went stiff. “Not everything.”
A spike of fear drove through me.
Could I handle another big reveal?
I sat up, turning to face him and leaning my shoulder against the headboard. “What else should I know?”
“I’ve told you nothing about my life.”
He sat up too, leaning beside me and dancing his fingers over my thigh and hip. The big man was touchy. I’d noticed it from the first moment in the backseat of that SUV, when his hand had tried to creep across the centre seat without him realizing. He was a tactile person.
Staring into his dark brown eyes for a second, I let my gaze wander down his neck. There was a scar, thick and nasty looking. Beneath the collar of his shirt, I imagined there were more. His arms had plenty. Reese also had tendrils of ink creeping out from beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt, tattoos I had yet to see in full.
I reached out and tugged at the bottom hem of his shirt. “Take this off.”
“Thorn…”
“Tell me about the scars. That’s what I want to know about your life. I’ll even tell you about mine.”
Grabbing my own shirt, I stripped it over my head. I was left in the lacy black bra Marlowe had helped me pick out and the casual grey joggers I’d been wearing to lounge around the house today. Reese stared at my cleavage for a second before taking off his shirt.
I appreciated that he didn’t try to tell me I didn’t have to give my scars’ stories. He knew I was well aware and wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t ready to talk. There may be one or two I skipped, but most of my surgical scars were from procedures I’d come to terms with years ago.
His torso was a mess of old injuries. A couple scars looked to be from gunshot wounds, then more from knives. The tattoo I’d seen peeking out was the plumage of a phoenix wing. The firebird covered most of the left side of his chest. It was a common theme for tattoos I’d seen — rising from the ashes, and all that. But it suited him, because in the pattern of scarring I saw a man who was more than the middle-class upbringing everyone had hinted he had.
Starting at the top, I reached out to graze my finger along the knife scar on his neck. “Where did this one come from?”
He shivered and I tried to pull back my hand, but he caught my wrist. His cheek nuzzled against my palm and he inhaled, scenting me. I squeezed my thighs together, trying to ignore the roughness of his stubble on my hand and how it would feel against other, more tender parts of my body.
“I used to fight,” he said. “And I was good at winning. Some people didn’t like that. The guy who gave me that one bet against me and lost a lot of money.”
Gently holding my hand, he brought it down to touch a couple more of the scars. One gunshot wound, two more knife wounds. “People really didn’t like you winning,” I murmured.
“No. They didn’t.”
I wanted to ask why he was fighting in the first place. Reese didn’t come off as an inherently violent person. Instead, I stuck to the scars and the stories. Using my free hand, I pointed to a tiny circular scar on my upper arm. It was insignificant to the eyes, but the root of all my problems.
“This is where they injected me with the drug that turned me into a normal omega again. It’s such a small wound it shouldn’t have scarred, but it got infected. I was feverish for weeks. They weren’t sure if I was going to live or die.”
For a moment I was back in that stainless steel room, all four of my limbs strapped to a table. Freezing cold and boiling hot at the same time, screaming with no one coming to help. When they did come, it was only to check my vitals.
Never to give me anything to help. They had thought it would corrupt the process. They left me on my own with no one around except the occasional fully suited nurse to check on me.
Shuddering, I stopped pointing at the scar and placed my hand flat against Reese’s stomach. “They should never have given that to you. Not without your consent,” he said.
“Almost every medical procedure I’ve ever undergone has been without my consent. Going gold pack in the first place was without my consent. I’m not saying it’s right, but it most certainly has been my life.”
“It isn’t anymore.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. Sure, there had been nothing medical involved, but I’d been falling in love with a lie of a pack. They’d played house with me in an apartment while their omega languished at home without them.
“Denzel will never make me lie to you again. I’d kill him first,” Reese said.
“No need. I’d be the one to kill him. What’s this one?”
I pointed randomly to a thin line on his stomach, changing the topic. It was one of the smallest scars he had, the most insignificant. At least, by appearance alone. The way he winced at the question made me bite my lip, almost wishing I could take it back.
“My biological father gave me that one,” he grunted.
“Biological?”
“He’s not the father I grew up with. My mother had an affair, and I was the product of that. Dad didn’t find out until I was seventeen when Soren came for me.”
“Wait, he came for you? Your father? Why would he want a relationship with a son who was almost an adult? Surely he knew about you beforehand.”
“That’s where this story gets long and complicated. Pick another scar, precious.”
I almost pushed, but held back. Reese seemed to be working up to it. He’d probably assumed I would pick the biggest scars first, so I went back to that, choosing a gunshot wound in his shoulder.
“You’ve picked probably the only scar I got while doing something legal. We were bodyguarding a pack event downtown, and one of the VIP’s was a gold pack duchess.”
“There are only two of those in the city, aren’t there?”
He nodded. “She’s highly sought after, and extremely hated by some. As she was getting out of her limo, a gunshot rang out and I jumped in front of her. The bullet was so powerful it went straight through my shoulder, but it took enough of the velocity out that she lived. It narrowly missed some of her internal organs.”
Reese smiled a bit, and I traced the edges of the wound and tried to ignore the flare of jealousy. “This seems like a fond memory for you.”
“It is. She was the oddest woman I’ve ever met. We were both bleeding together on the pavement waiting for ambulances to arrive, and she brushed off all her worried personal guards. Called them useless, because they weren’t the ones who’d jumped in front of a bullet for her. She slipped me a business card and I received another one with a vase of ‘get well soon’ flowers the next day.”
The muscles in his torso flexed as he leaned over, reaching into the drawer of the bedside table. He pulled out a crumpled and stained white card, and my eyes narrowed on it. “You keep it in your bedside table?”
Like this duchess was a booty call, or something? What was he planning on doing with her number in here? Jack off with it?
All attempts to smother my jealousy failed and I pulled my hands back to my side, clenching them into fists. I couldn’t rip the card into a thousand tiny little pieces. I may be Reese’s scent match, but I was not yet his omega.
Reese chuckled, the sound deep. “I had to hide it from Marlowe. When we received the flowers, he immediately gave them away. He got rid of the card, too. I was sleeping off the pain meds, but Denzel tells me he went a little feral, dumping red paint on it from his craft supplies, tearing it into tiny pieces, and flushing it down the toilet when he was done.”
Marlowe had the right fucking idea. I couldn’t take my eyes off the card.
“Precious, I’m only keeping it because a gold pack duchess is a good person to have owe you a favour. We might need her one day.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
A purr rumbled in Reese’s chest and he reached out for me, but I pulled away. I couldn’t trust myself to keep my hands off the card. He followed, grabbing my hand and prying open my fist to put the card in. I fisted my hand again, crunching it up into a little ball.
“If you want this back, you should take it from me right now,” I warned.
He brought his jaw to my neck and rubbed against me, scent marking me. I imagined the business card had been scent marked at some point, too. There was something about it that made me especially angry.
“Marlowe got one. It makes sense my other omega would get the other one. Maybe it’s better if you don’t destroy it because of how helpful a connection to a gold pack duchess could be, but it’s up to you. Hide it from me. Destroy it. Do whatever you want. I have no emotional attachment to that card or the woman who gave it to me.”
I glanced down at my tight fist.
“I’m not your omega yet.”
“You’ll always be my omega, even if you decide you can’t forgive Denzel and want to leave. Whether you’re with me or not, you’re mine.”
His tender tone pulled at my heartstrings, and I reached up with my other hand to rub his neck. Reese pulled back just enough to look into my eyes. I leaned in until our lips brushed.
A whimper left me, my body warming. He growled low in his throat, continuing to purr as well. His hands landed on my thighs, gripping just enough I knew he was fighting the urge to pull me onto his lap. I was tempted to let him, but with the card burning a hole in my palm I moved back and slid off the bed.
