Page 150 of Savage Surrender

The door barely closes behind them before Owen climbs onto the mattress.

I crawl into his lap as carefully as I can, but he drags me the last few inches and buries his face in my neck.

“I couldn’t get to you,” he says into my skin. His whole body is shaking now. “I didn’t know where you were...”

I press my mouth to his temple and hold him through the thought he can’t finish. The next cramp is already building. I help him work his pants off while the others settle around us. Tristan leans over to kiss me, and when I catch the back of his neck, he makes a broken sound into my mouth.

After that, I lose large chunks of time. The heat drags me under, and every time I surface, I reach for them again. And every time I reach, I find them.

32

BIANCA

Owen fell asleep between my thighs.

His face is pressed against me, turned just enough to breathe. One bruised arm is trapped beneath my leg, and his mouth is still warm against skin that has finally stopped begging for attention. His swollen eye is the first thing I see clearly. Fury moves through me before the rest of my body has even woken.

I don’t move yet, but for the first time in days, my body isn’t begging for anything. No cramp winds tighter in my pelvis. The bonds are warm and heavy with sleeping alphas.

Packing five adults into my childhood bedroom is slightly unhinged. The double bed is laughably small, but I used to stare at this ceiling and imagine one of them climbing through my window, then get greedy and try to fit all four into the fantasy.

Weller is next to the wall, an arm heavy over my waist. Tristan is curled along my other side. Freddie is sleeping on a thin blanket on the floor.

The room is a mess and desperately needs a window cracked. Empty plates are stacked on my desk, and water bottles lean out of the trash can. Towels hang over the chair and the footboard. Everybody showered at some point because the blood is gone, but the clean skin beneath it only made the damage easier to see.

I remember pieces of the heat, but a lot is missing. Every time my awareness returned, one of them was inside me or holding me so tightly I couldn’t tell where my body ended and theirs began. Owen’s deep voice at my ear while I cried for him to get closer even though there was nowhere left to go. Tristan swallowing my sounds like he was consuming me. Weller holding my face and making me look at him until I could tell him what I needed. Freddie feeding me ice from his fingers because I was complaining about being too hot.

My body is sore in places I didn’t realize could be sore, and there are bite marks down my chest and bruises scattered over my thighs. None of it feels like the fantasies I used to have in this bed. Those were much tamer.

Owen’s fucked-up eye opens a sliver. For a few seconds, he only looks at me from between my legs. Then he lifts his head, and the movement pulls a rough sound from him.

“Did you fall asleep eating me out?”

His cheek drops back to my thigh. “It was the only thing that made you stop crying.”

Okay then. Heats are fucking weird.

Tristan makes a miserable noise and drags the sheet over his face. On the floor, Freddie wakes abruptly, feels around for a body that isn’t there, then finds my foot hanging over the edge of the mattress and closes his hand around it.

“Morning,” he mumbles. “Are you hungry, nauseous, horny, or about to cry? Those are the choices I’ve been given lately.”

“E, none of the above.” My voice is rough.

That wakes Weller. He immediately pushes himself upright, squinting toward the thin daylight around the curtains. “You slept through most of yesterday and the day before. How are you feeling?”

I look at the water bottles, the plates, Owen’s face. “I’m okay. How long have we been in here?”

“It’s been seven days.”

Seven fucking days. I couldn’t account for most of them if someone held a gun to my head.

Freddie gets to his knees and leans across the bed to touch my forehead. “Winston checked on you every day. Clara too. Your mom stayed at their house until the heat passed, and the attorney called this morning about your dad. The judge signed off on his release. Now they’re waiting for the jail to finish processing him.”

I press my fingers into my eyes and give myself a moment to absorb that Dad could be home today.

“I want coffee,” I say. “Then I want to know every single thing I’ve missed.”

Freddie returns with coffee, breakfast sandwiches, and Ezra, who stands in the doorway and looks me over until his shoulders finally lower. Megan is somewhere downstairs on the phone with Anna. Their ordinary noise travels up through the vents, and something in me loosens.