Chapter 17

Isolde’s breath came in hard gasps as I laid her across my chest. Her hair and skin damp with sweat, and it made her scent that much sweeter. Richer. Flowers and sex. It made me want to fuck her on a bed of petals to see how it compared to her.

I wasn’t shocked she was out of breath and trembling. We essentially edged her for an hour, even though we weren’t trying to edge her. Her body loved pleasure, and the fact that she had a hard time finishing wasn’t exclusive to her. Plenty of women had trouble. But she was ours, and I knew we could help her get there more easily.

Sometimes it wasn’t a physical thing. Sometimes it was mental, and I felt like that was at the core of Isolde’s struggle. She didn’t feel safe in her pleasure, and if I could change that, I would.

“You still alive?” I asked her.

“Barely.”

Laughs rolled through all of us. Vaughn laid down behind her, stroking a hand down her back. “You’re incredible.”

Isolde snorted into my skin. “Says one of the men who just helped me instead of giving up because my body doesn’t work right.”

I rolled her beneath me, savoring every inch of skin I felt against mine. It was a damn good thing I still had my shorts on, or this would be a far more painful temptation. “Your body works just fine,” I said. “And if you think we didn’t enjoy ourselves, you’re wrong.”

She looked up at me, eyes still blown wide with the remnants of pleasure and her high. The hope in her eyes pained me, and I wanted to kill whoever put the doubt in her head. In this case, I was pretty sure I knew.

Licking her lips, Isolde’s eyes traveled over my face. She looked over at Vaughn and past him to whoever was behind us. “What about you?”

“What about us?”

“You didn’t…” her cheeks turned bright red to match her hair. “You didn’t finish.”

I grinned, dropping a kiss directly to the center of her chest. “Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to fuck you every way possible, Isolde. But I’m a big boy. If I need to come that badly, I can make it happen, and anyone who tells you there’s a quid pro quo for sex isn’t worth your time.”

A shade of doubt passed over her face. “Is that how you really feel? Or is it how you feel because I’m paying you?”

I bit my tongue from spilling every single secret we had. It would come soon enough. “It’s the way I feel. Period.”

Vaughn leaned close. “Time to tell us the truth about why you resisted.”

Isolde lifted her hands to my arms, touching my skin like she wasn’t sure I was real. “I promise you don’t want to know.”

“I don’t ask questions I don’t want to know the answer to.”

She blew out a long, slow breath. “Okay fine. After Beau dumped me, he started dating Angela. Like he couldn’t wait to move on to someone new. She worked with us. Didn’t know her well, but she never seemed to like me. After his promotion, she was in his line of direct report. I still had friends at the company, though most of them have moved on to new jobs now. One of them heard Beau talking to another coworker, asking why he’d jumped in so fast with Angela. Beau said he was already paying her, so he might as well take advantage since he hadn’t been getting any with me.” Her eyes flicked to anything but us, trying to avoid meeting our gaze. “I didn’t want to be alone, but I also didn’t want to be like him.”

Glancing over at Vaughn, he saw and nodded once before slipping an arm between Isolde and me to steal her away. I needed to get up and move, and like hell was I going to let her think it was because of her admission. No, it was because the man who’d broken her confidence was such an utter piece of shit I needed to walk it off.

Not to mention I didn’t believe him suddenly going to someone new at the same company after the breakup.

“Did he cheat on you?” Cade asked, voice dark with promise, and following my same line of thinking.

“Not that I know of. There weren’t any signs of it.”

That was a good thing at least, but I still needed to move and get this restless energy out of my system.

Vaughn pulled her to his chest, and she snuggled into him before I moved, making way for Joel to take my place and provide her with warmth.

“You’re nothing like him,” I told her as I paced across the space. “Nothing.”

“I know,” she murmured. Sleep colored her tone. In the dim light of the bedroom, we all looked at each other. She was fading in the face of such an intense orgasm. I hoped we could keep giving her exactly that. Pleasure and showing her what she was worth.

Everything.

It felt like we all held our breath until she fell asleep in Vaughn’s arms, with him purring and stroking a single hand down her spine. I jerked my head across the room. All the others came, but Vaughn shook his head. He wasn’t leaving her, and he already knew.

Even in the next room, we kept our voices down. “Do we tell her?”

“I want to,” Cade said. “But I don’t think she’s there yet. She needs to let go of the idea that we’re doing this for money.”

I shook my head. “How will she let go of it if we don’t tell her we’re not doing it for money?”

“If you’re Isolde,” Joel said. “Your confidence and everything you thought you knew has been shattered. You’ve basically been living in exile. Then you come back and take a risk with a pack like us, and you realize it’s so much worse than you thought it was. And just when you decide to do something for yourself? A pack sweeps in and claims you as theirs with no fucking proof.” He shook his head. “She’s vulnerable, and we can’t take advantage of that. If we force her hand in any way, she’ll always have doubts. It needs to come from her. Even if it kills me.”

“I hate that you’re right.” Hawk scrubbed his hands over his face. “Fucking hate it. But you are. As soon as we can, I want to tell her. Just in a way that doesn’t make her think we’re using her or we’re just paying lip service to a client.”

“We’re done, right?” The words tumbled out of me. “I don’t think I could stomach taking more clients now that she exists.”

Joel smirked. “Yeah. We’re done. We’ll figure out the money later.”

“Would be nice to actually show my face online,” Hawk said. He had an insane following for him and his music, but he’d always been faceless. Someone could potentially recognize his tattoos, but people were less observant than they claimed to be, and without a face to a name, it was easy for him to fly under the radar.

I pointed at him. “If you commit to it, we’re all going to hold you to it. Going after music for real.”

A faint smile. “I can do that.”

Joel looked between the four of us. “We’ve got a few days before the next wedding thing. Let’s take the time and show her who we are now that we’re not limited. Lay everything we can on the table. After that?”

There was only one answer to that question. After that, we would do everything in our power to make this Omega ours.