Chapter Six

It turned out that interrogation was not her favorite thing.

It required a lot of waiting. The longer she spent with the alphas, the more she had to recognize that she just didn’t wait well.

“Come sit,” Blake called from the pulled-out sofa bed. His legs were stretched forward, Pax seated beside him and Ryder lying across the bottom of the space.

A movie played on the television, an old western that none of them seemed all that interested in.

“How can you be so casual? I have a man tied up in my garage.”

Blake let his head fall back to look where she stood, behind the back of the couch. “Not used to tied-up men? That surprises me. You seem like a ball buster.”

“She’d have to actually make the first move if she tied up a guy,” Pax added in. “She likes to snarl, but I’m pretty sure she’s more of a tie-me-up sort of girl.”

Farrah pointed at Pax, her best glare in place, ready to explain to them how that was so not any of their business—and she for sure was not thinking about what it would feel like if they tied her up.

Instead, Blake caught her wrist and pulled. Everything moved around her with a few sets of hands helping. Before she could get out anything other than an undignified yelp, she found herself on the bed and between Pax and Blake’s large and very warm bodies.

When she yanked, then drove an elbow back into someone, it didn’t net her an inch of space. Instead, both alphas shifted closer until she was all but pinned between them.

“Settle down,” Blake said. “We aren’t tying you down just yet.”

The just yet forced a loud gulp from her.

“Just watch the movie,” Pax said. “It isn’t that hard.”

“Don’t we have bigger things to worry about?” Farrah pointed toward the garage when neither alpha seemed willing to let her go.

“I’ve tied up enough people to know he isn’t going anywhere.”

“He isn’t a frozen dinner. We can’t just leave him back there until we’re ready.”

“Course we can.” Pax didn’t offer anything else up, shifting as if he was getting comfortable there with her, somehow managing to remove every bit of room between them.

Ryder gave Pax a chiding glare from the foot of the bed. “You just like pestering her. The thing about questioning people is that their mind is our best ally. He hasn’t said anything because he doesn’t think he has to. We aren’t the sort to torture anyone, but it doesn’t take much for someone to think we might. Give him a bit of time sitting there, bound and stewing about all the ways we could hurt him? Well, in a few hours, our friend Ryan out there will be a lot more willing to tell us something.”

“Ryan? I thought he didn’t say anything.”

“A driver’s license tells us a lot,” Blake said.

“So we just wait?”

“Why do you hate waiting so much?”

Farrah released a long sigh as she gave in and rested against Pax and Blake, especially since neither was willing to budge. Besides, if she didn’t think about all the reasons she should pull away, the heat of their skin through their shirts wasn’t the most objectionable thing she’d ever felt.

“I’ve spent a lot of time having to struggle,” she explained. “I haven’t gotten anything by sitting around, so doing it makes me feel like I’m already late.”

Blake huffed a soft sound before elbowing her back. “You’ve always worried too much.”

“Well, someone has to worry. Last I checked, you all aren’t great at worrying about anything. It’s not like I’ve got anyone else to handle anything.”

Ryder tilted his head as he sat up to look at her. “You could have someone else. You could have had someone else the entire time.”

And there it was, yet again. They were back at the crux of the problem, back at fifteen years before, when things had seemed so simple.

And they had been simple back then. They had been inseparable. Farrah had been a part of the group as much as the other three, and that had held a sort of basic truth that had made everything else seem unimportant.

Then her heat had hit, and everyone had done things they hadn’t planned for, been prepared for, and, in the case of the alphas, probably hadn’t wanted.

It had torn it all apart, and yet they so easily fell back into those old feelings.

Farrah went to get off, to crawl over whatever alpha she needed to in order to escape the closeness that threatened her more than any other danger in her life.

Except they were having none of it. Pax caught her arm and Blake didn’t give her an inch of space. “I don’t think so, not this time. What is it that goes on in that thick skull of yours?”

“Thick?” Farrah gaped at Pax. “And that coming from the boy who needed me to help him cheat his way through senior math?”

Pax’s lip curled up. “Come on, Farrah. We know each other too well. Why the hell do you look like you’re coming around, then your face goes hard and you pull back?”

“It doesn’t matter. This isn’t happening.”

“Why not?” Blake asked it this time. “Having you back is like finding something that’s been missing.”

“Is it because of what happened during your heat?” Ryder had moved up so he sat just in front of her. His face was careful, that studying thing he did worse than usual.

She didn’t need them to see anything right then, couldn’t let them.

Instead of answering, she tore her gaze away, and in an instant, all three pulled back. They didn’t move off the bed, but gave her enough space that she could escape and regain her equilibrium if she wanted to.

Yeah, right. When do I ever feel in control around them?

Worse, the way none of them would look at her only drove her further into how she felt, into the anger of the past, the frustration of the years alone. “I can’t do it again,” she said.

Pax flinched, color draining from his cheeks. “We never meant to scare you.”

Scare?

“What?”

Ryder risked meeting her eyes, still poised on his knees on the bed. “I know your heat didn’t happen the way we expected, but it wouldn’t be like that again. We aren’t teenagers anymore. We could be gentle now, careful, slow.”

Frustration boiled over inside her at the fact that they didn’t get it. They really thought it was about the sex? About having been too rough?

“You left me!” When she should have shut up, especially when the startled look of all three met her, she let the truth spill from her lips. “I’m not mad about what happened during my heat—I’m hurt because of what happened afterward. I was sixteen, you assholes, and not one of you checked on me. None of you called me, came to see me. Six weeks later, when you all did show up, it was like you didn’t even know me anymore. You kept a few feet between us and you didn’t talk to me, didn’t even look at me. And when you asked in a not-at-all-subtle way if I’d bled yet, when the only thing you seemed to care about was if you’d knocked me up or not, you broke my heart.”

Ryder released a whoosh of breath, as if pieces had fallen into place and he didn’t care for the picture they created. “Farrah—”

“Don’t you Farrah me. You three were everything to me. I know you didn’t want what happened, but you looked at me like I was a freak, a danger. So you want to know why I didn’t tell you about Knox? Because you made it pretty damned clear you didn’t want me, so why would I think you wanted him? Why would I put myself out there only for you three to trample my heart again? Or, worse, to hurt him like that?” As the words rushed out of her, they took all her energy with her.

She’d never dared to speak those words aloud before. She’d been all stiff-upper-lip about it, burying the hurt because it seemed too threatening to even consider thinking about.

Ryder tried again. “I didn’t call you afterward because I was terrified you were afraid of us.”

“I’ve never been afraid of you.”

Blake ran his fingers through his messy red hair, his humor lost in the moment. “Yeah, but that had never happened before. You were a fucking virgin, Farrah, barely more than a kid. We were supposed to protect you, take care of you, and we didn’t do that. You hadn’t ever shown any interest in any of us, not like that, then we ended up fucking you when you couldn’t even really say no?” His words came out on a growl, as if the very idea still infuriated him. “We should have known better, should have been better. Figured you needed the space, the time. Seemed wrong to push anything on you after that.”

Pax caught her with his steady gaze. “When we did come to see you, what did you expect? For us to crowd you? To try and push you into anything? You didn’t look at us either, didn’t seem to want us around.”

The words sounded so nice, like the ones she’d dared to dream about before, but it was just too easy. “You had lives to get back to. You just wanted to be done with me. If I’d told you, you’d have either stayed out of guilt or left me anyway. You had plenty of other women around, and you all never took a second look at me that way, either.”

“And you call me the stupid one,” Pax said. “Why do you think we always chased off those boys you liked to play around with? Because even if we didn’t realize how it would all work, we always knew you were ours.”

Farrah wrapped her arms around herself, the promise of everything she’d ever wanted in front of her. She couldn’t risk it.

Last time, losing them had nearly destroyed her. It might have, if not for Knox. Could she really put herself together a second time? “You’re only saying that because of Knox. Because you feel guilty and want to do the right thing.”

The sofa bed creaked and warm hands came to rest on her cheeks, forcing her face up to meet Ryder’s eyes. He rubbed his thumb against her skin, warmth to the chill she had. “It’s been fifteen years, and you’re hard to replace. We’ve tried, tried to find people to fill that void, but there’s a reason nothing has ever worked out before. Those other women were never you.”

Farrah could spot no lie in him, and she tried. It would be so much easier if he were lying, if he were just trying to bed her, if he just wanted to make things work for the child they’d never known about. Instead, only want sat there, only loss, as though he’d ached as much as she had during the long years they’d been apart.

The right answer was to push him away, to tell all three of them that this was over.

They’d break her all over again, shatter her into pieces too small and sharp to do anything with.

But even knowing that, she did the worst thing she could.

Farrah threw her arms around Ryder and pressed her lips to his.

Ryder’s lips were home. They were soft, coaxing and gentle against hers, like a voice she’d missed whispering in her ear.

He dragged his large hands over her sides, touching her in a way he hadn’t since coming back, since her heat, and at that time it had been frantic. This time he did it as though he was memorizing her shape, as if he had to reassure himself she wasn’t some phantom.

All too soon, his lips left hers and he pressed his forehead to hers. “I didn’t get to do that last time.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“It didn’t seem right, too personal. If you didn’t really want me, the last thing I would do was take anything more from you.”

Farrah darted her tongue out to taste his lip, a tiny flick against the soft fullness there.

Another hand caught her chin, and she almost fought it until she found herself looking into Blake’s green eyes. He slid his thumb against her bottom lip, a hungry look in his eyes that made her ache in places that hadn’t been satisfied in far too long. “You have to want us this time, Farrah. Not because you don’t have a choice, not because biology is demanding it, but because you know what we’ve always known—we’re not right unless we’re together.”

Again, another out, another chance to back off and tell them it was too much, too fast, too unsure.

And again, she made the choice it seemed she’d always make. She nipped Blake’s thumb, drawing a surprised grin from him before he took his own kiss from her.

Funny how an action so similar could be so different. Where Ryder had kissed her with reverence, Blake took her mouth with a desire that made her knees weak. He pressed against the seam of her lips until she gave in, until she gave him access and he could taste her.

He took her with an assuredness and hunger that left nothing to the imagination. She couldn’t pretend he didn’t want her, at least like this. There was no way to lie with his body, especially when he rocked his hips forward and ground an obvious erection against her stomach.

Far too soon—ever would have probably been too soon—the kiss was stolen away and yet another set of hands had her turning once more.

To the most difficult, to Pax. While all the alphas were the father, as was usually the case when they settled down with a single omega and had children with her, Pax’s DNA ran through Knox.

Could he ever forgive her? Did she want him to? Maybe it would be easier if he never did, if he couldn’t get over it and that stalled this madness before it consumed them all, because Farrah didn’t think she had the strength to turn any of them down.

“You should have told us,” he said to her. “You should have given us the choice.”

“I never ask questions I don’t know an answer to.”

“And that’s the problem. You should have known. You should have known we wouldn’t leave you, that we wanted you. We were stupid, too, teenagers trying to do the best we could, but you shouldn’t have ever doubted us.”

“Being wrong was too pricey,” Farrah whispered, as though the quiet of her voice meant she wasn’t really revealing so much. “It was easier to not ask.”

“Easier?” He shook his head, his dark hair falling onto his forehead. “Fifteen years alone doesn’t seem easier.” He came forward but didn’t kiss her. Instead, his warm lips hovered a breath from hers. “Don’t ever doubt us again, Farrah.”

She was lost. Between his rumbled demand and the way he kissed her, she feared she’d never get her feet back under her.

He was fire, still angry and hurt, and he touched her as though he intended to make up for fifteen years of absence right then. He slid his hands beneath her top, his large palms searing her skin, leaving a tingle in each place he stroked, like a brand that would never heal.

All those needs she’d pretended she didn’t have, the ones she’d locked away, battered against her well-honed defenses.

Blake inhaled before he growled. “You really do need us, don’t you?” His words, even guttural as they were, had an edge of humor, of that sense of mischief.

Pax spoke between the breathless kisses. “Do you want us? Because if not, we’ll stop. We’ll back off and give you space. If you say no, this doesn’t happen.”

“And if I say yes?”

Blake pressed against her back, his solid body and the hardness of his cock making his intention clear, even though he said nothing.

Ryder brought her gaze back to his, trapping her between the three alphas. “If you say yes, well, fifteen years is a lot of making up to do.”

A whine left her lips at the idea of the three of them, of how much she wanted it, of all the times her dreaming mind had taken her to this place and how it paled compared to the reality.

There was only one answer when three alphas she loved asked her if she wanted them.

“Yes.”