Page 57 of The Gift
“Truth is, I pay him for his come. Because he’s an alpha. Which is pretty gross when you say it like that. He gives me what I need when I need it.”
“Why?” Reno interrupts, now I’m wondering if they all are as impatient as Henley is.
“I found that if I time it properly, I can self-regulate my body’s desire with the pills, blitzing my scenting ability and fooling my body by using his seed.”
“And how does he do it?” Reno asks, genuinely interested.
“Like I said, I can’t do much with CJ anymore, so I run in, face the wall, he uses his finger from a specimen jar he has ready, and then I run off and get hellaciously drunk.”
I expected a chorus of objections or at least a few growls, but I get nothing, and my eyes drop to the table so I don’t have to see their disappointment.
Koda though, drags his hand slowly right up my thigh before using his other hand to clamp over the table to bury his hands in my hair, guiding me in for a quick kiss on the forehead. Which is more telling than him standing on the table yelling out his intention.
“Goddamn it, Koda,” I barely say the words, but I know he hears because he does it again.
“Why do you think he grabbed you today?” Henley asks, interrupting me.
“I want to say he misread the scene because I’d been holding Jenna’s blankets and things. But he knows my scent, which kind of means you guys are to blame.”
“You can use me from now on,” Koda says quietly, in case I missed where he was going with his touch.
“Or me,” Ashton adds swiftly, drawing a hiss from Koda, but they both smile at each other too.
“And we can definitely practise,” Reno winks, talking as quickly and loudly as the other two.
“Bails, I offered first,” Koda says, making a point by kissing me smack bang on the lips. Pulling away to give me one of his looks as he waits for a response.
“Hmmm, we’ll see,” I offer, not wanting to lay all my cards on the table nor climb him like a tree and pepper his face with kisses of gratitude. Because that sounds fucking perfect, and in my mind, I sweep Reno and Ashton into that same thought. Maybe it’s time to get greedy.
I guess in a way, though, I do answer their suggestion, using my body. The loud and obvious inhales, followed by a deep chuckle full of warmth and… enjoyment, fills the gap in our conversation.
“It’s definitely the best peaches I’ve ever smelt,” Ashton says, his throat bobbing up and down as his nostrils flare wide. Our conversations have been completely random since the start of the night. He’s only answering a question I asked earlier. And that was after Henley and I had a debate on whether I’d ruined my senses through my overuse of tetracyclineandloratadine.
There were a lot of wide eyes and silence, when I explained what I had done. Reno immediately jumped up and went and got one of his medical journals to read aloud what I already knew. I’d purposely pushed myself into a state of hyposmia using the chemical ingredients in antibiotics and antihistamines, to reduce sensitivity to smells and tastes. They reluctantly agreed that by limiting my body’s natural responses, I was shoring up my defences so I could be in the presence of alphas or even hidden omegas. If I didn’t smell them, I couldn’t taste them, and that meant my body didn’t react in any way shape or form to others. A highly effective way of subduing my natural omega tendencies. Of course, Reno said it was a quick, easy fix. The medication he’d used earlier was helping rid my body of the toxins, given the way we were all starting to respond more to each other.
Henley leans over the table at Ashton’s suggestion, adding that it was fruit on a sunny day, with the hint of summer.
I told him he was being a romantic dick.
The noise Ashton made the first time he got a whiff was like a strangled whine before Reno slapped the pen against the whiteboard. And then we argued about what a growl was. He didn’t growl then, though I used the noise they all made when I laughed at their antics as an example of growling. And yeah there was a part of me that nearly scratched that stipulation clean off my list.
The A-team were actually not on their best behaviour either, which only reinforced their sentiment that this time is ours, and ours alone. Enjoying a glass of bourbon from the bench seat next to Koda, my feet in his lap, I kind of don’t want this night to end.
I keep pushing my own rules, I think testing me as much as I am them. Although, this is my first drop of alcohol after I announced I wouldn’t drink. And I’d also snatched Reno’s hand, showing him how I liked the touch of his fingers running up and down my leg. It wasn’t in contradiction to what was on the whiteboard about touching as such, it was more that I was becoming familiar and feeling okay that led me to be doing what I wanted.
“Coffee?” Reno asks, tapping his knuckles on the table to cut through Henley and Ashton arguing over something.
I pull my feet off Koda’s lap, grab the white board pen and cross out my touching rule but replace it with a different hard limit. Coffee.
“Fuck, sorry, I knew that.”
I take a sip of the bourbon. “It wasn’t on my list though. I can’t get past the smell. How sad is that? But, by all means, you have one, I’ll open one of the windows while you do. Everyone drinks coffee, right?”
“It’s like anything that you’re not passionate about, you can give it away if something better comes its way,” Reno says, smiling at me the whole time. And yeah, I know what he’s saying.
“There’s lots of things I do like.”
“Favourite thing?”
