Blizzards and Brews (Holiday Hollow Omegaverse)

Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

Lindsay

T he scent of jasmine and green tea filled the humid air of the bathroom. I sank deeper into the warm bubble bath and sighed happily as I rested my head on the rolled up towel behind me.

After the long heat, my body needed a solid soak and some relaxation.

Oddly, for the first time in… maybe forever, I was unsettled that I was alone. There was a feeling in my gut that I was missing something.

Them. I was missing them.

For a girl who always said she was independent, I was sounding strangely needy. Something had shifted in me during that heat. How could I look into Ollie’s eyes, see his deepest, unfiltered thoughts, and not realize exactly what I meant to him.

We still had a lot to handle between us. I’d have to tell them that I was at Beatty’s soon and probably why. I’d also have to come to terms with being in a pack.

Then there was Adam.

He had saved himself for me, and that knowledge blew my mind.

We owned a bar. More than one gorgeous omega had flirted with him over a drink and he could have said yes to a number of them.

But he didn’t.

He only wanted me.

They only wanted me.

Dustin had always made it clear he was holding back for my benefit. And even if I didn’t like to admit it to myself, he’d always had a place in my heart. He was the calming force in the strength of the other’s emotions and my own.

He was also the only one I’d had a previous physical relationship with, back before our designations came in after high school. Something that had stayed with me all these years even if a series of events had happened where we transitioned into the friend zone.

But the past few days had curtailed any friendzone that I had worked so hard to establish with them.

Now I knew they wouldn’t hold back.

I’d bitten Ollie. I didn’t regret it, either. He was mine as much as I was his. The three of us were glorious together.

When the five of us truly settled into a pack, with no one holding back, then it would be something incredible.

So, why couldn’t I just give in? Why did I still have these doubts that left me alone in a bathtub post heat?

Maybe I was just too stubborn to give in, or maybe I was still protecting myself. I couldn’t shake my reservations and I needed to know they were still feeling the same without a heat in the mix.

That didn’t mean I was walking away, though. I wasn’t. I was just… scared. Scared and conflicted.

A yawn cracked my jaw and as I shifted I realized the water was cold. With a sigh I got up and drained the bath. I’d barely tugged on pajamas before falling face first in my bed.

I was dead to the world until warm sunshine was streaming in my window. My eyes were still half closed and I felt rundown but a bit better than last night. I reached around for my phone and frowned when it didn’t turn on.

“Shit, I forgot to charge it,” I muttered, forcing myself out of bed. The clock on the side table said it was after eight and I knew we had a lot of work to do at the bar to get it ready for opening today.

The town would be getting antsy and so would the guys.

Beatty had coffee waiting by the time I made it downstairs. She was sitting at the table and tapped the spot next to her where a travel mug and breakfast sandwich was waiting.

“Heat will take it out of you. I know you won’t take a day to rest so there’s extra strong coffee and food. Take it.”

Her eyes were narrowed on me like I’d protest but I just gave her a grateful smile.

“Thank you,” I said, meaning for far more than this breakfast. She’d been another rock in my life when I needed it.

“Now get out of here and you better get things straight with that pack of yours. We may not be blood but we’re family, and I’ll talk sense into you the same way I did Summer,” she warned me.

“I’m working on it,” I promised, letting out a chuckle as I hurried outside, tying my hair into a messy bun as I walked to the car. It was the best I had for today.

The town was back to normal as I drove through it. In the week of Ollie’s heat the snow had all but melted and people were walking down the sidewalks again, bringing Holiday Hollow back to life.

Which reminded me, we still had work to do before the winter festival.

Dustin’s car was already in the parking lot when I pulled in and I frowned. Something had to be wrong, there was no way in hell Adam just missed work today. He was always here first.

“Lindsay!” Dustin’s strangled voice rang out when I pushed in the door and he tackled me in a hug, holding me tight. The way he shook had my panic rising.

“What’s wrong?!” I demanded. “Is Adam okay? Ollie?”

“Yes,” he breathed out but hadn’t let me go yet. “We thought you were gone. That you’d left us.”

“What?” I asked. Now, I was more confused than ever. “My phone died and I passed the fuck out after that heat. I was in bed.”

“Your land was empty, Linds,” he said gently as he pulled back slightly, staring down at me. His grip on me was tight, not daring to release me.

“I… I know,” was all I could think to say. I’d fucked up. I should have told them but I was too embarrassed I’d let that asshole get close enough to fuck me over like that.

He let out a long sigh and pulled out his phone, tapping the screen before putting it to his ear. I winced at Adam’s frantic voice.

“She’s here. Said her phone died and she just woke up and came in. She’s got it and a charger in her hand.”

“Where the fuck is her house? Why was she at Beatty’s?” Adam barked out.

How in the hell did he know I had been staying there? It was then that I realized I’d had Spencer drive me there. Of course, the first thing Adam would have done was question the alpha as the last person to see me.

“Calm down before you get here,” Dustin warned. “You aren’t going to fuck this up with your temper, do you hear me?”

Adam hung up without answering and Dustin let out a breath before bringing me in for a hug again.

His breath tickled my ear as he started to explain.

“We were dropping something off to you and when he showed up, the lot was empty. Your home was gone and you weren’t answering. What else could we think?”

It was then that I realized how deeply I’d hurt the guys. I had spent so much time preserving my own feelings and pushing them away I hadn’t realized that they didn’t trust me either.

Not if they thought I would pack up my entire house and just drive off into the sunset leaving them.

It was a painful, hard truth that I needed to absorb and consider. My chest ached and I fought back tears.

Dustin–the man who was always calm and collected, keeping the rest of us together–was holding me like he was afraid to let go.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered as I dropped my things and held him back. I breathed in his vanilla-caramel scent and held back my tears. “But I’m here and I’m fine. I’m not running now.”

“You’re not,” he repeated, more of a warning than a reassurance. “I can’t take this anymore, Lindsay. I need to know you’re in this.”

“I thought I made that clear when I bit Ollie,” I said in an attempt to lighten the mood. He finally let me go and stepped back so he could look down at me again. His fingers rested on my jaw, making sure I couldn’t look away from his blue eyes.

“Lindsay, I need you to know how committed I am to you. I don’t want anyone else, I never have. You have always been it for me.”

The raw vulnerability and conviction in his voice had my breath catching. He was staring down at me, telling me in those blue depths what he couldn’t put into words.

I absorbed them, letting them seep into my soul and calm the storm that had always been raging inside of me.

He didn’t let me speak. Instead, he leaned forward and pressed his lips to mine. The kiss wasn’t slow and sweet, it was rough and possessive.

It was a homecoming that was as absolute as the strongest vodka. But no amount of liquor could even make me feel as euphoric as his touch did.

My body reacted to his touch despite being exhausted and I moaned into the kiss, pressing myself into his hard body.

His lip ring was cold against our heated lips and he tilted my head to get better access.

“Where is she?” Adam’s voice rang out as he stormed through the door.

One moment, I was in Dustin’s arms and the next, I was hoisted over Adam’s shoulder, his hand landing a harsh slap on my ass.

“Ow! What the fuck, Adam?!”

“‘What the fuck?’” he raged. “ You’re asking me ‘what the fuck?’”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” I said, struggling against him. “I should have told you sooner but I was embarrassed.”

“Sorry isn’t good enough,” he said, swatting me again.“I went to your home this morning only to find it completely gone. You were gone, firefly. Do you have any idea what sheer terror rolled through me then? Of all the possibilities that could have happened?”

His foot pulled out a chair from one of the neighboring tables and within a matter of seconds he was sitting in it and had me stretched across his lap, my ass in the air.

“What–?”

Smack.

“ Not to mention the fact that you didn’t charge your phone so no one could get ahold of you,” Adam growled.

“So what? You’re going to spank some sense into me?”

Adam laughed humorlessly. “That’s exactly right, firefly. I’m going to spank this pert ass of yours until you get it through your head that what you did was completely unacceptable.”

He landed three more hot smacks on my ass, the sting making me squirm as I bucked indignantly.

“Stay still or I’ll have Dustin hold your hands down,” Adam warned.

I hissed. “He wouldn’t.”

The man in question walked in front of me. All I could see was his black boots until he squatted down in front of me and tilted my chin up.

“You forget, Linds. I know that starry, little look you get in those pretty, brown eyes when you’re turned on. And right now, babe? Those eyes are twinkling.”

Not once, not since our designations came in and the boys disappeared into the city for a month for Ollie’s first heat, had he brought up our past.

I could see in his eyes exactly just how much he wasn’t going to let this go, let me go.

He stood up and moved out of view. The next thing I knew his hands were at my hips, shimming my yoga pants down until they were tight across the tops of my thighs.

“Dusty–”

“Nope, Linds. You’re not going to sweet talk your way out of this one, babe. You’re going to take your punishment like a good girl. Now listen to your alpha.”

“I’m going to pay both of you back for this, you know that, right?”

“Oh, babe,” Dustin said, pulling up a chair and sitting in front of me. “I’m counting on it.”

Adam began then, raining a series of strikes across my now bare ass.

“Who do you turn to when you need help?” Adam questioned.

My ass burned as I wrapped my arms around his leg, not caring that my nails may very well pierce his pants at the rate he was going.

“I handled it,” I said, gritting my teeth as I tried to subtly rub my legs together.

A growl ripped from him. “You hid it. You hid the fact that you needed help from us. Your best friends. Your pack. You didn’t trust us with the truth. And make no mistake, firefly that’s what this is all about. Trust.”

He paused in his smacks, his hands beginning to palm my heated ass. It hurt and felt so damn good all at the same time.

My breath was coming in stuttered gasps, and I turned my head to the side so that I could look into Dustin’s piercing, blue eyes.

“I trust you. I do,” I swore.

Dustin hummed. “Then you’re going to need to prove that. Because everything about this situation says that you don’t.”

Adam’s fingers had begun to slip between my thighs as he cupped my ass, and I knew there was no disguising how turned on I was.

For years, I’d dreamed of a scenario like this, and as indignant as I felt, this is also what I needed.

“I do, I swear I do, and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Just please–”

Fuck, I needed relief. I needed them to touch me.

I didn’t care that I was sore and still recovering from the heat. I wanted them.

Multiple times throughout the past week when I’d been high on alpha and omega pheromones I’d thought about them both. What it would be like if they had been in the nest too.

It had been so long since I’d had Dustin, we’d both been teenagers, and I missed the ways we’d learned each other.

And, Adam…

“Do you need a release, firefly?” Adam questioned.

I gasped as his fingers toyed with my slit. “Yes, please.”

He took me at my word not wasting time sinking two fingers into me.

“Oh, fuck!” I screamed.

“This is what you wanted,” he reminded me. “You wanted my help getting off.”

Smack.

I clenched around his fingers, my mouth falling open on a silent scream. He’d hooked them inside me and wasn’t letting up.

“Please, please, please,” I muttered, apparently not afraid of begging anymore.

“I don’t know if you deserve it,” Adam said. “You didn’t come to us, Lindsay.”

“I’m sorry!” I screamed, pushing back against his hand defiantly. “I should have come to you, okay? Are you happy? Now let me come.”

“Dustin,” Adam said, as he continued to build me up closer to the edge.

Dustin gently gripped my chin in his hands, biting that damn lip ring again. “You know the word to make this all stop, Lindsay. But we need to know the truth. This is never going to work if you don’t trust us. Now look me in the eye and tell us the truth. Why didn’t you tell us?”

Hot pleasure pulled in my core, on the verge of pain as my skin prickled. With one hand between my legs and the other caressing my red skin, Adam still had me hanging by a thread.

“I-” I started, swallowing harshly. “I was embarrassed okay. I was so fucking stupid.”

Smack.

Smack.

Smack.

“Don’t you ever talk about yourself that way,” Adam growled. “You are one of the brightest people I know.”

“We may not know all of what happened, but he’s right, babe. That’s not on you,” Dustin echoed.

The fight drained out of me at that. I had been so tired. So tired of living on just the items in my backpack and staying at Beatty’s. I wanted my stuff back, my home.

It was a hell of a lot to shoulder myself, and here they were, assuring me that I didn’t need to.

“You are amazing.” Dustin continued

“Gorgeous and Intelligent.”

“The best person we know.”

“You deserve everything, firefly,” Adam said. “And we’re going to give it to you.”

He gave me everything then, whispering praise in my ear as he worked me faster and faster until I was falling over the edge, clinging to him as a lifeline.

My vision went hazy from the pleasure and when it started to ease I felt like I was going to lose it, completely overwhelmed by the last few days.

I didn’t even realize I was crying until Dustin was there, kissing my forehead and drying the tears that had escaped.

“We have you, babe. Always. We promise.”

They held me close between them, Adam purring loudly until my eyes were dry and my emotions were once again stable.

A laugh actually managed to fall from my lips.

“Did we break her?” Adam asked worriedly before he purred louder.

Dustin peered at me closely before a crooked smile graced his face. “No, brother. I don’t think we broke her. If anything we might have broken through.”

“I feel…I feel lighter somehow,” I confessed.

“Well, of course you do,” Dustin said matter of factly.

The two of them took care of me, cleaning me up and rubbing some lotion into my skin until I was dressed once again and standing between them in our bar.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“Now we get out of here because the cleaners are going to be here any second and we need to be gone so they can do their job,” Dustin said.

I nodded my head. “Where are we going?”

“The only place all of us should be right now,” Adam said, pressing me closer between the two of them. “Our home.”