“Edison—” Rhodes began, clearly panicked about having been caught kissing me.
But Edison lifted up a hand to stop him as he came to join us by the tub, taking up the spot that I’d just pulled Rhodes from as he leaned down to give me a kiss. “Are you enjoying your bath, pet?”
I leaned into his mouth, relishing the taste of him after my last kiss had been so abruptly interrupted.
Once he was done, Edison gently tilted my head so that he could press his mouth into my ear. “I should have had you on the case from the beginning, darling, because I think you would have had Rhodes straightened out long before this.”
We grinned at each other before turning to the alpha who was clearly still going through it if the horrified expression on his face said anything about his current mental state.
“Well,” Edison said decisively as he reached for the black silk robe that was hanging from a nearby peg. “I think it’s far past the time for the three of us to sit down and talk. Rhodes, why don’t you go change first so that we can all chat comfortably.”
“Edison, I didn’t…” Rhodes trailed off, looking at me with wide eyes because we both knew that he did, in fact, mean it.
With a sigh Rhodes stood, his waterlogged clothes hanging heavily off of his frame as he stepped out of the tub and headed for the closet, leaving a large trail of water in his wake.
“Can I borrow some of your clothes?” he called over his shoulder, but I could already see him rummaging through one of the drawers.
“You know where everything is,” Edison replied before turning his attention back to me.
“You know,” he said, his fingers dancing along my wet collar bone before sliding up to the fresh bond mark on my neck. “The pleasure you were feeling was what woke me up out of a dead sleep. I nearly lost my mind thinking you were cheating on me until I saw that it was Rhodes kissing you.”
I quirked a brow at him, catching his hand with my own and pressing it harder to the bond mark. The contact made both of us shudder as our bond seemed to sing at the contact. “Where would I find someone to cheat with in this house, Edison?”
“My men, as good as they are, still have eyeballs, Perrie,” Edison rumbled, leaning down to press another hungry kiss to my lips. “Though I’m not opposed to ripping them out if you continue to grow any more beautiful than you are now.”
The compliment to me was so soft that I nearly missed the threat that he’d woven into it. “Rhodes looks at me and he’s one of your men, so why is it any different?”
I knew why it was, I just wanted him to verbalize it out loud.
“Because, pet,” Edison said as he reached into the tub to grip my waist, pulling me out of the water and into his lap. “In my mind, Rhodes has always been the third member of our pack. He just hasn’t realized it yet.”
“And do you think he’s realized it now?” I asked, nodding to where Rhodes was currently shucking off his sopping wet clothing.
Edison’s arms wrapped around me and he rested his chin on my shoulder. “Hmm, I’m not sure yet, though I am sure that he wants to kiss you again and if the stiffness in his boxers tells me anything, he definitely wants to do more than that.”
The hunger in Edison’s voice made me shudder a little bit and I turned to catch his mouth with mine again.
I just hoped that he was right and that, by pushing Rhodes, I hadn’t ruined everything forever.
Twenty Three
RHODES
“In my mind, Rhodes has always been the third member of our pack. He just hasn’t realized it yet.” Edison’s words echoed from the bathroom and into the closet where I was struggling to get out of my wet clothing.
He’d definitely said them loud enough because he knew that I would be able to hear him. Especially seeing whatever he said next was muffled and hard to make out—probably also on purpose.
I knew there was too much going on in my head right now because normally him saying something like that would have made me equal parts elated and terrified. But now I just felt the buzz in my lips from Perrie’s kiss and the stiffness in my boxers… also from Perrie’s kiss.
Vaguely, I knew that kissing her would make me feel similar to how it felt to kiss Edison. It was different, of course, as Perrie was about a foot shorter and wholly softer than the alpha, but the sensation and hunger it created in me was very much the same.
And now I’d tasted it and all I wanted to do was turn around and go right back into that bathroom and throw myself at the couple still having an idle chat by the tub.
But we needed to talk about this. To work out how the hell something like this could ever work.
I also needed to tell the two of them what had transpired in the three days that Edison had been stuck in his rut. The branch families had somehow known that Edison was out of commission because they’d shown up several times to try and hold meetings, claiming they didn’t need Edison’s final approval for the things they were trying to get passed because they had quorum.
They also weren’t very happy that Edison had written that if he was ever hurt or killed and he had no heir, that I would step in and make decisions until the next heir could be chosen.
It was a hammer that I’d had to use several times over the past three days to keep the branch heads from stealing everything down to the damn silverware.
I wished I could have told them why he wasn’t up for any of his scheduled meetings or why he couldn’t come out to tell the branch heads to fuck off himself. But I knew that revealing that he was in a rut was a dangerous idea. Alphas were the most vulnerable during their short ruts and even more so during their omega’s much longer heat.
If the branch heads wanted to try and get rid of him, which I wouldn’t put past them, a rut would be the perfect opportunity to do so.
Keeping that in mind, I tried to go into his room several times to try and rouse him from his rut only to be growled at by the wild-eyed alpha who was usually bent over his omega, mid-thrust.
So I handled it on my own with a little help from our security guys and a lot of help from Oona who’d done the most interference with the branch heads, distracting them with whiskey from the cellar and asking them about their children and grandchildren.
How she managed to remember all of their names, I would never know. I’d learned early on that Oona was not a woman to be trifled with and the last three days had only cemented that knowledge.
Pulling on a pair of dark sweatpants and a gray shirt that reminded me of the color of Perrie’s eyes, I stared glumly at my brown leather jacket which, for the second time in two months, would need to go to the dry cleaners.
“She must have something against it,” I muttered to myself as I draped it over the drop of the dresser to at least let it start drying as I turned back to the couple in the bathroom.
Perrie was now sitting naked in Edison’s lap, her fingers curling into his chest as they seemed to be in the middle of a serious conversation.
