Still, she wasn’t too boneless to miss the brush of lips between Gabe and Nick when they moved away from her pu**y. “Wow. That was really hot and I’d order you to do it again if I was anything other than a

puddle of warm satiated goo.”

Nick chuckled, surprised as much as she’d been but it had seemed natural to brush his lips over Gabe’s.

After all, they’d both been there going down on her at the same time.

Spooning into each other, they fell into a sleepy silence, muscles jumping and endorphins floating.

* * * * *

Gabe nestled his face into Tracy’s neck, letting her scent wash through him, calming and relaxing him. He was utterly contented and he realized with a bit of a start that it was the first moment of such complete happiness and comfort he’d experienced in nearly thirty years. All his life he’d felt different. As a kid growing up in the housing projects in Boston, his mother had made him stay inside to protect him from the violence of their world. Stuck inside, he turned to books.

He got a scholarship to a private high school and had excelled, getting a full ride to Yale. New Haven hadn’t been so very different from his housing projects although, certainly the campus was a walled universe apart from the impoverished world just outside.

He got good grades and rarely went out those first years. He found it difficult to relate to anyone, as he always had. His mother hadn’t even finished the ninth grade and his father had been on disability for most of Gabe’s life due to a workplace accident that had broken his back. But suddenly he’d been surrounded by people who drove luxury cars and didn’t have to sell plasma to pay for food. There were other students who’d come from impoverished backgrounds and Gabe had always figured if they all didn’t have to work two jobs and study their asses off to keep their scholarships they might have hung out more.

Still, after a while he dated and had a wide circle of acquaintances, and the rare close friend. He’d never had trouble attracting women. He did have trouble keeping them once they’d progressed to the point where he wanted to open up the relationship to some of the sexual flavors he loved.

By the time he got into Harvard Law, he knew what he wanted to do and had a well-defined plan to get there. His father had died the year before and his mother had moved to upstate New York to live with his aunt. He was pretty much alone when Gavin Moore attacked him in a drunken rage.

Tim Moore, Gavin’s dad and the Mediator for the National Pack for forty years, came to him in the hospital. From what Gabe learned later, the man had sat outside his room the day and a half it took him to recover from the attack.

Tim made his pitch. In exchange for Gabe keeping quiet about the attack, he’d be brought into the National Pack. Moreover, Tim would mentor him and the Pack would pay his tuition. Gabe had jumped at the chance. And he hadn’t looked back.

Tim had been like a father to him. Not surprising really, since Gavin was a lazy, worthless asshat. Such indolence and a sense of entitlement—it drove Gabe nuts. But still, even though he’d shared holidays with the Moores, he’d never felt like one of them.

He was glad his mother lived long enough to see him graduate from Harvard. He’d bought her and his aunt a house and had taken good care of her those last years. But the hard life she’d lived up to that point had taken its toll and her diabetes and emphysema had both gone poorly treated for so long that even the best doctors money could buy had only been able to prolong her life for another ten years.

This woman and the man beside her were his now. His in a way that nothing had ever been before, and he would do anything to protect them both. Starting with finding out what the f**k was behind the odd way Ben and Sarah had acted earlier.

* * * * *

Nick’s heart pounded beneath Tracy’s hand, draped over his chest. A lazy smile touched his lips as she traced a heart there. He loved that sense of whimsy, it brought much-needed levity into his life. Even before the insanity of the evening at the Pack house, he’d known his life was too serious. He moved into Tracy’s body, feeling the cool steel of her nipple rings against his back. Her sweet little ni**les were always hard, he most definitely liked that.

There’d been dozens of women that year alone. Each encounter had been satisfying physically but not emotionally. He’d told himself that he didn’t need it, that emotional connection was for suckers. Besides, he’d had his friendships with Sarah and Josh, the Third in Pacific.

But as he lay there, he realized that he’d been lonely for the kind of connection he’d felt since he first bonded with Tracy. He not only loved her and was mated to her and to Gabe, but he felt a deep kinship with her. Whole where he’d felt empty.

All his life he’d purposely held himself back in the shadow so that Ben could excel. And most of the time Nick had been okay with that. He really hadn’t wanted the pressure of being Alpha. It was a public, people-oriented position and as Enforcer, Nick had the kind of privacy and quiet that Ben could only dream of. The Pack house was constantly full of people and that would have driven him nuts.

At the same time, he knew something, something that his father and Ben knew too. Nick was far more qualified to be Alpha than Ben was. Nick was smarter and stronger and quicker. Just because Ben was older didn’t mean he was automatically Alpha. And yet, Nick hadn’t wanted to challenge or embarrass his brother. He loved Ben and Sarah and his niece and nephew.

Still, he was really thrown for a loop over Ben’s and Sarah’s behavior. That first night, when he’d taken Tracy to meet them, Ben had been a bit hesitant about his endorsement of Tracy, although he’d been pleasant enough to her face. And Sarah, well, he’d allowed her to convince him that it was just silly jealousy but clearly it was far more than that. He felt sick at making Tracy so upset with that phone call when she’d been right about Sarah’s attitude.