The Strength of the Pack (Suncoast Society #30)(42)

Her heart soared. “Thank you!”

He smirked. “Thank him,” he said, hooking a thumb at Jesse. “He’s the one who’ll have to be jerking off into a cup to make this happen.”

“Gee, that sounds so romantic,” Jesse snarked. “They probably won’t even have gay porn. Can’t you take me in there, tie me up, and forcibly jerk me off? That’ll yank my chain.”

“I’ll just send you in there with a butt plug up your ass,” Leo joked. “That’ll make you plenty horny.”

“TMI, guys,” she said, pulling her hands back and waving them in the air as she tried to disperse that mental image. “I don’t mind accidentally hearing you guys do it through a closed bedroom door, but I don’t want to know the deets. No offense.”

“Oh, now you get squicky,” Leo teased, getting up to round the table and kiss the top of her head. “You’ve watched me beat his ass at the club.”

“That’s different,” she insisted.

“How?” Jesse asked, also getting up to kiss the top of her head.

“It just…is. I can’t explain it.”

Like she couldn’t really fully explain her position here. She just knew.

And as she’d been told repeatedly by everyone, she needed to follow her gut. She’d ignored it for too damn long. Well, her gut told her this was the right thing.

For her, and for their pack.





Chapter Sixteen


A week later, she still hadn’t had that talk with Nate, even though she’d already scheduled their consultation appointment with a doctor in the same practice as her ob-gyn, one who handled fertility issues. It was three weeks away still, so she had time to talk to him.

But another, more pressing detour cropped up—her sister, Ann, had finally earned her doctorate degree.

And asked Eva to come up for a large family dinner that weekend—including relatives she hadn’t even seen in years.

And her father.

Nate would attend with Eva, but Laurel already had “prearranged plans” with her father.

Eva wasn’t entirely sure her mom or dad hadn’t been behind the last-minute nature of the invite. If she had to put money on it, she’d be willing to bet it was her father’s doing. With her sisters clueless about what had happened to Eva growing up, they were more open to being manipulated in some ways by him.

This smacked of his handiwork, of waiting until the last minute in hopes that she would either feel pressured to come, or if she turned them down, he could shift the blame back onto Eva and tell anyone at dinner who would listen about it.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been so devious, or put her down in front of her sisters or other relatives.

“You don’t have to go,” Jesse told Eva from where he sat on her bed. “You can say sorry, I have to work. Or, sorry, I have other plans. Or, sorry, I don’t want to be within a two-mile radius of that f*cking assh—”

“Jesse, Ann doesn’t know what he did to me,” she quietly said. “And she didn’t do it to me. I’m going for her, not for him. She called me personally and asked me to come. This is her day to celebrate. She’s earned her doctorate degree. That’s a big deal and she’s worked really hard to get it. I love my sister.”

“But the bastard’s going to be there.”

“I won’t be alone. Nate’s going with me.”

“Does he understand the backstory?”

She sat next to him on the bed and rested a hand on his thigh. “He knows something happened, but I haven’t told him everything, no. And he hasn’t asked for the details.”

“Why won’t you tell him? And why hasn’t he asked? You guys have been dating for months.”

“Because he respects my privacy. It’s how we’ve arranged our dynamic for now. I’m working on myself, okay? Nate told me that he’s always open to hearing what I want to tell him, when I want or need to tell it, but that he won’t force me to tell him. That the timetable on when I tell him—and when we take our relationship farther—is up to me. It’s not like I’m collared to him yet.”

Jesse snapped his fingers. “A-ha! The restraining order. Perfect excuse not to go.”

“You know damn well it expired when we didn’t renew it.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t remember that.”

She patted his leg. “I’m not ready to tell Nate yet because I don’t want to tell someone unless I know I can open up to them all the way and be able to have a full relationship with them. He asked me about my scars, so he…knows some of it already without me telling him. He’s very…perceptive. We haven’t even had intercourse yet.”

Although they’d done just about everything else except actual intercourse.

“I wish you’d let us go with you.”

“No, because I don’t want to start a war on my sister’s big day. Besides, if you guys come and Laurel doesn’t, that will guarantee drama from my father. I don’t want to create drama. Ann asked me to come, and I am. I told her I’d be bringing a date, and I am. If my father causes trouble, I’ll deal with it.”

“Take June. She carries.”