SoCal Cuties Box Set: An MMM, Shifter, Mpreg Romance

by Grey, Aspen

  “Oh, and I suppose that should be you?” I interjected, finishing his thought. Even if he wasn’t ready to say it, that’s where he was headed. Sasha opened his mouth to say something, but rethought whatever it was and went another direction with it.

  “I know you wouldn’t take me back,” he snarled. “You’re afraid.”

  “Oh, I am?” I laughed. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

  “You’re afraid that you’ll fall back in love with me,” Sasha said angrily. “That you’ll realize just how fucking stupid you were to push me away in the first place, and then you won’t want to take me back because by doing that, you’d have to admit that you screwed up, and you wouldn’t ever do that. Not in a million years.”

  I was so angry I could feel it seeping out of my pores. My fists were clenched so tightly at my sides they were ready to burst apart, and it was taking everything I had not to run up to the little prick and slap the expression off his face.

  “Sasha, listen to me,” I said, doing my best to remain calm. “I don’t want you back. I’ll never want you back. You were a horrible, horrible boyfriend and the only thing I regret is not breaking up with you sooner.”

  “Fuck you!” he screamed, taking a step forward like he wanted to fight.

  “But you need to listen to me,” I told him. “Because I’m going to give you one last chance to get out of my life. One. And to be honest, I don’t even know why I’m doing you that. I don’t owe it to you at all, but I guess I’m just a better person than you.”

  “Oh, what are you gonna do, Jedrik?” Sasha snarled. “Kill me?”

  “We have photos,” I told him. His mouth clapped shut. “Photos of you and your whole operation down there at the warehouse. The stolen cars, your boss and his boys…everything. And if you don’t back off, remove yourself from my life forever, we’re going to give them to the police and bring you and your whole little shitty crime syndicate down.”

  The color washed away from Jedrik’s face like stain being removed from a piece of wood by my sander, and for the first time, he appeared to have nothing to say in response.

  “Oh, not so tough now, are you?” I asked him, stepping forward. His scent was a horrible assault on my senses. Despite being my ex, and having caused me so much pain, there was a tiny sliver inside of me that still cared for him—as a person, not a lover.

  “So, this is it, Sasha,” I told him. “I’m giving you one chance to leave now and I won’t go to the police. But if you come back—if you push it again, or if I even get a whiff of you coming near me or my mates again—I will use the evidence we have and put you and your friends behind bars. Do you understand me?”

  I saw the anger inside Sasha, and also that he had a lot more to say. His lips quivered, but he held back.

  Good choice, I thought.

  “Okay, Jedrik,” he replied. I thought that was the end of it, but as he turned away, he stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. “If this is what you think will make you happy, then go for it.”

  Think…

  And with that final, spiteful remark, Sasha turned his back on me and disappeared into the shadows. Only after his scent was faint enough to let me know that he was truly gone, did I turn and head back inside, feeling as though I’d finally managed to close the last, unresolved chapter in my life behind me and move on.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Perry

  Four months later…

  I loved watching Jedrik work with wood—and not just in the innuendo kind of way!

  Spending time in Jedrik’s woodshop was a favorite activity for Roberto and I, especially given the fact that we were both pregnant now and didn’t like moving around a ton. He’d brought in two extremely comfortable chairs that we could easily get in and out of but also relax and kick back and watch as he cut, planed and shaped wood into whatever his current project was. Today, he was finishing up a table for a client in Del Mar that was going to eventually be built into the home, joining with a tall beam in the kitchen that flowed into the living room. After this was finished, he had six chairs on order to complete the room.

  He was working with cherry wood, which was a reddish color but warm and extremely hard and tight grained. It was beautiful, but expensive, a cost that of course translated into the final price of the table, which was substantial. As usual, he was using his signature garnet shellac finish, and we’d been instructed to stand back by the open door so we couldn’t breathe in any of the denatured alcohol that was used to cut the flakes. It probably wouldn’t be a big deal, but with a baby in your belly, you want to make sure that you’re doing everything you can to be safe.

  “It’s looking beautiful, baby,” Roberto said, my hand in his as we watched Jedrik’s precise, careful, deliberate brushstrokes. Shellac has a very distinct, gorgeous look to it, but is very hard to apply and work with, as brushstrokes can appear quickly and ruin everything. I’d learned this when he’d let me try brushing a piece of scrap wood and had completely botched the job. Thankfully it was just for practice and wasn’t anything important.

  “Are you going to add another coat?” I asked, already knowing the answer. It was one coat of shellac and then lacquer from there. But I just liked hearing him describe the process to me.

  “This should do it,” he replied. “Too much shellac on cherry and you turn the thing too dark. I want this to shine.”

  “They’re going to love it,” Roberto said. “They better take good care of it!”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’ll be beat up in a few years,” Jedrik chuckled. “But hey, maybe they’ll need a replacement then.”

  “And we’ve got just the guy for it,” I smiled.

  It was the end of a long day and I turned around to look out at the sunset, putting a hand over the baby bump that seemed ready to burst beneath my loose t-shirt. Roberto turned around with me and wrapped an arm around my shoulder, pressing his belly against mine. We were like a couple of those chocolate truffle treats ready to be unwrapped and eaten and I couldn’t wait until the moment when we finally brought the cubs into the world.

  Wendell had of course volunteered to handle the deliveries, and had told us he could get us an ultrasound to check the baby’s sexes, but we had declined unless something terrible happened that needed our attention. We both wanted to be surprised, and although he wouldn’t say so, I knew Jedrik was hoping for a boy and a girl, and I was hoping we could give that to him.

  “So, what’s for dinner?” Jedrik asked, looking up as he applied the final brushstroke to the table top. “Lasagna again?”

  I stuck out my tongue, knowing what he was referring to. I’d made a lasagna the other night, then Roberto and I had fallen asleep on the couch and let it burn to a crisp. We’d had to order Thai food.

  “Oh, stop it,” Roberto chuckled. “You want to embarrass us even more?”

  “Just a joke,” Jedrik teased, walking over to us, his white Henley work shirt practically bursting off his muscled physique. It had been four months and my lust for him hadn’t waned a bit. In fact, with the pregnancy, Roberto and I were somehow hornier than ever, which seemed like a strange aspect of nature, considering the fact that we couldn’t get pregnant again.

  Not yet at least…

  He stood between us, legs spread wide and strong, and placed one hand on each of our bellies, sliding our shirts up to expose the skin that was impossibly stretched over the lives growing within us. I’d never been more proud to be alive than when he looked at me with those strong eyes.

  I’m yours….

  “You two are so sexy,” he told us. I let my eyes fall to his pants to see if I could see anything growing there, and sure enough, I saw a small bulge beginning to form.

  Always ready…

  He slid a hand down my belly towards the hem of my sweatpants, but I jokingly swatted him away. It was fun to tease him a bit now and then.

  “You can’t start now,” I scolded him. “Or you won’t get any dinner.”

  “Mmm
m,” he grinned, wrapping his arms around me. He leaned close and kissed my earlobe, filling my nose with his scent. “Can’t I just eat you?”

  “Roberto!” I cried out. “Help me!”

  Roberto laughed and snatched my hand and pulled me away from my horny alpha. “We have to make dinner, Jedrik! Now—tell us what you want?”

  “Surprise me,” he chuckled as Roberto and I slowly backed away, pretending (but not really) that he was about to pounce on us at any second.

  “Okay, we will,” Roberto chuckled, pulling me away even more quickly, knowing that if one of us was to give in and let Jedrik ravish us instead of going to prepare our meal, it would be me. “You going to take a shower?”

  “Ah, shut up, Roberto!” I scolded him as we headed for the stairs.

  “Sorry! Bad mental image to conjure up when we’re trying to escape,” he laughed to Jedrik. “See you soon, baby!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Roberto

  Jedrik simply smiled as we walked away and headed back upstairs. Perry was practically drooling as we stepped back into the apartment.

  “Why does he have to be so sexy?” he whined, trying to go slump down on the couch. But I kept my hand firm and pulled him over to the kitchen. We had cutting to do, as we were making a Gordon Ramsay taco recipe tonight that, while easy, had a decent amount of prep work.

  “He’s probably thinking that about you,” I replied as I got a clove of garlic from the pantry and an onion. “Grab that ground beef and pork from the fridge, please.”

  “Why do I want his cock even more when I’m pregnant?” Perry asked without wanting an answer. “All I want to do is eat and have sex all day.”

  “You don’t want to cook for your man?” I joked.

  “Of course I do,” he replied. “But…ya know…”

  I smiled to myself as I began to crush and peel the garlic. The recipe was garlic, onions and peppers roasted gently in oil and brown sugar and then added to the ground pork and beef, then topped off with homemade guacamole and served with tortillas or chips. I was excited to see how Jedrik liked it.

  Perry took his place beside me and began to peel the skin from the onion, his mind obviously elsewhere.

  “It’s crazy, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “I mean—remember when we got fired from the coffee shop?”

  “Ugh!” I groaned, instantly taken back to that day. “Fucking Chad.”

  “That’s right,” Perry sighed. “Chad. But you know what? It’s even more than that. I mean—I ran away from home and your parents were killed. You’d think that people like that would never be able to find love, you know? Like we were just too broken or something.”

  “No one’s ever too broken,” I told him, nuzzling his neck. “But I know exactly what you are saying.”

  “Right?” he smiled, yanking the skin from the onion and tossing it in the trash. “I just can’t help but think how lucky we are and how if you were to write this story for a movie or something, we’d be those two characters who were never meant to find love and turned out to be like cruel, stone-cold assassins or something.”

  “Stone-cold assassins?” I repeated, blurting out laughing.

  “I don’t know!” Perry giggled. “Aren’t those characters always like wounded and come from dark pasts or something?”

  “I guess,” I chuckled as I began to slice the garlic. Perry, still thinking, simply passed me the onion, assuming I’d be the one doing the chopping. I didn’t mind and took it from him. “But I get what you are saying. You know I wake up sometimes thinking about it?”

  “Really? Is that why you toss and turn so much?”

  I gave him a quick jab in the ribs and he laughed and jumped back. It was a running joke about how bad of a sleeper I was, and if I wasn’t perfectly positioned on my side of Jedrik, I’d toss and turn for a long time before falling asleep.

  “No, that’s not why and you know it,” I told him. “I just find myself thinking about things like that before I go to bed—how things could have gone and how we could have gone another way—”

  “And become dark assassins from our tortured pasts!”

  “Something like that,” I laughed. “Or just not finding each other to begin with. Not finding Jedrik. I mean—we met him because we decided to go to a frigging swingers party. How crazy is that?”

  “I know!” Perry agreed. “Our eyes didn’t meet over a cup of coffee or at a cooking class. We didn’t accidentally run into each other on the street. We met him at a frigging orgy!”

  “Thank God we met him before we actually got into things,” I speculated as I began to slice the onion. “Can you imagine if we’d decided to like…get it on with another alpha and then Jedrik walked in?”

  “Oh, God, that would have been so embarrassing!” Perry grimaced. “But I think he still would have gone for us. Don’t you?”

  “Well, we are fated mates,” I replied. “So, I’d sure hope so. But I wouldn’t want his first image of us to be some alpha giving us a deep dicking or something like that.”

  Perry burst out laughing and leaned against my shoulder. He reached beneath my shirt and ran his hand up my back, stroking me gently. I thought about when it was just us two together, wondering what we would do without our horrible job serving coffee to rude customers, and thought about how lucky we were now living with Jedrik and being in a beautiful relationship.

  It was nontraditional, that much was for sure. I couldn’t even think of anyone I knew who’d even considered doing something like having a three-way relationship. When we told people about it, we got some strange glances, but it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t involved with Jedrik and Perry to impress other people—I was involved with them because they made me happy—because we were meant to be together.

  And how many people could say that? How many people could say they knew they were with the person (or people) they were meant to be with? That was something remarkable in my life and one of the things that gave me the courage I needed to look forward to my life, to be optimistic and to be absolutely sure that the two children we were both about to bring into the world would have lives that the rest of us had never been able to have.

  Jedrik had lost his parents and of course our lives had been filled with turmoil, but we were going to provide a nice stable life for our children—however many we decided to have. Two was a great start, but I had a feeling that baby fever would come over me again and I’d be throwing myself at Jedrik in no time.

  We were going to give him a boy and a girl. I knew it. I don’t know how I knew but I did, and I was convinced that there was a girl inside me. Maybe I was crazy, but I was just getting that energy from my belly. Of course only time would tell, but I was pretty sure we were both about to pop like a couple of overinflated balloons. And I couldn’t wait.

  “Okay, slacker,” I told Perry who was lost in a daydream beside me. “Grab a knife and help me with the peppers.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jedrik

  I took a step back and looked at the table.

  Almost finished.

  The cherry wood was gorgeous and had planed out nice and flat, and I’d spent a lot of time sanding it smooth with smaller and smaller grits of sandpaper until it was as smooth as glass. Despite having applied the shellac countless times before, I was always still slightly nervous before doing a new application. Just a few random drips or a brush that was too full and I’d have to sand it off and start again. Thankfully, this time had gone just perfect.

  And that was just how our life had been for the last four months: perfect.

  Sasha was apparently scared off and hadn’t shown his face, and the pregnancies had continued without issue. Our lives at home were incredible. We got along perfectly and basically never fought, and when we did have a slight disagreement over something small, it was resolved in no time.

  The omegas’ ever-changing bodies turned me on more than I’d anticipated. It wa
s something about knowing that I was the reason behind it and as they grew, I saw their nurturing side and it made me think about how I was going to be a father soon.

  I told myself I was ready—but was I? In a way, woodworking was like being a father. You took something from its untouched natural state, nurtured it and helped guide it into something new. My children would be like the raw planks that made this table: pure, ready to be taught how to survive in the world. I’d show them how to live, help them grow into strong adults that could survive on their own. And I’d be proud.

  I’d been hoping for a boy and a girl—one of each—but I knew I’d be happy with whatever fate decided to give me. Besides, who said we had to stop at two? Why not three or four? Or more?

  Relax, you’re getting ahead of yourself!

  I guess I had a bit of baby fever, if that was even a thing for an alpha to have—maybe breeding fever?

  I thumbed the lights down in my shop and stepped into the hallway.

  “Final step tomorrow,” I thought, envisioning the many coats of lacquer I’d apply to seal the wood and protect the shellac finish from the countless cups, plates, bowls and silverware that it would hold. It made me happy to think of how many meals would be shared over the table that I’d created—how many happy memories would be made (hopefully).

  I closed the shop door and moved to head upstairs, but that’s when it happened. A smell that shouldn’t have been there, a smell that I’d been certain I would never smell again, assaulted my senses, bursting through my nostrils like a tropical storm and sending my emotions spinning.

  Sasha? It can’t be!

  Without thinking, I shouldered the door open to the outside and stepped out into the night to see two alphas, one with fiery red hair and the other with a long black mane that hung down to his ass, standing in front of a thick, mobster-looking bastard in a red velvet suit standing behind them, his thick fingers dwarfing the cigar in his hand and making it look like a tiny pencil.