“Of course it's not too late to back out,” Claire answered without hesitation, nearly earning another recoil from Jack, who was still struggling with the concept of being heard by an Omega, let alone comprehended. However, he managed to keep himself in check.
“Really?” the Beta uttered.
“No one is going to do anything they don't want to do today. That's rule number one,” Claire declared simply. “If you've decided this isn't something you want, then we drop it, no questions asked. Because rule number two is that this is supposed to be fun for everybody.”
Inherently, Jack felt endeared to the Omega's trustworthy disposition as he looked back up to Ashley, who echoed the much-taller girl's words with a reassuring smile and another soft brush against his back with her fingertip.
Sooner or later, he knew he was going to have to buck up, for Ashley, and for himself, if this relationship was going to endure. And he certainly wanted that, above all else. What was he so afraid of?
“No,” the Beta answered confidently, and gave Ashley’s thumb an affirming pat. “I… I want this. I do. Sorry, I’m… just wrapping my head around it still.”
“There’s no need to be nervous. We’ll take things nice and slow and make sure everyone understands the rules as we go,” Claire explained kindly, lowering her fist toward the edge of the path and unfurling her fingers such that Jack barely felt the airy gust as they flattened before Ashley’s feet. “No judgment and no embarrassment here. At all. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jack mumbled, looking up to Ashley’s face just in time to find her puckered lips descending on him, planting a moist peck on his head as she gingerly took a step and embarked onto the bronzed platform of Claire’s fingers. Padding carefully across the cushy terrain into the creased center, the Alpha kept her arm perfectly steady.
Meanwhile, Jack witnessed with gob-smacked appreciation the absolutely astonishing gamut of the hand, stretching seemingly for acres below the humbled feet of this six-foot-one tower of a teen cradling him in her own palm. Suddenly, the grand scale of Ashley’s hand seemed startlingly small, when the peachy terrain of the Omega’s was all but covering up the very ground below. Every crease of Claire’s hand formed a crested valley and every curve leading to the heel resembled the terrain leading up to a mountain, if it weren’t for the rosy glow of the skin that revealed itself as organic, tough as it was to fathom. Even from this high up, the Beta found himself easily tracing the patterns that formed the swirls of Claire’s fingertips like concentric ripples moving out from the center of a lake.
Once the front door was sealed again, the journey through the foyer brought with it fresh wonders as well once Jack managed to tear his gaze away from the sight of Claire’s hand so far below. Every wall felt like it was literal miles away. The tables and countertops the Omega passed by in the hallway and kitchen may as well have been edges of the horizon for how tangible they felt at this distance. He clung tighter into Ashley’s fingers out of the need to re-establish a tactile connection with his body while surrounded by the alpine halls of the Lindons’ household.
She, of course, was only too happy to oblige with a snugger embrace, folding him deeper into her palm as she herself settled comfortably against the heel of Claire’s hand. It was already taking a great deal of focus for Ashley to avoid falling into muscle memory of an occasion not so long ago when this very same hand that currently held her with such revere for her safety and happiness was coiled tightly around her body, robbing her of sensory orientation and personal agency all in just a few smothering presses from those mighty fingertips. Biting her lip, Ashley stroked her pinky along Jack’s cheek, reminding herself again that they were here to move forward, not backward.
“They’re here!” Claire announced happily as she re-entered the living room and approached the glass island that comprised the coffee table, positioned before a synthetic black leather couch that glinted with sunlight caught in its textured valleys.
On the table stood an Alpha, wringing his fingers through his dirty blonde hair and pacing back and forth along the edge. He seemed to shrink into himself a little at the sight of his fourteen-story significant other returning with the guests in tow, though he’d already prepared himself for the inevitable awkwardness this encounter would bring that had only resulted from his own boastful blathering. The twenty-year-old Alpha was already fully committed, particularly if he wanted Claire to stay in a good enough mood with him to play around a little more after the lesson was complete. A little humiliation among friends was more than worth that in his eyes.
“Hi… guys,” Sean Morrison coughed into his fist, waving up to the passengers of Claire’s hand as the Omega slid her way into the gorge between the coffee table and couch, gently descending into its buoyant cushions and lowering her flattened palm down toward the translucent plain.
“Hi Sean,” Ashley said with as much cheeriness as she could summon for her classroom acquaintance, knowing whatever anticipatory embarrassment she was feeling right now, he had to be experiencing tenfold. Carefully she rose from Claire’s palm and sauntered down the soft plank of the girl’s fingers, alighting back on completely solid ground once again, whereupon the Omega withdrew her appendage, clasping her palms onto her knees.
“And you’re… Jack, right?” Sean said, focusing his attention onto the teen in Ashley’s palm and giving another half-hearted wave of his fingers. “Good to meet you, man.” It took an awful lot of control to avoid flinching at the sight of this three-inch newcomer. After all, Sean felt at least partial responsibility for delivering Jack into Ashley’s shoe and the subsequent misguided day of sweaty, bruising torment thanks to his casual divulgence of personal details regarding the nature of his relationship with Claire. For a moment he considered extending a finger for the Beta to shake, but decided he already felt like enough of a jackass for this particular moment.
“Yeah, you too,” Jack said amiably, though most of his attentions were still devoted to surveying the enrapturing cavern of the Lindons’ living room. Though adorned with few building-sized sticks of furniture, it was still more than enough to overwhelm the Beta, who attempted to estimate how many of his entire house could be stacked into this single antechamber of the Lindons’ abode, before quickly abandoning such mind-bending arithmetic. His rapidly blinking eyes passed over the sleek flat screen, entertainment center, and the armchair matching the ebony hue of the couch that faced the narrow end of the table. Attached to the wall behind the chair was an aquarium tank large enough to hold an entire pond. It gurgled with colorful aquatic life, hosting a full coral reef brimming with wild chroma along its blooming surfaces. Nearly wincing from shock, Jack could’ve sworn he saw a shark dart between the weaving vines and bubbling jet-streams.
“I don’t mean to rush anyone…” Claire said, noting the palpable gracelessness of the situation for her little friends and resolving to get things in motion. “…but I don’t think this is going to be any less weird for anyone until we just jump in. So how about it?”
“Sure thing,” Sean said nonchalantly, pretending to pick at something under his thumbnail to avoid looking anyone in the eye. To the standoffish Alpha, the sooner he was out of sight of these witnesses to his folly and under Claire’s toes, the better. After the girl had given him a look at Ashley and Jack’s list that morning, he’d been forced to adjust his stance to avoid exposing a rather incriminating opinion tented in his pants.
“Good with me,” Ashley confirmed, then lowered her gaze to the Beta, arching her eyebrows. “How about you?”
“Yeah,” Jack breathed, simultaneously filled with jitters and a hopeful libido. “Let’s do it.”
“I have your list right here,” the Omega said, tapping at her phone where she’d placed it on the couch cushion. Brimming with sudden life, the car-sized communication device flashed with the playful games Ashley and Jack had spent half a month devising for this momentous occasion. “Wanna just go from number one?”
“Yeah,” Ashley said, backed up by a numbly nodding Jack, who could envision that first line in his mind as plain as day:
1. We want Jack to be able to lie down in my shoe while I wear it.
“Well, then,” Claire sighed happily, propping the rubbery treads of her massive sandal against the table’s edge gently enough that an earthquake was avoided, though nonetheless an echo rumbled across the glassy surface on impact. Her fingers fumbled to unlatch the straps as she lowered the truck-sized footwear delicately onto the surface and tugged her heel free. The Omega wriggled her bare toes as she reared the expanse of her tanned sole freely above the heads of everyone present, popping her joints and eyeing Sean with an impish smirk. “Why don’t we begin?”