Chapter 2
Two
REMY
My thumb rubs over the silver seal on the envelope in my hand, a Cupid’s bow and arrow embedded into the wax. I should open this, but I believe in delayed gratification. I also may be worried about what a company like Cupid’s Call could be inviting my pack to. Is it an escort service?
“Why are you looking at that envelope as if it may blow your hand off?” Felix asks, his arms spread wide at my office’s doorframe.
My brother knows me better than anyone else, and I suppose I am looking at it like a ticking time bomb.
“It could be,” I mutter, tossing it onto my desk with a glance of distaste. “There is a Cupid’s bow and arrow on it, Felix.”
“Hmm,” he says, walking across my office. “I suppose I’ll have to save you from having a spell put on you.”
My bark of laughter makes his lips twitch as he picks the envelope up. Turning it over, he glances at the return company name and address, even going so far as to sniff it.
“Felix,” I sigh. “Are you going to fuck it or open it?”
“That’s up in the air because it smells delicious… it’s like apricots and fuck me, lavender too,” he groans. “Did someone from Cupid’s Call put perfume on all of these, or is this the actual person who sent this? My cock is rock hard over here.”
Snatching it back, I stick my nose against the envelope and inhale deeply. Yeah, that’s fucking delicious.
“Now I’m even more worried about opening it,” I complain, handing it back to him. “Please, do the honors.”
Rolling his eyes, he carefully lifts the seal with his thumb so that it’s intact before pulling out an invitation from the envelope. Scanning over it, he purses his lips.
“It’s a dating service,” he says. “We’re being invited to a mixer with other packs to find an omega. I wasn’t aware that we were looking. That’s kind of ballsy, don’t you think?”
“Who runs this thing?” I ask, grabbing the envelope back. “I know it’s Cupid’s Call, but does it say who the owner is?”
“A woman named Hollis Edwards,” Felix mutters, handing me the invitation.
“Why does everyone feel so agitated?” Malcolm groans, shuffling into my office. I guess it’s a party now. His red hair is sticking out everywhere as if he just had a fight with someone instead of a planning session for what our next launch of sex toys will be with the team.
“I’m annoyed,” I reply, smirking at his glare. I didn’t answer his question at all, and I enjoy playing the brat for him. In my defense, I do it very well.
“That’s cute, Remy,” he says, sitting in one of my comfortable chairs.
“Why do you look like you just got face fucked?” Felix teases. “Where’s Brice?”
“I had a really frustrating meeting,” Malcolm says. “The planning team and I have very different ideas on anal plugs.”
Snickering, I shake my head. I fucking love my job. There’s no where other than The Naughty Toy Tote where this would be a perfectly acceptable conversation.
“Is this you telling us that you’ll be face fucking one of us later?” I ask, my fingers looking up Cupid’s Call. I want to find this chick’s number so I can give her a piece of my mind.
If we wanted to, we could find an omega on our own, we’re just too busy to do it. Business is booming, our community service part of the business is expanding, and omegas are a lot of fucking work. I don’t think our lives need one.
“Definitely,” Malcolm says. “Can you believe that we had a discussion about how flared a base has to be in order to be safe?”
“Okay…” Felix drawls, making a face. I mean, it is an important part of anal plugs, but I’m not sure why it looks like Malcolm has been through a war.
“For three hours,” Malcolm adds.
“Fuck. I’ll be back,” Felix groans. Someone is about to be reamed out, and it’s not going to be the fun kind.
My brother is the hard ass. He runs the call center, is the one who has the difficult conversations with employees, and makes sure that operations are on par with his standards.
Basically, he’s the hardass of us all. After watching my brother stride out of the office, I go back to digging into my research.
“Now that Felix is going to take care of my issue, what’s this about being annoyed?” Malcolm asks.
“We got an invitation to join a dating event to help us find an omega,” I murmur, stopping on a video of a woman speaking on the website. She’s a brunette with wavy hair, gray-blue eyes that remind me of a cloudy sky, and lips that could suck my soul out of my cock.
“Huh. Why?” he asks. “Is that something you can just order like a box of sex toys?”
Chuckling, true amusement begins to disperse my earlier annoyance. The reason our pack works so well is that we balance each other out. We’re bonded to each other, we work and live together, and we’ve known each other since college.
Well, Felix and I go back farther, obviously, since we’re siblings, but you know what I mean.
“Wouldn’t that be nice?” I ask, chucking. “I think this is her on the website. Want to watch this video with me?”
“Since it sounds like you want to give her a piece of your mind,” Malcolm drawls. “I want to know who you’re going to be yelling at because someone dared to think we may want an omega, Remy.”
“Way to take the passion out of my sails,” I complain. “I was all full of piss and?—-”
“You should probably head to the bathroom if you’re full of piss,” Malcolm snickers. “Watersports aren’t my thing.”
Fucker.
Turning my monitor around, I move to the chair next to him and click the touch screen to watch the video with him. Malcolm gets up to dig his fingers into my shoulders to help me release the stick up my ass, and I have to admit that it feels really good.
I’ve been stressed out with how busy we’ve been. I need to take a second to unwind.
The woman in the video is unassuming and beautiful, detailing that she’s the owner of Cupid’s Call with the intention to make dating safe and fun.
We listen as she insists that the mixer is free, but there is the need to reserve a space due to limited availability.
Hollis Edwards isn’t selling a pitch, she’s insistent that this is about choices and the freedom to find a match that is a love connection.
There’s also the added fact that she seems to have some competition with another organization, and she’s not too thrilled about that.
I’m mildly curious about this other organization that has very conservative views about courtship and the way an omega should comport her or himself.
We occasionally have issues with different organizations who hate that we sell sex toys and think that we’re destroying human connections.
I think that’s a load of bullshit.
Frankly, I believe in being free to do what you want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else.
Sexual expression, experience, and personal growth are large tenants of why we own a sex toy company.
Unusual requests are something that we really enjoy fulfilling, and some of what we do is about helping people with their needs.
Knots on a cock ring for betas, strap-ons for alpha females or anyone else who enjoys pegging, and toys with knots for omegas who need them to get through their heats are necessary for our society. I don’t care what anyone else says, I believe that we provide an integral service.
This also occasionally means having really frustrating conversations about butt plugs. My lips tremble as I struggle not to laugh at how funny that actually is to me. I fucking love our lives.
“She’s easy on the eyes,” Malcolm murmurs, his voice a bit deeper in the silence.
“She is, but I bet she’s happily packed up and not on the menu for this mixer,” I say, willing to lean into an imaginary scenario.
My pack and I do this all of the time for work or in general, a way of working through things.
“Maybe,” he says. “Would it be terrible to go by her work and drop off a Naughty Tote gift bag along with our regrets for not attending her little mixer?”
I drop my head back to gaze up at my alpha as he gazes at me with a wicked smile. Oh, that could be fun.
“Can we also ask her to take us off whatever ridiculous list she put together when she was sending out invitations?” I ask.
Granted, they were carefully worded, engraved, and she used fancy wax seals. It’s obvious that this means a lot to her since it’s all being put together for free. It makes me wonder if she’s looking for donors for gift bags for this thing.
I mean, she runs a dating website, it couldn’t hurt to collaborate with her, right?
“What are you thinking about?” Malcolm growls, bending down to kiss me. He says he gets a better idea of my schemes when he’s tasting my lips. I think he just really likes to make out with me. “Mmmm. I can taste the evil genius now.”
Laughing, I shrug. “I think this idea needs everyone, Mal. Let’s go find Brice and my brother.”
Standing, he nods and waits for me to rise from the chair. I make sure to turn off the computer monitor and take the invitation with me to show Brice. Our footsteps take us past Felix growling at the team that Mal was talking to, though he cuts off the lecture as he watches us walk by.
Regardless, the team he was speaking to seems acceptably aware of what they did wrong as Felix hurries off to join us. We don’t have any issues with constructive criticism, but arguing just to hear your voice isn’t helpful.
Malcolm unfortunately seems to get the short end of the stick because he has more patience than we do. While it makes him a wonderful head of our pack, employees sometimes take advantage of that since he’ll breathe through wanting to yell at all of them to shut the fuck up.
“Are we about to do something fun?” Felix asks, glancing at his watch. “We could probably blow off the rest of the day.”
It’s almost five in the afternoon, technically we don’t have anything else planned today.
“I have an idea that could be really fun,” I say with a smirk. “We’d get to tell Hollis our regrets, put her in her place, and offer her gift bags with our toys and marketing inside them to make us seem like?—”