Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Shawn
Iwas really doing this. I couldn’t believe that I was actually at Kincade Slopes on a Friday night, dressed in one of my most expensive suits, preparing to walk into the lodge so I could pretend to be some mafia boss buying an omega for his pleasure.
Something must have been really wrong with me that I was so quick to toss my moral compass out the window for a weekend of hot, more or less anonymous sex.
I guess this was what happened when an alpha got too busy with work to get between the sheets with an omega.
Abstinence might have been a virtue in some people’s minds, but I was beginning to question whether it had been a good idea for me.
I took a deep breath, then opened my car door and stepped out into the chilly, mountain evening.
My heart raced even though the event hadn’t started yet.
I smoothed a hand over my slicked-back hair—the hair products I’d used to look more like a gangster earlier had been kind of fun, actually—and glanced around the parking lot.
A few other alphas were just arriving and the lot was already half full, which meant the omega auction was a bigger event than I had thought it would be.
For a second, my feet didn’t want to move.
That was just embarrassing, though, so I cleared my throat and pushed myself forward toward the lodge’s attractive front door.
It was floor to ceiling glass with a gorgeous view of the warm, cozy lobby on the other side.
It looked peaceful and inviting, not like a seedy club where omegas were bought and sold to the highest bidder.
“Okay, I can do this,” I whispered to myself, my breath curling into the cold air.
A few steps later and the jarring ring of my cell phone nearly buckled my knees and had me running back to my car.
Did someone know what I was doing? Had I been found out?
Were the society papers going to be splashed with headlines of one of Barrington’s best and brightest philanthropists slumming with some kink club’s erotic activities?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told myself, reaching for my phone and jogging to get into the warmth of the lodge before answering the call.
I shouldn’t have been surprised that it was Walt.
“Hey,” I answered with pretend cheer. “What’s up?”
“I’ve been thinking about the venue for the Christmas supper,” Walt said without a greeting or any sort of small talk.
“Yeah?” I asked, still cheerful as I ducked into an out of the way corner at the front of the lobby. I was willing to give Walt the benefit of the doubt because for whatever reason, he didn’t sound particularly happy.
“The Grand Hotel is all wrong for this sort of thing,” Walt said.
I heard movement and clatter in the background, like he was cooking or something.
“For one thing, even the grand ballroom is too small for the amount of people we should be hosting. The event just keeps growing every year. For another, it’s way too hoity-toity for people who just want a hot meal and a little cheer on Christmas Eve. ”
“I agree,” I said, peeking around at the other alphas entering the lodge and checking in at a table on the other side of the lobby. “But could we maybe talk about this at the office on Monday? Or, no, Tuesday. I might be out on Monday.”
When Caden had called me to say they’d found the perfect omega to pair me with for the auction, he’d informed me I should clear my schedule for Monday, just in case the omega went into heat.
According to the form the omega filled out, his heat wasn’t due for several more weeks, but sometimes intense play brought it on early.
Either way, Caden had said I would want that extra day to recover, like from a sex hangover.
“You’re taking a day off?” Walt asked, curiosity in his voice that he was trying to make sound like indignation. What I really heard was concern.
“I do that now and then,” I said, trying to keep things conversational. “But, hey, look, I need to go. I’m at a…a thing tonight, and it’s about to start.”
“Fine,” Walt said in a huff. “I make an effort to call you and talk about things, but you can’t be bothered to talk to me for five minutes.”
“No! That’s not it at all.” Bless his heart, but sometimes my little brother made me want to wring his neck for his sullenness, even though I knew the chip on his shoulder was well-deserved. “I want to talk to you. I’ve missed seeing you lately. Why haven’t you been in the office lately anyhow?”
“None of your business,” Walt snapped, defensive in a way that felt suspicious to me. Something was up with my little brother. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from your important event,” he said sarcastically. “You always have better things to do.”
“It’s not that,” I sighed. “If you must know, I sort of, kind of have a date.”
Walt hung up before I was halfway through the sentence.
I pulled my phone away from my ear with an irritated huff.
I loved Walt. He was my brother, my only sibling.
He was the person I was closest to in the world, though I’m sure he didn’t think so or see things that way.
I knew damn well that our dad didn’t treat him fairly because he was an omega, but that only made me want to protect him with everything I had.
But he could be a total shit sometimes.
I rubbed my face to clear those thoughts and pack them away at the back of my head. The last thing I wanted when I was about to pretend to purchase an omega and then spend the weekend banging him into next Tuesday was to think about my brother.
I approached the registration desk and managed an awkward smile as I greeted Denny, who was as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at nine PM as he’d been at the DFC offices in the middle of the morning.
“Mr. W, you’re here,” Denny greeted me with a wide smile.
“Er, yeah, I am,” I said, face flushing hot enough to rival the fire crackling in the large hearth in the center of the lobby’s lounge area.
Denny glanced over the pile of large envelopes in front of him and pulled one out, handing it to me.
“Here’s the dossier for your omega. I think you’re going to be super pleasantly surprised by him.
Caden and Hamish knew the second you both applied that you would be perfect together.
” As I took the envelope, heart racing, Denny leaned forward and whispered, “You didn’t hear this from me, but they kind of consider this a set-up. ”
“A set-up?” Everything felt instantly wrong. Who was setting me up and for what?
“As in setting two friends up on a date,” Denny clarified with a laugh. “You should see the look on your face.”
I felt myself flush harder. “All of this is just so new to me,” I explained.
“Which is why Caden and Hamish think this omega will be perfect for you,” Denny went on. “He’s an experienced player, but he’s also a sweetheart and, well, you’ll see.”
“Thanks?” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re very welcome,” Denny said, then nodded toward the corridor that stretched away from the lobby into the heart of the lodge. “Just follow the signs to the conference—I mean auction room.”
I nodded to Denny and started off in the direction he’d indicated, my heart in my throat. I wasn’t really doing this, was I? I wasn’t kinky or even particularly free with sex. Everything I was doing was so out of character.
Then again, I knew probably better than anyone that Caden and Hamish were some of the best guys out there. They did incredible work in the community. I donated my own, personal money to their causes on a regular basis, so I knew nothing that was going on at Kincade Slopes could be truly wicked.
The conference room was set up almost like any lecture or workshop I’d ever attended, which was weird. There was a small stage at the front of the room with a podium and a large, black cube, but that was it. I took a seat at the end of one of the rows of chairs and opened my dossier.
The first thing that struck me, and it struck me hard, as I pulled out the papers inside was the picture of the omega I’d been paired with.
His smiling face instantly stared back at me.
I knew the face. It was the young, homeless omega I’d run into as I’d left the DFC offices the other day.
His wide-eyed, innocent expression had a sweetness to it that had been absent the day we’d met.
As I started to read his details, my face heated with shame.
Enzo O’Neill. He wasn’t homeless. He wasn’t as young as I’d thought he was, either.
He was twenty-three, lived and worked in Norwalk, and his papa had died back in the spring.
He’d been the primary caregiver for his papa for years, and according to what Caden and Hamish wrote in the file, his dad was a deadbeat. My heart ached for him.
An entirely different part of me ached as I read on. Enzo liked light impact play, but he mostly enjoyed extreme submission, including being fisted. He produced above-average volumes of slick and liked cock-warming and being restrained while he was fucked.
I swallowed and had to adjust the way I was sitting so my swelling cock wasn’t blatantly obvious to everyone walking by.
Then again, I spotted more than a few pairs of tented trousers as I quickly glanced around the room to see if I was too conspicuous.
It was just that I’d never had such personal information about an omega, about anyone, thrown right at me like that.
He liked being fisted? Wasn’t that up there at the top the list of taboo things you could do to an omega, right next to having more than one alpha at a time take his heat?
I cleared my throat and shifted the way I sat again as images of sweet Enzo O’Neill bent over with his legs spread wide and his slick-wet hole on display to me filled my head.
I had big hands, like most alphas, but what would it feel like to push one into the tight wetness of a hole and to feel the constraint of an omega’s insides squeezing around me?