4. Graeme #2
When he was done, he rolled to his feet in a seamless motion, moved his tailcoat aside and lifted the lid of the washing machine, threw the shirt in and was about to say something to me when his phone chirped.
He checked the display, then put it down on the dryer, yanked up his pants, tucked in his shirt, zipped, adjusted his belt, and tossed the tailcoat over his shoulder.
When the phone rang, he quickly picked it up again and put it to his ear.
“Hey,” he said warmly to whoever was on the other end, and I found my jaw clenching as I stood and pulled up my underwear and trousers, unable to see anything but the golden skin of his throat where my mark needed to be. “Yeah, I got the text from him. Why are we—what?”
He was listening, which gave me a moment to admire the long, sleek lines of the man.
My mate was breathtaking.
His short hair was a riot of wheat and rich burnished gold, ash brown with streaks of silver.
His eyes were the color of a cloudy day, an opaque gray that flashed like polished moonstone.
There were heavy laugh lines etched into his fine angular features, and heart-stopping dimples that made my knees weak.
His lips were full and lush and bewitching, as well as swollen from my kisses.
I wanted to kiss him again, at my leisure, and it hit me then, as I braced myself on the washing machine for the second time, that he was not at all as affected by me as I was by him.
“I am,” he growled. “I’m on my way right fuckin’ now,” he finished irritably, hanging up and turning to go.
“Avery.”
He stopped with his hand on the knob. “I’m sorry to bail on you, but duty calls.
If you go see my mother, she’ll give you my number.
I’d love to hear from you,” he said, the annoyance that had been there before now absent.
Then he gave me a wicked grin before he opened the door, slipped out, and closed it behind him.
He was gone.
I stared at the spot where he’d been seconds before, all the while thinking that at any moment he was going to pop right back in and tell me he was kidding.
An omega didn’t leave an alpha without permission, and certainly no omega had ever left their mate.
It was simply not done. What was happening right now?
But it became glaringly apparent with each passing second that Avery Rhine was not aware of the rules omegas lived by, because he did not, in fact, come back.
He’d left me, his alpha, of his own free will.
It was without precedent, and I was utterly gobsmacked.
Honest to God, I had no idea what to do.
Not only had I never been faced with this situation before, but the whole thing was nonsensical and completely out of my wheelhouse.
I dealt in logic, in things that made sense, and him leaving me—and even more alarming, him being able to leave me—was beyond my comprehension.
How in heaven’s name did he have the audacity to abandon his alpha?
Didn’t he understand it wasn’t allowed, wasn’t permitted?
And now that he’d gone, what in the world was I supposed to do?
Did I run after him and drag him back to my house?
Did I go to his mother and get his number like some common suitor who found him appealing?
Did I report him to the council?
He said he knew I was a cyne , but did he know what that truly meant? That I had even more power to discipline him?
Did I report him to the dryhten ? And if I did, what would they do to him?
And what the hell was I supposed to do about the rug?
He’d left me in the most ridiculous position with regards to the protocol of hospitality.
Because while it was true that it wasn’t my spend on the rug, I was the cause, and he had rolled over on his back before he wiped himself off, so technically my semen was on the rug as well, and if I kept thinking about it, my brain would explode.
And why couldn’t I leave the room? It took me a moment to figure out, and then it hit me.
It smelled like him.
The room was practically pulsing with the scent of his sweat and musk, of sex, and I wanted to breathe it into my lungs.
More than that, I wanted him . The longer I stood there thinking about him moaning under me, begging me, coming apart, the rasp of his voice, the catch of his breath, the madder I got.
How dare he leave me? He had no right to leave me.
He belonged to me. I owned him. He was…he was—I…
The second revelation nearly gutted me as I was struck by the irrefutable truth that he had made all the decisions.
Not me. Him. I had corralled him and herded him into the laundry room, yes, I had kissed him, but that was all.
He had gone to his knees; he had swallowed my cock; he had taken me inside his body.
And he was the one who left when he was done.
He’d called me his alpha, and I’d succumbed to my animal, I’d wanted to, and I allowed myself to believe the power was mine.
But it was all him. I was merely a fun romp at a party.
This was a life-altering moment for me, and he left!
I felt the anger and possessiveness surge through me, boiling my blood, and it took all my self-control not to put my fist through the nearest wall or shift to my wolf.
The animal in me yearned to run down his mate, to take hold of his throat and pin him down and claim him.
Remind him to whom he belonged. I was ready to have Avery Rhine again.
I wanted my scent and my tongue on every square inch of his skin before I marked him as mine.
It was primal. It was life and death, more than a need or a want; it was necessary that his neck be scarred with the brand of my fangs this very instant.
The fact that I could not make that happen, because he was gone, rocked me to my core.
I shivered, thinking about him, about his beautiful round ass, how my cock had looked sliding inside of him, stretching him open, and the mewling cries that had come out of him as I yanked on his hair and bowed his back as he took me in deeper.
My desire would undo me if I didn’t make him mine. There could never be anyone but him again; my wolf would accept only him, and he didn’t know it, because clearly he didn’t understand the protocol of mating.
And for him, being an omega, his position was even more precarious.
Newly claimed omegas were not at all like betas or gammas.
Both could be claimed, but not marked, and go about their lives; they were so much stronger than omegas.
They were made to be partners, separate but united.
The same was not true of an omega. Omegas who were newly claimed needed to be bitten and to carry the mark of their alphas.
Being unmarked was dangerous for them. Avery was, at the moment, oozing pheromones designed to keep his alpha close.
His smell, the way he carried himself, the blown pupils and feeling like he was drugged, all of it was a siren call to his alpha, to make me take him over and over, to put my scent on him and mark him.
It was like a dance of submission, of glances and touches, an open, carnal invitation.
Crudely put, I’d kickstarted his heat, and every wolf who crossed his path would want him.
And any other but me he would run from.
When he left, he said he’d love to see me again, but the fact was, biologically, he had no choice.
He would have to come to me. It was hardwired in him now to seek me out.
Whether he acknowledged my place or not, I was still his alpha and his mate.
He would need me for more than sex; he required closeness and comfort from me.
Proximity to me would give him relief and balance.
Without me, he would slowly fray, unable to eat or sleep, and eventually he would shut down completely.
The problem was it could take days for him to figure that out, and in that time he’d be driving others mad and putting himself in real jeopardy.
Just because he ran didn’t mean that no one could catch him, and he’d fight not to be taken, and others would fight to have him. It was a recipe for disaster.
I hadn’t thought it through when I steered him into the laundry room.
I’d only meant to taste him and talk to him.
Having him there on the floor never crossed my mind, but neither did him touching me.
No one put their hands or mouth on an alpha without express permission, and no one took liberties with me, especially. I was far too frightening.
But Avery wasn’t scared of me in the least. He’d looked at me as a conquest, and once his lips were stretched around my cock, my logic was drowned in a sea of frantic, desperate longing.
I couldn’t recall ever wanting anyone more, which made perfect sense.
The man was my mate, my other half. He belonged to me.
Not taking him, not acting, was counterintuitive.
Why would I hesitate to claim what was mine?
I needed to find him and bring him home.
And while it would not be critical for hours, even days, he would feel the eyes of others on him, see their covetous glances and feel their thirst, and he’d wonder why he was so prickly and short-tempered with that attention when it had never bothered him in the past.