5. Avery #2
“What you two do,” she told us, her tone disapproving, like ice water through my veins, “is not dating. You need to stop fornicating and settle down.”
He groaned. I whimpered.
“You both need Jesus.”
And Ethan, that asshole, sat there all smug because he was a lawyer who’d married a doctor, and was basically every mother’s dream child.
“I hate you,” I told him after dinner.
“Me too,” Wade assured him.
“Mom,” he called over to her, “Wade and Avery are going to a strip club after this.”
Only a call for a homicide saved us.
Where I was concerned, she wanted me to find a nice man and settle down. Since I hadn’t told her son about me being an omega, I certainly couldn’t tell her, so I simply did a lot of smiling and nodding whenever the subject came up.
Where her son was concerned…she wasn’t wrong.
He was running through women, looking for something, a connection that was just not there.
It always started well, hopeful, and then there would be what I called the moment .
I’d see it in his eyes when he looked at them or talked about them, and I knew it was done.
The last eight or so women, he hadn’t even introduced to me, and if I wasn’t meeting them, that was the kiss of death.
I was the step right before meeting his mother.
I’d met Meggie, but only by accident. I was coming out of a club, he was going in, and he’d grabbed my bicep and spun me around to face him.
“Where were you?” he snapped at me.
“Here,” I told him, tilting my head at my date, who was waiting with a cab for me at the curb.
“We were supposed to get burgers.”
“Yes, and you know how much I love to watch you wolf down a side of beef…no pun intended,” I teased.
His snort let me know how funny he thought I was, which was not at all. “Huh,” he scoffed. “It’s my fault how that you’re a vegetarian werewolf?”
He was trying to banter with me when he should have been paying attention to his date. That was never a good sign. I grinned at the woman behind him, reminding him that she was there. “You said you had a date, so I made other plans.”
He looked pained; it was clear he would have rather been eating greasy fast food at our favorite diner than be at a club.
He introduced me to Margaret “Please, call me Meggie” Edmonds, a high-end real estate broker, and when I told them to have a good night, he kept his hand on my arm, clutching tight.
I covered quickly. “We’re about to have a late dinner; would you two like to join us?”
“Oh, I would love that,” Meggie almost squealed. “I haven’t met a single one of Wade’s friends, and I was beginning to worry he didn’t have any.”
I fake laughed, then led them over to meet Ross Ingersoll, a corporate relations manager who had bought me coffee two days prior on my way in to work.
As pickups went, it had been a smooth one.
I gave him my number, and he called—many times.
I finally relented, since Wade had a date, and agreed to go out to a club and maybe get food after that.
He, like Margaret—sorry, Meggie —was thrilled to meet a friend of mine.
Somehow people thought meeting other people in your life solidified things.
I also felt it made them think, If they have friends, clearly that means they can maintain relationships . If they only knew.
By Monday afternoon, I’d missed eight calls from Ross.
Wade missed five from Meggie. The difference was, he didn’t call her back, but I called and explained to Ross that it wasn’t him, it was me.
And even though he was mad and called me a few unflattering names, at least it was a clean break.
As far as Meggie knew, she and Wade were still together.
And now him asking her to drive him to the train station sent the wrong signal.
When I arrived at the train station, it was deserted except for a Mercedes sedan.
I pulled in next to it and was going to roll down my window when the passenger door of the sedan opened and Wade got out, looking nice in a sweater and dress pants, wingtips, a cashmere-and-wool trench coat, scarf, and gloves.
A woman got out of the back seat, braced her hands on his chest, lifted to kiss his cheek, and then took his place in the front.
Wade jogged around my Jeep and got in as the front and rear passenger windows of the Mercedes both rolled down at once, and I was faced with the woman who’d just kissed Wade and a blond man who was sitting behind her.
I rolled down my window, and Meggie leaned across the woman to wave at me.
“Hi, Avery, how are you?”
“Good,” I assured her, fiddling with the controls to put the heat on high. “And you?”
“Well, we were on our way to dinner when Wade got the call to come up here.”
“I’m sorry your night was ruined,” I told her.
“I’m just bummed that you had a thing tonight, because we wanted you to come with us so you could meet my friend Steven.”
“Yeah, it happens. When mothers call, you gotta show up.”
“That’s so sweet,” the man in the back seat chimed in, smiling wide at me. “I’m the same way with mine.”
He was handsome, but at the moment only one man held a drop of interest for me. Unless power was rolling off of them in waves of dominance and strength, they were not even the smallest temptation. I wanted…
The rush of arousal that surged through me was unexpected, and I jolted without meaning to, catching my breath.
“Ohmygod, are you all right?” he, Meggie, and the woman who’d kissed Wade goodbye all asked at the same time.
“What the hell?” Wade muttered beside me, hand on my shoulder, as if to steady me.
“Sorry,” I husked, momentarily overwhelmed, my body having never reacted that way before, shivering with the cold as I tried to calm my racing heart. “I didn’t eat,” was all I could think of to say.
“His blood sugar just dipped,” Wade leaned forward to explain to the others. “I’ll have to feed him, but we gotta go now. Thank you for driving me, Meggie. And Skye and Steven, thanks for keeping her company. You guys have a good dinner.”
I took several deep breaths.
“We’ll miss you,” Meggie said, blowing him kisses.
Skye did as well, her gaze on him speaking volumes.
“I’d love to double date,” Steven called over to me. “Or just date.”
“Sounds great,” I barely got out, gripping the wheel tight.
“Drive away,” Wade muttered under his breath. “Now. Drive away…now.”
But doing that was a bad idea until I didn’t feel like the world was spinning.
“I’ll be waiting,” Steven apprised me. “Just gimme a call. Anytime.”
“For God’s sake, drive away,” Wade growled, poking me in the ribs.
His touch startled me, the uncomfortable jab stilling my fugue state, making everything slip back into focus.
“I’ll be looking forward to hearing from you,” Steven concluded, hitting me with a similar look to the one Wade had gotten from Skye.
I waved, rolled up the window, and pulled away from them, exiting the parking lot by the same route I’d entered.
“What the hell was that?” he barked at me.
“I—sorry.”
“Look at me.”
I turned slowly.
“Shit, pull over.”
I complied immediately, stopping on the street beside a mailbox.
“We need to change places; you shouldn’t be driving.”
“No, I––”
“Now.”
Following directions, I got out of the car. We passed each other in front, and then he was behind the wheel and I was in the passenger seat, both of us pulling on our seatbelts.
“I thought wolves couldn’t get stoned,” he griped at me, pulling away from the curb.
“We can’t,” I answered, realizing that I needed more water. “I must—I’m dehydrated, I think. We need to stop and get me some water.”
“You have water in the back.”
“I drank it all.”
“Okay, I’ll stop, but what’s with your eyes?”
Pulling down the visor, I flipped open the mirror, and when the light came on, I was faced with blown pupils that made my irises appear jet black. I looked lobotomized.
“Did you take something?”
“No…I—no.”
“Then what the hell?”
I had known what Graeme Davenport had wanted to hear.
When we were in the laundry room and he said I knew who he was, I knew what to say to get what I wanted.
He wanted to be called alpha, the wolf equivalent of “Daddy” for many members of the jarl , and for me to go all weak and willing on him.
I knew how to play it, how to get an alpha believing they had all the power and that I was just a docile little lamb of an omega.
They got off on that, and it was the quickest way to get laid.
Because yes, I’d slept with many. It was a secret, a huge one, no one could ever know, but it had never meant anything.
I had wanted Graeme just as badly as I had the others, so I said and did what I knew he would respond to.
It was my regular act. Only after did I show them that they’d fucked a tiger, not a kitten, because I was even more unaffected than they were.
As their dicks were in the process of shriveling up, that was when I made my exit.
But was that what happened? Because now that I was thinking about it, Graeme had been looking at me oddly, like he was confused, like I was not what he expected.
But he hadn’t turned away from me, had maintained direct eye contact, and was just as strong and powerful standing there as he’d been initially.
His look conveyed irritation, perhaps a bit of confusion, but that was it.
What did it mean? And what was with me feeling unbalanced when my mind had drifted to him earlier?
I had thought about being in bed with Steven, and the revulsion—
My chest tightened, and it felt as though my heart seized, like every muscle in my body clutched at once. The choked cry tore from my throat as Wade stomped on the brakes. I heard him yell my name, but it was like he was far away instead of right next to me.
I grabbed for the door handle as my body spasmed, and I lifted up off the seat, my back arching up tight in a rictus of pain.
Frozen there, I felt a blast of cold air when the door opened, and there were hands on me, between my shoulder blades, on my abdomen, trying to force me down into the seat, to make my body fold in half so I could sit once more. But his hands, Wade’s, were not what I needed.
I had pleaded with Graeme to take me. Had called him not just alpha, but my alpha, and now, suddenly, I could hear the words vibrating down deep inside.
My alpha.
But that wasn’t possible. I wasn’t a beta or a gamma. I couldn’t be his true mate. And if I wasn’t, then this couldn’t be what I thought it was. I couldn’t be calling for him. Omegas didn’t mate. Omegas bonded , that was all. All we were capable of.
I concentrated on my breathing, on the beating of my heart, and then latched on to Wade’s smell, the scent I knew as well as my own, crisp and clean, always, even after a night in a smoky club when he drank too much; underneath that was him, fresh, like the sun on your skin, and soap, and man.
Counting, I felt the need peak inside, almost like an orgasm, like climax, and then the grip loosened, and I collapsed down into the seat. Sound came back at the same time.
“…hospital?” he rasped.
I turned to Wade. “What?”
“I think I need to take you to the hospital.” His voice shook and rose, his fear a palpable thing. I reached for him, and he slapped my hand away. “The fuck was that?” he yelled at me.
What could I…? “I need water,” I threw out lamely.
His eyes were huge. “That’s you needing water? Fuck,” he gasped, slamming my door, running around the front of the Jeep, and scrambling back into the driver’s seat. “I’ll get it, we’re going, just, fuck…hold on, all right?”
He gunned the motor, flying down the street, nearly rolling the Jeep as he took a left, seeing a gas station and crossing four lanes to get us there. We came to a jerking stop, and he was out of the car fast, bolting inside to find me some water.
I felt like crap for scaring him, but needing fluids was the only thing I could think of.
Whatever else this was, I definitely needed to speak to Graeme Davenport.
Hopefully he wouldn’t blow me off when I called him later…
after I went to the station and ran his name.
I didn’t need him to leave his number with my mother—I was a detective, after all—but reminding an alpha I had more access to them than any other omega probably wasn’t wise.