Chapter 11 Theo
My heat breaks on the fifth morning. I know it before I open my eyes. The pressure in my belly has gone. My skin doesn't burn.
I'm lying on my side in Dom's bed, facing the window. Gray light through glass. The sheets are damp under me, salt and musk and the sweet-sharp residue of slick that has soaked through to the mattress. The room smells like sex.
I sit up. My body aches in ways I don't want to think about. My inner thighs are raw. My hips are bruised where his hands were, the tender places where bone sits close under skin, and when I shift my weight the soreness sends a deep, slow throb up through my pelvis.
There's a bite mark on my hip, the skin raised and tight where his teeth broke the surface.
I don't remember getting it, which means it happened during one of the later rounds when the heat had burned through whatever remained of my self-control and I was just his.
I don't want to think about that word, because I know myself well enough to know that I want to be his. There’s something deep and primitive inside me that knows I already am.
It’s just that I can’t be. Dominic Novikov is the most dangerous alpha I have ever met. I know what dangerous alphas do. Even if I survived him, what kind of life would it be? I don’t want to spend my life terrified and afraid.
I don’t want to have children who had to grow up the way I did, waiting for the sound of a key in the lock and feeling their body flood with fear whenever they hear it.
At least my father was nobody important. Here, I am surrounded by the some of the most terrifying alphas in the city, with the one who should be mine the worst of them all. Coming back here was the worst mistake of my life. I won’t make it again.
Assuming I ever manage to get out of here at all.
He's asleep behind me. I can hear the slow, even rhythm of his breathing and feel the heat of him radiating across the gap between us.
I stand up. The air hits my bare skin and I'm suddenly aware of every point of damage: the ache between my legs, the tenderness at my wrists where he held them, the bruise on my hip that twinges when I straighten. My body is a map of everything that happened in this bed.
The bathroom tiles are cold under my feet. I close the door and turn on the shower. The water is hot and it hurts against my raw, oversensitive skin. I stand under it until the steam fills my lungs and drowns out the scent of him that's baked into my skin, my hair, the inside of my nostrils.
My mind is slowly coming back online. It's been offline for days and the relief of having it back is so acute it makes my chest tight. I can think again.
I run the numbers while the water hits my shoulders.
Five days in heat with my prime match. No condom. His come inside me more times than I can count. I know the odds of pregnancy but I can't think about that now because if I do, I'll drown.
So, how the hell do I get myself out of this mess? I only have one lever that I can pull and that is my knowledge of what is happening on the gambling floors below.
And that’s not simple.
There’s a reason that Novikov hasn’t been able to pinpoint the ring. It’s not just three or four people counting cards or a couple of dealers false shuffling. I’m not surprised that they haven’t been able to find it.
It took me some time and I’m still not completely sure of who is guilty and who isn’t.
Novikov has two pit bosses who alternate their shifts. Both of them are in on it. Then there are the four dealers, a couple of security men, a woman working the cage with the chips. I am also certain there are a handful of useful idiots that the pit bosses are using to muddy the water.
Then we have a handful of regular players and finally, the expendables: the one night players who show up looking nervous, cash out and never come back.
The network is bigger than it looks.
And then there's the part that took me longest to see. They've seeded false wins across other tables.
I nearly flagged a dealer I'm now sure is clean and is being set up to take a fall.
They let innocent players win on purpose, at times and amounts that mimic the pattern of the real operation.
If someone starts looking at the data, those tables light up too.
It muddies the picture. It's designed to stop people like me from isolating the guilty from the innocent.
The whole thing is too sophisticated and too expensive for what it's earning. The effort doesn't match the net. Whatever this is, it's not just about cheating the house.
Even so, I've watched enough from the surveillance feeds to know the losses are significant and getting worse. I don't need to understand the gang’s motivations to understand that.
I turn off the shower. I stand dripping on the tiles and stare at the mirror through the steam. The bite mark on my collarbone is livid red against my skin. The bruises on my hips are purple, thumbprint-shaped. I look like I've been in a fight, which in some ways I have. A fight I lost badly.
The deal was: find the ring, earn my freedom. I wasn’t sure I believed him then. I definitely don’t believe it now.
I stopped believing it somewhere around day two of the heat, when I saw his face above me in the dark and there was nothing in it that looked like a man planning to let go.
So the names are the only card I have left and I need to play them right.
I dry off. I have no clean clothes. I only ever had two changes anyway and some time during the heat, Novikov sent them down to laundry and they haven’t yet returned.
I find a pair of his sweatpants in the closet and a T-shirt that hangs off my frame.
The cotton is soft, expensive, and saturated with his scent.
Cedar and whiskey soaked into the fibers.
When I pull it over my head, my stomach clenches and a low pulse of warmth rolls through me that has no right to exist now that the heat is over. My body still responding.
When I come out of the bathroom, he's awake.
He's sitting up in bed, bare-chested, one arm resting on his knee.
The sheet has pooled at his waist. The scratches I left on his shoulders are red, four parallel lines on the left side, and there's a bruise on his throat where my mouth was.
He doesn't look damaged by any of it. He looks fed.
He watches me walk through the door in his clothes and his gaze tracks down my body and back up, slow, proprietary. He smiles, pleased. The smile of a man looking at something that belongs to him.
"Morning," he says. His voice is rough from sleep and the low register of it vibrates somewhere behind my sternum.
"Heat's broken. I'm going back to the office and get back to work."
"Sit down. I'll make coffee."
"I don't want coffee. I want to go back to work. The sooner I am done here, the sooner you’ll let me go."
He gets out of bed. He's moving slowly, unhurried, and I can see every muscle in his back shift as he stretches, the broad slope of his shoulders, the tapering line of his torso. He's built like a man who has never had to worry about who's between him and the door.
He walks toward me and I hold my ground.
He stops close. His scent is there without the devastating intensity of the heat, but it's not nothing. It settles around me and my pulse picks up.
"Time for you to eat," he says. "You've barely had anything solid in five days."
"I ate when you told me to."
"And you'll eat again now. You’re too thin. Unhealthily thin. It’s my job to look after you. Then we'll talk."
He walks past me. His arm brushes mine and the contact, bare skin against bare skin, sending a jolt of heat up to my shoulder.
I clench my teeth and don't react. I hear him in the kitchen.
The fridge opening. The heavy base of a pan landing on the stove.
The click and whoosh of the gas ring igniting.
The crack of an egg against the rim of the pan.
The casual authority of it makes my stomach clench with fury. There’s a complete absence of any question about what I want.
He says things and they happen and it has never once occurred to him that they might not.
I stand in the hallway and try to think. I have something they want and that means I have some leverage. I just need to be careful about how I play my cards.
I trade the names of the people cheating him for my freedom. I can’t do it here. Not while I'm inside his building, inside his reach.
I have to keep that information close and only give him the names from a distance, once I'm clear.
He gets what he needs. I get what I need. Nobody has to trust anybody.
It's the only play that makes sense. You don't show your hand until the pot is being pushed in your direction.
The smell of butter and eggs reaches me from the kitchen. My stomach turns over, not with nausea but with hunger so sudden it makes me dizzy. My body burned through everything it had to fuel the heat and now the debt is coming due.
I walk into the kitchen. He's at the stove, scrambling eggs with a fork, his back to me. The muscles in his forearm flex with the movement. He plates the eggs without looking up, pours coffee into a mug and slides it across the granite toward me.
I sit on the bar stool. I eat because my body needs fuel, not because he told me to.
He leans against the counter across from me and drinks his own coffee and watches me eat and the weight of his attention sits on the back of my neck like a hand.
"I have some names," I say.
He goes still. The mug pauses halfway to his mouth.
I explain what’s happening in as simple terms as possible. I give him no names. I don’t tell him that both his pit bosses are dirty. I don’t explain in detail how they are doing it.
"I want the deal we agreed to. I find your cheating ring, I go free."
"Those were the terms."
"Are you going to abide by them? If I give you everything, are you going to let me go?"
He puts the mug down. He doesn't blink. "No, you know I won’t," he admits.
"You letting me leave was the agreement."
He shrugs.
"You said when the job was done—"
"I said I'd deal with the situation. This is me dealing with it." He folds his arms across his bare chest. "You stay."
"Then I keep the names. You get nothing."
He looks at me for a long moment. Then he smirks again and my heat is supposed to be over, but it doesn’t stop something inside me clenching at the sight of it. That smirk is going to kill me.
"That's your play?" he asks.
"That's my play. The ring keeps running. Your losses keep climbing. Whatever that means for your business, your people, whoever's above you. I sit here and eat your eggs and keep my mouth shut and we'll see who breaks first."
"You'll break first."
"Try me."
He pushes off the counter. He walks around the kitchen island until he's standing next to me.
I'm on the bar stool and he's standing and the height difference is deliberate and his bare torso is at my eye level and I can smell him, God, I can smell him, the salt-skin smell of a man who has spent days fucking me senseless. It shouldn’t be attractive but my body doesn't care about should.
"Let me explain how this works." His voice purrs, sending a shiver through me. "Everything you used to find the network, I have access to. All I need is to get someone else in and they do the same job that you just did."
"Maybe."
"Definitely. And when I do, you've given me nothing. You've sat on information while my business bled."
He picks up his coffee and sips it, watching me over the rim. "Just give me the names, Theo."
"Let me go."
"No."
I study the absolute confidence of his expression. He is sure that this conversation will end the way he wants it to end. He's not negotiating. He's informing me of the outcome.
My mother's alpha used to do this. It wasn’t the same words or the same decisions but it’s the same thing. Omegas do as they’re told and alphas do the telling. He can fuck right off with that.
"You can't keep me here forever," I say.
"Yes, I can. We’re a prime match. You belong with me." The entitlement is so total it doesn't even register to him as entitlement. "Give me the names," he says again. "You've done good work. I'm not going to forget that."
“Why should I? What possible motivation do I have now to help you?”
He leans back, steepling his hands behind his head. “What motivation do I have to let you go? The moment I allow you out, you’re going to run for it and I’ll never see you again.”
I get up from the stool and go over to the kitchen sink. I wash the plate. The water is warm over my hands. I dry it and put it back where it came from. I ignore his. He can wash up his own mess. It’s petty but I don’t have much else. I’m thinking.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll give you one name for some freedom. Let me out of the suite at least. You’ve got the ankle monitor on me. I’m sure there’s an alarm set to go off if I go past the front door. I’ll swap one name for the ability to leave this floor. I’m going to go stir crazy stuck in here.”
He studies me, thinking, then nods. “Okay. You can go third floor to twenty-fourth. You’re not allowed on the main casino floors below. Bars and restaurants above the third are all available. Break any rules and you’re right back in here.”
I begin to nod but he adds: “And it better be a good name.”
I swallow. “And if you break your word. It’s the last name you get.”
“Deal.”
“Gary Stokes.”
His eyebrows lift. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Completely. I’m still pinning down evidence on some of the others, but he is a definite.”
Gary Stokes is one of the pit bosses, working most night shifts. Dom clearly wasn’t expecting the name.
But the surprise doesn’t last long. He just nods, then he gets up and walks out.
Then I go to the office and close the door and sit in the chair and stare at the monitor and begin, very carefully, to work out what I do next.