3. Jorge
3
Jorge
The security at Mathew’s place is unusually tight today. They stopped me at the gates, insisting that I show them ID before they let me in. And then they wouldn’t let me park in the garage but I had to park outside.
What’s going on?
Did someone seriously threaten him?
An angry growl starts in my chest, but I quickly suppress it. That’s not my place.
I can be worried about him as a friend, but I can’t start growling like I’m his Alpha, that crosses the line. A very blurry line, but a line anyway.
Derrick tries to hide his smile as he lets me past him in the hallway. “Mathew’s in his office.” He looks way too relaxed for how heavy security is in the rest of the place.
If there was an active threat, he wouldn’t be sauntering around the place, he’d be giving orders to his team. But if everything was fine, I wouldn’t have been stopped at the gates…
Something weird is going on.
I open the door to Mathew’s office and am immediately overwhelmed by the scent of his favourite cologne. It’s a great scent, dark and sweet at the same time, very sexy.
Did he drop a bottle or something? It’s way too strong. He’s normally much better at knowing how much of it to use.
Plus, he usually doesn’t wear it at home unless he’s expecting someone he doesn’t fully trust. In all other cases, he simply uses fragrances that smooth out and diffuse pheromones. Way easier on the nose than trying to overwhelm them with heavy scents.
I sniff, but I don’t notice any unfamiliar pheromones, just the usual ones from Mathew and his people. Which makes the whole situation even stranger.
The carpet of half the room, the half with his desk, is crumpled and as I step inside, a hideously large couch looms between the door and the desk. That’s normally not there and Mathew wouldn’t have chosen it willingly, it’s not his style.
What the hell happened here? I’ve been gone for a few weeks and this is what I find when I return?
Something is clearly wrong.
“Morning.” Mathew’s voice sounds slightly off, but he clears his throat and his voice is back to normal. “What do I owe this pleasure?”
I sit down in one of the chairs in front of his desk, noticing even more things that are slightly off. The pillows on the couch in front of the window are crumpled. The door to the garden is open but that’s not easing the heavy scent. And Mathew looks sweaty, even though the room isn’t very warm.
“I was wondering what was keeping you. You usually call me the moment I’m back in the city. I’ve been back for four days and still no call.”
The sweet and forest scent of Mathew’s cologne seems to affect me more than usual today, much more than usual. I know I’ve been looking forward to fucking him for days, but not so much that his cologne should make me this hard.
“Yeah, I was… busy.” He jerks and clears his throat again. “You must have noticed the security. I’ve been really busy keeping an eye on things.”
“I noticed. What happened? Were you robbed? Did someone break through your security?” I sit up straighter, alarm flashing through me, making my pheromones spill out.
The security here is top-notch, nobody should be able to get through it, at least not far enough to get into his office…
I swallow hard, suppressing the building growl in my chest, until the sweet tones of the cologne seem to get even stronger and I distinctly notice the honey scent.
What’s going on?
I stand up, looking around and as I notice the bright red piece of lace on Mathew’s desk, he seems to notice it too and quickly swipes it to the floor.
“Mathew?” This time I purposefully send my pheromones towards him and he closes his eyes, biting on his lower lip as he lets out a slight moan.
It’s then that I notice the giggle coming from under his desk and I give him a level look. As I send out my pheromones again, I get another moan from Mathew and another giggle from under the desk.
“Mathew, why is your desk giggling?” I walk closer to him, leaning on the desk as I stare at him.
The honey scent intensifies and I go rock-hard.
Fuck, that smells good.
“Is it?” His second hand joins his first under the desk but whoever is enjoying themselves is not giving up as his eyes fall closed. “Fuuuuuck…”
The combination of his whispered curse and the sliver of Mathew’s pheromones mixed in with the forest and honey scents make me wish I was balls-deep in him right now.
“I’m pretty sure it was.” I walk around the desk, when there’s sudden movement and a short curvy woman with long brown hair slips from between his legs, sitting on his lap, her hands behind her back as she squirms.
The position makes her button-up fall open and exposes her beautifully soft body. She’s only wearing the open button-up, nothing else. So I suspect that the red lace thong was hers.
“Wait, don’t move yet. Don’t want to let everything hang out…” Her voice is sweet and husky as she’s apparently trying to close his pants behind her back, while rubbing all up against him.
Poor Mathew. If she keeps going much longer, he’s going to come inside his boxer briefs.
And I might too, this view is way too erotic…
“He doesn’t have anything I haven’t seen yet. You on the other hand…” I take a step closer and take in her honey pheromones. Fuck, she smells so good.
I want her. I want to lick her all over to see if she tastes as sweet as she smells.
Mathew glares at me as he quickly closes her button-up and wraps his arms around her. “Stop staring. She’s m—” He shuts his mouth, his pheromones flaring again.
Wait…
His pheromones have never been this intense before, and the way they blend with the young woman’s honey scent is intoxicating.
On instinct, I reach out to them, but a low rumble from the other side of the room stops me.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A tall and burly older male Alpha steps through the door to the garden, his deep forest pheromones almost suppressing the other scents in the room.
When I look back at the two Omegas, the young woman has a knife in her hand and she’s looking at me with suspicion, ready to cut me up if I make one wrong move.
“Omegas are very protective when they’ve just found a scent match.” The Alpha stops in front of the desk, glancing at the two Omegas and then looking at me. “I’m Caleb. The short one with the knife is Vera. And you are?”
“Jorge. I’m a friend.”
Vera laughs, the sound bright and sweet as she looks at me dubiously. “Friend, right… Friends don’t send out ‘bend over and let me fuck you’ pheromones when they see each other.”
“We’re friends, with many benefits, but still friends.” I smile at the fire in her gaze and her snark.
She’s very cute, I see why Mathew likes her. And, she smells heavenly, though the Alpha doesn’t smell too bad either.
She cocks her head to the side, taking me in fully as her honey pheromones become stronger. “You’re dressed just as fancy as Mathew, are you in the same line of work?”
“The same line of work?” I meet Mathew’s gaze, not sure how much she knows about what he does for a living.
“Well, he’s in ‘transport’. Are you too?” She puts the knife down and takes a step in my direction, interest in her gaze.
“‘Transport’?” I chuckle. “That’s definitely one way to describe it. No, I’m in ‘finances’. But we work with a lot of the same people.”
“Hmmm.” She reaches out and tugs at a button on my dress shirt, not caring one bit that her shirt has fallen open again or that my pheromones are clearly responding to hers. “Did you really come here just to fuck Mathew?”
“Vera!” Mathew and the Alpha, Caleb, call out at the same time and she grins, winking at me.
“I’m just asking… I wouldn’t mind watching, or joining in…”
Caleb sighs deeply and reaches out to the cute but wicked Omega. “Let’s get you some proper clothes, so these two can chat in private for a few minutes.”
“Fiiiiine.” She pretend-pouts, then she gives Mathew a quick kiss before she follows Caleb out of the office. “Don’t start without me!”
She’s a handful, clearly, but as she turned around to leave, I noticed something else…
I twist to Mathew. “She’s marked! They’re a bonded pair! What the hell are you getting yourself into?”
“It has nothing to do with you.” The blissful look disappears from his face and he turns away from me, sitting back down at his desk. His voice is sharp and his body tense.
“Like hell it does.” I cross the distance over to him, but he spins around and pushes me against the wall, a knife to my throat.
I don’t fail to notice that this one is different from the one Vera was holding earlier and that the one she put on the desk is now gone. She must have swiped it on her way out.
“No. It doesn’t.” His gaze is intense, angry and upset at the same time. “It has nothing to do with you. From here on out, all we ever are are two people in the same business, nothing more.” His voice nearly breaks on the last few words and his pheromones flare in distress.
The first rumbles of a growl break from my throat, but when that seems to intensify his distress I quickly shut it down.
No. Not good.
He must know what his words do to me, how much he’s clearly hurting himself by saying them.
I reach up, touching his cheek, wishing I could kiss him but he would slit my throat if I attempted that right now. “Not this again.”
“There is no ‘again’. They are mine. I’m theirs. You and me might be scent matched but we never bonded, so you’re free to find your own mates. I won’t be needing your ‘help’ anymore.” His words say one thing while his voice and pheromones tell a totally different story.
The scent of his distressed pheromones is making me sick, making it hard for me to think clearly.
I know I shouldn’t be saying this, the last time I told him this they had to dig a bullet out of my thigh, but it’s my only hope. “I’ve been yours from the moment we met.”
“No.” His voice is tight. “No. We can’t. I can’t give you what you want. We have to stop here.”
“And you can give them what they want?” Nothing about him changes when he’s with them or when he’s with me.
“With them, it doesn’t matter. She’s not broken like I am, so we can still make a family. I can’t give you children. We can’t start a family.”
“What if I don’t care about that?” How can he not see that I want him, I don’t care about any of the rest. I just want him at my side and I have from the moment we met.
“But I do . I care.”
I try to get through to him, but we’ve had this argument before, and it didn’t end too well that time either. “We’re a scent match. We’re fated to be together.”
He shakes his head as he drops the knife on a shelf next to him. “We might be a match, but we can’t bond. So, what’s the use?”
“A bond isn’t everything. You know that.” I grab the front of his shirt and reverse our positions, pushing him up against the wall.
He lets out a gasp, grabbing for my wrists with both hands as his face flushes and he starts perfuming.
“Fuck. Your pheromones…”
These are not his normal pheromones, these are something else. I don’t know if it’s because he just scent matched to two new people and that has changed them, or because he’s distressed from trying to push me away, but I’ve never felt this intense of a connection to him before.
I lick my lips as my head swims. “If I could mark you right now, I would. I would have marked you years ago.”
I put my head on his shoulder, taking in his pheromones, mixed with Caleb and Vera’s scents, letting my own mix with them too.
Mathew grabs onto my shirt, his body shaking. “Jorge…” His voice is hoarse. “Please.” His arousal floods the air, forcing me to fight myself so I don’t rip his clothes off and fuck him.
This time, I don’t suppress the possessive growl that builds in my chest, letting it roll over him with my pheromones.
“You’re mine . And so are they.”
It’s only when I say the words that I realise the truth of them. I realise why Mathew’s cologne appealed so much to me, why I didn’t recognise Vera and Caleb in the room sooner, why their pheromones turn me on and don’t trigger a fight response even though they’re clearly all over Mathew.
They’re all mine.