Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
Truett
W atching Strat work had always been exciting. Even before we were qualified, watching him do mock trials had been annoyingly riveting. He had presence, and spoke so eloquently, it was hard not to be pulled under his spell.
I could watch him for hours. Unsurprisingly, the jury came back with a guilty verdict within fifteen minutes, because the case had been pretty open and shut.
But that was enough of a reason to take my Omega out to dinner to celebrate. Sonny and OJ were going to meet us at the club afterwards. Lance had opted to stay home; clubs and crowds still weren’t his thing, which I could understand.
I was excited to take my Omega out for dinner, just the two of us. We’d all been so caught up in our new bonds with OJ and Lance that Strat hadn’t been getting the attention he deserved, but tonight, we’d change that. We’d all agreed that he’d been working hard, and he deserved to be celebrated.
I stood and walked out of the courtroom, waiting in the halls for him. I saw the defense come out, their faces sour from the loss. Too bad, too sad. I’d been on the receiving end of Strat’s skills, so I could sympathize a little, but they just needed to be better.
Plus, their client was a scumbag who’d robbed the elderly at knifepoint, causing one to have a heart attack and die. How sad could you be that you lost your case, meaning that trash had to go to jail? The quandary of being a defense attorney, I guess. It was why I’d gone into corporate law.
“I fucking hate going against Wilmington. He shouldn’t even be a lawyer,” grumbled the defense lead, who I’d never met. “Being a fucking Omega is an unfair advantage. He had the jury eating out of his hands—using his pheromones, probably.”
The other defense attorney huffed. “They shouldn’t let them into positions of power where they can sway outcomes. Better suited to the kitchen or the nest. Leave the law to the Alphas,” he chuckled.
I growled low in my chest. I was going to beat the shit out of these fuckers. Especially once I saw Strat behind him, overhearing that toxic bullshit spewing from their mouths. The Alpha lawyers didn’t know he was there, as the courthouse was pumped full of de-scenter, but that didn’t make it okay. I was going to pound some sense into their heads.
Still growling, I stepped forward, ready to defend the smartest man I’d ever met. I looked past them, and Strat must have predicted what I was about to do, because he was vigorously shaking his head.
For a moment, my Alpha didn’t care. This was a man I loved. No one spoke about the person I cared for like that. But logic told me that fighting in a courthouse was a sure way to get reprimanded, maybe even have my license suspended.
So I took in a couple of deep breaths and moved into the path of the defense lawyers. They looked up, and I knew they recognized me. If people didn’t know me from the court circuit, they probably knew me from the society pages back when I was younger. I was rich as hell, and Sonny and I had partied pretty hard once upon a time.
“Heathstone, good to see you,” Asshole Alpha Number One said, putting his hand out for me to shake. It physically hurt me to take that guy’s hand and not rip it off.
“Have we met?”
The guy didn’t even look offended by the dismissal in my tone. “August Hilt. I was a year below you in high school. I went into law, because my parents wanted me to be you so bad.”
I curled my lip. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember you.” I raised an eyebrow. “I hope your parents aren’t too disappointed. I watched your case in there, and it was lacking at best, and grounds for a professional misconduct case at worst. I hope your client appeals, because he’s going to get thirty years due to your incompetence.”
I leaned down toward him. “I wouldn’t ever blame my own failures on someone else’s designation. Strat Wilmington is a hundred times the lawyer you are, and I hope you go home, cry yourself to sleep, and pray you develop half of his talent. He didn’t win that case because he’s an Omega; he won it because he’s damn good. It didn’t help that you are dangerously useless.”
Stepping back, I looked at them like they were both worse than shit on my shoe. I moved around them and over to Strat, who was watching me with an amused expression. Placing a hand on his lower back, I escorted him out of the courthouse and to my car.
As soon as we were inside the vehicle, Strat leaned over and kissed me hard, the embrace filled with a fervent need until I was panting and my cock was straining. When he pulled away, I felt drunk with lust.
He grabbed the front of my shirt. “That wasn’t necessary, but you defending me was hot as fuck. Thank you, Truett.”
I shrugged like it was nothing, which it was. It was the bare minimum I should do as a human being, let alone his Alpha. “All I told them was the truth.”
He flopped back into his own seat, his cheeks a shade of pink that made me want to take him back to my apartment and strip him down. Shaking his head, he gave me a resigned expression. “Their words don’t affect me, Truett. I’ve heard hundreds of versions of the same speech since I was a freshman in college, from my peers, judges, clients. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”
I hated that. I hated that he just had to grin and bear the disrespect. “I never thought you were using your Omega-ness to win during college. You were fucking good—anyone with half a brain could see that.” I started the car. “You kicked my ass fair and square more than half the time.”
Pulling out into the traffic, I drove us to the restaurant. It was a little hole-in-the-wall Turkish place that was a hidden gem. The chef was a seventy-year-old Turkish matriarch, who ran that kitchen like a drill sergeant. It helped that most of the other chefs were her sons and grandchildren.
Laughing, Strat put his hand on my thigh. “That’s why I had the hugest crush on you. I jerked off to the thought of you more times than was probably healthy. Every time my heat came around, I thought about asking you to see me through it. But you were one of the few who saw me as just another student and not an Omega. I wasn’t about to change that just because of my heat.”
The idea of anyone else seeing Strat through his heat made my stomach curdle with jealousy. Never again. Just me and my Pack from now on.
How different would life have turned out if we’d taken Strat as an Omega back then? “I would’ve been honored. It wouldn’t have altered my respect for you.” I laid my hand over his where it rested on my thigh, entwining our fingers. “I can’t help but feel like everything worked out how it was supposed to, though. I would’ve been a shitty Alpha back then, too filled with cocky bravado and absolutely zero skill,” I teased. “Now, you can have everything your heart desires, Strat Wilmington, and I’ll be right there in the wings, giving you what I can and supporting you to achieve what I can’t.”
He squeezed my thigh as I pulled up to the parking space out the front of the restaurant. “Everyone says Sonny’s the sweet one, but I think deep down, you’re a bit of a marshmallow, Truett Heathstone.” He lifted my hand to his lips, kissing and then scent marking it. “I can’t wait to be your Omega.”
We made it to the club before Sonny and OJ, and we were led straight to our table. I was so full from dinner that you wouldn’t know I had abs underneath the food baby straining against my shirt buttons. Strat had lost his suit jacket and tie, and had unbuttoned the top three buttons of his dress shirt. How he’d gone from highly paid lawyer to wet dream in the space of a car ride was nothing short of a miracle.
As we walked through the club, people eyed him like they wanted to mount him right there, Alphas and Betas alike, and I had to swallow down my growls. But I did put a possessive arm around his waist.
I was tempted to drag him to the bathrooms, to show him just how much I wanted him, to prove to him that he was mine, to cover him in my scent. We could maybe pretend we’d just arrived once the others got here.
Strat raised an eyebrow. “Stop looking at me like you want to fuck me on this table, or I might take you up on it.”
Growling, I lunged across the booth. I’d claim him here, in this writhing mass of people, for everyone to see. My Omega. He was laughing, but when I reached over and grabbed his cock, it turned into a moan. Let him see I was serious.
The scent of orange blossoms and gardenias suddenly washed over me. “Stop groping my Omega,” OJ whispered in my ear from behind me, saving me from claiming Strat right here in the club. Strat was now looking wide-eyed, his lips parted. Looking over my shoulder to see why, I sucked in a breath.
She looked fucking beautiful. She was in a dress I’d certainly never seen before, and if I’d seen her in it before leaving the house, it would have been straight on my bedroom floor. It was a short black bodycon dress that clung to her curves, with long sleeves and a high, straight neckline that brushed her collarbone. It had mesh cutouts, hinting at the curve of her breasts. Her hair was up, so you could see the long curve of her throat.
Glancing down, I realized she was wearing sparkling black Converse, and I smiled. She’d never mastered stilettos. God, I loved her. As she leaned in to kiss me softly, I put my hand on her waist and realized that the dress had absolutely no back.
Just acres of exposed skin.
God, I was going to murder someone tonight. At least her claiming marks were visible, sitting above her shoulder blades like tiny wings.
As she leaned across me to kiss Strat, Sonny slipped in behind her, so she didn’t flash the whole damn club her underwear. I gave him a what the fuck were you thinking? look.
Years of friendship and a Packbond let me interpret his return expression as she looked so beautiful, I couldn’t say no.
That was fair. There was very little I’d deny OJ. But man, tonight was going to give me a heart attack. We should have brought Lance. He could have put some Alphas into a sleeper hold or something.
Strat had tugged her over my lap and was nuzzling his face into her neck. Scent marking her, I realized. Man, why didn’t I think of that?
“Otillie-James, you take my breath away,” he growled, his hands running up and down her spine. “I vote we grab a bottle of something top shelf and just go back to my apartment.”
She threw her head back with a laugh. “No way. I got all dressed up and did my makeup and everything. We’re going to dance.”
As Sonny slipped in on the other side of the booth, I groaned. “We’re going to need alcohol, and a lot of it.” I signaled the bottle girl, who quickly returned with a bottle of tequila and an assortment of mixers. Sonny poured a couple of fingers of straight tequila into our glasses, and I raised mine in toast. “To our brilliant and talented Packmate on winning his case.”
“Cheers,” everyone chimed, clinking glasses and downing the smooth liquor, all except Sonny, who was on call for work. He was drinking pineapple juice. Poor bastard was going to have to watch our Omegas grind on the dancefloor sober.
OJ looked down at Strat. “Want to dance?”
I was far too full to dance, and my horror at the thought must have shown on my face. Sonny laughed, slapping my shoulder. “Don’t worry, True. I’ve got it.” Because there was no way in hell we were going to let our two sexy-as-fuck Omegas go onto the dancefloor by themselves. I didn’t trust any other fuckers.
Rightly so, because as soon as they started dancing, moving against each other sinuously, I got hard as a fucking rock, and I’d bet my fortune so did half of the club. The amount of eyes on my Omegas, watching them hungrily, made my skin itch.
I hated that I didn’t have my claim on Strat. To anyone who was looking, he was still fair game. They couldn’t know he was mine. They were both mine.
I growled low in my chest. Fuck it. Standing, I grabbed the bottle of tequila and walked out onto the dancefloor. Didn’t want the bottle rats to swipe it from the booth. Stepping up behind Strat, I buried my face in his neck as we moved to the fast-paced beat.
Just like everything he did, Strat was an excellent dancer. I passed him the bottle, and he took a mouthful, leaning forward and spitting the shot into OJ’s mouth.
Fuckkkkkk. I wasn’t going to survive.
We continued to dance as one song turned to another and then another. I’d undone my shirt halfway down my chest, and strands of OJ’s hair were sticking to her face. The white of Strat’s shirt was going see-through in some places.
I couldn’t see Strat’s face, but OJ’s pupils were blown wide, and I could scent her over the de-scenter they pumped into the clubs, so Alphas didn’t get frenzied while drinking. I looked up at Sonny and saw we were in agreement. We needed out of this club, and into somewhere that had a big bed.
He suddenly stilled, pulling out his phone and frowning. He flashed it to me, showing the text calling him into work. That sucked, but I guess that meant I got two Omegas all to myself.
Leaning into Strat’s body, I whispered in his ear, “Let’s get out of here.”