Chapter Eleven
Oren
Noble had not been to the club since our early morning coffee, and it took everything I had not to stop by Dave’s Quickie Mart during the late-night hours when he might be there.
I’d always heard that meeting one’s mate changed everything, and that was certainly true.
If he was my fated. My wolf seemed certain of it.
But that did not mean I could become a stalker.
Just because being around him provoked emotions I’d never experienced before.
Had me in an uproar, and the omega knew I was a member of Crowned, and since I had been going every night, if he wanted to see me, he could. He also had my contact information.
Amazing how rarely I’d managed to get to Crowned without the incentive of maybe seeing Noble.
I still wanted to get ahead in the firm, still went in very early to be sure I could accomplish everything I needed to, but as I worked with my financial advisor to transfer some of my investments to the Crowned parent company, I was shocked at how much I’d managed to squirrel away.
My money had been growing steadily, and probably would continue to do so if I made no changes, but it wasn’t all about dollars and cents.
Crowned provided a service to those in the lifestyle, one I wanted very much to support. It had been a refuge for me, for sure.
I sat on a barstool, nursing my bourbon water and observing everything around me, finding it hard to believe that soon, I might have a partial ownership of this place.
“Having fun?” Gatlin was on duty this particular night.
As head of security, he had explained that he would often take a shift as dungeon monitor when they were shorthanded.
Something I would volunteer for when I finalized my paperwork.
If they wanted me to. I looked forward to it.
The DMs provided a safety net for everyone, and the dominant in me had a strong protective instinct.
“Standing there like a statue isn’t one of the more popular activities here at Crowned.
Since you’re about to own a share of it, I thought you should know.
” He wore a more casual ensemble than usual, black jeans and button-down with the DM armband enhancing the girth of his left biceps.
“Yeah, so I hear. Just woolgathering. Busy night?”
“It is. And seems to be amateur night. You would not believe what I just had to break up.”
“No?” My focus lay on a spot across the floor where I thought I’d gotten a glimpse of my—of the omega from the back. No…just some other random guy with a great ass. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You’ve got it bad. Reminds me of when I met Shaw. Did I ever tell you he was the one who got away and then…you are not listening.”
“I am really. Okay, that’s a lie. You were saying something about amateurs?”
“Yes, and I was also going to ask you if you wanted to help out as a volunteer DM. We do use them sometimes, but I’ve changed my mind.”
“About which?” I asked. “Telling me the story about the amateurs or meeting Shaw for the second time or helping out?”
“I have a feeling I’ve already told you my Shaw story,” he said. “But I’ve changed my mind about all of those things. I don’t think you want to listen to me blather on. And you’re about to be even more distracted—not what we want for a DM.”
“Distracted, why?”
“Because, right now, staring a hole in your back, is a certain masked omega, and…” He probably said more, but his words faded into the excited yapping inside me as I nearly got whiplash, spinning around.
“That’s him!”
“I’ve got to go stop someone from flogging too high and— Why am I still talking?”
“I don’t know.” Lifting a hand, I waved to the security chief and started across the floor. “Catch you later.”
His laughter followed me, but I couldn’t mind.
The omega stood silhouetted against the light of the foyer.
He still wore the mask, and I wondered if it was for the general membership.
Not me, please. Although he’d managed to stay in the early morning shadows on the patio of the café, I’d gotten a better look than he might realize. “Hi, Noble. Nice to see you again.”
“Oren.” He nodded, his mask bobbing, and he reached up to steady it. “I thought I’d stop by for a while. Looks busy tonight.”
“It is and, according to a friend of mine who is DMing, a lot of amateurs in need of some supervision. Would you like to check out the scene or maybe have a drink?” I was only hoping he wouldn’t say he was meeting someone else.
“Let’s walk around,” he said. “I may be damaged, but I’m no amateur.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” Reaching out, I took his hand. “Don’t want to lose you in the crowd.”
He let me link our fingers. “You’re glad I’m not an amateur? I thought all alphas liked the virginal type.”
“Not me.” I’d never felt that way. Why should it matter if I was his first?
We both had a life before we met. I was much more interested in being his last. “Someone with a little experience knows what they want, what they need. It’s much more fun than wasting time trying everything.
” I leaned close to his ear, just above the moon scar.
“Not that I don’t enjoy a little experimentation, but I’m hoping you’ll share with me what gets you hard, reaches you emotionally… all the good reasons we come here.”
He choked a little before letting me tow him through a thick section of crowd to the first station where an alpha had nude two omegas bound back-to-back. The long tails of a custom flogger licked over their skin, eliciting gasps and groans and “please” for more. “Uh, not this,” Noble said. “No.”
“What’s a no about it? You don’t like leather tails?”
“I do. I just don’t like threesomes. When I’m with an alpha I… I guess I don’t want to share their attention.”
“Music to my ears. They are enjoying it though. Definitely not an amateur alpha here.”
“No.” His grip tightened for a second. “He’s not.”
Oh. Okay. He’d been with the alpha and appreciated his skill. “Would you want to be with him again?”
“No.” No more words, but I chose to hear them the way I wanted them to read. Was he also feeling the mating? Did his wolf speak to him?
We strolled on, following the general flow of people from station to station.
There were indeed a few who needed supervision, and we watched one alpha removed from the station because he’d failed to respond quickly enough to the omega’s safe word of yellow.
Not an end to the scene. That would be red, but it did call for a pause, a reset, probably a little conversation.
I’d made a mental note that flogging would be acceptable, but nothing else seemed to move him until we came to one of the spanking benches toward the far end of the room. His hand in mine grew moist, and signs of arousal were both in his increased breathing and in his pants.
“This one?” I pulled him in closer to me, while an alpha I’d seen around a few times, a virtual giant with bulging muscles, spanked the living daylights out of his omega.
When the sub’s ass cheeks were flaming red with criss-crossed handprints, the alpha untied his wrists and ankles and gathered him in his arms with breathtaking gentleness.
“Yes.” Noble leaned into me. “They are so good together.”
“They certainly are.” After that, we retreated toward the bar and found a two-seater table where we could have a drink and talk a little more about what we’d seen. The omega liked impact play, but he was not a masochist by anyone’s standards and not interested in a sadist in his life.
Very lucky, since I was anything but. He sipped his rum and diet ginger ale through a straw, probably the only way he could in the mask without spilling it, and when we finished, I made a suggestion.
“Would you like to keep this going for a bit? Maybe have a drive…possibly shift?”
He was silent long enough I was about to tell him never mind, and let him off the hook, but then he said, “I’d like that very much.”
And my heart raced.