Chapter Twenty Three #2
“I can go to the bathroom on my own,” Lennon told me bluntly when we made it to her before she could even reach the doors. Her complexion was completely flushed, like she was running some kind of fever.
Alarm bells started to go off somewhere in the back of my mind.
“Not how that works,” Brooks told her brightly as he held it open for her and gestured for her to pass through.
Before I stepped after her, I felt a heavy gaze on the back of my head. Turning, I found the eyes of Bunny Holloway locked onto mine.
She nodded in acknowledgement before going back to her dinner.
Strange, I thought as I hurried to follow Lennon through the lobby that was almost entirely empty save for the occasional employee or Secret Service agent.
The restrooms were located behind the check-in desk down a long, winding hallway and by the time we made it there Lennon had started to sway on her feet.
“Whoa,” I said as her knees buckled and I caught her, dropping to the ground with her as I held her burning hot body to mine. “What’s happening? Are you all right?”
Brooks, who’d been walking in front of her, whirled on his feet and hurried to block us from view.
“I don’t know…” Lennon said to me dazedly, her fingers tightening on the cuff of my sleeve as she let out a groan. “It feels like the room is spinning and I’m so hot.”
As she spoke, the enclosed space of the hallway filled with the unmistakably heady scent of cherry wine and pieces started to click into place.
In the ballroom, amongst all of the guests who hadn’t bothered with suppressants, my nose had been all but useless amongst the chaos. But here in this secluded hallway? It was hitting me full force that Lennon was about to go into heat.
“Shit,” I hissed, pressing my hands to her feverish forehead.
I just didn’t understand how it had come on so fast. She’d been fine this morning and most of my alpha classes had taught me that there would be signs in the weeks leading up to an omega’s heat.
Then as quickly as that thought came, my mind rushed in to answer. Omegas often sought out extra sexual encounters with their alphas, made risky decisions, were twitchy with their emotions, and started seeking out textures that soothed their skin.
Everything that had happened over the past few weeks, the sudden bond with Maverick that his instincts had basically taken over for, the risk of walking down a floor filled with other agents in a nightgown, her yo-yoing mood all day today… and then there was the dress.
Lisa and Landon had picked out a different dress for her, a sparkly blue number that had been approved by the powers that be (i.e. her mother and McDaniels), but Lennon had insisted on wearing a different, completely satin blue dress instead.
Initially, I’d assumed it was because this dress covered more of her shoulders, but now that I thought about it more I’d seen her fingers fiddling and rubbing the fabric together all night as we rode in the car together and as she spoke with people during the cocktail hour.
All of it pointed to an encroaching heat, we had just never dealt with it before because we’d never had an omega before.
“Lennon, honey, when was your last heat?” I asked, putting one hand under her knees and another behind her back before lifting her into my arms.
She was quiet for a moment before she quietly answered. “Last year.”
“Last year?” Brooks, who had been facing away from us and watching the entrance of the hallway, gasped. “How?”
“Heat suppressants. For the election. My doctor told me it should be okay as long as I flush them out of my system after it’s over… I don’t know why they stopped working.”
I frowned at that. “You’re still taking them?”
She nodded. “I took them this morning, the same as always. But I guess those also don’t seem to work around you guys like a lot of things.”
That made sense, I guessed, though it didn’t really help me right now.
Looking at Brooks, we exchanged a grim look.
“Go up and get Mav and Dallas. We need to get a room immediately for at least the night. Then I need you to find Lennon’s grandmother,” I told him, thinking of the look that the older woman had sent me. Had she known this was about to happen?
“No,” Lennon said weakly. “Don’t tell anyone.”
But she was in no condition to protest, her body starting to writhe with pain in my arms as the first sign of heat cramps seemed to be taking effect.
“Shh,” I told her soothingly. “I’m going to take care of you in just a second.”
“What are you going to do?” Brooks asked, his eyes on Lennon and his pupils looking blown. He looked about two seconds from losing control himself.
“I’m going to calm her down enough to get her upstairs without the entire hotel noticing,” I said, taking a step back away from him. “Now go, Brooks.”
That seemed to snap him out of his trance. The alpha turned on his heel and hurried down the hallway.
There were three options for the restroom, the women’s, the men’s, and the family restroom. I chose the third, hoping for a lock.
The restroom was ritzy with a long, low marble countertop, recessed lighting and what looked like a small chandelier hanging from the ceiling. But I didn’t care about any of that.
Flipping the lock over, I pulled on the door, testing to make sure we didn’t have any uninvited visitors, and then put Lennon down on the counter.
“I don’t feel good, Zeke,” Lennon moaned, her arms slung around my shoulder as she rested her forehead on my chest.
“I know,” I said, trying to keep my voice even despite the sheer amount of pheromones leaking off of Lennon and filling the small confined bathroom.
If I wasn’t careful, I was going to lose my mind completely, my inner alpha clamoring to the surface, ready to take what it already perceived as his.
Lennon’s dress would make what I needed to do difficult, so I reached around and pulled down the zipper, my fingertips brushing along her spine and making her arch against me until I reached the end.
“Can you stand up and step out of the dress for me? I don’t want to wrinkle it.”
She nodded before getting up on wobbly feet, one hand on my shoulder as she stepped out of the dress and stood in front of me in the lacy nude bra and panties that were sending my mind into what could only be described as horndog overdrive.
Lennon’s head lolled to the side as she stared at me, her pale blonde curls tumbling down over her shoulder. “Do you like me, Zeke?”
“You know I do, Lennon,” I replied, my voice raspier than I’d ever heard it before.
“Show me then,” she demanded, her voice tinged with a whine. “Make me feel better.”
She wasn’t completely in her right mind, her heat pushing all coherent thought aside in favor of the pursuit of stimulation and the need to bond and breed.
This wasn’t the place to do that.
Logically, I knew that, but her scent was making my head spin and my cock stiffen uncomfortably in my pants with the need to press so deeply inside of her that my knot notched in that special place that was unique to omegas, the one I had never felt before.
“I’ll make you feel better,” I purred, the noise sounding a bit awkward as I tried to find my rhythm. “But the main show will have to wait until later, honey, okay?”
Lennon made a noise low in her throat, something like a delicate growl, but nodded anyway. “Fine, just please make this burning stop.”
Then, as if to punctuate her words, she grabbed my hand and drew it in between her legs where slick ran freely.
“Sit up on the counter for me,” I directed, my fingers slipping the gusset of her panties aside as her ass met the cold marble and she hissed.
This wasn’t how I wanted to make love to Lennon for the first time. I’d been imagining a candlelight dinner and a romantic nest-like hammock on a beach, but beggars couldn’t be choosers when it was finally time to get my girl.
Lennon’s hands slid up the lapels of my jacket, pulling me in close so our mouths could collide in a vicious, hungry mashing of lips and teeth.
My fingers slipped inside of her dripping cunt easily, her heat-slick guiding the way.
“More,” she demanded, her words smothered by my mouth. “Give me more, Zeke.”
I obliged, my thumb brushing past her impossibly swollen clit, gratified when her hips bucked against my hand.
The need to work fast, to soothe this wave of her heat so we could get her away from prying eyes warred with the desire to dominate and make her mine. My inner alpha was pressing down on all of the rationality I still possessed like it was a thread being pulled too tight and it was about to snap.
Think of all of the people out there, Zeke, I told myself silently as I spurred Lennon toward her first climax of her heat. Think of her mom and her grandparents.
Think of how badly all of this can go if you give in and fuck her in this bathroom.
That was enough to check the ardor that my inner alpha was doing its very best to stoke.
Pulling my face away from Lennon’s, I pressed her mouth to my shoulder.
“Come for me Lennon,” I growled softly into her ear, feeling her slick insides quiver around my fingers. “Come, but be quiet so no one can hear you.”
It took a few more well placed strokes before she shattered. The cloth of my jacket took the brunt of her muffled moan as she held onto me for dear life until the shakes finally started to die down.
“Thank you,” she mumbled, her head turning to the side so she could lay it on my chest as she continued to shiver.
Brushing her hair away from her sweaty back, I just placed a soft kiss on her temple. “Anytime, now let’s get you dressed again so we can get you out of here. What do you say?”
I felt her smile. “Sounds like the best thing I’ve heard all day.”