18 #2
Another time, the photographer was one of those alphas who thinks way too highly of himself, all up in his own head, and he was giving me all these sneering alpha orders.
For some reason, that just made me crazy.
I lost my temper. I didn’t hit anyone, but I may have destroyed some…
things. I may have knocked things over and yelled and threw what you could call a fit, and…
Anyway, when I met this other omega at the modeling event, and he told me about this website, where it would be very sexy stuff, but where I didn’t necessarily have to do nudes, and where I could decide how far it went, and where it was a subscription model and all of that, I was desperate enough that it seemed like a lifeline.
I did like it, actually. I thought I got good at understanding photograph composition and I enjoyed a lot of aspects of it. I did keep all of the pictures shoulders and below. I showed my dick, not my face.
And the subscribers were these sad alphas who had never, like, touched an omega, who had spent their whole lives in marriages with betas, who had children, who were in love with their partners and families but still had this odd ache.
People don’t talk about this, really, how life is often a set of compromises, that it is very rare to get everything you want, and that most people know this, and they honestly don’t even mind it.
They fall in love, and the love is big enough that it drowns everything else out.
They don’t mind the things they’re missing, because they determine those things weren’t important.
But sometimes, people do mind. And those people, they can’t live in this either/or life, where they just swear off omegas forever. So, they do things like subscribe to omegas online, develop ghosts of relationships with them.
Is it cheating?
I mean, yeah, it is.
Is it worse to cheat physically, in person, instead of just onscreen, where you talk to a person who never actually touches your knot? I think so.
I’m not making excuses for these people or saying what they did with me was just fine, you understand? I’m just saying I felt bad for them.
I’m trying very hard to explain this to Hannah, who just nods and waves me on from it. I guess it’s not that big of a deal to her.
I guess she probably wants me to get to the alphas. That is what I’m supposed to be telling her.
How did I meet my alphas? I met them at a naked party, and I sucked their dicks and they sucked mine. When I say I don’t have a lot of sexual partners, maybe I’m leaving out all the dick sucking, actually. Maybe if you count all of that, I’m a little bit of a slut.
Hannah raises her eyebrows at that. So many questions.
What’s a naked party?
Where to start?
So, I did the website, and I made a lot of money, and then I didn’t need more money, but I found myself doing other things that I didn’t need to do, but saying that I was doing them for money.
Hannah gives me a horrified look, so I hasten to tell her that I wasn’t a male stripper or something, that I wasn’t a sex worker who had actual sex for mone—
I mean, maybe I was.
It’s all weird lines, right? I would do these parties where they would hire a certain amount of omegas because—apparently—omegas don’t voluntarily come to these things?
And really, who could blame them? What omega is like, “Yes, sign me up, I want to go hang out with a bunch of very horny alphas at a clothing-optional party”?
So, I was not getting paid to have sex. I was paid to go to a party and be naked. And people would come to these parties and mostly just look at naked omegas. Mostly.
But Kane was, of course, very forward. Most of the people who come to these parties come dressed, even though it’s clothing-optional. For most people, just going to the naked party is enough of a thrill. They don’t need to do anything more than that.
So, Kane, though, arrived wearing only a collar with a little silver chain around it and this weird thong-cockring thing. I don’t know. His dick was sticking out. It was hard, but it was like lingerie. Gatlin was holding his “leash.”
Kane came over and talked to me. I mean, came over and propositioned me, really. He smelled… well, Hannah knows how he smells. I give her a look and she nods.
“So,” I say, “that’s how I met them.” There, maybe we’re done. Maybe she knows everything she needs to know now.
Hannah furrows her brow. “I would have thought it would have been the other way around. I would have thought Kane was holding Gatlin’s leash.”
“Would you.” I shake my head. “No, that’s not their dynamic. It’s not that Kane is more dominant. Kane is flashier. Gatlin is more cautious. Kane excites Gatlin. Gatlin is buttoned-up and proper, and Kane is everything Gatlin is not, and therefore everything Gatlin wants.”
Hannah thinks about this and nods.
I tell her that Gatlin’s love language is acts of service or whatever, right? Kane’s love language is gifts.
I mean, I think that’s right. We did a group therapy session once and talked about love languages.
My love language, from the quiz the therapist made us take, is supposedly also acts of service. But that seems crazy, because I really resent being obligated to people.
Hannah glares at me.
I think I should probably stop explaining the alphas and go back to groveling. “Hannah, you should know that I’m sorry, really sorry—”
“How did they bite you?” she interrupts.
I explain to her that I went into this surprise heat, and I called them, because I was miserable and they were the nicest alphas I knew.
They came over to my place and came into my nest and took turns knotting me, and they were real patient with me and real sweet, and they made me feel like, you know, a princess.
I smirk at Hannah when I say that, but I think she knows what I mean.
So, I was in heat, and they were licking me all over, and I started begging for bites. And then they bit me. We were crazy turned on, and there’s the way the air smells when our scents are activated. She knows. She’s smelled it. It’s heady and it makes it easy to do things.
But then it happened, and it was just very obviously done, and there was very little any of us could do to alter it.
Also, none of us were admitting that we might want to alter it.
All of us were very vocally telling the other two that we were super freaking happy about this and that we wanted to make it work.
Gatlin wanted me to move in right away. He fixed up a room for me—without asking me what I liked or anything, admittedly—and then he showed it to me.
By the way, he hadn’t even told Kane that he’d done this, so Kane was there when Gatlin was showing me the room and was all, “Move in with us, omega.”
Kane didn’t say anything. He didn’t rescind the invitation or anything. Instead, he was a little too vocal about how I should definitely move in.
I really did want it to work.
Obviously, I moved in.
And then, you know, we tried.
There, that’s it, then, I think I’ve explained everything. Back to groveling. I wonder if I should grovel on my knees or something, really go for it?
Hannah speaks up. “So, all three of you tried? So, why didn’t it work? And don’t tell me it was your fault, because I know there’s more to it than that.”
I think about this, blowing out a huff of air.
I think and I think, and then I have it.
I think I can illustrate why everything went wrong between us with one story.
So, we’d been living together for a while at this point. It was after I tried to go to therapy and things got weird and I quit therapy.
It was after I took down my profile on the website, because my alphas—notably Gatlin—were not entirely cool with my having all these pseudo-relationships with alphas online.
“That’s weird to me, too,” says Hannah, breaking in. “Because I would think Kane would be possessive.”
I think about that. “Kane’s possessiveness is balanced by his desire for independence,” I say. “So, if he recognizes that giving me freedom means he has an excuse to not commit and be free, too, he’s fine with it.”
She makes a face, as if she doesn’t really like that.
I decide to tell the story.
Basically, it was an argument that we had because Kane wanted us to go to another of these clothing-optional parties, and he had purchased me this outfit. It covered all the major body parts, but it was a very sexy outfit.
Kane liked dressing me up and taking me places, showing me off. I liked it, too, because it made my omega feel very claimed and chosen.
Gatlin was like, “This is insane. We are not parading our omega around for other alphas to go sniffing around.”
Kane was all, “I can totally protect him, and besides, he only wants us.”
Gatlin gave me this look which said that he knew that wasn’t true, and it may have been the case that I had been set loose at these parties since getting the bite and had been… flirty… with other alphas.
Gatlin was like, “Why are we even going to these parties? We don’t need this. We have an omega. We’re settled. We don’t need to be interacting with other people. We need to be thinking about the future instead.”