Chapter Eight
Laz
The door slams behind me when I let it go. Normally I don't like loud noises, and I definitely don't like the anxiety of a slammed door, but I'm so angry that my body is hot.
“Why did you do that?”
“Do what?” Kris asks, looking over her shoulder on her way to the small bar in the corner of the main room.
“You know what,” I spit.
“Oh, sweetheart. Calm down. You're just going to work yourself up into a state.”
I am already in a state, and climbing higher.
I would wring her neck if I thought I could manage it.
I can't. She'd never allow it to happen.
Anytime I even hint at becoming physically aggressive, she barks out commands to sit down and be quiet like any Alpha would when their authority is being questioned.
She might look like a delicate little flower, but I've seen how vicious she can be if provoked.
“Why, Kris? Why did you put me in that position?”
“What position would you have preferred? Under him? On all fours?” She smirks as she pours herself a drink. “Cowgirl?”
My mouth tightens into a thin line.
“Are you going to pout? Or sulk?” she asks.
“Just tell me why.”
She sighs dramatically. “To bait him.”
“This isn't a game or a paycheck, Kris. Brooks is not a client.”
She laughs and takes a sip of her drink. “He most certainly is. He might be the biggest fish of them all. I was just making the worm look nice and juicy.”
“No,” I argue. “You didn't. What you did is ask for a Valla rampage.”
She blinks innocently. “Why would he go on a rampage?”
I rake my hands through my hair, yanking on the roots. “Brooks isn't a client, Kris.”
“Is he special?”
“Stop it.”
“You seem terribly lucid today.”
“Brooks isn't a client.”
“No,” she sighs. “I suppose not. But he will pay through the nose for a few minutes with you. That's a fact.”
“I can't see him again, Kris. I can't.”
“Just imagine how good it would feel if you were flying high and boiling hot and I handed you over to that Valla for a week.” Her voice trails off wistfully.
My dick is immediately hard at the mention of Brooks and R in the same sentence.
“No.”
“You'll do it.”
“I won't.”
Her lips curl around the rim of her glass in a small smile. “We'll see.”
***
I don't want to ask her for it. She told me she'd give it to me when I asked for it.
I'd rather die than ask her for anything right now, especially my medicine.
But it's been two days and I'm so sick. I'll only get sicker and sicker and sicker until I'm no more than a pile of sick and bones on the floor begging for relief.
That relief will have a cost, though, and I'm terrified of what it will be.
Deep down, I know what she's doing. I know what her goal is, and the longer I go without R, the more confident I am that I'm right. Terribly right.
Kris is using me to climb social and para-political ladders.
The clients started out as her friends, whom she wanted me to meet and whom she knew she could trust me with.
But they stopped being friends somewhere along the way, and now all of her clients are high profile in one way or another.
And they're all financially loaded. As the client list improved, so did the living quarters Kris set up.
The penthouse we're currently living in came right after I spent a week with an Alpha in the rafters of the proverbial food chain who had very specific and very cruel tastes.
He's one of the few that I can remember in vivid detail, and it isn't a fond memory.
Kris sees Brooks as a big fish. If I thought of him as someone who didn't matter, I would agree with her.
But he might be the only person in the world who actually does matter.
He didn't deserve to see Kris crawling all over me.
He didn't deserve seeing her hands on me at all.
She did that on purpose to show him what he could have access to if he's willing to pay her price.
She's done it before; I've just never cared about it—until now.
Until now all that mattered was my next dose and the ecstasy waiting for me on the other side of it.
None of this was real until just a little while ago.
Up until I couldn't look away from his eyes, it was all just noise.
Guilt and shame are two different things, and they're both so heavy inside me right now that breathing is difficult. I can't let this happen. I can't let her turn Brooks into just another client. I can't let her sell me to him.
I was with Brooks the first time I took R. One of his guys gave me some to try. He said Brooks would enjoy it as much as I did. And he did. We both did. It was supposed to be a one-off thing that was fun for a night.
But I liked it too much.
Everything felt so much better with R. Every single orgasm was made of celestial matter, and I couldn't stop.
I. Couldn't. Stop.
Brooks tried to enjoy it as much as I did.
I remember bits of our life back then. He tried to enjoy the effects R had on me because that was initially the point of it, but eventually the point changed, and he didn't enjoy anything about it.
He told me he wouldn't compete with the drug.
He told me to choose. I chose. And now he's back, and I have been presented with the truth of that choice, and I'm ashamed of it.
I can't let her turn Brooks into just another client. I can't.
But I know what will happen if I let myself go again. I know it as deeply as I know my own name. If I am going to be with Brooks again in this lifetime, it can't be like that. I would rather die.
I can't go on like this, either. Eventually, and sooner rather than later, I will succumb to my misery and ask for it.
I'll beg her to make me feel better. And she will.
And I don't know what I'll wake up to. The wound on my thigh from the mark removal is only halfway healed.
If she sends me under and calls Brooks, if he comes, he'll see it.
He'll know. He'll know what I've become.
He'll know what I've allowed. I can't. I just can't.
Inevitably, though, I do.
Less than a week. That's how long it takes for me to give in to the furious, nauseating craving.
“Please don't call Brooks,” I beg Kris as she measures the dose.
“I'm only giving you half of what you normally get. You've gone without for so long now that we can play with your tolerance a little. Isn't that exciting?” The dark light in her eyes lets me know exactly how exciting she finds it.
“I don't care about that,” I tell her. “Just don't call him here. Promise me.”
She gives me a stern look. “I promised I'd take care of you, didn't I?”
“That's not the same thing,” I counter. “Kris. Not him.”
“Well.” That's all she says as she holds her hand out expectantly.
I hesitate before I stretch my hand toward her and let her turn my wrist so that the blue-green veins show proudly. I can't stop this from happening. I've made the choice.
“Call someone else,” I whisper harshly. “Please.”
“There is one person who I think would be the right fit...” she trails off, knowing I'll take the bait.
I swipe a hand over my sticky forehead and try to tuck my hair behind my ear. It isn't quite long enough, but I try anyway. “Who?”
“Someone new. You'll like them.”
Them.
“Them” always means a female Alpha.
Fuck it. I shouldn't be allowed to enjoy this, anyway.
I'm making another choice. I'm going to stop doing this to myself.
I've threatened to get clean before—I've even meant it a few times.
This time is real. The threat of being given to Brooks like a common whore and not even remembering it after the fact is worse than being sick, dying, or anything else. I have had enough.
“I don't like it when you get that look on your face, honey,” Kris says, squeezing my wrist. “It always means trouble for us.”
Us.
Us.
I let a laugh slip out as she slips the needle in. “There won't be any trouble.” Not yet.
The drug takes less than five minutes to reacquaint itself with my system, and less than an hour after that, I'm being mounted by a very pretty female Alpha whose name doesn't matter because I will burn through her by the time the sun goes down.
She's still soft enough to be hurt by the simple fact that I don't want her.
Pretty women don't like it when they're not the end goal, and while she can suck me off and ride me until both of us are raw, she will never be what I need to assuage this endless burning ache.
I might not want her, but I do need her. I need whatever relief I can get, even if it's her warm pussy locked around me. I'll take it, but it won't be enough. It will never be enough. Kris will have to call someone else if I'm to have any relief.
Then I remember what she said. Half the amount. It's going to wear off. It's going to wear off while I'm still balls deep inside this woman. And then...
Then I'll have to wait until it's over before I can get away from her. It's happened before, but it feels different this time. I can't concentrate long enough to figure it out now, which means that it will come barreling into me later.
“Such a sweet Omega,” the Alpha purrs as she fucks me. “You're doing so well.”
Even if I were capable of a response, I wouldn't bother giving her one. She's saying it for her own benefit.
Hours, months, millennia later, the R finally wanes in my bloodstream, and I can feel myself coming back together.
Bit by torturous bit. The first thing that registers is the feel of her hair brushing across my chest and face.
The next thing is the slick sweat between our bodies.
Then the thick, tacky feel of her body surrounding mine.
“Wait,” I mumble, as the discomfort begins to mount. “Wait.”
She pauses mid-thrust, smiling down at me, her eyes empty of anything good. “Again? She said you may need some more, but this is ridiculous.”
“What?” I ask, trying and failing to grip her hips to lift her off of me. “What do you mean?”
She leans over to get something off the nightstand, but I'm still too muddled to keep track. She leans down, breathing hotly into my face before her lips fall against mine. Then a sharp sting bites into my bicep, and I gasp.
She raises back up and resumes her grinding thrusts as my eyes roll back.
“Two days,” she grunts, but it sounds far away. “I paid for two days of you, and I'm getting them.”