Chapter 4
FOUR
MAX
Parting the sun-yellowed vertical blinds strung across my bedroom window, I peeked outside, intently studying every shadow cast by the street lamps dotting the small parking lot.
None of them moved. Good. Hopefully, my stalker wasn’t out there.
Headlights swept the lot as a car pulled in off the street and parked a few spaces down from my door. A honk rang out, spurring me along.
Apparently, Joey didn’t like to wait.
With a deep inhale, I grabbed my phone and keys and headed for the front door, making sure to lock it behind me so that freak couldn’t break in while I was gone.
Thank fuck maintenance had finally fixed it while I was at work today. Like, what if he’d realized my door didn’t lock and snuck in to murder me, or watch me sleep or something fucked up like that?
I shuddered. It was bad enough that his scent haunted me everywhere I went; I didn’t need to worry about him actually being in my apartment.
Honestly, I thought I was going crazy. When I threw on my work uniform this morning, I swore I smelled him on it, like the bright fizz of fond deglazed off the bottom of a pan. And when I came home an hour or so ago, it was still there, taunting me.
God, I can’t wait until I can afford to leave this shithole, I thought as I stepped outside.
Thick, humid air smacked me in the face, offering little relief from the phantom scent everywhere I went. Even though it was dark, it hadn’t cooled down yet from the heat of the day, and with no breeze in sight, the hot, sticky moisture settled into the cracked concrete, wet and heavy.
It also settled into all of my nooks and crannies in a way that made me feel like I needed to shower again, despite having just done so. I jogged the last few steps to the passenger side door of Joey’s car before he honked again.
“Hey,” I said, throwing myself down into the seat and hitting the door lock—just in case. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“No problem,” he answered with a smile. “You look great.”
I blushed, suddenly self-conscious. With all my worrying over the stalker situation, I hadn’t had time to feel anxious about tonight, but now I was.
Peering down at my blue striped seersucker shorts and casually mussed button-down, I pushed the sleeves further up my forearms. “Thanks. Where are we going?"
Throwing the car in reverse, he peeled out of the lot. “It’s a surprise.”
I gripped the safety handle above my head to keep from bouncing against the seat. “Oh. Okay.”
I was nowhere near in the mood for surprises, but that would be rude to say.
I hadn’t told Joey about my stalker because I didn’t want him to think I was crazy or paranoid about stranger danger.
When I’d asked him to follow me home last night, I’d lied and said a neighbor was bothering me; that was all.
Then, he’d asked if I wanted to hang out tonight after work, and I’d agreed because I really needed to do something other than sit inside all night, terrified of some creep lurking in the shadows.
He hadn’t specifically said it was a date, but to be honest, I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be one, anyway. Without the initial rush of having someone’s attention, I realized I wasn’t all that interested in him beyond having a friend in a new place.
The drive was awkwardly quiet. Sitting on my hands, I stared out the window while the sleepy neighborhoods and businesses flew by. When he passed the last street lamp on the way out of town, I began to fidget.
“Not even a hint about where we’re going?” I asked, trying to be light and carefree. “Are you dropping me off in the middle of nowhere or something?”
He chuckled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No. There’s this club outside of town; you probably haven’t heard of it. We’re meeting some friends there.” He barely even glanced my way, not taking his eyes off the road.
I raised my eyebrows. I may be new to town, but how the fuck did he know where I had and hadn’t been? Also, a club sounded like the opposite of what I wanted right now. Too many people; too many shadows where a stalker could hide.
And who were his friends, anyway?
Unease skittered down my back. I realized how little I actually knew this guy. Everyone joked about the perils of dating a line cook, but I worked in a kitchen, too, and wasn’t anything like the stereotype.
Joey’s nice, I reminded myself. In a perfect world, I would’ve texted a friend my location so they could keep an eye on me until I got home, but I didn’t have any of those here yet.
My mood improved significantly when I spotted the small bursts of lightning lighting up the distant night sky, like tiny electric shocks dancing along the horizon. “Hey,” I said, pointing. “Cool! Heat lightning!”
Joey scoffed. “You know that’s not a real thing, right?”
I blinked. “Yes, it is.” I’d spent many warm summer nights outside with my mom as a kid, catching fireflies and watching the heat lightning zip through the atmosphere. It was her favorite thing about this time of year.
“It’s normal lightning, kid. We’re just too far away to hear the thunder. Heat lightning is a myth. The air can’t actually get so hot it forms lightning.”
My cheeks warmed, and I looked away, afraid he’d see the embarrassment on my face. “Oh.”
Thankfully, he turned off the main road not long after, distracting me from feeling like a popped balloon. We slowed, creeping down a derelict strip of asphalt that’d definitely seen better days.
A large, unmarked, metal warehouse came into view up ahead, lit by a single dim street lamp. The sparse windows spaced along the roofline glowed red, intermixed with a pulsing strobe light.
It did not look like a normal club.
“What is this place?” I asked, gripping the safety handle above my head again as we bounced down the pothole-laden drive.
Joey parked in what was once a grassy meadow next to the building, but was now a mud pit, torn up by tire tracks. There were too many other cars to count lined up in haphazard rows fading into the night.
How many people knew about a place like this?
He peered over at me, but I couldn’t make out his face in the gloom. “It’s for a certain kind of crowd.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What do you mean?”
Sensing my reticence, he sighed, exasperated. “It’ll be fine, kid. Just loosen up a little. Undo a few buttons, if you know what I mean.”
My earlier embarrassment calcified. I hated when he called me kid.
Twenty-three years old with dead and non-existent parents wasn’t a kid.
I may not be worldly and all-knowing about clubs for a certain kind of crowd, but I paid my own goddamn taxes.
I stressed about health insurance, bills, and retirement.
I took care of myself, every fucking day.
Sure, maybe I was more cautious than most. But you don’t grow up with a single omega mom and not learn a thing or two about alphas and how they’ll push your boundaries too far.
It was on the tip of my tongue to demand he drive me back home. Or, I could just start walking back to the road and call an Uber. But then, over his shoulder, I swore I saw something shift in the darkness outside.
My senses tingled. A predator watches.
I thought of my apartment, dark and lonely with a scary, masked alpha lurking nearby, and sighed. Fine. I could loosen up a little to blow off the stress and hopefully shake the creep off. “Sure. Okay. Let’s go,” I said.
“‘Atta boy,” he replied with what was closer to a sneer than a smile.
Fuck, I already regretted this.
Bass pounded through the walls of the single-story, long, metal-sided building when I stepped out of the car. For real, who built a club in a warehouse?
Following Joey, we stopped in front of a door manned by no less than four bouncers—which was odd, considering there was no line—who looked us both up and down, lingering a little too long on me. I couldn’t tell if they were leering or merely assessing our age.
The fact that they didn’t demand our IDs indicated the former.
I was of average height and build for an omega, but still carried some baby fat in my cheeks. Paired with blonde hair I could never keep out of my eyes and glasses, I probably looked closer to a Jehovah’s Witness youth than someone who went to a club for a certain type of crowd.
Apparently deciding I wasn’t going to ask them to attend church on Sunday, one motioned us inside. “Have fun.”
His tone gave me the heebie-jeebies.
The temperature wasn’t any more comfortable inside. In fact, it grew worse when a narrow hallway spilled out into a large, open area full of entirely too many people to be code-compliant.
I stifled a cough. “Somebody needs to turn on a fucking fan,” I hollered over the loud music. It smelled awful, like body odor and weed mixed with something tangy coming from the thick fog pumped out of machines placed along the perimeter of the room.
I was certain I’d rather not know its purpose.
“C’mon,” he yelled back, ignoring me. Gripping my arm, he dragged me forward.
Assuming he knew where we were going, I let him lead me through the crowd of people who weren’t exactly dancing, but more grinding all over one another.
Craning my neck around, I couldn’t help the pulse of desire in my belly.
Alphas and omegas were all packed together in a pit of sweat and skin, with more bare asses on display than I’d ever seen before.
A few couples, throuples, and even larger groups were having full-on sex on the fringes of the crowd.
But it didn’t just smell like sex and desire. Omega heat pheromones were so pungent you could cut the scent of slick and cum with a knife.
Surely, if someone had gone into heat, they wouldn’t be here, would they?
I peered around again, realization dawning. The ecstasy on both the omegas’ and alphas’ faces was unmistakable. This wasn’t just a club for a certain kind of crowd.
It was a heat club.
I was certain my cheeks were beet red. What the fuck had I gotten myself into? Why had Joey brought me here?