Chapter Sixteen #2
He snarls. "Roy. The alpha whose scent I licked off you this afternoon.”
It’s not a question. Slick floods my panties.
“It’s his birthday.”
“Callahan’s?”
It’s not a far-fetched guess. There are only two bars in town the college students frequent.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Drink some water. Keep this phone on you. I’m on my way, sweetheart.”
“You shouldn’t call me that.”
The bartender is back now, staring me down as she fills a beer.
“You have my cell?"
I close my eyes. "Yeah.”
There’s a muttered grumble. He's angry I didn’t call him first.
"Call me if anything happens. I’ll be there soon."
I pass the phone back to the glaring bartender, and she rolls her eyes and presses end call.
"Can I get a water?"
She passes me some lukewarm tap water in a flimsy plastic cup. The clear kind with the edges I’d gnaw on as a kid until the plastic turned white and started to peel.
A tall, older alpha next to me looks me up and down.
“Your gland pop yet?"
“Excuse me?”
“Your heat's soon. You looking for someone?”
I screw my face shut. I fucking hate my scent being a blinking green light to every alpha within a mile of me. No wonder suppressant abuse is so common.
"No. My alpha is on his way." It’s the first time I’ve referred to Connor as such outside a medical setting, and it feels amazing.
"Ain’t got a bite. Must not be that serious."
I push off the bar and walk away from him, and he mutters, “Hickeyed-up omega slut,” behind my back.
I leave the bar entirely to go outside and wait on the sidewalk for Connor. The cool air outside feels good on my overwarm skin.
There’s a group of people on the corner smoking cigarettes, and I shift away from them to avoid inhaling their smoke.
“Where ya goin’, pretty?” one of them shouts. He’s wearing black leather and has on motorcycle gloves.
I ignore him.
“You got something all over your little dress. Got just the thing for that, back at mine.”
His friends chuckle.
“Leave her alone, Morgan,” one of them says. “She’s scented.”
“No alpha who gave a shit would let her out this close to her heat. All slicked up without a bite in sight. Maybe he's into sharing?”
I curl my hands into fists. This is why I’ve had to work myself to the bone to stay on suppressants since the ceremony. Entitled assholes like Morgan and all those other pricks in the bar, who think any omega who goes in public close to their heat is a walking invitation.
I walk farther away from their group, but Morgan trails after me. The crosswalk sign shifts from green to red, and cars start to turn, cutting off my escape.
Morgan herds me up against the brick wall of the bar.
“What’s wrong, baby? I’m not gonna hurt ya. I’ll make you feel real good.”
I’m flushed and dizzy. The alcohol is really catching up to me. Maybe I should have stayed inside.
He reaches for my neck, and I shove him away. His scent reeks.
A familiar black Camaro brakes hard at the curb, stopping in the middle of traffic.
Morgan glances at it. I try to slide away from him, and he grabs me by the bicep.
A car door slams.
"Get your fucking hands off her."
Alpha .
Connor’s here. He looks furious—like an avenging angel.
Morgan smirks. “Let me guess. Your alpha? You really oughta keep better track of your things, bro. Someone might want to borrow them.”
Connor snatches the alpha’s arm off me and twists his wrist backwards until there’s a sickening crack.
Morgan screams. His wrist hangs limp and unnatural.
Connor takes my hand and pulls me toward his car as Morgan’s friends rush to help him. My omega purrs in pleasure at Connor’s display of violence on my behalf.
He opens the passenger door for me and helps me in, making sure I’m all tucked away and buckled before shutting the door.
I kick off my heels and rub my aching feet.
Connor slides behind the wheel and pulls off the curb. The engine purrs.
"Thank you."
He doesn’t respond. Tension rolls off him in waves. Is he mad at me?
When he misses the turn for my apartment, I glance over at him.
“Where are we going?”
“To mine.”
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
Well. Couldn’t argue with that logic.
We sit in silence for another minute.
“Do you have food at your apartment?” he asks.
“Ugh. No.” I haven’t had a chance to go grocery shopping amid the chaos.
“That’s why.”
His hand is resting on the gear shift, and I take it and fold it in mine. “Okay. We’ll pretend like you didn’t come up with that reasoning after the fact.”
Connor flashes me a look.
I collapse against the seat, relishing the seat warmers heating my bum.
“Sleepy,” I murmur.
He squeezes my hand. “I know, baby.”
I nod off on our drive to his place, only waking when the engine goes quiet and the headlights cut off.
I grab my heels by the straps and open the door, then pause before getting out.
It’s a long way from the low sitting passenger seat to standing, and I’m still dizzy.
Then Connor’s there, lifting me into his arms. He carries me over the threshold to his apartment like he’s bringing home his bride, and it stirs something forbidden inside me.
I nuzzle into his neck, right by his scent gland. I might drool a little. Connor tenses beneath me.
“Did you get taller?” I ask as he sets me down on his couch. He’s always been huge, but right now my face is even with his crotch.
“You’ll have to measure for me.”
He untangles my strappy heels from my hand and takes inventory. “Where’s your phone? Your keys and wallet?”
I shrug. “Roy was holding them for me while I danced, but I lost track of him.”
“I’m gonna kill that fucker.”
I giggle. Drunk Lana finds that incredibly funny for some reason.
“You can’t!”
“We’ll see.”
He drapes the blanket on the back of the couch over me and pushes my hair behind my ears. His fingers go to my neck, tracing the bruised glands with his thumbs.
“I marked you up.”
“It’s okay.”
“I wasn’t apologizing. I like seeing my marks on you.”
Fuck, that was hot. I clench my eyes shut. “You can’t say things like that, Connor.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll start to believe them.”
My stomach growls, and Connor heads to the kitchen. His place is nice, but soulless. Open floor plan with lots of sleek angles and black and chrome accents. He hasn’t bothered to decorate. Like he isn’t planning on staying long.
“I’ve got eggs, bacon, OJ. Suit you?”
“Yes please.”
“Scrambled? Medium well?”
“How come you remember all the things I like and the ways I like them?”
“Cause I love you, Birdy.”
My heart flops in my chest like a fish out of water. He says it so casually, it makes me question if he even realizes what he said. Does he expect me to forget by the morning? Will I forget?
It should feel like a revelation, but it doesn’t. Of course we love each other.
Like friends. That’s what he meant. My heart is leaping into my throat for no goddamn reason.
I doze wrapped in the scent of his blanket until Connor brings me a plate of deliciousness, then we eat together on the couch. I scarf everything down.
“It’s a one-bedroom, but you can take the bed. The couch sleeps alright.”
I look at him skeptically. “There’s no way you fit on this couch. Sleep in the bed with me.”
I don’t know what makes me say it. The alcohol—it has to be. I’m playing with fucking fire. I’m in his domain, surrounded by his scent, asking him to sleep in the same bed as me.
Connor stills. I watch the flex of his throat as he swallows.
He’s going to deny me. There’s no way he’ll agree.
“You sure?”
I nod silently, stunned.
I follow Connor into his room. Things feel awkward between us in a way they never have before.
“You wanna shower, or?—?”
I shake my head. “Maybe in the morning. I’m beat.”
“You sleeping in that?”
I glance down at my bandage dress. Usually I sleep in the buff, but even stripping down to my bra and panties feels risqué right now.
“You have something I can wear?”
Another swallow. A long blink. “Yeah.”
He pulls a pair of boxer briefs and an old gym tee out of his dresser and tosses them to me.
“These are the only bottoms I have that won’t fall right off you.”
“That’s fine.” His t-shirt is going to swamp me anyway.
I go into his bathroom and change. My panties are stained with slick from earlier, and I fold my dress around my underwear like I’m at the bloody gynecologist.
The boxer briefs fit me loosely, but the elastic keeps them up.
The brush of the silky fabric against my lips reminds me how these have cradled Connor’s cock and balls.
An image of him sliding them down his muscular thighs to free his bobbing erection flashes through my mind, and I banish the thought before I slick these up, too.
My brain is tempted to play out the fantasy of giving his boxers back to him full of my slick and seeing him come completely undone, but I shut that shit down. Fantasies aren’t going to do me any favors.
Connor’s faded gym shirt falls to my mid-thigh. It’s freshly laundered but still smells like him, and I want to pull it over my nose and huff.
What am I doing? Am I really going to risk it all to share a bed with Connor Masters?
I’m sobering up way too quickly. I’d prefer the excuse of alcohol to hide my actions behind.
“You okay in there?”
“Yep. Just using your toothbrush.”
A muffled chuckle. “I don’t mind.”
I bust out of the bathroom, catching him with a smile still on his lips. His eyes drop to my legs, then trail up my body. His jaw clenches.
“Lana.”
“Sharing toothbrushes is disgusting. Even if we were mated, I wouldn’t do that.”
Foot, meet mouth.
“If we were mated, we’d probably have a matching pair.”
“But how would we tell them apart?”
“One on the left, one on the right. Just like sides of the bed.”
“You’d take the side closest to the door.”
“Naturally.”
This is way past playing with fire. I’m swallowing it, dousing myself in gasoline and juggling lit matches. There’s no way I’m going to make it until our next tutoring session. I can feel my heat creeping up my neck like a warm breath on a cold night.
I gesture to the clothes I’m wearing. “I’m gonna smell like you.”
“When you smell like me, you smell perfect.”
Butterflies take flight in my stomach. “Are you tired?”
Connor glances toward the living room, then back to the bed. “Yeah. Go ahead and make yourself comfortable. I’m gonna change.”
I slide beneath the covers and fight the urge to snoop through his nightstand drawer.
He comes out of the bathroom dressed in low-slung sweatpants.
And that's all.
He's shirtless. I’ve seen him shirtless before, of course. At pool parties or swim practice, or when we went skinny dipping in the lake. Back when we were aware enough of each other’s bodies for it to be titillating, but too young for it to turn into anything illicit. This was different.
He’s ripped. Absolutely shredded.
My jaw hangs open. “Holy. Nope. You need to put that weapon of a torso away.” My skin goes hot just thinking about sharing the bed with him.
He looks almost sheepish.
“My alpha's been displeased since I moved. Working out is one of the only ways to quiet him.”
Of course. His alpha probably sensed something was amiss. Did part of him recognize me as his mate? Without the clarity of the claiming ceremony, it was hard to imagine, but mating dynamics were as much magic as science.
Connor pulls the covers back. "I sleep hot. You’re lucky I’m wearing pants."
The sink of the mattress as he climbs into the bed beside me feels like an opening salvo. The beginning of the end.
Every hair on my body stands on end. I feel alive in a way I haven’t in a long time.
There’s no way I can fall asleep like this. My body's exhausted, but my mind is racing. I’m in my mate’s bed.
I can sense every inch of his skin beneath the sheet beside me. I could reach out and touch him, taste him. Dust my fingers over his abs and trace the v-lines in his abdomen down the trail of hair leading beneath his waistband.
We lie there like awkward corpses, elbows splayed and bodies still. I’m wide-a-fucking-wake.
Connor leans over to his nightstand, pulls an e-reader out of the drawer, and slips on a pair of glasses.
It’s so fucking domestic that it’s heartbreaking.
“Holy shit. Connor Masters uses reading glasses.”
He glances at me over the rims. He looks like one of those unreasonably hot glasses models who don’t obey the laws of the universe, because glasses only amplify their hotness.
He shrugs. “I’m getting old.”
“Not getting any wiser, though.”
I roll over and crane my neck to see his screen. My leg brushes against his.
“What are you reading?”
“You used to hate being asked that question.”
“Because it was always some jerk whose only talking points were how quiet I was and that I should smile more doing the asking. As if reading equated loneliness.” Sometimes I didn’t even respond, just lifted the cover to show them.
I hadn’t begun to know the meaning of loneliness, back then.
“And you were usually reading smut.”
I snort. “Undoubtedly. You were the only one who knew what to do.”
When we started sitting together on the bus, he’d pull out his own tattered paperback and read next to me, rather than ask what I was reading. The conversation would then come naturally, instead of feeling like an imposition or interruption.
“Because I understood what it was like to be on your side of the question. And I knew I’d have better luck earning your smiles than asking for them.”
He makes my heart hurt when he talks like this. He always knows the right thing to say. I need to change the subject.
“So, what are you reading?” I waggle my eyebrows.
He cracks a smile. “Smut.”
I wriggle closer until my thigh presses against his. He wasn’t lying about running hot.
He trails his spare hand through my hair, gently combing it.
I cuddle close and fall asleep on his bare chest while staring at the quiet glow of the e-reader, thinking about how much I’ve missed him.