Marcus #2
I watch him go, trying to calm the tremble in my own hands even though I’m not the one who just completed a merciless workout. I’m acutely aware of where Alex’s sweat is still clinging to my fingertips from when I made the few corrections to his form.
I wipe my hands on my sweats, closing my eyes for a few long moments to regain my composure, telling myself he’s just another client until I start to believe it again.
I need to get changed before finishing up my shift back in the office, so when I’ve caught my breath, I follow him into the locker room.
I can tell the energy is all wrong as soon as I step into the changing area.
Alex is standing next to an open locker, his shirt already off, revealing the magnificent, ultra-defined expanse of his chest. But standing a few feet away from him is Chet—a heavyweight brawler with a record as dirty as his mouth—who’s got his arms crossed and his chest puffed out.
He’s flanked by a couple of other semi-regulars at the gym, Jaxon and Price, neither of whom I’ve ever trained, but I’ve seen them around enough to get a distinctly alpha-hole vibe.
“I’m just asking what a fucking dancer is doing at a boxing gym,” Chet sneers, his tone dripping with mockery that gets my hackles up instantly. “What are you gonna do, knock us out with a twirl?”
He sniggers like a playground bully, and Alex just leans back against the metal lockers, looking bored.
“Well,” he says, his voice icy, smooth, and completely unbothered.
“I’ve been training for a minimum of eight hours a day since I was four, I can lift a man twice your size clean above my head like he’s a feather, and I’m so flexible I could probably lie on the floor and still kick your teeth out.
So yeah, I guess I could knock you out with a twirl, if that’s what you’re into. ”
A vein pulses in Chet’s forehead, and Alex checks his nails nonchalantly, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
“Is that a fucking challenge?” Chet spits, his sour scent spiking in the small space.
His pheromones are making my instincts flare with red hot aggression all the way from the doorway, so how Alex is maintaining such steely control is beyond me. “You trying to fight?”
“Not particularly,” Alex drawls. “You smell like the bottom of a teenage boy’s laundry hamper. I’d rather not have that rubbing off on me.”
Chet takes a step forward, getting in Alex’s face. I move towards them, sensing that things are about to go south, but Alex flicks his gaze to me and gives a subtle shake of his head, signalling for me to stay out of it.
“I thought your type loves rubbing off on other guys. Maybe even other alphas,” Chet taunts, and there it is: the elephant in the room. The unspoken assumption that’s behind the subtle shift in the atmosphere whenever Alex walks into the gym full of regulars.
It makes my stomach roil; whatever my personal hang-ups, I’ve never tolerated homophobia or discrimination of any kind in my personal life, and I want the gym to reflect that.
But the reality is that a lot of the guys who train here are old school.
It’s baked into the fabric of boxing, like plenty of other sports—growing up, eighty percent of locker room trash talk consisted of alphas calling each other gay, girls, or omegas.
It’s lazy, and it’s shitty, but it’s part of the culture, even now.
I hate it, but I don’t know how to change it.
Alex is unfazed, tilting his chin up defiantly. “Would it be a problem if I did?” he says, his voice soft but dangerous. Chet doesn’t answer. Alex cocks his head coyly. “Tell me, whatever-your-name-is, have you ever fucked another alpha?”
Chet turns a violent shade of purple that puts me in mind of a beetroot. “Of course not,” he sputters. “Fucking disgusting.”
A small smirk curls Alex’s lips as he leans in conspiratorially, forcing Chet to take an unsteady step backwards.
“Well, I’ll let you in on a secret: you think knocking another alpha out is a rush?
Imagine bending him over and fucking him ‘til he’s begging you to let him come.
Now that’s a fucking rush. You’ve not felt true power until you’ve felt another alpha fall to pieces beneath you, believe me.
You should try it sometime. I have a gift for sniffing out alphas who enjoy that kind of thing, and you.
Well,” he makes an exaggerated sniff in Chet’s direction, “you practically reek of someone who enjoys that kind of thing.”
My mouth is so dry I have a hard time swallowing the lump that’s suddenly formed in my throat, and I get the distinct feeling that all the blood in my body has just left my face, and I can’t bring myself to think about how far south it might have traveled.
I’ve never heard an alpha talk so brazenly about being with other alphas—not on the street, not in private, not even on the grapevine.
There was a TV ad last year that gave the tiniest hint of an alpha/alpha relationship, and the backlash was so loud it got taken off air within two weeks.
Being into male omegas still carries a stigma, sure, but two alphas? That’s a whole other level of taboo.
And here Alex is practically admitting to it, in a goddamn boxing gym, of all places. The guy is fearless.
Chet looks completely dumbfounded, his mouth flapping open and closed indignantly like a fish, his arms hanging in useless fists at his sides as his pea-brain scrambles to process everything that Alex has just said.
Guys like Chet are used to intimidating other alphas through sheer size and bullishness alone, so when that fails, and they’re faced with someone who doesn’t play by their neanderthal rules, they have no idea what to do.