“Do you have to do this here?” she said through the glass, her anger clear enough even though her words were muffled.
“What?” he growled in response, the woman taking an instinctive step backwards. “Oh shit… Omega, I need to put you back in your seat now.”
I whined at that, the fire in my blood that he’d fanned making that seem like the worst bloody idea in the world, something I fought with ineffectual little hands that he plucked away as he pushed me back.
Pushed me away is how it felt, a cry catching in my throat as instinct and rational brain clashed. I didn’t have the right to expect him to deal with this for me, I knew he was not a contender for my alpha, but right now, that was how this felt.
“Stay in your seat!” he snapped when I squirmed, thrashed, and basically fought him.
And there it was—cool, hard order slammed down into me. I was back in my seat, my belt clipped over me, and all I could do was hunch up there, drawing my knees to my chest and wrapping my arms around them.
“Jesus, omega, I know I riled you up, but…”
The woman had gone now, having gotten what she wanted and not wanting to tangle with an alpha, and all I could wish was that I felt the same. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to take one long breath, then another. Then a hand landed on the back of my neck, heavy and strong, the thumb stroking my skin in small passes that caught my whole attention.
“I need you to tell me if you’re OK, right now,” he said, then snorted. Anyone who looked at me could tell that I wasn’t. It wasn’t my heat, but fuck, didn’t it feel close? Every cell in my body screamed for him, for more than just that little touch at my neck. I ached deep inside, my cunt clenching down on nothing, and with each pulse, a little cry tried to force itself past my lips.
Enhanced responsiveness, that was why alphas liked us so much. Their intense sexual frenzies were contagious for us, lighting us on fire for them to burn. No alpha had managed to inspire this in me, and my beta one-nighters had never even touched it. Never really touched me. I knew what this was, could use the techniques my psych had shown me. I could just keep breathing until the fiery tide in my blood went out again.
“Fuck, you feel it too, don’t you?”
No command, no insistence, that was the difference this time. I’d had alphas try to make me feel like this, but it’d just left me cold. Him? The vulnerability there, the regret, it stoked the flames right as I was trying to smother them, because of one little word.
Too.
We felt this, not just me.
“Alp
ha…” I didn’t say any more, the word squeezing past my lips as it was. Lips I couldn’t stop licking, because there were traces of him there and I needed the taste of every little bit of it.
“Jesus, I’m going to fucking hell.”
With that dire pronouncement, he started the car, putting another call through as we went.
“What’s happened?” Orion asked, his tone much more grim now. “Bren?”
“We’ve got a situation.”
“What kind of a situation? How the fuck could you have a situation dropping the omega home?” Brendan didn’t answer, and the silence stretched. “Christ, it’s her. What the hell did you do?”
“She…saw I was worked up and she comforted me.”
“Fuck, Bren…”
“That’s what they bloody do, Orion, or have you forgotten? I get the blue-blooded bitches you mix with wouldn’t hug a man if he was dying but…other omegas, that’s what they’re like.”
“So? One hug isn’t a big deal. Rhys will fuck you raw on the couch when he smells her on you and all will be well. That’s not a problem.”
“I…”
“Fuck, Bren, what did you do?”
“Look, I…”
“Stop with the foreplay and spit it out, alpha.”
The command was so sharp and intense, I felt the need to answer him, but that meant peeling my hand away from my face. A barrier between him and my cries, between me and his scent, I breathed in the recycled oxygen cupped there.