“It’s just people don’t usually look at the artwork. I was so surprised, I thought I’d come over and make sure everything was OK.”
“More than OK,” I gushed. “Do you work for the gallery? I love James’ art so much. Have since I first saw his work on the cover of some of my favourite author’s books. He doesn’t do illustration now—Shit, you must know that working here. Sorry, I’m gushing, but my mother, Miranda Rhodes, you’ve heard of her?”
“Wunderkind of the tech world?” His eyebrow jerked up. “Yes, of course. She has an account at Delozian, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, and she asked me to identify some works for her to buy and I haven’t looked at all of them, but I see there’s red dots going up already, and this one… I think this one. Can we put her down for this one? She has to approve the purchase, but she usually does.”
“OK, just take a breath now.”
It was right about then, I realised this gallery attendant was an alpha. His scent came in late, muted perhaps by de-scenter, it was a strange combination of ground coffee beans, sandalwood, and leather. I frowned slightly, the insanely masculine scent a little at odds with his more refined façade, though the roughly raked back hair hinted at something else. But I found myself taking that breath, of course, and was rewarded by his smile in response, which was dazzling.
“Oh, hello, James. You found her,” George said, passing me a glass of champagne.
My fingers closed around it on automatic, but I just stared, brave, brazen even for an omega.
“James?” I asked weakly.
“James Chadwick,” he said, that smile broadening, a large hand held out for me to shake.
I didn’t have to feign weakness, since my hand was like a dead mouse in his, and he took my fingers and brushed a kiss across my knuckles in response. When he was there, he paused, just for a second, looking for all the world like a courtly gentleman, but it wasn’t old-fashioned manners that kept my hand in his. I heard the sharp intake of his breath as he sucked it in, sucked me in. He was breathing in the scent of my cunt, only partly washed away, on my fingers.
“A pleasure,” he said finally, straightening up and fixing his eyes right on me. “Now, I can put a tentative dot against this artwork, but how about we look at the others before you make any specific commitments?”
And then he fucking offered me his arm, the arm he used to move his hand to make the artworks I drooled over. Or one of them, I didn’t know if he was a righty or a lefty. ‘I love you’ I mouthed over my shoulder at George, and he just smirked, tipping his glass at me, and then wandered off to chat to his friends.
“So what was the theme of this show?” I asked. “Shit, I should just read the catalogue essay.”
“Oh no,” James said, shooting a smile my way
. “If your mother is prepared to buy some of my most expensive works sight unseen, then an impromptu artist talk is definitely in order.” He brought us to a stop in front of a drawing of two figures, one male, one female, facing off against each other, bristling with…something. I couldn’t tell if it was love, lust, pain, or what, and that was what made it so fascinating. “Heaven and hell or thereabouts. I wanted to explore contradictions and how they seem so at odds with each other, and yet at their core, they contain common ground. Like alpha and omegas.”
He reached out, tracing the line of my pearl choker with his finger in the way that alphas did, always ignoring social niceties and pesky things like personal space to put their mark on everything. But rather than being oppressive, I shivered. His eyes flicked up, dancing with that same light, but perhaps just a little brighter.
“Control, submission, claiming—none of those things are exclusively omega or alpha, despite what social conventions dictate. The model for the woman in this piece is an omega.”
My eyes jerked back to the artwork, taking in the defiant stance of the girl and her heated expression.
“And so is he. They are mated.”
“What?”
“That’s the job of the artist, to look past the bullshit messages we transmit out self-consciously and look beyond to what is. I find myself fascinated by all the ways our dogma about designations fall down, in the beauty of that.”
“And that’s what you put in your catalogue essay?”
“Of course not!” he replied with a snort, then winked at me. “The gallery paid an art critic to write something pompously post-modern. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari.” He held up his beautiful long fingers and ticked off each theorist. “First thing you need to know about the art world is no one actually explains what they are doing. It leaves them too open, too naked.”
I couldn’t look into his eyes as he spoke, instead watching that wonderful mouth move with meditative focus. And as they formed that last word, something twitched inside me.
“Are you…” James stopped, put his too hot hand on my arm, and looked down into my eyes. “Are you all right, Ms Rhodes?”
I wasn’t, I knew that. I’d woken calmer, sadder, emptier, and ready to go out and have some fun, but a good fireman goes back and checks over embers to make sure they had really gone out. At his touch, at his proximity, at the heady cloud of his scent, what had burned before flared alight.
“Ms… Omega?”
The command was light, questing, testing me out, and when I didn’t reply, caught up way too much in the way I was physically responding to actually say anything, his grip tightened slightly and he escorted me over to one of the leather upholstered benches in the gallery.
“Water, I think, would be a smarter choice.”