In Trouble, page 2
And I hit that green button. It takes a minute, but then, right on cue, Hugh comes strolling out the back with a cricket bat slung over his shoulder. Not that he needs it. He’s about twice as tall and twice as wide as any other alpha I’ve ever met. Usually just the sight of him is enough to have any alpha who’s trying to get fresh with me to back right off.
“Everything alright here, Connie?” he asks me in his pleasant customer voice.
“It’s time for my break. Maybe you could help this customer out, Hugh?”
“Gladly,” Hugh says, eyeing the other alpha as I jump down from my stool and disappear behind the beaded curtain to the kitchen out the back.
As soon as I’m safely in the kitchen, I flick on the kettle and sink back against the wall, my heart hammering in my chest.
I’ve had more than my fair share of encounters with alphas working here. Plenty who think that I’m fair game. Well, maybe I am, but I don’t like mixing work with pleasure and, besides, it’s different here. I like being in control, making the move. Here in the shop the power somehow shifts. They’re the customer, they’re paying me for a service, and somehow they think just because I’m scribbling ink on their biceps, I should get down on my knees and suck their cocks for the fee as well.
Yeah, I bet Hugh’s never been asked to do that.
It doesn’t matter how many times it happens though, it never gets any easier. The scent. The tone. The air of dominance. All pressing down on me. The little omega inside me crying out to submit. Oh, she’d love for these dickheads to trample all over us.
Ain’t going to happen.
I close my eyes, resting my hand on my chest, and draw in several long steadying breaths.
When I open my eyes again, that alpha is standing there, right in the doorway of the kitchen.
This time, I can’t help but jump.
Fuck!
How did he get past Hugh?
“You’re not allowed back here,” I say, straightening up. “It’s private. For staff only. How did you get in here?”
“I came in the back.”
“The dog?”
“I stepped over him.”
Mop, he looks like a hound dog from Hell, but he’s a big softie really and a hopeless guard dog.
The alpha’s gaze runs over my form again and he lifts his palm. “It’s OK. I’m not going to hurt you.”
I scowl at him. Oh yeah, I’ve heard that before.
I’ll be gentle with you, Omega. Take you to heaven and back.
And then they pound you silly and yank your hair. Not that I’m complaining about that. It’s just the deception. Selling you one thing, delivering another.
“Just give it back to me.”
“I don’t have it,” I say through gritted teeth.
He sighs and digs into his back pocket. “OK,” he says, spinning a business card between his fingers. “Here’s my card. If you happen to remember that you did … accidentally … take the bracelet and wanted to return it. You could leave it at this address.” He holds the card out to me and when I don’t take it, he slides it onto the countertop. “No questions asked. You have a week.”
I don’t move, just keep staring at him. Alphas hate quiet, tense omegas. They want them complying or coming. Only one of two things. Standoffish and defiant, no way.
“If it doesn’t find its way back to this address …” he meets my eyes. I remember his are that deep blue. Eyes that should be icy cold and are somehow the reverse, my skin warming as he stares at me. Bloody alphas and their mesmerising eyes. Always swirling and sucking you in. “Then …” He hesitates, shakes his head and walks away.
Then what? I want to call after him. Then what?
But I’m still frozen by those eyes.
I listen to his footsteps pound down the hallway, and then the backdoor that leads out into the carpark round the back slams. Why the fuck was it unlocked?
I shake my head, trying to remove the feeling he’s cast over me.
Mop comes trotting through from the yard, and I crouch down to ruffle the fur around his ears. “Great job there, Mop.” He licks my face, undeterred by my dis, then scampers off, probably in search of Hugh.
I step over to the counter and peer down at the white rectangle card.
Blaize Hammond.
What the fuck kind of name is that?
Printed under his name is his title, the name of his business and the address.
CEO. Deep Slick.
What the fuck? He owns Deep Slick!
The club – the club where we met. He owns it?
I pick up the card, meaning to crumple it in my fist and throw it in the bin, but a whiff of the alpha’s scent catches my nose. I can’t help bringing it to my nose and sniffing.
“Smell something good?”
I jump, dropping the card to my chest and fumbling it in my hand before I get a grip of it again. “Jeez Hugh, you gave me a fucking heart attack.”
He eyes the card in my hand, and I slide it into my back pocket. Bounding into the kitchen, he pours himself a mug of coffee from the pot, the cup buried in his huge hand, and peers at me over the rim.
“You going to tell me what that was all about out there?”
“Usual knobhead,” I say, turning my back on him in the pretence of making a cup of tea, not wanting him to read my face when I lie.
I don’t like lying to Hugh. Or his mate, Zoe. They’re the only people I don’t enjoy lying to.
“The dude says you stole something of his.”
“A bracelet,” I say.
Hugh chuckles. “Ahh, he didn’t tell me that bit.” I hear him take a slurp of his drink, and I drop a tea bag into a cracked mug and pour in the boiling water. “So did you steal it?”
“No,” I say, not very convincingly. Shit, I not only dislike lying to Hugh, I’m also crap at it.
“I thought you’d quit doing that, Con.” His tone sounds disappointed, and my shoulders slump.
“I have … mostly.’’ I grip the little tab on the end of the tea bag’s string and bounce it up and down in the water, watching the liquid turn brown. “It’s just the alphas. I can’t help myself when it’s the alphas.”
“Most of our clients are alphas,” Hugh says sternly.
I spin around to face him. “I’d never steal from a client, Hugh. I love this job, you know that.” For all the harassment and snide comments that come with it, I really do love this job. I’ve spent my whole life scribbling away, and now people pay me to do it. Pay me a fair bit of money too. My designs, my talent, are becoming more and more well known throughout the city.
“I don’t understand why you do it,” Hugh says. We’ve had this conversation before. When he first found out about this little habit of mine. Found out because he caught me red-handed stuffing a trinket into my bag at his house. It was the first evening we’d met, when Zoe had found me alone on the bus and persuaded me to come home with her.
I’m lucky he didn’t throw me back out onto the street then and there. But he’d given me another chance. He’s always giving me second chances. I don’t deserve them.
You’re trouble, Connie. A waste of space.
“I don’t know,” I lie again. I do know. It’s because I want pretty things like everyone else. It doesn’t matter that I can afford to buy those things myself now (well some things anyway). I see other people’s perfect lives and I want that too. If I take a piece of it, if I take enough pieces, maybe I can build a perfect life of my own.
I need therapy. Something Zoe’s been telling me for the past six years.
“I hope so.” Hugh downs the last of his coffee and drops the mug in the sink. “Don’t throw away what you’re building here, Con.”
“I won’t,” I promise, my fingers gripping the edge of the counter behind my back, the alpha’s card burning against my thigh.
“Good, I’m going to clean the machines. You get back out there on the desk. You’ve got a client arriving in five.”
I nod, forcing a smile. But when he’s gone, I notice my hands are shaking.
What am I going to do about that freaking bracelet?
* * *
Luckily, my next client is a beta. A guy I’ve worked with several times before. Today, he wants to add a word to his bicep, below a skull and dying rose design I did for him a couple of months ago. It sounds like that should be easy, but the font is stylised and fiddly, and he wants the word encased inside a picture of an old-fashioned key. I have to ramp up The Stones on the speakers to be able to concentrate, chewing rapidly on my gum, and squinting hard.
The word seems especially designed to taunt me. And the fact I spend the next hour staring at it, especially cruel.
Honesty.
After that, it’s nearly closing time, so I help Hugh pack up. He offers me a lift home as he locks up the front doors and drags down the shutter.
I stayed at Hugh’s and Zoe’s for about a year after I met them. Then, once Hugh had trained me up and I started making money, I moved out and into the box room I rent in a house-share a few streets away.
It stinks of damp, the heating breaks down every other week, and most of my housemates are antisocial, but at least it means I can roll out of bed and stumble to work. Plus, the rent is affordable.
I refuse Hugh’s offer, but sweet-talk him into letting me borrow Mop for the evening. Strictly speaking, we’re not allowed pets in the house. Every so often, though, I sneak him in for a sleepover.
It’s one of those dark and wet evenings in October, the pavements coated in the mush of fallen leaves. I dig my hands into the pockets of my vintage leather jacket, tuck my buds into my ears and walk the long way home, allowing Mop to snuffle at every interesting scent along our route. It’s too noisy in the bloody house to think straight. Out here, I might be able to figure things out.
It’s how Zoe discovered me. I’d needed to clear my head. So I’d started walking. And then I walked some more and more, and soon I realised I never wanted to go back. That I never was going to go back.
We don’t want you here, Connie. You’re trouble.
In the end, my legs wouldn’t carry me any further, and I’d boarded that bus and rode it for hours around the city. I guess I’d been crying or something because this omega with silver hair and piercings lining her earlobe bopped her shoulder against mine and asked if I was OK.
I don’t know why I told her the truth – I’d never told anyone else – but I did and she took me home.
Tonight, though, the solution to my problem isn’t going to rock up on a seat beside me. I’m going to have to solve it myself.
I take a sharp corner right and double back towards home. The house is empty when I open the door, and I hurry Mop along the hallway and bundle him into my room. Most of my housemates work in the city centre and don’t make it home until later, so I fetch a can of coke from the fridge, wipe Mop’s muddy paw prints from the floor, and slink into my room to join him.
Ducking under my bed, I wriggle on my stomach until I can reach the shoebox resting against the wall and drag it out. Mop watches me with interest, his tail wagging fiercely. I kneel on the faded floorboards and lift off the lid.
Mop comes to investigate, sniffing at the box and then sneezing, shaking his head, and scurrying away to the other side of the room.
The bracelet rests on the top of the pile of belongings – the most recent of my trinkets. I pick it up and let it fall over my fingers. It’s nothing special. I doubt it’s even worth that much, but as I twist it over, I notice a fine engraving on the lock.
From Papa
My heart spasms and that guilt sloshes in the pit of my stomach. I run the pad of my thumb over the letters.
It must feel good to have someone in your life who cares enough about you to give you a gift like this. To have that gift engraved.
I toss it back into the box and slam down the lid. Then I push it under the bed, using my feet to ensure it’s flush against the wall. Then I hide it behind my spare blanket and an old suitcase. I lock my room up every day before I go to work, but who knows who comes snooping about when I’m out.
Climbing up onto my bed, I flip open the lid of my laptop and settle the computer onto my lap. Mop jumps up to join me, curling beside me, and I scratch at his head.
“Time for a bit of snooping of my own,” I tell him. Placing the can of coke down on my bedside table, I type in the alpha’s name. I’m surprised to find very little. A couple of pieces on him in the city’s business magazine which tell me nothing of interest about him and is really just an advert for his club. He doesn’t seem to have any social media – or perhaps it’s all locked down to prevent snoops like me.
So I look up the club instead. There’s an Instagram account and I scroll through the images – stylised dark and neon shots of the bar and the tables, the menus and cocktails. Then there’s also a whole bunch of shots of the club in full swing. As I flip down them all, I spot myself – on the dance floor, waiting at the bar, drinking from a straw, talking to an alpha.
Perhaps I’ve been going there a bit too often. It’s always crammed with alphas – the perfect pickup joint. Not anymore though. I’m going to have to give the place a wide berth and head somewhere else to find a lay.
I grip the laptop lid, ready to slam it shut. But then I continue to flip through the photos instead. More and more photos of me. None of Blaize Hammond.
I fish the business card out of my pocket and pin it to my notice board, hidden among my designs and bits and pieces of inspiration I’ve cut out of magazines.
Chapter 3
It’s amazing how easily you can push shit from your mind when you try hard enough. It’s a skill I learned when I was younger. If you pretend it’s not happening, it’s pretty easy to fool yourself that everything is fine. Good. Aye OK.
And that’s what I do with the bracelet. I resolve myself to forget about the thing. Pretend it never happened and get on with life.
The days tick by and I don’t give it one more thought. And there’s no sign of that alpha to break my bubble of ignorance.
Then Saturday rolls in. I only work in the morning, which leaves the afternoon free. Hugh and Zoe are busy taking their kids and Mop to a birthday party, and I don’t think I’d get away with tagging along. Sadie, the only housemate I can actually stand and an omega like me, is still away on a romantic trip with his latest alpha.
I’m on my ownsome. And I hate it. I try to watch TV, try to read a book, scribble a few designs. All the time that urge is growing. The urge to find an alpha, to be fucked and to be knotted.
Which has me thinking, of course, about Deep Slick and that Goddamn bracelet. I want to go there so badly. To have an alpha wrap me in his arms and hold me down.
I rub at my head. Why am I like this? Why do I crave the thing I hate the most? It’s some twisted perversion, just like the pilfering.
Maybe I should see that shrink after all.
In the end, I try to relieve the pressure myself, yanking up my skirt and kicking off my underwear. Then I fish out my giant purple dildo, the one with the vibrating knot. Sadie bought it for me last year.
“To help you break your addiction,” he’d chuckled. He’d meant it as a joke. Although the words rang fucking true.
Addiction.
I’m addicted to alpha.
I hold down the button until the dildo lights up and starts whirring in my hand. Moara in the room next door can probably hear, as well as Ed upstairs. I don’t give a shit. They’re lucky I’m not bringing an alpha home every night or spending my heats locked in my room with one. Then they’d have something to complain about.
I open my legs and rest the cold silicone against my clit. It’s already swollen and pulsing and I’m already wet. I come quickly, then thrust the thing inside me, fucking myself with it, trying to imagine it’s the real thing. There’s no scent though, no heavy weight, no warm body.
I close my eyes and try to imagine those things, and who should come swimming into my mind with those bright blue eyes, Blaize fucking Hammond.
I yank the dildo out and toss it across the room, where it thumps against the wall. My heart hammers in my chest and, no matter how many times I try to blink away, that image is seared into my mind.
I lie on my bed in misery until my phone beeps beside me. Flinging a hand towards it, I bring it lazily up to my face and then bolt upright when I read the words.
Times nearly up, little Omega. Do the right thing.
How?
How did he do that?
I should never have let him snatch my phone that evening. I’m going to have to bin this phone and buy a new one. My fingers stray over the screen. I’m tempted to message him back. Tell him to go to hell and stop harassing me. But I don’t. Instead, big fat sloppy tears trail down my cheeks. I sniff, wiping them away.
I’m going to have to give it back. He’s an alpha. He’s going to hound me until I do.
A little voice in my ear adds, “and it’s the right thing to do. It’s not yours.”
I flop my arm over my face. Yeah, that too. It belongs to him. A special gift. I can’t keep it knowing it means so much to him.
I make up my mind.
I need to find a way to sneak it back. I’m not giving him the satisfaction of knowing he was right.
* * *
I doll myself up. It’s the best line of attack when it comes to an alpha. Dazzle them with the omega-shit, have them thinking with their dick and not their brain. Hey, there has to be some advantages of being an omega and I’m blessed with the usual omega assets. The scent, the petite, curvy frame, the soft skin, the copious amounts of slick and the ability to take a knot.
My knees buckle slightly at the thought of that knot. Of that alpha’s knot, at the way he’d made it even firmer, locked himself into me even harder. Shit. I can’t let thoughts like that distract me if I’m going to slip into that club, dump the bracelet in the cubicle, and make my escape.
Deep Slick is one of those clubs that you can only enter if you’re wearing the right clothes and have enough money to afford the overpriced drinks. If I was just a beta, there is no way they’d let me in. But I’m an omega. We’re rare and in demand and this club is a favourite haunt of alphas. The bouncers know to let any omega in – no matter how scruffy or poor she looks.
