In Doubt, page 2
“Hell, yes.” I grin back at her and we drop down to sit cross legged on the floor as we wait for the others from our course to arrive.
Soon my friend Carl joins us and by ten o’clock, there’s a large group of us crowding around the entrance to the bookshop and causing the staff inside to throw us disgruntled looks.
“Is everyone here?” the professor glances at her wrist watch, then runs her gaze over the list of names on her clipboard.
I don’t know why she’s asking. It’s obvious one person isn’t here yet. His presence is so dominating his absence is always noticeable. Plus, he’s the same person who’s late for every class: Jake Grantham. Somehow, though, he gets away with it every time. Just flashes a half-apologetic smile at our usually formidable professor and all is forgiven.
It’s that alpha charm. That dangerous alpha charm.
I bounce on my toes, eager to get going.
The airport’s relatively empty, a few business men and women wheeling their suitcases and a cleaner filling rubbish bags. I tip my head back and watch as rain streams down the cavernous glass roof and another jet thunders overhead.
“Perhaps Jake’s not going to make it,” I whisper.
Sia rolls her eyes at me. “Of course he’s going to make it, Giorgie. Jake wouldn’t miss this trip any more than you would.”
She’s right. Jake and I are competing neck and neck for the spot at the top of the class. Neither one of us is going to let those extra marks slip through our fingers.
“Anyway,” Carl says, scratching at the scruff on his chin and leaning around Sia to survey the airport entrance, “You know the professor wouldn’t leave without her star pupil. She’ll keep the whole plane waiting for him if she has to.”
I groan, knowing he’s probably right.
“Here he is!” Sia declares, and both mine and the professor’s eyes are drawn to the parting glass doors. Jake Grantham strolls right through as if he doesn’t have a care in the world and hasn’t been keeping the rest of us waiting for the last twenty minutes.
The professor sighs in relief and smiles widely.
I frown harder, unable to drag my gaze away. His presence is definitely domineering. Six feet and god knows how many inches tall with more muscles than should be humanly possible, golden hair and seductive blue eyes. It’s not surprising that as well as acing this course, he also has a spot on the varsity rugby team.
He’s the kind of guy who's had everything land straight in his lap. Rich parents. Good looks. The right connections. And now possibly the research spot I want.
I hate him. I really do.
I turn back to Sia. “He made it,” I mutter.
She bumps her shoulder back against mine. “Come on, Giorgie. You don’t need him to do a no-show to beat him. You can win the top spot on your own merits.”
She’s right. I lift up my chin. Top spot means a guaranteed place on the professor’s research team next year, and her team is the hottest right now. They are doing the most interesting work in our field in the UK. It’s why Jake transferred to Crestmore. It’s why I’ve been working my arse off to guarantee that spot for the last four years.
“What the hell is Jake’s pack doing here?” Carl mutters, snapping me out of my thoughts.
I turn back around to follow his gaze and find Jake is flanked by three of his rugby team mates. They’re all equally big, equally intimidating and equally alpha. And that treacherous little omega inside me can’t help but be impressed by all that testosterone on display.
His team mates are also good looking. Levi Smith’s long black hair is hooked up in a messy bun at the base of his skull, a web of tattoos crisscrossing over his dark skin. Dylan Evans strides alongside him, fair complexion with a mop of curly black hair and emerald eyes. And on Jake’s other side, Aiden Colt bounces along, streaks of copper and rust catching in his short brown hair and freckles sprinkled across his arms and face.
“They’ve probably just come to say goodbye.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet.”
“Then why do they have luggage?” Carl asks. “Are they coming too?”
“Looks like it,” Sia whispers as we watch the professor greet the four men. “But Professor Weaver doesn’t have a problem with it so I assume they OK’ed it.” She shrugs.
I flick my gaze Jake’s way and immediately catch his eye. Those deeply blue eyes that have my insides spinning. His scent curls into my nostrils. Crap!
He scowls at me in that way he always does. Then his eyes linger down my form, the crease between his brow deepening.
Yeah, I get it. He disapproves of what I’m wearing. It seems he always does. I assume it’s not cute and omega enough for him. But screw that, I’m going to wear what the hell I like. And if that means my very own interpretation of Indiana Jones, cargo pants and khaki shirt, then so be it. This is the twenty-first century and omegas can define what it means to be a member of our designation now. We’re no longer ruled by alphas and their expectations of us.
And I know all about Jake’s expectations. He brags about it to the boys in our course. Carl told me.
I scowl back at Jake.
“What are your band of merry men doing here? Did you need someone to hold your hand on this trip?”
Jake’s packmate, Aiden, hooks his arm around Jake’s shoulder and frowns at me in an almost mirror image of the expression on Jake’s face.
“You think we’d miss out on a trip like this?”
“I can’t believe Professor Weaver let you come!” There were plenty of disappointed students on our Masters course who couldn’t afford the trip and would be selling a kidney right now to grab a ticket.
But I guess it shouldn’t surprise me. Jake’s pack is wealthy and entitled and probably paid their way onto this trip. Not that Jake did. His good grades guaranteed him a fully funded place like me. It’s always the two of us at the top of the class. A fact he reminds me of every time he nips me to that top spot. Which isn’t as often as he’d like. And that’s the reason he hates me. Alphas don’t like to be beaten. Especially by omegas.
“You don’t even study archeology,” I mutter. Aiden’s enrolled on the economics course, or something equally dull.
“They’re not coming on the dig,” Jake tells me. His scowl morphs into a frown. These are two of Jake Grantham’s favourite looks. Not that it matters. The man is good-looking and knows it. He has the kind of chiselled bone structure reserved for the catwalk.
“We’ve booked this awesome luxury villa with beds to spare,” Aiden tells me. “Plenty of room for anyone who’d like to join us.”
What? Are they going to try to change the scientific assignment of a lifetime into some boys’ trip?
“You know there were people who really wanted to come on this trip who missed out on a spot,” I snap, glaring at Jake and trying to ignore the way the blue in his eyes sparkles like the sea in sunlight, even under the neon strip lighting of the airport.
“I really want to come on this trip,” Jake snaps back. “That doesn’t mean I’m not going to have a bit of fun while I’m there. I know you don’t understand that concept …”
My fists land on my hips automatically, my natural posture for dealing with Jake Grantham. “Archaeology is fun,” I remind him, pushing my glasses up my nose with my middle finger. Aiden bursts out laughing and Jake’s lips twitch as if he’s suppressing a smile.
“Whatever turns you on.”
Yep, and there we go. Typical alpha, turning everything into a sexual innuendo.
“Why are you even coming on this trip if you’re not going to take it seriously?”
“Just because I’m not dressed like some extra from Romancing the Stone doesn’t mean I’m not taking this seriously.”
“This outfit is what people wear in the desert. You know it’s going to be over 40 degrees out there?” My gaze runs down his body, assessing his own choice of clothing, shorts, a vest and flip flops. As I do, I try not to notice the tightly packed muscles bulging in his crossed arms or the little twang of something that sparks in my gut. “Flip-flops?” I point at my own sturdy boots. “There are scorpions and snakes.” Doesn’t he care that they could kill him?
“Which is why we’ll be sticking to the villa,” Aiden says. “Don’t get your knickers in a twist, little Geek. We won’t be ruining your important work.” Aiden lifts up his hands and turns to the two other packmates standing behind him.
By avoiding Jake Grantham for the past year, I’ve avoided his pack too. Now it looks like I’m going to be stuck with them for the next two weeks.
I toss my hair over my shoulder and turn my back on them.
Sia’s pouring over the itinerary for the trip and hasn’t paid any attention to my conversation with Jake and the other alphas. But Carl was listening.
“They’re going to try to turn this trip into some fuck-boy excursion,” he mutters with disapproval. “You know about all the stuff those boys get up to.”
I swallow, buffing my glasses on the hem of my shirt. If I’d suspected Jake Grantham was the kind of alpha who used and discarded girls when I first met him, unhappily I’d been proven correct. The exploits of his pack quickly filled the gossip column of the student paper. It seems they are all players, using their star status on campus to sleep with as many girls as they can.
I peer over Sia’s shoulder to read the schedule.
“Who is?” Sia asks.
“Jake and his ninja turtles,” I whisper.
Sia snorts at my joke. “Professor Weaver won’t allow that.”
“Professor Weaver has never had to deal with a group of alphas.”
“Exactly,” Carl lowers his voice. “And we know what their reputation is like.”
The professor may be a battleaxe of a beta, but she has no experience when it comes to a pack of alphas. I live with one. My brother’s. It’s a hell of a lot of testosterone.
This trip means the world to me, and securing my place on the professor’s team means even more. I can’t believe Jake’s prepared to turn such an important trip, a once in a lifetime trip, into a lad’s tour.
“Well, more fool him,” I tell my friends. If Jake’s going to be distracted by his packmates and girls, that leaves me more opportunities to impress the professor.
This is my opportunity to impress.
I’m not going to let a bunch of boys ruin it for me.
2
Jake
Aeroplanes always give me a bloody migraine. The scents swirling in the recycled air are spearing right up my nostrils with no hope of a breath of fresh air for the entirety of the flight.
This flight is going to be a thousand times worse. In fact, this whole fucking trip is likely to involve a level of torture I’m frankly unprepared for.
I stare out the window at the endless bank of clouds reaching all the way to the horizon.
This is probably a bad idea. A very bad idea. It’s what I’ve been saying for the last six weeks, but somehow my goddamn pack talked me into going. They know how much this trip means to me.
The Ancient Egyptian temple they’ve unearthed on the edge of the Sahara desert is the biggest archeological find in several decades. The pictures I’ve seen blew my fucking mind and had my blood buzzing with excitement. It’s untouched, buried under layers and layers of golden sand, unvisited for centuries. Who knows what will be found inside its shadowy halls?
Every archeologist worth his fucking salt is heading out there over the next few weeks for the initial dig. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, not only to see something truly awesome but to make connections and secure my future. Secure that spot on Professor Weaver’s team. Prove to my parents that I can be someone.
It’s why my pack is tagging along on this trip. It’s not something I can afford to miss and they want to provide the moral support I need to make it through this. Plus, the dickwads wouldn’t miss an opportunity for a holiday at a five star villa if it meant missing their grandmothers’ funerals.
I cough, trying to force the scent that’s driving me insane from my nose and my throat. Aiden rests a hand on my shoulder.
“Hanging in there, mate?” he asks with sympathy. He’s no doubt suffering too – Levi and Dylan as well – but none of them as badly as I am right now. It’s something about this goddamn scent that gets right up my nose – literally – and burrows under my skin.
I shake my head and my gaze floats down the aisle and lands on the omega who’s the cause of all my problems.
She’s sitting happily, unaware of the agony she’s putting me through, her book perched on her lap and her long tanned legs tucked underneath her. Her fingers tap playfully against her rosy, plump lips as her caramel eyes scan to and fro over the page behind her glasses. Shit!
She’s beautiful, smart and as passionate about archeology as I am. Plus an omega. With a scent that smells like ripe watermelon. Like paradise. She should be my dream woman.
But she’s the one thing standing in the way of achieving my dream. The opportunity to work for Professor Weaver next year. The professor is the best in the country and the work she’s doing right now is the most interesting.
I came to Crestmore University with the express ambition to claim that prestigious spot. Only to find this little omega standing firmly in my way.
It’s not all bad, though. I struck up a friendship with Aiden and found my place in this pack.
Aiden squeezes my shoulder, and I tear my eyes away.
“How much longer?” I ask through gritted teeth. My packmate taps on the screen in front of him.
“Half way there. Two more hours. Sorry, mate.” I groan and bite down hard on the knuckles of my fisted hand. “I’ll get you a drink.” I’ve already downed three straight whiskeys. I doubt the air stewardess will give us another. But as usual, I underestimate my packmate and his ability to charm the hind legs off a donkey. And the underwear off most women.
The air stewardess pours the honey coloured liquid into the glass, ice clinking against the sides, and I spot Giorgie peer over her shoulder and roll her eyes as I take the drink.
Screw her, I think, as I toss back the burning liquid in one gulp. Screw her and her fucking stupid decision to never use scent blockers. Every other omega and alpha I know uses them. It’s only fucking polite. Scents can drive an alpha and omega out of their mind and blockers can mask that scent, making them almost untraceable.
It’s one thing to make it clear she isn’t interested in me. To make it crystal clear she’s unattainable. But does she have to rub it in my face?
I’ve heard her telling her friends that her brother is very protective of her, but if that was actually the case, I have no idea what the tosser is doing letting his omega sister walk around unblockered and unaccompanied.
And on a fucking field trip. To the fucking desert.
The woman is clearly intelligent. The only reason I can deduce for her actions is that she’s trying to throw me off my game. She thinks that her scent will be enough to distract me. Well, it hasn’t worked so far this year, and it isn’t going to work on this trip.
I thank the air stewardess and hand her my empty glass. Then I tip back my seat and try to tune into some mundane action film.
We picked seats in first class thinking it would put some distance between me and the omega causing me to fidget like a bloody toddler in my seat. But I’d forgotten her brother belongs to a pack with money to burn. And so here she is too, along with those two friends of hers who never leave her side.
I’d tried to talk the others into finding some lucky passengers back in economy to swap seats. That idea went down like a lead balloon.
I twist around and tug the earbud out of Aiden’s ear. “I don’t see how I’m going to make it through this trip,” I moan to him. Feeling the beads of sweat beginning to coalesce on my brow. “It’s worse than usual.”
“It’s just the confined space.” Aiden’s brown eyes peer into mine and with a look of bewilderment, he shakes his head at me. “I don’t know why you don’t just screw her and get this whole thing out of your system.”
“Because she doesn’t want to screw me.”
Aiden sighs. There’s no denying it. You’d have to be a fucking fool not to see the hatred in her eyes when she spoke to me out there in the departure hall. Except you could hardly call it talking. It was more like sniping.
“And unlike you, I’m not interested in screwing women I don’t actually like.”
And Giorgie Martinelli is one woman I thoroughly dislike. Her scent — and yes, goddamn, the way she looks — may have my inner alpha drooling like a starved wolf, but the omega irritates the hell out of me. All that lively chirpiness, the way she thinks it’s acceptable to lecture the hell out of me, and all the while she’s playing me.
I’ve considered going to the professor and lodging an official complaint. But what would be the point? I’d only end up labelled as some misogynistic alpha. No one would believe me. I’d end up looking like a sore loser.
I close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing. If I let this scent get the better of me, my cock will be rock hard in a matter of seconds.
The breathing doesn’t work. I snap my eyelids open and catch the gaze of the stewardess again. She smiles at me in a way that definitely tells me she’d make good use of my hardon if I wanted her to. But my cock is crying out for omega pussy and no beta one is going to tame the beast raging inside me.
Ruffling through my bag, I pull out my emergency suppressant and jump out of my seat, strolling straight for the bathroom. Suppressants help to dull the bodily reactions we alphas and omegas are slaves to. Helping to regulate and modulate an omega’s heats and prevent an alpha from going into rut. Thank fuck for them. They’re the only thing that’s dragged me through class after class with the omega.
Once inside the cubicle, I snap shut the door and yank the bolt across. Then I sag against the sink and spray a fuck-load of the foul tasting suppressant into my waiting mouth. It’s the third time I’ve done this during the flight, the suppressant only lasting so long when I’m gulping down lungfuls of that sinful scent. I gag a little and my eyes water, but then I feel my muscles relax, my cock softens and some of that tension melts away. Not all of it, but enough to stand up straighter and look at myself in the mirror. I look a fucking mess. My hair ruffled, my pupils blown wide, and my skin coated in a fine film of sweat.
