Second Match: Perfect Match Agency Book 5, page 1
Second Match
Perfect Match Agency
Book Five
Wendy Rathbone
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Afterword
Forbidden Match
by MM Farmer
Perfect Match Agency series
Also By Wendy Rathbone
Wendy Rathbone’s Trope Cheat Sheet
Second Match
Perfect Match Agency
Book 5
Published 2023 by Wendy Rathbone
Copyright © 2023 Wendy Rathbone
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, including electronic or photographic reproduction, without a written permission from the author. The licensed art material is being used for illustrative purposes only. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or business establishments is coincidental.
Cover design: Roe Horvat
Editor: NJ Torrance, Roe Horvat, M.M. Farmer
Published by: Eye Scry Publications.
About This Book
One failed attempt with the Perfect Match Agency leads to a second—will this omega be The One?
Morgan is a handsome, wealthy businessman who attracts young omegas easily, but most are looking for a sugar daddy and never stick around.
Signing up with the Perfect Match Agency sounded like the best bet for finding his perfect mate, but Morgan’s first match ended before it could get started.
Now, the agency has found a second match for Morgan. He’s been skunked before. His heart is yearning, but his mind tells him not to get his hopes up. Will this omega, finally and forever, be his perfect match?
Would anyone want an omega who can never go out in the sunlight?
Riley has lived his whole life in isolation in a cult community that believes he is a demon because of his severe allergy to sunlight. Rejected by the cult and never forced to go to church, Riley shares nothing of their beliefs.
Still under guardianship of his parents and their backward ways, Riley is about to go into his first heat. It is church law that demands all omegas have husbands before that happens.
So far, Riley has rejected two horrid marriage prospects and no one else in the community wants anything to do with him.
Without Riley’s knowledge, his parents sign him up for Perfect Match, deciding any marriage, even with an alpha outside their beliefs, is better than nothing.
But what Riley really needs, more than marriage, is to be rescued from his bleak and toxic environment. And Morgan, when he meets Riley, may be just the alpha to do it.
Omegaverse, MM romance, matchmaking, instant attraction, heat and rut, virgin, age gap, rescue, disability, caretaking alpha, wedding, mpreg, HEA.
Perfect Match Agency is a multi-author gay romance series. The stories are non-shifter omegaverse, with high heat and low angst. Male pregnancy is possible in the world. Each book can be read as a standalone, features a new couple, and a satisfying happily ever after.
Chapter One
Riley
“What are you wearing?” Papa grimaced as he entered my room.
I looked down at myself. Dark sequined half-sleeves pulled up to my biceps, a black satin tank top which left my shoulders bare, blood red leather pants that hugged me everywhere. That was so very wrong and evil in Papa’s eyes—I looked like a vampire prince in the shadows of my room, and I liked it. Expressing myself how I wished was the only true pleasure left to me.
Leaning back against a pink fur pillow on my bed, I waved my hand through the air. “What, this little outfit? Something I just slipped on.”
Papa shut his eyes and let out a long sigh. “Hopeless.”
“Oh, you haven’t seen the footwear yet. They just arrived this afternoon.” I jumped off my bed and pulled a box out from under my bed. When I held up the black, over-the-knee boots with silver spikes sticking out from the sides, Papa went pale. He said nothing, but I read his response too well.
I blinked back the emotion of his disapproval. After all these years of being rejected as one of our family and community, even when I didn’t believe anything they stood for, the shame my papa wore whenever he was around me still hurt.
“Like them?” I asked, widening my gaze.
Fanning himself with his left hand, he shook his head and sat in the cerulean velvet chair by the shuttered window and faced me. It was going to be a long conversation.
That chair. It was something I’d begged for two months before father and papa got it for me. This was before they tired of my requests they couldn’t, out of guilt, deny me. Before they gave me my own credit card for online shopping so they didn’t have to see the sinful things I bought.
My room was the nicest in the entire household. I had seven brothers and though they each had their own room, they were not nearly as indulged as I was by our extreme family wealth. My parents considered me a lost cause—at least religiously—and they pitied me, so I pretty much got whatever I wanted. My brothers had chores, prayer meetings, and church services to attend five times a week. Hidden away as if I didn’t exist, I had none of those requirements. I was not allowed to attend church or prayer meetings, and any chores our parents had devised for their sons were done outside in daylight which eliminated me.
I could only go out at night.
Papa leaned back, his hand coming up to play with the beaded fringe of my thick curtains. “I didn’t come here to discuss your unholy wardrobe.”
“What, then?” I ran my thumbnail along the sequins of my sleeve.
“You’re turning nineteen tomorrow. No surprise with all your oddities that you are a late bloomer. The doctor says your heat could come within the next two months.”
“Thank you for reminding me, Papa, but I was aware of that.”
“Dr. Chen confides only in me and your father. Were you eavesdropping again?”
I shrugged. “How else am I to keep up with things around here? I don’t get to go anywhere. I barely get to leave my room.”
Papa looked decidedly annoyed. “Surely you don’t expect us to board up the entire household’s windows because of you? We have given you everything and endured the ministry’s threats to shun us because we don’t send you away. Our faith says you’re a demon. You know we’ve done the best we can within our faith.”
I’d heard that indignant speech a hundred times. My parents were understandably defensive. They wanted to do the right thing by their faith, but also by me, their only omega son, my brothers having all been born alphas. They kept me away from a community that reviled me. They didn’t even try to indoctrinate me into their way of life. In their eyes, I was a demon. The guilt they felt believing their own child born with a severe allergy to sunlight was some monster and not simply suffering from a rare disease spurred them to make my cage as luxurious as possible. Giving me toys and games and velvet chairs my brothers could only dream of alleviated their conscience.
“I can endure my heat alone, Papa. It’s okay.”
“Our scripture forbids it. You must be mated, and since you have declined the offers of suitors we have approved—”
“No one in this town actually wants me,” I interrupted. “And those two arch lectors you chose who said they would take me as a supplicant to appease God… you can’t believe they would treat me nicely. That Carter guy was disgusting, drooling while at the same time glaring at me.”
He continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Because you declined the approved offers we made to you, we are forced to look outside our community. Your father and I have been patient because of your condition, but now the time has come. You will not endure your first heat without a mate. It is against every principle of the faith.”
My parents were beholden to their strict community. Even a demon child needed to be mated or they felt they had failed to do their god’s will.
When I was sixteen, I’d begged for WiFi after I heard my younger brothers talking about forbidden things like the Internet and online gaming and movies that weren’t strictly church-made. I got the WiFi I requested, but most of my access was locked. I learned to navigate around those locks and my reality instantly expanded. Even if I couldn’t go out into the world at large on my own, it was there for me online. All of it. Everything. The fog of our insular, authoritarian church had receded for me in my bedroom, in the prison of my so-called demonhood.
That was the moment I realized, despite being a spoiled brat, I was technically an abused child, kept cloistered in shame and chagrin.
Back then, I longed to run away. But how could I navigate the outside world if I couldn’t exist in the daylight? How would I feed myself without the support of my family?
I read everything my parents allowed me to have, and after getting the Internet I soaked up far more information than I’d ever dreamed was out there, but I had no formal education, no abilities to get a job and live on my own.
“I haven’t forced you to look for any mate for me. Anyway, how can I find a mate of my own choosing if you won’t let me out past the fence line?”
“A young, single omega on his own out at night? With your fragile condition? That’s blasphemy, Riley.”
I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t that fragile. I simply burned up in UV light, that was all. And if the holier than thou church of our stagnant community thought I was a vampire, what better way to respond than to embrace the romanticism of that?
“Your father and I have another plan to ensure you find your true husband.”
“I keep telling you, Papa. You can’t force me to—” I stopped at the hurt now shining in his eyes, bowing my head.
“We don’t want to force you, son. That is not in our hearts.”
“Then what’s your plan?”
“Your father and I have taken the liberty of signing you up with the Perfect Match Agency.”
“I think I heard you wrong. What did you just say?”
Papa ignored my question. “Since you have said no to all of our choices in a mate, we will find you the mate you deserve, get you married before your heat, and it will be taken care of.”
“You signed me up to a matchmaking service?” I couldn’t keep the utter shock from my voice.
“It’s our last resort.”
It didn’t make sense. “For real? A matchmaking service? Outside the community and the faith? Isn’t that blasphemy?”
“We are desperate. It would be a worse indiscretion to God to endure your first heat outside of marriage.”
“For you, maybe. But not for me. I told you I can handle it alone.”
“That is not an option for us as your parents according to God’s will.”
I blinked at him. “Even if my future husband is not of the faith?”
“Yes. Your father and I discussed it at length. Because you are technically not one of us, your future husband does not need to be of our faith to marry you, mate you and take you away.”
So this was it. This was how my parents were finally going to get rid of their embarrassment of a son who didn’t fit with their worldview.
“What if my match doesn’t agree to immediate marriage?”
“Your profile has dealbreakers. One of those is that he agrees to marry you before he takes you to his bed. It is our way. You won’t be matched to anyone who doesn’t agree to this.”
I felt my eyes warm. I was trapped in every way. By my birth. My community. And my health. It made me easily pliant in my parents’ hands.
“What if I don’t like him?”
“This is why we went outside the church to find your match. This agency finds not only suitable mates for its clients, but mates that you want and desire based on science. Body chemistries as well as psychological aspects are matched. You will be perfect for each other and agree to a marriage. You will want him.”
I snorted. “You don’t believe in science, Papa.”
“Your father and I believe first and foremost that marrying you off, no matter how it is arranged, is God’s will. We will see this through.”
“And how could they match my body chemistry to an alpha in their database? I didn’t give samples.”
“We had the doctor take samples when he was last here. The questionnaire you filled out that same day for your psychological profile was also for Perfect Match.”
“What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it is the job of your father and I to find you a suitable mate. That form, if you were truthful, should ensure you and the alpha are compatible in every aspect.”
So the doctor had been in on it with them, the tests, the crazy, long questionnaire to assess my mental health—all of it was for a matchmaking service? Of course, they’d had every angle covered. “But what if I don’t believe in any of it, your faith or their science? What if I refuse to meet him?”
“Your father and I will be greatly disappointed in you, then.” Papa’s facial muscles went slack and downturned, a frown combined with a wounded animal look.
Being raised with shame and guilt as motivators, let alone being called a demon, it was easy for me to fall into the pattern of not wanting to disappoint my papa. Everyone had always said I was most like him. In looks, anyway. In every other way, I couldn’t be more different. But I still felt the guilt he was an expert at bringing out in me. I wanted to please him. Didn’t every child long for approval from their parents, even if their parents were totally off the map?
“I’ll try it because you ask me to, Papa. But I can’t promise you I’ll want this match.”
“You are such an obstinate child, Riley. Always defiant even in the crib. Why? Why do you have to be this way?”
Because I was trapped. Because I could see the cage bars and he couldn’t.
I said none of that out loud. My parents saw me as a burden. I didn’t want to be that for them, but some things were out of my control. If I could have, I would have left at a young age even if it meant living on the streets. But for me, that would have been a death sentence.
And now this.
But maybe, just maybe, this was a way out. Could something called the Perfect Match Agency really work?
My mind began to swim with all the possibilities. I wondered if my fathers addressed my private health matters in my profile. Or how I was raised like a monster in a community that feared me. I wished they’d let me see the profile when they were creating it. It angered me they had done this behind my back, but they were about control. Always in control of the family, their behaviors, and adhering to the strictures of the church. That control included finding suitable mates for their sons. Of course, we would not be consulted on something as important as that.
I also wondered, with a profile that demanded marriage first, then mating, what sort of alpha would be compatible to that? But then I also remembered the matches were made by science, too. If we met and were attuned to each other right away, would the rest of the relationship factors just fall into place?
The low light of my computer gave the blues and greens I decorated my room with a distinct underwater look. By the window, the heavy curtains kept the light from Papa’s form and cast him in a shadowy glaze as he began to stand.
“How long before a match is made, Papa?” I asked.
He turned, his body now entirely in shadow. “Did I not mention it? This is what I came up here to tell you. You have already been matched. And so quickly it must be God’s will. The email arrived today. Your father and I have contacted the alpha with an offer to meet you, supervised, of course, here at our home.”
Chapter Two
Morgan
Work was piling up. My assistant, Storm, had been away on paternity leave and only just returned today. With a useless temp in his place while he was gone, I acutely realized how much I relied on him.
I stared at the long line of emails I’d barely gotten through. Hundreds. Storm culled them for me and sent me only the most important ones, but the temp had not done that. Now that Storm was back, my emails were less, but I still had all the backlog which I didn’t want to burden him with on his first day back.
I flicked through the list and something caught my eye just as it vanished off-screen. I scrolled back.
The email header said: Perfect Match Agency.
How had I missed that?
After my first match had failed, the omega chosen for me, Kace, falling for Storm before we’d had our first date, I let my account go dormant. I was happy for Storm. He was my friend and I begrudged him nothing. He and Kace had a beautiful baby now. But that whole fiasco had left me still single. And not a little pissed at the company that had made such overreaching promises that I’d find my true mate through science and algorithms they claimed brought countless couples together in blissful, unbreakable bonds. It just wasn’t fair.
