Lennon’s eyes darken, like she’s caught in my snare, and for one impossible second, I think I have her. That she feels it too. But with a single blink, all of that disappears.
My hands drop away from her hips in shock as she backs away from me, her head starting to shake.
“Nno. I can’t… No,” Lennon mutters, trying to look anywhere but at me.
“Lenn—” I begin, but she cuts me off with her own raised finger now.
“No, Dominic. This isn’t appropriate. Employee fraternization is strictly prohibited. You are…” she trails off, giving me an appreciative once-over, like she is almost tempted to forgo this sudden, abrupt stop in whatever that moment was between us. But with another shake of her head, she burns down any hope I had of her returning to my arms.
“Well, you are you. I’m sorry, but this relationship needs to be kept strictly professional. I’m flattered,” she says, meeting my eyes, and the sincerity there only twists the knife deeper. She means it, I know she does, and I do nothing but watch as she backs further away, desperate to get away from me. “But, I can’t. I’m sorry.”
I wait for her to stop. For her to turn around and realize she’s making a mistake, but she doesn’t. The door swings shut behind her, and just like that, she’s gone.
I wait for her change of heart. For her to realize that it's a mistake to walk away from me like this. But that’s the opposite of what happens. Because here I am.Alone.
She rejected me. Can’t say I’m used to that sort of thing. Not being an asshole, it’s just a fact. Never before has a woman, let alone an Omega, ever turned me down. I’ve never had a problemgetting my knot wet in the past. These days, the guys keep me sated in that department.
This…this is a first for me. And the fucked part is, it’s not the possibility of being rejected forsexthat has me feeling all naked and exposed. It’s the fact that I was caught up in some kind of trance, and that’s never fucking happened to me before. There’s never been a time I’ve lost my own damn faculties. But when it comes to the coach’s daughter, I’m tripping over myself like a fucking lovesick fool.
Love.
No.
That’s the scent match talking.
Everything is primal when it comes to her. She is mine. She is mine and she turned me down. A bubbling sensation begins in my chest, one that overcomes any kind of rational thought I had once loosely held onto. Any gentleness I had once felt for the Omega? Gone.
In its place is something dark. Something unkind. Something that I am forced to anchor myself to the nearest table against so I don’t storm out of the room, find my little runaway and bend her over. To teach her a lesson in what it means to deny me. To run away from me when she is fuckingmine.
Run while you can, Little Bird. Because when I catch you, you will wish you were dead.
Chapter Ten
Lennon
“Fuck, B. I can’t believe I just ran out of there like my ass was on fire,” I groan, collapsing back into the mattress at the center of my new, half-built nest, the fitted sheet barely tucked around the edges before I decided to throw myself into the middle of it and have an all out fucking crisis over Dominic Hart. “I could feel his cock pressing against my stomach and…ugh!” I am equal parts mortified and turned all the way on, and neither reaction benefits me in any way.
I could see his raw desire for me in his eyes. The way they heated as he allowed his gaze to travel over my body. I don’t think I will ever be able to forget the way his hands felt on my hips. The way his touch made something inside of me clench painfully. I had only been moments away from letting out the most pathetic whine, seconds away from getting to my knees for a man I had only spoken to for a few moments. I would have begged for his cock, too. Begged him to slip his length into my mouth so I could taste him. For him to relieve this tension that has been building up inside of me after being surrounded byAlphas for the past month, that smells far too good to someone as pathetically unmated as I am.
“I have been telling you for months now that you need to get some good dick,” Bronte says pointedly, stuffing another pillow into a pillowcase. I groan as I reach for a blanket and begin organizing it until I am mostly happy. Getting this new nest perfect is going to take time. Bronte visits me every chance she can get, but I know it’s because she doesn’t want me here alone. Despite her begging for me to get another apartment, I haven’t had the heart to move out. This apartment was my father’s. The last place he laid his head before his health declined and he went into the hospital. Being here… It feels like he’s still around sometimes. It feels like he’s still around all the time, no matter where I am, but there’s something about this place that makes me feel closer to him. More so than when I’m in his old office.
It’s more personal. Like every corner of this place was entirely his. He didn’t share this space with anyone. Until me. Leaving feels like a betrayal in some way. He had left all of this to me, and I refuse to treat it as though it’s cursed just because a fucked up stalker asshole is trying to ruin it for me.
While I am still taking those threats seriously, I won’t let them win by leaving what has become like a security blanket for me. The camera Bronte had installed for me put my mind at ease a little. The moment something looks off, an alert goes out to the security company, and that alone gives me at least some peace of mind. Removing all negative thoughts from my mind before Bronte notices the hundred and one things circling my head. I promised a girl’s night, and so far, we’ve managed to talk about nothing more than intense fucking Alpha’s. One in particular.
“I know. I just…” I trail off, unable to give Bronte an exact explanation for why I have decided to become a nun over the past few years. I could do the typical things and blame it all on my busy time schedule or the fact that I haven’t met anyone‘worthy’ enough, but they would both be lies. Sure, my schedule before my father passed was packed full of endless cases and court dates that seemed to flow from one to the other, but I had plenty of holidays under my belt that I could have used. Plenty of Sundays were spent curled up in my nest while I could have been out meeting someone. But something in me had refused. Even the part of me that screamed to be touched by someone had eventually shriveled up into the corner of my mind along with everything that I had deemed ‘unimportant’ for years. Now, all of that is coming to bite me in the ass because I wanted nothing more than to say fuck it and accept every single thing that Dominic was offering.
I couldn’t smell him.
Couldn’t get a proper read off him like a scent would give me. But his body language and the look in his eyes told me every single thing I needed to know.
He wanted me just as much as I wanted him. Something I threw away for the sake of company policy. A policy I am damn fucking tempted to throw the fuck out the moment the season is over.
“You know you could just take it back?” Bronte says, grabbing another blanket from the pile of washed nest supplies we purchased after I hightailed it out of work this afternoon.
“I can’t, and you know that.”
Bronte rolls her eyes, “Who said that you can’t, Lenn? You are literally the owner, even if it isn’t official until the end of the season. What are they going to do? Take the team off you? The only stipulation was that you needed to coach the team for a year, right?”
