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Exhaling sharply, I explained to my friends what we were doing, and even though they wanted to stay and work with us, I sent them to the opposite side of the room.

“Your friends are charming,” Deacon said, his voice all silvery and smoky, and the smile he gave me was utterly decadent.

“Stop that,” I warned him. “Do not flirt with my friends.”

“But it makes you quite territorial. Or is that simply jealousy?”

“I have nothing to be jealous of.”

“No,” he agreed quickly. “You do not. Get back to work.”

But I stood there and watched him instead.

“I don’t see you moving.”

“I will.” I kept staring at his shoulders and the veins in his forearms, his ass as he moved back and forth, and how messy his hair was and the different colors in it, from chestnut to a deep umber, with streaks of bronze and gold.

“You’re staring,” he teased me.

“I…” What was I going to say?

He turned then, arms crossed, and grinned at me. “Did you know that many truly mated omegas can go into heat merely by being near their alphas for a prolonged period of time?”

“You made that up.”

“Did I?”

I shook my head at him. “That’s shameless.”

“I don’t know, it seems like you want to get down on your hands and knees for me.”

Whirling around, I strode over to where I’d left off picking up paper and began making a new stack. I didn’t want to ever have a discussion about the heat of an omega, because everything I’d read growing up said that all omegas experienced it, but then there were many new books and articles that said many truly mated omegas didn’t have them.

When I’d spoken to Linden about it, years ago now, he’d told me that he’d been put into many in his life. What normally happened was that an alpha put an omega into heat by having sex with them. If they then marked the omega, the heat would pass and would never occur again. Even if the omega was discarded by their alpha, the mark was forever, a scar they carried, the heat a mere memory. But many alphas put their omegas into heat and then offered them to others for money, favors, whatever the alpha craved. Linden, as he was married to a human, didn’t go into heat anymore, for which he was so very thankful.

He’d also told me something curious, which was that Avery, even being an omega, had never gone into heat in his life. Linden said that was because Avery had a true mate, not a bonding. Normally, a bonding was what one did with an omega, nothing more, and the first time, before the bite, they would go into heat. But Deacon was my true mate, so if everything I’d read, heard, and been told was true, I would never experience the heat that burned up every inhibition. But maybe, if you were with your true mate, there were no inhibitions anyway. Why would there be?

I had no idea when it had gotten so hot in the room, but I needed to go into the cold room, or run to the bathroom, and splash icy water on my face—either would help. I walked out the door on the opposite side of the room and down the hall, then turned toward the bathroom. I had just passed our lounge when I was grabbed from behind, swept off my feet, and carried through the door.

All I could smell was him. Deacon. His pheromones were so powerful, cloying, the air nearly humid with them. I heard a lock click, then the light went off, and there was only the yellow emergency lights.

“What are you⁠—”

“You were thinking about me, little omega,” he said, sounding almost sinister as his hands went to my belt.

“I—we can’t—Deacon,” I choked out his name as the buckle surrendered to his nimble fingers, then the button of my chinos and the zipper followed. “I’m at work. This is where I do important things and⁠—”

He shoved me forward and I landed face down on the futon couch.

“It’s so hot in here,” I told him as he pulled off my boots, I heard them hit the floor, and then my pants and briefs went first to my thighs, then further, to my ankles. Suddenly I was naked from the waist down, scrambling to my hands and knees, and only then, finally, did my head start to clear.

“You’re going to get me fired and—Deacon!” I nearly screamed his name, because he had put both hands on my bare ass, spread my cheeks, and shoved his tongue deep inside me.

It felt so good, better than any toy I had ever used on myself, and when he sucked and licked, pressing in deeper each time, all I wanted was more.

When he took hold of my cock, I nearly came right there.

“Yes, good, that’s what I want,” he husked, and then I was on my back, flipped over like I weighed nothing, knees bent, and he was there for a moment, looming over me before he took my cock down the back of his throat in one seamless glide.