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CHAPTERTHIRTY-SEVEN
Madison
By the following Saturday,the bruise on my neck had faded.
I hadn’t heard from the pack past a couple of check-in texts from Lucas Wednesday morning.I’m fine,I had said.Thanks. I hadn’t heard from Gray or Rian at all.
Don’t think about Rian.
I assumed–although I couldn’t tell–that the scent of rain and coffee had faded from my hair, from my skin, even if I could still smell them on the clothes I kept slipping into just before bed: Rian’s sweats. His shirt. I had left them in a plastic bag by the door, ambitiously, after washing them the first time, but soon realized that I slept better in his clothes than my own.
I added that to my list of things not to think about.
Instead, I had filled my week with work–I had some catching up to do–and saw Charlie, and Sophia, and texted with Brent. We were getting dinner tonight at the place we’d been to before, a little burger place with okay burgers and great, if slightly salty, fries, and I was standing in front of the mirror, deciding whether it would be more obvious to try to cover the last yellowish vestiges of hickey with makeup, or to leave it be, when my phone buzzed.
7:00 won’t work, babe, running late. 7:30, k?
Whatever, I thought, and texted backno problem!
Dinner was… fine. I was hungry by the time we sat down to eat–I had been hungrier than usual all week, had found myself fixing peanut butter sandwiches after dinner–and devoured my burger, flabby cheese, chewy bacon, and all. Brent had smiled.
“I like how you’re not a salad girl.”
“Hmm?” I said, taking a sip of my beer.
“You’re not, like, one of those girls who only eats salads on dates. I hate that.”
I looked down at my mostly-empty plate, just a few scattered fries remaining. “Thanks, I guess.”
We caught up, but it was mostly one-sided: I didn’t talk about my heat, about Rian, or Lucas, or Gray. I didn’t have to, Brent kept the conversation going until it came time to pay. He pulled out his card, and I reached for mine.
“I thought you might want me to spoil you, now that you’re an omega,” he said, one side of his mouth tilted into a smirk, “but you’re still my Mads, huh?”
I smiled back, feeling my chest constrict. Was I?
Apparently so: when he asked if I wanted to come back to his place, I nodded.
Brent’s apartment, in which I had spent so many days and nights during the three years of our relationship, seemed unfamiliar: it smelled stale and strange, like synthetic cologne and unwashed sheets. I followed him through to the bedroom, ignoring the longing in my chest for coffee, for thunder, and let him kiss me, slipping his tongue into my mouth and his hand into the front of my panties, my skirt hiked up around my waist on the bed.
“You’re such a good girl, aren’t you, Mads?” he said, and somehow, the words that had sounded so special from Rian’s mouth now had my stomach twisting in revulsion, even before I continued. “You didn’t let them stretch you out too much, you’re still tight enough for me.” He knew, then, he’d been able to tell, I didn’t know how. My neck, maybe. My scent. Maybe he just knew it had been three months since we’d slept together last. His fingers were probing, sliding in and out through the slickness my traitorous body now produced so much of. “You were made for this, huh? So fucking wet for my cock already.”
I squeezed my eyes shut as I heard him fumbling with his belt, his zipper, and his cock nudged against me. I had spent so much time like this, on my back on this bed. I knew if I opened my eyes I would see the same crack on the ceiling I always had.
Why did it feel so different?
Brent hadn’t changed, I knew that much instantly, as he thrust into me, his rhythm familiar even after our months apart.
But I had. I hadpresented. Was he right? I was an omega now, had I been spoiled? Was this not enough? Even if my omega body was still tight and wet and hot, like he said, had something stretched and broken in my heart?
“You want a fucking knot?” his breath was damp in my ear. “I want you to beg for it.”
I didn’t say anything–I couldn’t–but it didn’t seem to matter. Brent was as lost in his own body as I was in my head. Whas this how it would always be, with a beta? Is this why omegas found packs and got themselves mated?
Brent was kissing my jaw, my neck, his lips and tongue wet against my skin, and I realized I was forcing myself to endure what I had enjoyed before–Ihadenjoyed it, hadn’t I?–forcing myself to remain still and pliant under his heavy body as he rutted into me.
And then his teeth grazed my neck–the lightest touch, there and then gone, so feather-soft I could almost have pretended it never happened, if not for the roiling in my stomach, the revulsion I felt down in my very bones. I pushed him away hard, my hand on his shoulders moving him off of me, until he sat with a petulant thump on his bed, his wet cock bobbing from the apex of his legs. I sat up myself, feeling naked despite my clothes still being mostly on, feeling raw and sticky and sick.
“I have to go,” I said, scooting to the edge of the mattress, pulling my underwear back on underneath my skirt.
