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“Expenses? You mean, for the business?”
“I mean for anything. Enough that you didn’t have to marry unless you wanted to. You could live in a place like… the Omega Lofts. Run your business from there.” I almost choked at his casual mention of New York City’s most exclusive all-omega apartment building. It had phenomenal security, an attached twenty-acre park with a lake dedicated solely for its use, and was occupied by super-wealthy single omegas from all over the world. The Lofts weren’t rented out; they were purchased outright, though the residential fees were more than my own parent’s mortgage payments.
“Wow, shoot for the stars. We were saving up for a shared room at the Georgetown government omega facility but yeah, I guess. If I could get a few rooms at the Omega Lofts for me and my friends—oh! Plus an extra one for a physical office space. Maybe a slush fund of a few hundred thousand for incidentals? And legal documents of course, so no one could come in and take it all away… Yeah, I’d stay single for sure.” I rolled my eyes, but his own expression didn’t change.
“But that would make you happy?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I’d miss my parents. My favorite restaurants. I love living in Georgetown.” I thought for a long moment. “No. I wouldn’t be happy with that. I want to earn it, right? I want to work for it, and have the company be something I’m proud of, because I built it. Not just another thing somebody else gave me.”
“Of course.” He rubbed a hand over his wrinkled brow, like he was trying to solve some difficult equation.
“Do you ever smile, Grumpy?” I teased.
“No,” he said. “The last time I tried, I had to have emergency surgery. I almost lost a lip.” His delivery was so deadpan, at first it didn’t register.
“Oh lordy, Grumpy McGrumperson. Did you just tell a joke?” I clapped my hands. “You’re a real boy, Pinocchio!”
“Brat, I told you to stop calling me names.”
I glared at him. The blankets and sheets were completely rumpled, and I folded them back into place as I retorted, “Why should I, Grumperman? Hit a little too close to home? Don’t like it? Just smile. Maybe people will start calling you Smiley. Thanks for the talk, Smiley. Now, if you could head on out, I’ll get back to my downstairs DJ job.” I wiggled my fingers at his face. “Bye, Smiley.”
For a moment, he hesitated, his nostrils flaring as he breathed. The only movement I could perceive was his chest as he sucked in my scent. His pupils were dark, his hands clenched, like it was all he could do not to throw me down on the bed and lay down a few sick beats of his own… but then he turned on his heel and walked out.
Chapter10
Grumpy
Ideserved a fucking award—a Nobel Prize, maybe even Humanitarian of the Year—for not throwing Soleil Fairweather down on her narrow bed and fucking her until her voice gave out from crying my name, until she begged me to stop making her come, until she forgot the name of her damned fiancé and knew that she was mine.
But she wasn’t mine. She wasn’t even hers.
Instead of doing what I wanted, I stalked back to my cabin, took a quick shower, jerked myself off so hard my dick was probably sprained, and went to bed.
The next day, I stayed in my room and my office, getting food delivered that I had no appetite for, and watching my obsession move around my ship on the camera feeds I’d re-routed to my phone.
Then I jacked off again. And again.
I spent the morning reading through my brat’s high school yearbooks and trying to find the beta boyfriend, the afternoon putting things in place to make certain she would never need to marry Tarquin or any other alpha unless she wanted to, and the evening catching up with contracts that needed reviewing for a possible merger with a competing cruise line. Then I went to find my sister and get some more answers.
She was sitting alone in the dining room bar, her asshole fiancé nowhere in sight. I checked her drink. Hot tea. Good.
“Where’s the douche?” I asked, signaling the bartender for my usual Balvenie Caribbean Cask scotch, no ice.
I expected her to snap back at me, but she just took a sip of tea and shrugged. “Did you hunt me down to trash talk Alphonse some more?”
I flinched. She sounded like she had six months before, when she’d been self-medicating. She’d almost died, and I’d checked her into a rehab facility near Miami. I wished I’d chosen any other one, since that was where she’d met Alphonse. He’d followed her out of rehab and into her life, and she’d only introduced us a month before, after they were engaged. I could not get her to see the red flags that were so apparent. When I’d asked her why she’d settled on him, she’d said, “He smells green and comforting, like Simon did.”
I didn’t think a general smell was enough reason to get married. Of course, I didn’t think marriage was all that great, in any case. Our own parents had divorced when I was seventeen, and both of them seemed happier for it. But Lore was fifty-two, plenty old enough to make her own mistakes.
“No, I don’t want to talk about him,” I replied after I’d had another drink. “I want to ask about being an omega. About what your life was like, after you changed.” She turned on the barstool and stared at me in shock. Her eyes were red-rimmed. “Have you been crying, Lore?”
“You know what they say about omegas. We cry all the time,” she said, waving a hand in the air like she was brushing away a mosquito. “Why are you interested in my life all of a sudden, little brother?”
I frowned at my drink. I was disappointed in myself, that I’d never asked her about… practically anything. We’d grown up in the same house, but she was just enough older than me that I’d been… uninterested? No. Self-centered, like most boys. I told her so.
“Don’t feel bad, G. You got better over time. Well, mostly.”
I mock-glared at her. “When you first discovered you were an omega, you didn’t drop out of school. I would remember that.” I was eight at the time, and our parents had still been together. Dad had been excited, telling all his friends about the first omega born in our family in four generations. Since fewer than one in ten women became omegas, it was rare. But I’d mostly been annoyed at her getting more of the already-inconsistent attention of our parents.
