Page 72 of Toy No More

I force myself to forget about it, to ignore them, and turn my head to him with a faint smile. Jasper kisses me again, thrusting inside me and swallowing up the gasp I let out with his tongue.

This is a start of something better, I keep telling myself. It has to be.

Chapter 19

Kobe

Thevoicesoutsidemydoor grate on me like nails scraping a chalkboard. My muscles, my joins, my skin…they all react with such overblown sensitivity I can’t believe I managed to get any sleep. Even the sheet underneath me is uncomfortable to a barely tolerable degree.

I turn around slowly and hold my hand over my face, taking inventory of how close to death I feel. The maddening scent of Jasper finally seems to be gone. When I tried to fall asleep, it felt like I would never be rid of it. No matter how long I stayed in the shower, letting the cold water run over me to the point of risking hypothermia, I couldn’t make it go away. Now, it’s only a lingering tinge at the back of my nose that I can deal with. My heart no longer palpitates, either.

The horrible headache is a different story…

A knock on the door sends shards tumbling through my skull. It takes my brain far too long to connect what that painful sound means, and I barely grab the blanket and pull it over my bottom half as I lay there naked and spread out like a starfish in time before Marci walks in.

All night, I’ve been so damn hot I couldn’t sleep with a much as a blanket touching me. The bed’s drenched in my sweat either way. I might need a new mattress.

“I’ve already seen it all, darling,” she whispers lightly, smirking as she comes in with a glass of water and some pills in her hands.

I wish I had the energy to even chuckle at that. I still want her to know I appreciate her, so I move my head to flash her a thankful smile.

Marci puts the stuff on my side table. I hate seeing her face locked into that worried expression. All I told her when I stumbled home was that it was anomega issue. It’s better for her to not know the full extent. Thankfully, Marci asked for no more information, probably because she knows she couldn’t really understand it fully even if she had. She’s still been checking in on me throughout the night, unfortunately for me, because every little sound would wake me up.

“I’ll get him ready for school. Hannah isn’t available today, remember? But don’t,” she says quickly, noticing me jerk as I realize that’s today of all fucking days,“don’tworry! I’ve got it. So just rest, alright?”

Before I can thank her, Marci slips out of the room. As much as I want to hug her, I relish in the silence and complete darkness that returns.

I force myself to turn and wash down the pills. One is for my head, another is a suppressant that should hopefully dampen the effect of thissituation. I fight with the urge to throw up again, as I have been doing since I came home, and lie back down.

My body is split in opposite directions—a part of me wants to sleep until the world ends, and the other is too restless to let me relax for a second. Hoping I will get some much needed shuteye once the medicine kicks in, I reach for my phone. I need to make sure the message from Jasper that woke me up at five in the morning telling me to take the next two days off wasn’t a dream.

It wasn’t. The text is nothing more than that. No apology. Of course, it would be foolish of me to expect one.

Remembering Jasper’s face as he stood above me sends shivers down my back, so I shake my head to ward off those memories. It scares me how weak and pathetic I felt. The power he had over me was the kind of power no man should have over another.

I always knew Jasper was dangerous, but yesterday showcased the terrifying extent of it. If Solomon Zane was anything, he was smart and cautious.

Though, I suppose, not smart enough to see what was coming…

Now, the future is even darker and more unsteady. God only knows what Jasper will do now that no one can hold him back.

I blink in confusion when I see there’s another new message I didn’t notice before. Not very surprising, considering I was pretty delirious. This one’s from Apollo, sent at about five in the morning, a few hours ago.

Hydrate. Don’t move much. Light foods. Get better.

Also, PLEASE call an ambulance if you feel a metallic taste in your mouth.

A wave of concern passes over me at that ominous message, but upon clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth and swirling it around, I’m confident that I won’t need the ambulance. Lowering my unfocused gaze, I conjure up the fuzzy memories of Apollo coming to my rescue. I hardly believe I somehow made it to that car. For most of the way there, I thought I might just pass out on the street.

And then he appeared like an angel. Telling me what was happening to my body and making sure I was better.

My eyes no longer feel like they will bleed from looking at my phone, even on the lowest brightness, so I rest against the headboard and go online. I search for the word I think Apollo used, getting various results. I’ve never heard ofAcute Pheromone Overexposureand neither did the many, many posters asking the questions on forums I scroll by. While it seems pretty uncommon, I gather it’s a sort of thing that many omegas have at the back of their minds as the worst that can happen to them.

No wonder I had no idea about it. I never grew up around venusfolk, after all. Mom never cared to make sure I had people like me in my life, and because betas most often keep to betas, that was who surrounded me as well.

The guy who knocked her up must’ve been a venus, probably an alpha. That’s as far as we ever got on that. I learned the same things the beta kids at school did and had to figure the rest out myself. Marci always tried to help, but not having any solid role models I could ask personal questions growing up definitely left me with some gaps in knowledge.

I find some scientific articles, but those are too complex for my current state of mind. I skip past the drivel of data in an attempt to find the most important information.

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