Page 1 of Game On

If being indescribably,pathetically horny in public was a criminal offense, I was risking serious jail time. Not that it was my fault, my heat had to be a day, if not hours, away, leaving me desperately clenching my thighs together as heat prickled along my skin with every shift of the early summer air.

I couldn’t tell if the stares I was getting were from the usual, ‘aw, hell, that’s a lot of tattoos!’ or because I was perfuming worse than a failing department store’s cosmetics section. The idea made me a little… uneasy. I wasn’t used to being perceived in this way. Usually there was a screen between me and whoever was keenly aware that I was wetter than a slip and slide.

Slick and slide… Tara, focus!

Right.

Faceless icons.

And the illusion, at least, of safety.

I tightened my hand around the strap of my duffle bag, breathing in a deep lungful of air—absolutely drenched in juicy, lush cherries and zesty, fresh lime.

Maybe I should’ve used the suppressants…I worried, but it was way too fucking late now. I was coming in unbelievably hot and no amount of synthetic hormones were going to be able to stop the metaphorical floodgates now that they’d opened.

With more effort than I would’ve liked, I turned my attention to the reason I’d left the safety of my nest for the loud, stinky, too-bright outside—the promise of some fucking relief. Going through my heats alone had become a routine, as uncomfortable as it made them, and I got by fine enough, but…

My knees wobbled as a beta woman passed by, the thick, cloying perfume clinging to her clothes and hair warning that not far off was an alpha who she belonged to. It was too much, the milky coffee scent too bitter and sweet at the same time.

I breathed in through my mouth, trying to clear the foggy wanting where it burrowed into the back of my skull as I trained my eyes upward, searching for the sign—or even the street number—for the, um, facility I'd chosen to spend my heat in.

For what was, realistically, a sex dungeon, Omega’s Lust Heat Hotel was pretty missable from the outside. Not that I’d call a twenty-seven story skyscraper ‘missable’, but it certainly wasn’t conspicuous.

I let the worried thought disappear as I looked up at the glass-fronted building, the sparkling surface tinted to mirror the others around it. Like this, nestled between skyscrapers with coffee shops in their lobbies, doctors offices and whatever other types of offices people with normal jobs went to based on the suits and skirts flitting from the subway stairs into revolving doors, it could’ve been just another corporate head office.

Post office? Law firm? Vet? A bank maybe?

Tara, quit stalling. I scolded myself, stepping up to the automatic doors in my scuffed sneakers.

The doors slid open with a gust of cool, scent-free air that made my shoulders—that I’d hardly realized were up to my ears—relax.

I almost expected the rubberized soles of my shoes to squeak along the damn near dark, reflective grey tile floor as I moved through the bright, airy atrium. The fountain at its center bubbling softly, helping to mute the noise from the street. An ample amount of plants dotted every available surface, adding a calming palette of natural greens to the somewhat confusing landscape of the room.

It was hard to tell exactly the sort of place I’d walked into from looks alone. Sort of a mix between a high-end spa and a medical facility.

Complete with fat golden koi swimming in the middle of the water feature.

It was… relaxing. Or would be, if my stomach wasn’t tightened into a steel knot.

Exactly the kind of environment I needed as I wobbled my way to the welcome desk, making the beta behind the counter blink as he looked up from his computer at the sound of my ragged breathing.

I always forgot that they couldn’t smell us—though in this moment, with my heat bearing down on me at any second, I was relieved of that fact. Any alpha in a ten mile radius was likely to catch a whiff of my aggressive, syrupy cherry and lime perfume. Sharp and tangy and sweet and fruity and zesty all at once.

I put my hand onto the smooth, shiny surface of the white acrylic countertop, the sweat beading along my temples doing little to cool my feverish skin.

“I’m, uh—looking to check in?” I said hopefully, as the beta continued to look at me open-mouthed from behind bottle-thick glasses with surprise. “I did the online application a couple weeks ago and submitted my documents.”

The beta—Phil, from his nametag—seemed to finally collect himself, jerking into motion quickly. “You’re very close,” he commented.

“Yeah,” I said, wondering if he expected me to be embarrassed.

“Can I see your ID?”

I fished in the front pocket of my hastily packed bag for my card case, freeing my plastic identification card from it to slide towards him. “I was working and I think I might’ve triggered it a couple days early by accident.”

I neglected to mention that my work had involved being pounded by a fuck machine controlled by my subs on Slck’d, an omega-only camming website. Sometime between pretending to beg for alpha knots in heat and trying not to come too early, I’d noticed that things were getting warm… too warm. That the act was becoming more realistic than I was ready to handle alone.

Not that I hadn’t before, I’d managed all of my heats until now solo. I hadn’t even… I mean… Not for real. Just pretend and with toys. I’d never had an alpha, or a beta for that matter, touch me in real life. Perhaps a little unusual for someone who was twenty-three… But I’d always wanted my first time with another person to be special.

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