Page 25 of Omega Chattel
“What do you like?”
“Manga. Comics.”
“Of course.” He was young. It was a given he wanted those sorts of books.
“Novels with adventure and maybe some sexy times,” he added.
“I’ll tell you what. You read one short story out of here a day and then the rest of your reading can be a novel a week of your choice. Not a comic book. Okay? Then I want a review of each. No less than two-hundred and fifty words.”
“I can do that.”
“I understand it will take time to settle in.” I paused, worried I had thrust him into this too quickly. He had only just become an adult. He had been only days away from the farm, the only place he’d ever known as a home in his short life.
I wanted to reach out to him, touch him, reassure him. He was safe here. No one would punish him. No one was going to throw him out, least of all me.
I didn’t do physical contact with my Omega guests, my students. Brief handshakes, a gentle hand on a shoulder, and that was about it.
I thought again of Kee, but he didn’t count.
I had hoped, of course, Kee could be rehabilitated, and maybe eventually want to bond with me. But he’d only ended up being a disruptive influence on the others, and turning a cool eye to my greater affections. I’d never thrown him out. He’d always left on his own and without warning.
Alli was not like Kee at all. He was younger, less experienced, soft not loud, innocent not hard. His build, his coloring—everything was different. A beautiful boy.
Alli made me think things I didn’t want to deal with. I kept telling myself he wasn’t what I wanted, but that was a lie. I couldn’t stop thinking about him—all day at work. And now, with his frustrations and damp anxieties of youth squirming to please me. He’d said he wanted me. The prettiness of him, his youth, his scent which created a strange pain deep in my chest, like heat and cold mixing. He was magnetic in ways I couldn’t deny.
A small voice broke me out of my thoughts.
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Maybe if I work tonight before bedtime on all this, I can catch up. I can try.”
“No. You’re going to come into the living room with the rest of us and watch a movie. It’s a movie a night. That’s what we do here to decompress. If you work all the time, you will burn out and we can’t have that can we?”
He shook his head and his hair fell back. His sweet eyes seemed to grow bigger and rounder.
“We’ll have popcorn and it’ll be fun.”
“But I don’t think I deserve—“
“You’re not allowed to think that way,” I interrupted. “What every person deserves is decency from others and a chance. A chance to strive. You’ll do better tomorrow, right?”
He nodded.
“Good.”
It shouldn’t have been big eyes and all innocence that drew me, but it did. The fact that he’d shown little interest in his learning should have exasperated me. Instead, I wanted to comfort him even more. I realized he hadn’t had time to acclimate, and my thoughts kept clamoring to make excuses for him.
Why did I just want to hug him? Hold him?
I treated my Omega guests well, but I didn’t coddle them in that way. And Kee, well, he wouldn’t allow coddling even if I’d wanted it. Even if I’d wanted to hold him in my arms after crazed Burn sex and breathe in his scent. No, he wouldn’t have it, and I had worked to close that foolish part of myself off.
Until Alli.
Something had awakened inside me, but so soon after Kee, I had to tamp it down because this could not be happening. Not so fast. Not so strong.
But those big eyes shone, darkly expressive. Did he even understand his unique allure?
