Page 44 of Omega Chattel
I felt the tremble in my mind as well.
My heart sped up. I knelt in front of him, wanting to put him at ease.
“Look at me, Alli.”
His dark eyes peered from beneath his long lashes.
“We have known each other barely four days. You’ve been away from the farm, the only home you’ve ever known, for a week. You can’t know everything overnight. You can’t know what’s out there, and what you might want until you begin to live.”
His pink lips parted. “I know what I want.”
Inside, my smile lit up my thoughts, my veins. The room grew so hot. But how to be sure? For him? And for my already broken heart? Could I take it again? A young Omega offering himself so easily, saying what he wanted, and then changing his mind?
In fairness, Kee and I had never even begun to form a bond. I’d wanted to. Kee had not. I wouldn’t have even attempted it with Kee—not without the Omega’s permission. Kee had consented to fucking only. Nothing more. Kee’s bond was to money for his addictions. He knew how to seduce me, and that I would give it, and that was the only reason he kept coming back.
“I won’t change my mind,” Alli whispered, as if reading my thoughts.
“You are so young.” I reached out and ran one finger down his smooth cheek.
“That’s not fair.” He leaned back, as if away from my touch. “You keep saying that.”
“Is it not true?”
“Yes.” He bowed his head. “And you don’t like virgins, I know, but I--” His words stopped as if he’d run out of energy.
I’d hurt him with that off-hand remark when we’d first met. He thought I had rebuffed him. It was his street boy forwardness I’d rebuffed, and the sad reality that to eat he was going to have to sell himself.
“I don’t like virgins. Not for my Burns.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means when I pay for chattel during my Burns, I want chattel, nothing more. Someone with experience. An Alpha’s Burn might seem intimate and thrilling at first, and all about finding love because the Burn is the facilitator of mating, of virility, of perpetuation of the species. But it’s quite cyclical and routine. It can mean nothing, really, unless you’re with the right person.”
“So if you want to just get through the Burn, satiate it, you need someone who won’t take a lot of your time distracting you.”
“Yes.”
“I could be that, though.”
“My dear, you’re already a distraction.”
He looked at me with questions in all his features. “But--”
“Alli, I’m not rejecting you. I’m not in the Burn.”
“Oh.” He pouted. He frowned. Then his face relaxed. “Oh!”
Now I allowed a small smile. I suppressed a shudder. This one could cut me deep if he wanted. If he decided things weren’t working out.
“You don’t hate me, then.” He gave me a smug look, one of his cheeks puffing out more than the other.
“I don’t know you well enough to hate you.”
“You don’t know me well enough to love me, either.”
“I’ve never experienced the fated mate syndrome. But I can feel it here.” I tapped the side of my head. “Hunger, want, need. Affection.”
He nodded slowly, but still looked disappointed.
