Page 47 of Omega Untamed
His quick suggestion had me raising my eyebrows. “Really?”
“I saw a two-tone room like it once. It was very nice.”
“I’ll bring some paint chips in. You can choose.”
Kee tilted his head. “When will you have the time to paint?”
“Most likely, I won’t.”
“You want me to…?”
“If you’d like.”
“Yes!” He sat up straighter. “I mean, okay. It’s fine. I think it would be fun.” He gazed around the room again. “I’ll have to move things. I’ll have to have a lot of brushes and drop cloths and stuff.”
“I will get them or make sure they are delivered.” Maybe it would keep him too busy to make more friends of the neighbors.
“I am sorry about Del.” Kee took a deep breath.
“Del?” The name did not register.
“The Omega next door. I really didn’t mean to talk to him. He doesn’t know who I am. At all.”
But he might know me through others in the complex. I didn’t have friends here, though I’d lived in the apartment for two years. My name was known to the manager who collected the rent. Managers got around. And managers talked. I mailed in my rent, but others waited until the last minute, or paid late, and therefore went to the manager in person. It was impossible to have an apartment complex where people didn’t talk about the other tenants.
Feeling better about the future, now that I’d come up with a task for Kee, I had a pretty good night on the couch, aside from my dreams. Dreams of Kee in the bedroom and me sleeping next to him breathing in his peach scent. Of Kee naked, hair tumbled, clinging to me, bending for me, his muscular buttocks practically in my face, giving me his cat’s eye looks over his shoulder as he drew me in and in and in.
*
“You are not like the others,” Myre said.
Two days had passed, and again Myre had kept me from going home. Kept me from Kee.
I saved and filed the reports he’d asked me to look over. Paperwork on money I’d collected earlier in the day. It had gone smoothly except for one hardhead. I’d had to get a bit physical there, and it had left a raw taste in me, as well as a hyped up energy.
I sat at Myre’s second computer at a typing desk about six feet away from his desk. Fresh flowers scented the room. Lilies. He had them delivered every day from a florist shop he controlled in the busiest part of the city. He laundered money there, and I had proof, but that wasn’t big enough for Sam to make an arrest.
Sam wanted to get Myre for life, even though no one knew how many years he had left. The average Alpha lifespan was two hundred years. Myre looked at least one-ninety-nine.
Now I glanced up.
Myre was giving me one of his discomforting stares again. Like he wanted to eat me or fuck me. Or both.
After two years, and Myre now treating me like some old friend, I still had only brief insights into what made him tick. I’d seen him go off with pretty Omegas almost nightly, but I’d heard on the rumor mill he didn’t fuck them. He made them do things. Play. Sometimes he had two or three. I believe they put on shows. Beyond that, I tried not to think about it. I didn’t want to know what Myre did behind closed doors. Although lately, it appeared as if he wanted to know what I did. He was more and more curious. Asking me questions he’d never asked in two years. Private questions I tried to avoid and deflect, such as:
“Do you prefer blonds or brunets?”
“Don’t you have a Burn coming? Go on and take a few days off. If you need my help procuring an Omega to your tastes, you need only ask.”
“Have you ever had two at once? It’s marvelous. Ah, to be young again!”
Myre never asked anything without an agenda. These were subtle ways of finding out more information about me. About my personal habits and lifestyle. I gave vague and probably unsatisfactory answers, but he merely smiled, the skin of his face breaking into dozens of more wrinkles. Then he would surprise me with a set of gold cufflinks, or a fancy pen in a satin case.
“For a job well-done. You saved me money,” he would always say.
And several times, it was true. I’d caught accounting errors that showed his guy was not the best at his job. I’d brought other problematic concerns to his attention, which he fixed in his own ways. He either got rid of the problem, which meant it was probably six feet under, or he switched employees around, changing shifts, hiring more spies.
“Tonight, I have something special planned. I want you to come with me,” Myre said. His eyes were like hard, dark crystals. The look in them said,You cannot refuse.
