Page 28 of Omega Island
“This isn’t fair to you.”
“What’s fair?” he asked. “Ever?”
He was right. Yet I couldn’t quite read him. He was hard, straining the cloth between his legs, but he had calmed me, never made any overtures even when I’d asked. It was too much for him, probably, after escaping abuse, but at the same time I kept thinking maybe he didn’t want me. My selfish hormones wanted him to want me. The peak of hubris during a time of omega need.
“Whatever you’re doing is helping,” I said.
“It’s deeply ingrained in me to make sure you’re okay. But also—I do care. About you,” he said.
I felt myself start to fall back, my mind going hazy again. Did that mean he did want me? Hell, I was behaving as if I was twenty again.
He caught my wrist as I started to drift off the step. “Hold on.”
I turned my hand and gripped his hard. I wanted him and it wasn’t okay. Only he seemed not at all put off by me. Now I was thinking too much when all I wanted was a big, hard alpha to fill me.
I grasped his hand harder. “Please don’t let go,” I said.
“To keep you from drowning, of course,” he replied.
“How I feel now, I almost want to drown. I’ve put you in a position I never meant to when you don’t deserve it. Or want it. I’m sorry.” I guess I’d left my heat haze long enough to make a speech, and it surprised me.
“How can you feel that I don’t want you?” he calmly asked.
I jerked my head back, feeling water seep down my back. “I asked you. You said no.”
“Oh.” His damp blond strands moved enticingly over his shoulders as he turned. “Another thing my alpha dad taught me. Consent. You’re in no position right now.”
“Huh?” What did he mean? Yes, I was out of my mind, but with a mating urge so powerful my body was breaking itself into pieces over it. “I think I consented when I took down my shorts.”
“I think you were still drunk on your hormones.”
“I’ve never heard anyone say that before.”
“Well, now you have.”
The conversation, like the massage, was strangely calming. I kept thinking,Does this mean he wants me?
But Raimi was an entanglement himself. He had his own baggage to deal with, let alone mine.
“Are you saying if I asked you to come home with me now while I’m lucid you might not say no?”
He blinked twice, and there was a lightness there I hadn’t seen yet in him, a lovely intrigue. “You’re really asking?”
“I would really like to have a partner for my heat.”
“But—me?”
“Yes. You.”
“I’m not sure I would be the best for you.”
“You’re very calming to me.”
Raimi glanced away as he spoke. “And you’d want sex.” It was like he’d just blurted out the biggest, deepest secret between us in such simple terms.
“If possible.”
“Oh. Wow.” He turned to face me again, eyes wide.
