Page 20 of The Omega's Surprise Baby
The accomplishment didn't make me feel good, though.
* * *
Lying in bed that night, I couldn't sleep. I peered at Nick, sleeping on a mattress on the floor across from me. I'd had the mattress the night before, but now it was his turn. He looked like that didn't bother him, though. In the low light falling into the room from the street lamps outside, my friend looked peaceful.
If I was a better person, I would have kept quiet and let him sleep.
But something was really eating at me. “Nick?” I tried. Then again, a little louder. “Nick? Are you sleeping?”
He muttered something incomprehensible and turned on his side.
“Nick, are you—“
“Not anymore!” In the dark, I couldn't really see him glare at me, but I knew that he did. We'd been friends for years now. I knew that he was glaring at me and I knew that I deserved it, but none of that mattered to me just then.
“I need to ask you something.”
“Okay, ask so I can go back to sleep.”
I chewed my lip. “Hypothetically speaking—“
“Dude,” he stopped me. “It's never hypothetical with you.”
“Hypothetically,” I said again, a little louder. “How pissed would you be if I slept with one of your relatives?”
“One of my relatives?” Nick perked up. I’d clearly caught his interest now.
“Yeah, you know like, a brother, a cousin… or something. Maybe your sister. Don’t you have an alpha sister?”
“I do, but she’s married. But you don’t wanna do my sister anyway, do you?”
“Not really, no.” I hugged the pillow to myself, peering at Nick in the dark. “But you know, this is all hypothetical.” I wasn’treallygoing to sleep with a single dad who was still mourning the loss of his mate. No. That would be a stupid, stupid idea. Alphas like Shane weren’t the kind of alphas you fucked for fun. And I wasn’t the kind of omega who did that either.
“Generally, I don't mind if you want to sleep with any of my relatives,” Nick said after a moment. Something in his tone let me know there was more to come, though. “But you're thinking of Shane, aren't you?”
“What if I am?” I asked. “Keeping in mind that this is all hypothetical.” My stomach twisted. I knew my friend was about to tell me that this was a bad idea. Iknewit was a bad idea for so many reasons, and yet I couldn't seem to think of anything else.
Then again, making stupid decisions was kind of my thing.
Nick sighed. “If you're thinking of Shane, that makes things complicated.”
I rolled on my side and waited for him to continue. After a moment, he did.
“You should have seen him a year ago. He was broken, man. It was awful. We were all worried about him.”
I sucked my lower lip between my teeth. I didn't want to think about what Shane might have looked like after his mate died in that car crash I’d heard about. He carried so much love for that omega even now that I was sure the accident had devastated him.
“What if it was just a one night stand?” I asked. Maybe one night would be enough to get all these budding feelings out of my system.
Nick stayed quiet for a second, and another. “Dude,” he said then, peering up at me in the dark. “You're seriously considering this, aren't you?”
Busted.“It's not my fault your cousin is hot,” I tried to joke.
“If all you need is a hot alpha there's a large enough pool to choose from in LA. You don't have to fuck my cousin.”
“But the alphas in LA aren't like him,” I said before I could stop myself.
“And here I thought we were talking about a one night stand.” Sheets rustled as Nick sat up. “Shit, man. You're really into him, aren't you?” He sounded alert, like we were approaching disaster. Maybe we were.
