Page 2 of Roommates
“Sorry, can't today,” I texted back. “Tutoring my roommate.”
I glanced up from my phone and turned around in my desk chair to look at Adam's empty bed behind me. Well, not exactly empty. TheStar Warsprint on his sheets was completely obscured by at least two loads of laundry he just hadn't gotten around to washing yet.
The first two weeks or so of living together, it had bothered me how messy his space was, but I’d had all of the fall semester to get used to my new roommate and now that spring was upon us, I managed to look at his side of the room without twitching. Adam just wasn’t a tidy person.
He wasn’t apunctualone either. He'd promised he'd be here in ten minutes—half an hour ago.
My attention snapped back to my phone when it started vibrating against the wooden surface of my small desk. A new message from Conner.
“You're still tutoring Adam? Do you think that's a good idea?”
“Stop worrying,” I texted back. “I've got things under control.”
“If you say so. I gotta get ready for the demo now. Talk to you later.”
“Have fun,” I wrote back and put the phone aside. Automatically, my gaze went to my desk's drawer.
When I told Conner I had things under control, I meant that I had enough pills with me to last me until the end of term—and they were in this drawer, which I kept locked at all times. Call me paranoid, but in my situation, it paid to be. The world believed I was a beta, and I wanted to keep it that way.
My freshman year, I'd been careless, forgetting to put my pills away before dashing out during an unannounced fire drill. That was how Conner found out that I was taking heat suppressants. I'd tried telling him they were something else, but he wasn't stupid enough to buy it. He was an omega himself and taking the same medication to be able to focus on his studies.
So I told him the truth and begged him not to tell anyone—and he never had. Conner was a good friend—and certainly sympathetic to the struggles I would face if my secret came to light, even if he still tried to convince me to come clean every now and then.
I knew coming clean wasn't a good idea, though. No, it was far too late for that.
Leaning back in my uncomfortable desk chair, I exhaled, and at that moment—finally—the door to my room opened. Adam came barreling into the room, his dark hair as messy as his side of the room and his gray shirt sweat-slicked and clinging to his large frame. “Sorry, I'm so late. I was out running. You want me to take a shower before we start? I should probably shower.” Before I could even say anything, he pulled his shirt over his head and discarded it with the rest of his laundry on his bed.
I had the hardest time not staring at the naked skin that revealed itself before me.
This was the part I didn't have under control as well as I would have liked. How could I have? There was no controlling Adam. He was the yin to my yang. Where I created order, he left chaos and smelly socks in his wake. Where I tried to establish a respectful distance, he used my bed to create a pillow fort. And where I was a symbol of modesty, he pranced around the dorms with his naked torso on display.
And he caught my gaze every damn time.
It really wasn't fair, though. Omegas were never made to room with alphas. I used to laugh at the notion that college-age omegas and alphas just couldn't be expected to suppress their urges around each other—but now that I regularly came face to face with the gorgeous planes of skin Adam hid underneath his clothes, I understood the reason behind the rule. There was a small—or not so small—
part of me that wanted me to run my fingers over every exposed inch of Adam's chest as he ruffled through his laundry bag, where he kept the clothes he'd actually washed.
“You do need a shower,” I made myself say. “You reek.” Of male sweat and alpha pheromones. I made a disgusted face, because I couldn't let him know how not-disgusted I was. Couldn't let him know that his scentdidsomething to me. It spoke to a part of my brain that wanted him to take off more than just his shirt. I caught myself just before my eyes could trail down to the lines of his groin.
Yeah, I totally had things under control.
I didn't like to admit it, but Conner was right to be concerned when he heard I was rooming with an alpha this year. My pills were suppressing my own scent to enough of a degree that I wasn't attracting Adam to me, but they didn't save me from breathing in the pheromoneshesaturated the air with.
“I'll be right back,” Adam told me, once he'd dug a towel and an assortment of fresh clothes out of his laundry bag.
“Take your time,” I called after him, but he was out the door as quickly as he'd come in.
Once he was gone, I decided to flip open a text book. Gluing my eyes to my pre-law homework was better than imagining what my roommate might look like standing under the shower spray, droplets of water running down his naked body.
Focus, Lucas, I chided myself. There was no use thinking up any scenarios that involved me and Adam being naked together. Even if things were different and there was some way that I could make a move on my roommate, I was completely inexperienced. The pills I was taking suppressed my scent, yes, but I couldn't rely on them to disguise what I was when I was having sex with someone, so I simply never had sex.
I told myself it was the easiest solution, even if right now, it felt like the hardest one. It did keep me from thinking I could get with Adam, though.
Why would a senior jock want to start anything with a nerdy sophomore virgin?
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