Page 19 of Omega's Forbidden Heat
He needs to go.
She steps away and halts and the sudden action makes him glance up at her face. The colour drains from her skin right in front of him and her eyes are wide. He follows their projectory to the floor and her feet. In front of her toes, lies a neat white envelope. Plain and unobtrusive. Businesslike. With the word OMEGA spelled out in capital letters.
“What is it?” he says.
She crunches down gingerly and picks it up by one corner between a finger and thumb, holding it out and letting it dangle in front of her face.
“I haven’t had one for months,” she mutters, more to herself than to him. “I thought they’d stopped.”
He stares at it. “Don’t open it, Amy,” he tells her.
Her eyes float up to his and she frowns, tucking her thumbnail under the flap and ripping open the envelope. Why can she never do as she’s told?
“Don’t read it.”
“Why not? It’s just words right. They couldn’t possibly hurt me.” She rocks back onto her backside and crosses her legs in front of her, pulling out a folded sheet of white paper, the kind with faint blue lines ruled across its width. She opens it into her lap and her eyes swivel left and right as she reads the lines of typed words.
Cowards, he thinks. They don’t want her to know who it’s from. They’re not brave enough to sign it, or let her identify the author from their handwriting. The thing stinks of perfume too, it’s obviously been doused in the stuff, disguising the author’s scent.
A deep line forms between her brows and he can tell she’s fighting hard to stop her bottom lip from trembling, catching it and holding it firm with her teeth.
It’s agony.
“Let me see it.” He holds out his hand and she snatches the letter against her chest.
“No.”
“Omega,” he growls and she throws him another scowled look.
“Jack, you don’t want to read this.”
“Why not?”
“Because … there’re things about you in here too.”
“What the fuck? Give it to me, Amy.”
She stands and steps towards him, holding out the piece of paper with the poison words.
He takes it and squints down at the words. It’s an incoherent mess of vile and putrid thoughts, vomited onto the page. It accuses her of all sorts and him too and he can almost see the writer both horrified and delighted at the things they imagine they’ve been doing together.
“I suppose it’s not surprising,” she sighs.
He grimaces. “So what if we’d done half these things? Shit, all of them. I bet half the people in the village are doing all sorts of sordid, kinky shit.”
She laughs, a bitter sort of noise. “Oh, they are.”
“Do you know who it is?” He struggles to get the words out. He doesn’t like the look on her face, defeated, sad, resigned. He’d like to find this person and stuff this piece of paper down their throat. Force them to eat every last one of their words, make them gag and choke on every single one.
“No. I wanted to try and find out. I considered going to the police. But Finn and my parents talked me out of it. They said it wasn’t worth the hassle and it would all blow over.” The wind flutters her hair and a strand catches on her wet mouth, she frees it and twines it behind her ear. “It did for a while, but I guess you’ve stirred things up.”
“Not as well loved as you claim I am.”
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
He shakes his head, and shoves the letter in his pocket. She watches him do it and makes no move to ask for it back. “Do you know who it is, Amy?”
“No.”
