Page 23 of Omega's Forbidden Heat
Amy stares at him.
“You’re not going to stay and eat the stirfry?” Amy asks, forcing her voice light. “According to Finn, I might poison myself unless I have a little help.”
He scratches at the base of his skull and she wonders if his gland tingles as much as hers. “I’ve got left over chicken pie my aunt brought over. I need to eat it tonight before it goes off.”
“Come on,” Finn says, tugging on Jack’s arm, too caught up in his own urgency to notice the tension he’s just stepped into. “See you later, Amy.”
Jack glances at her. “See you,” he says.
She bites her lip to stop herself from saying something she’ll regret and his eyes flip away.
When they’re gone, she slides off the counter, rubbing at the aching gland on her neck, and goes to fetch the noodles.
* * *
Six years ago
What is it like to be kissed? It’s a question that’s been humming around in her head for weeks. People kiss all the time. Her parents are always canoodling in ways that embarrass her. But kissing has never been the obsession it is until now. Until he’d kissed her hand. And now she can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to be kissed by him in other places, on her mouth, on her throat, on her shoulder. It has her skin burning with need, so fiercely it is uncomfortable, and she scratches at her flesh, at her thighs, at her wrists, at the base of her skull.
And then she sees him. Mrs Styler sends her on an errand to the office and as she steps out of the science block and onto the path, she sees him.
Sees him press another girl up against the back wall of the school building, slide his hand into her hair and kiss her.
The kissing she’s seen at school has often looked sloppy and wet and not particularly enjoyable. But Jack Johnson kisses the girl like a film star. Like he is in a movie and someone is filming the whole thing. It isn’t rough or messy. It looks tender and romantic.
She can still remember how soft those lips felt against her the skin of knuckles. But she’d like to feel them against her own lips. She’d like to know what it feels like to have them glide against hers and capture them between his.
Chapter Nine
She pushes against the door with her shoulder and it swings open. The girl’s toilet is filled with women gathered around the sinks, reapplying lipstick and brushing their hair. She runs her eye over them but there’s no one she knows so she heads into a cubicle, bolting the door, sitting on the lidded toilet and hooking out her phone. She wants to give Georgia a bit of space. She clearly likes the guy who had come over to talk to them and Amy had quickly felt like a spare tyre.
She messages a few of her friends and scrolls through Instagram but then a word catches her attention.
Omega.
She lifts her head and stares at the cubicle door, its surface scrawled with marker pen comments; some uplifting and cheery, others complaints about life and, more specifically, men. She smiles until the conversation on the other side catches again her attention. It’s whispered in low voices, but since she presented her hearing has been more acute and she overhears a lot she ought not to.
“Are you sure that was her?”
“Certain. She’s the Omega one — studying psychology or healthcare or something like that. She’s in Gina’s lectures.”
Amy’s spine stiffens and her cheeks burn. She wishes they wouldn’t. It’s not the first time she’s overheard people talking about her like this, and yet it still hits her every time. Every occasion an equally cruel strike.
“You know, she’s slept with half the university, right? Goes round begging men to take her when she gets her heat.”
“I heard she let the football team gang bang her.”
“Oh my god, that’s revolting.”
“I don’t know why she doesn’t just shack up with some Alpha. Why she insists on acting like such a whore.”
“She probably loves the attention.”
“You know what they do right? Those Omegas and Alphas. Have you ever seen the porn?”
Amy swallows. The voices whisper with glee and delight, picking over the details, salivating over the stories, full of their damnation of her. It’s how so many of them think. To them, she’s something shameful and degraded. Nothing better than a dog.
She won’t cry. Despite the queasiness rushing through her body and the way her lip trembles. She knows the truth.
