Page 65 of The Alpha Escort Agency
“Hmm. I do love chocolate cake,” his grandad says, licking his lips and rubbing his stomach with exaggeration. “Where have you hidden it, Mary?”
“I’m not telling,” she says, wagging her fingers at him. “It’s Rory’s, not yours.”
“Well, if I get there first ….” he says, striding toward the doorway.
“I’ll have some,” Rory shouts, jumping down and dashing past his grandad to get to the kitchen first.
His nan makes a big fuss about laying the last big piece out on his plate and his grandad pouts in the corner.
He knows they are trying to make him feel better. That his mummy isn’t coming.
And the chocolate cake doesn’t taste as good as it did yesterday.
Chapter 19
It’s a week until Christmas. Which would be bad enough. All the cheer. All the loved-up couples. All the happy families. Plenty of reasons to make her feel lonely and alone. All that would be bad enough. But she also has her heat starting today. It’ll be over before Christmas. Still, it’s the last thing she needs.
The thought of spending it with anyone other than Rory is unbearable. Yet it’s out of the question to ask him to help her. There’s no going backwards. No returning to a transactional relationship.
The agency had been in touch a week ago and for a moment her heart had leapt into her throat, convinced that they’d found out the truth about her relationship with Rory. But no, they’d called to make the arrangements for her heat. She’d told the young-sounding woman on the other end of the line that she no longer required their services, that she was severing the contract. This had led to a whole host of questions about whether the escort they’d sent her had fallen short of their high standards and, with a grimace, she’d had to reassure the woman that Rory had provided a more than satisfactory service, going into detail that made her cheeks burn and her misery ten times worse.
Satisfaction. It’s what she longs for now, what she needs; the throb between her thighs intensifying with every inhale and pain building deep in her gut. She stumbles through to her bedroom where she prepared her nest the day before and tumbles into the mass of cushions and blankets, burying down into the soft layers and drawing the fabrics around her.
In among the layers is his shirt. The one she’d worn after the night she’d spent at his house. His scent on the fabric has faded, but it’s still there, woven into the thread. She doesn’t acknowledge to herself that she’d sought it out to add to her pile, that she’s wrapping herself in it now, pressing her nose against the cotton, laying it across her face so that every breath in is him.
Somehow she sinks into sleep, a restless one where something she longs for is just out of reach, behind the next corner, around the next bend, flitting from her grasp every time she lunges for it. She wakes drenched in sweat, her clothes stuck to her burning flesh and she peels them away, tossing them from the bed.
The pain is so sharp now it feels as if someone has sunk a blade into her stomach. She clasps at her gut, rolling from side to side on the bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. It hurts so bad, so bad. She needs her Alpha. She needs his knot buried deep inside her, filling her up, and she needs his spunk relieving the pain.
The Omega inside her begs, pleads, screams, bargains, demands, she finds Alpha. It doesn’t even have to be him. Any Alpha will do. Just make her come, fill her up, fuck her.
Biting down hard on her lip until she tastes metallic blood, she fights. Clenching fists full of sheet. Screaming through the pain. She will not give in to it. She will do this alone.
She starts to lose her mind. Convinced he must be there. Begging him to help. Sobbing when he never comes.
She plunges her fingers inside her, rubbing at her swollen lips, tries to make herself orgasm, but though the tension builds and builds, it never breaks. She’s left at a summit of frustration with no relief, no rescue. Just the never ending stab of pain, throb of longing.
It goes on for hours, maybe days. Her mouth is parched dry, her body limp with exhaustion, her thighs coated in dry slick, but slowly, slowly, it starts to ebb. The heat wilting, the pain fading, the yearning withering.
She comes back to herself. As if she’d been shipwrecked, tossed into an angry storm, battered and bruised by a punishing sea, now washed up at last on the shore. She has no energy left to move, no strength left to cry. Instead, she struggles to her feet and heads to the shower, and washes all of it away.
???
He’s tried not to count the days and he’s tried not to think about the date. His mind registers it anyway. An innate recognition deep in his soul that it is time. It leaks into his consciousness and his heart sinks to his toes, even while his Alpha prowls inside, spitting and snarling, demanding to be unleashed.
He tries and fails not to think of her. But his mind plays cruel tricks on him, conjuring up her sweet heat aroma, playing out images of her wet sex, taunting him with memories of how perfect she’d felt.
He doesn’t want to be reminded of that because it has him hardening despite his efforts, and he knows he's in danger of tipping into a rut. There’s the option to go fuck someone else. Hell, he can get paid doing the honours. But when the agency had phoned him last week to inform him that his regular client, Ms Turner, no longer required his services, he’d quit on the spot — he was going to do it anyway, like he'd promised her, but somehow he’d never picked up the phone, written the letter, and done it. He’d kept putting it off. Maybe some pathetic part of him had hung on to the hope that she’d want him back, even if only for his cock and his knot.
Carl, a new escort Andrea had asked Rory to take under his wing a year ago, had called an hour later, obviously with instructions to find out what was going on with Rory. But Carl's heart wasn't in it, and instead they'd talked about how his sister was doing in ballet school and his progress on doing up a motorbike.
Andrea herself had called after that, offering him a pay rise and a new regular client if he’d stay.
“You’re one of our best escorts, Rory,” she’d said. “Hard working, reliable, good with the Omegas. You know I’ve never had one complaint about you in all the years you’ve worked with us. Not one. What can I do to persuade you to stay with us?”
“Nothing, Andrea. It’s just time for me to move on, to do something else.”
“Are you going to work for a rival agency? Because I need not remind you that there’s a clause in your contract—”
