Page 14 of His Reward (Omegas After Dark: Omega Auction #2)

“I landed a quad,” Marco said, voice raised. “I almost landed it in competition five years ago, before anyone else.”

I turned to give him a sarcastic look as I reached the locker where I’d stashed all my stuff earlier.

“Face it, Marco. You were good, but you were never Father’s gold medal boy.

” Those words came out bitterly. I wasn’t thrilled about being the chosen son any more than Marco liked being second best. If only our roles had been reversed.

No, I didn’t really think that. I was a champion and I liked it. I wanted that gold.

“Stephen Dousegard’s parents approached dad while you were off doing whatever you do when you’re not talking to us,” Marco said, crossing his arms and leaning against the side of the lockers as I sat to remove my skates.

“So?” I asked with a shrug. “Father coaches other people besides me.”

“Dousegard is the number one junior, but he’s looking to make the leap to seniors. This year. Immediately. He only needs to win one competition on the Grand Prix to qualify for the Winter Games.”

“Good for him,” I said, laughing as I stood to put my skates away. I really did wish Stephen all the best. He was a good kid, though not much of a kid anymore. He’d had his first heat, if skate world gossip was to be believed, which qualified him to compete on the senior circuit.

Marco was just jealous. Always had been. He was easy to ignore as I peeled out of my sweaty, long-sleeved t-shirt and tossed it into the basket I kept at the bottom of my locker for laundry.

A few seconds too late, I realized my mistake. Marco sucked in a breath, then huffed it out. He’d seen my back.

“What’s all that?” he asked, lip curled in distaste as he scanned my still-striped back.

It was too late to backtrack, and with the attitude Marco had been showing me lately, I didn’t feel like sugarcoating anything. “What do you think it is?” I asked with cocky confidence.

I took it a step farther by pushing my leggings and underwear down so my mottled ass and bruised thighs were on display, then took my time tossing my clothes into the basket before reaching for the terry robe hanging in my locker.

Marco made a disgusted sound then met my eyes as I threw the robe around my shoulders and pulled it closed. “You’re a sex freak, aren’t you,” he said.

I laughed. Genuinely laughed. “You’re such a prude,” I said.

“I’m not a prude,” he said. For an alpha approaching thirty, he sure sounded like a grossed-out teenager. “What did you do to get those marks?” he asked.

Still not in any sort of mood to be discreet or go easy on him, I shrugged and said, “I let an alpha tie me to a St. Andrew’s cross and beat the hell out of me before fucking me until I cried,” I said. Well, it was a paraphrase of what Boston and I had done.

Marco made another disgusted noise. “That’s what you do with your so-called reward weeks? You go to some kink thing and let alphas abuse you?”

“It’s consensual,” I said, tying the front of my robe. “I like it. I get off on it.”

“You’re sick,” Marco said.

“No,” I corrected him. “I’m a grown adult who knows what he likes in the bedroom and who has the freedom and agency to enjoy himself in a safe, discreet environment.”

Marco gaped at me, then repeated, “You’re sick.”

There was no point. I shook my head, then turned to head for the fitness center on the other side of the locker room, where the sauna was. I needed a good sweat to leech some of the frustration from my body.

“I’m gonna tell Dad,” Marco called after me.

“Why would you do that?” I called back over my shoulder. “Father’s a kinky bastard, too.”

I didn’t know that for certain, though I’d suspected it for years.

I also suspected he got his rocks off with someone other than Mom.

But whatever the case, just suggesting it was enough to shut Marco up.

I glanced back at his shocked face one more time before pushing through the door and striding down the hall to the sauna room, the lights flickering as I did.

I was incredibly grateful no one else was in the sauna when I got there.

It was warm but not too hot. I turned the temperature up a bit before stepping inside, but the whole thing, including the lights, flickered for a second before I could pour a bit of hot water on the glowing stones in the middle of the small cube.

Electricity problems were the least of my worries.

Once the room started to heat and fill with steam, I went to sit on one of the benches against the wall and shed my robe.

It felt good to be naked in the enclosed space of the sauna, where someone might pop open the door and see me sitting there with it all hanging out at any second.

Not just anyone, though. For some reason, my mind went straight to imagining Boston barging into the sauna in nothing but a tented towel around his waist. My imagination played out a scenario of him storming toward me, grabbing me and flipping me, then shoving me over the bench so he could lift my ass and fuck me until I screamed.

The fantasy had me smiling and hard.

Then it had my smile fading and my heart squeezing in misery. Why hadn’t Boston called or texted? Five days was a long time. Plenty of time for both of us to recover from the intensity of the auction play.

Of course, I could have called or texted him.

My face flushed with a touch of shame to join the heat of the sauna as I considered that.

There wasn’t actually a rule that said the omega had to wait for the alpha to contact them.

I hadn’t really dated before. I’d been too busy training for that gold medal.

I honestly didn’t know how these things were supposed to work.

A distant screeching sound gradually pulled me out of my combined fantasies and worries. At first, I couldn’t figure out what it was. It was high-pitched and made my heart beat hard against my ribs.

A second later, I realized it was the fire alarm.

My eyes popped wide and I sat up straight. I tried to tell myself to stay calm, because most of the time fire alarms were false alarms. I had to know for sure though. I pushed off the bench and walked to the sauna door, pulling it open.

The tiny sauna immediately filled with smoke. I sucked it in accidentally in my surprise, then coughed hard as it burned my lungs. The alarm screamed loud in the hallway outside the sauna for about five seconds before it and everything else went black and silent. The building’s power went out.

“Shit,” I hissed, wheeling back to find my robe. The only light in the room was the glow of the stones in the center of the sauna, and that wasn’t enough to reassure me at all.

I grabbed my robe and threw it on, tying it with shaking hands. In the distance, I could hear shouting and other alarms. Instinct told me I needed to get close to them, but as soon as I stepped out into the hall, smoke burned my lungs and eyes.

Shit, shit! I held my sleeve up to my face, glad my robe was a little damp. That would help me, right? I needed to get out, one way or another. The nearest outside door that I knew of was through the fitness center, so I headed that way instead of going back to the locker room.

It was a bad idea. As soon as I pulled open the door to the main space of the gym, bright, searing heat washed over me. Through the smoke that stung my eyes so badly I could hardly see, I caught sight of flames licking at the wall and enveloping everything.

I slammed the door and turned to run in the other direction, but it was too late. Part of the ceiling collapsed, raining fire and debris down in front of me. I was trapped, and the whole rink was about to burn down around me.