Page 33 of His Snowbound Omega

“There’s no reason for you to wine and dine me either,” he pointed out, “yet here we are.”

“That falls into the ‘taking care of you’ bit.”

Thorn set his cutlery down. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“That’s very honest of you,” Baal noted. “Very…out of character. The Thorn Winters I know would rather die than show any sort of weakness in front of another.”

“You barely know me.”

“Am I wrong?”

No, but…

“Lucky guess.” Sure, Thorn had learned to wear a mask and act like nothing ever got to him. He was an omega on an alpha run planet, of course he’d had to do that to survive.

“What doesn’t feel right, frosty omega?”

“This.” He placed his palms on the table. “All of this. If you’d wanted me, we could have skipped straight to the hotel room.”

“I told you I want you to get used to me,” the alpha said.

“You’re not using your pheromones.” He sniffed just to be sure, but he was right. Aside from the natural hint of it thatlingered in the air between them, the alpha wasn’t expressing them.

“We’re in a public place.” Baal used his knife to wave at the room, which was pretty crowded in every section except for the one they were seated in. No doubt his doing. “Make me a roll.”

What the hell?

It was on the tip of his tongue to refuse, but what would be the point?

Thorn snatched one from the basket and cut it open. He slathered on a healthy amount of butter and then stood and leaned over the table to set it on the edge of Baal’s full plate.

“What are you doing?” he asked when the alpha picked it up and merely stared at it.

“I haven’t had bread in a really long time,” he confessed.

“Why?”

“When I was a teenager, I briefly ran away from home. I stole to get by.” Baal turned the roll in his hand as though fascinated by it, seemingly unaware of the butter that dripped down his palm and ultimately stained the white cuff of his dress shirt. “One week was particularly bad. It was the middle of winter, and I hadn’t eaten in three days. There was a kid on his way home from school, a tiny thing, smaller than the backpack he was carrying. He had a sandwich.” He licked his lips. “I wanted it.”

Thorn scrunched up his nose. “Don’t tell me you stole food from a kid.”

“Almost,” he confessed. “That was the plan. But the kid had a brother. Guess he was picking him up from the bus stop. He arrived just in time to see what was about to happen. Smart. Know what he did when he saw me lurking near his little brother?”

“How am I supposed to know that?”

He grunted. “The older one pulled a sandwich from his pocket and handed it over. Didn’t say a word, just stared me down. If looks could kill, he would have set me on fire and sent me straight to hell right then and there. He wasn’t as small as his little brother, but he was still half my size. He had guts. Turned out the sandwich was barely more than two slices of bread stuck together.”

“Bet you were disappointed.”

“Not at all,” Baal disagreed. “Nothing’s ever tasted sweeter.” He took a hearty bite of the roll and his eyes slipped closed. When he reopened them, there was a heat in his icy blue eyes that had Thorn’s heart leaping uncomfortably in his chest. “Until now.”

Chapter 11:

The hotel room Baal had booked for them was the VIP suite, which Thorn probably should have expected, yet was still surprised by.

If dinner had been unnecessary, booking a lavish room such as this one was definitely way over the top. Didn’t they just need a bed or a single solid surface to do what the alpha had in mind?

“Unless you meant you wanted me to practice being spoiled,” he found himself saying as they moved through the foyer into the main area, “I’m not seeing the point of all this.”