Page 71 of In Doubt

“Slow? Future? This?” Sia asks, swinging her gaze between the two of us.

“I … I want …!” She hesitates and I’m right, she can’t think straight. “It’s just sex, Jake, it doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t–” She halts and hurt floods her eyes. “Unless…unless…you don’t want to help me, is that it?” Her bottom lip trembles and I think she might cry. Shit! A crying omega in heat. It’s soul destroying. I’d do anything, practically anything, to stop those tears from falling. “Last night didn’t mean anything to you.”

“Last night!” Sia yelps.

“We only kissed,” I mumble.

“But you wanted to do more,” she declares to me and her friends, and I cringe not loving the details spilling out in front of these two.

I turn back to her friends in desperation, hoping they’ll offer me a way out.

But there’s no way I’m handing her over to Carl and Sia is clearly on her friend’s side.

“Are you saying you don’t want Giorgie?” Sia says, standing a little straighter now. “Because I’ve seen the way you look at her, man. Like all the time. It’s obvious you’ve been into her since day one. And it sounds like you wanted her last night.” I’d like to dispute that version of events, but what’s the point? “And I’ve seen the way she looks at you too. She never shuts up about you. You’re all she ever talks about.”

“I am?”

“It’s clear as day that you both want this!”

I stare at the omega, trying to determine if all this is true, searching for a glimmer of truth beneath the haze of the heat.

“Look, Giorgie is stunning and intelligent–”

“And witty and caring and everything a man could want!” Sia adds.

“I still don’t think this is appropriate.”

“Me neither,” Carl says.

And that fucking decides me.

“But I don’t see any other reasonable solution here. I will keep her safe.”

“You’d better do, Grantham!” Sia says, glaring at me hard.

“Give me your number,” I say. “And I’ll give you mine. You can check in on her.”

Sia nods, then steps towards her friend, smoothing wet strands of hair from her face. “Are you really sure this is what you want?”

“Yes,” Giorgie says, those big caramel eyes finding me and heating every inch of my body. “Yes, I trust him.”

Something catches in my chest. She does?

18

Jake

Regardless of the omega’s reassurances, I feel like an arsehole as I bundle her into the back of the car. Am I doing the right thing? Am I taking advantage of her? Will she hate me after this?

“Alpha,” she mumbles, curling her body against mine.

Shoving aside my trepidations, I bark at the driver to take us home. He eyes us with interest in the rearview mirror as the omega attempts to climb into my lap, and I tug across the curtain that separates the front seats from the back.

“Alpha,” she moans into my ear before nibbling my lobe. “I need you.”

“I know, I know you do, Baby Girl, but you’re going to have to be patient for me.”

Her little hands slide under my shirt and caress the planes of my abdomen and my chest. I close my eyes, hands tight fists beside me, trying not to think about that kiss, that spine tingling kiss.