Page 21 of Knot Your Basic B*tch

Chloe raised an eyebrow at me. “Well, I’m staring at fish as I eat a fish.”

“Is that putting you off your salmon?”

“Hell, no.” Chloe took another large bite to emphasize her point. “This is really good.”

“What about the company?” I leaned back in the chair,giving Chloe a good view. Might as well, after trying on seven different shirts, to find one that showed off the muscles in my chest while not appearing like I was trying to flaunt them.

“Not bad.” Chloe smirked, making a show of looking me up and down. She totally picked up on how I was flexing as I tried to work out whether she was attracted to me. “I mean, if you want to know my sexual preferences… I like men. I’m a little attracted to women… but to be a hundred percent accurate, I’m mostly attracted to fictional characters in books more than real people of any gender.”

“Ah. So my competition is a shirtless Fabio.” I smirked at her, enjoying her flirty teasing.

“More like a millionaire werewolf, who is also in the mafia.”

“Who could forget those very sexy… werewolf mafia men? Right.”

“What about you? Did you want a larger pack?”

I heard what Chloe wasn’t saying. Were we disappointed that we ended up with her as a scent match instead of in a pack with her brother? Did she think that my pack somehow still wanted Titus? That we weren’t attracted to her?

Damn Titus Styker and his stupidly beautiful body. He was totally cock-blocking my whole pack right now.

“Are you asking if my pack needs a mafia man who turns into a rich wolf?”

Chloe smiled, caught off guard. “Be serious.”

“I just want you.” Under the table, I clenched my hands together briefly, before releasing them. My fingers were aching with the need to touch her.

She shook her head. “You wanted my brother. Meeting me was just an afterthought.”

“Titus has elite connections. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up. I would hate it if my pack never even applied. That was our chance to push our limits. See what thethree of us are capable of. But besides that, I thought that my pack had everything I needed. Until I met you.”

Chloe ducked her head. Was that red creeping up along her cheeks? Did I make my scent match blush? “Jesus.I didn’t even ask the other alphas what their intentions were with my brother. I just assumed that they all just wanted to get in his pants.”

“To be fair, that is a fair assumption.” I had to steer the conversation away from her obnoxiously good-looking brother and back where it belonged. Onher.“Are you happy with your classes at the Institute?”

If I was a different kind of alpha, more of a smooth talker, maybe I could have maneuvered this conversation with my charisma and sex appeal. But alas, I was just me. Besides, I wanted to get to know Chloe a little better.

I had to believe that being authentically myself wasn’t going to fuck everything up. Chloe was our scent match, that meant that there was something inside of us that made us compatible. If I couldn’t be myself around her, what even was the point of having a scent match?

“I think at some level it’s important. If omegas knew nothing about their own biology, it could be rather hard to navigate their impulses. Can you imagine the kind of chaos that would unfold if an omega just tried scenting random household appliances? Her instincts could make her scent mark her microwave or the blender, and then her alphas would start hoarding those appliances. How would anyone be able to even eat a decent meal?”

I nodded. That made perfect sense. If you looked at it that way it wasn’t entirely bad for omegas to learn a little about the biology that drove them instead of getting sucked in by all of it.

“So, you enjoy the basic curriculum? Would you ever want to join one of the academies?”

“Absolutely not. I’m not in love with studying, it’s all just a means to the end.”

“What would that end be? What do you dream about?”

“Honestly?” Chloe drew herself up and stared at me with a challenge in her eye. Mentally I drew myself up too. This was it. She was revealing to me her deepest, darkest desires. All I had to do was be supportive and let her know that it was all going to work out. “I want to get my degree so that I can get a quiet desk job.”

I nodded slowly. It sounded like a good first step to a solid career. A position in an office was a realistic entry job for someone as motivated as Chloe.

“What would you want to do next? Move up the corporate ladder? Do you eventually want to be a manager?”

“No, that’s basically it. I want to be like a secretary.”

I held myself back from askingwhy.I wasn’t stupid enough to shit all over her dreams, even if her dreams weren’t what I expected. Though I had honestly never heard of anyone who wanted to be a secretary before as their dream job. That didn’t mean that there was anything necessarily wrong with wanting that.