Page 15 of Omega's Fever

“I need to go.” I push myself away from the wall. “Excuse me.”

I flee down the hallway like the building’s on fire. His knowing look burns into my back but I don’t care. I need space.

I get to the parking garage without doing anything else stupid but fumble with my keys, dropping them twice before managing to unlock my BMW. I sit there for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel, trying to let my brain catch up. It feels like the world is spinning.

My phone buzzes. Anne’s name flashes on the screen. I let it go to voicemail.

The drive home happens in fragments and I nearly blow through a red light. My hands won’t stop shaking on the wheel. Every breath brings ghost traces of his scent, even though that’s impossible. He’s not here.

I’ve just completely nuked my career. I just fucked my client in an interview at the courthouse. He’s being processed back into custody, still smelling like me. The Bureau rep noticed. People are going to know. It’s only a matter of time before the gossip reaches the senior partners at the firm.

Then I’m going to get fired.

If I’m lucky I can salvage it but I can’t go back to the office smelling like this. I need to wash every trace of him off my skin.

By the time I stumble through my front door, my clothes feel like they’re suffocating me.

I strip on the way to the bathroom, dropping clothing on the floor. I’ll pick it up later and send to the dry cleaners. Or maybe I’ll just burn it.

I scrub under the shoulder until my flesh turns pink, then red, but his scent clings like it’s been burned into my DNA.

Maybe it has.

Prime match.

“No.” I say it out loud. “Absolutely not.”

I dress in fresh clothes, careful to avoid anything that touched my skin at the courthouse. It doesn’t make a difference. I can still smell him.

The drive back to the office is torture and by the time I slide into my parking spot, I’m vibrating with barely controlled panic.

“There you are.” Kao looks up from his computer as I enter our shared office. “Anne’s been... holy shit, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” The words come out too sharp. I drop into my desk chair and immediately start shuffling papers for no good reason at all. “Traffic was terrible.”

“Uh-huh.” He rolls his chair closer, studying me with the intensity of someone who’s known me since law school. “Is that why you smell like you just ran a marathon through a field of horny alphas?”

“Kao.”

“What? You reek, buddy. Like, seriously. What happened at the courthouse?”

So much for the shower. I open Kellen’s file, staring at his mugshot. His dark eyes bore into me from the photograph.

“The defendant and I had a slight... reaction.”

Kao’s eyebrows shoot toward his hairline. “Oh my god.” He’s not even trying to hide his glee now. “You had a scent match with scary alpha guy? That’s amazing. Was he hot? He looks hot in a ‘could snap you in half’ kind of way.”

“It’s not amazing.” I flip through pages without reading them. “It’s a disaster. Anne’s going to kill me.”

“Anne’s going to think it’s hilarious. Remember when Andrews got scent-matched to that prosecutor last year? She laughed for days.”

“That was different. Andrews wasn’t defending someone facing life in prison and then was just a scent match. This wasn’tjust an attraction. It was worse. Way worse.”

Kao frowns at me. “How worse is ‘way worse’?”

I grimace. “Melkham ordered him tested and registered with the Bureau.”

Kao looks confused. “On the basis of what? A bit of scent? That happens all the time.”