Page 38 of Omega's Formula

I’ve never washed a dish in my life.

I mean, I must have at some point. University, probably. I used to get takeout when I lived here. Everything came in containers with disposable cutlery.

But I genuinely cannot remember the last time I stood at a sink and cleaned something with my own hands. At home I have a housekeeper who comes daily. At the penthouse, same thing. The dishwasher is loaded by someone else, run by someone else, emptied by someone else.

I turn on the faucet. Hot water. Soap. How hard can it be?

Twenty minutes later, I’m done and feeling fairly pleased with myself. I didn’t get water all over the floor or break anything. It was easy: omega’s work.

As I dry, I hear Nolan chuckle at something he’s looking at on his phone. He hasn’t offered to help. He hasn’t even looked up.

I grit my teeth and pack everything away in the places that I think that they go.

My father would be horrified. An alpha of my standing, doing dishes like some omega. I finish eventually. The kitchen is more or less clean, though I’ve got water on my shirt. I dry my hands on a towel and stand there for a moment, unsure what to do next.

The living room is small. Nolan is on the couch—my couch, my bed for the next two weeks—scrolling through his phone. There’s nowhere else to sit except the armchair in the corner, the one that was here when I moved in eight years ago and I never bothered to replace.

I lower myself into it. The springs creak. Nolan glances up.

“All done?”

“Yes.”

“Great.” He returns to his phone.

I should go to sleep. Should claim the couch, set up the bedding, establish the routine. But it’s barely eight o’clock and the idea of lying down while he’s still awake feels wrong somehow. Vulnerable.

So I sit there watching him not watch me. Counting the seconds until the compliance ping gives us something to do besides marinate in this unbearable tension.

The silence stretches. I can hear the city outside—traffic, distant sirens, the white noise of eight million people living their lives. Inside, nothing but the sound of our breathing and the soft tap of Nolan’s thumb on his phone screen.

I study him without meaning to. The way the lamplight catches his hair. The line of his jaw, the curve of his ear, the slope of his shoulders under that soft grey henley. His lips are slightly parted as he reads, pink and full and—

He looks up. Catches me staring.

Our eyes lock. Something electric passes between us, the same current that’s been humming under my skin all day. His breath catches—I see it, the slight hitch in his chest—and his tongue darts out to wet his lower lip.

I track the movement. Can’t help it. My whole body remembers what that mouth felt like under mine.

For a long, charged moment, neither of us moves.

Then Nolan clears his throat and looks back at his phone. “There’s a documentary about penguins if you want to watch something.”

“Penguins.”

“I like nature documentaries.” His voice is too casual. Too light.

“Fine,” I hear myself say. “Penguins.”

TV is probably a good idea. It’ll give us something to occupy us.

He pulls up the documentary. The TV is small, mounted on the wall opposite the couch. There’s no way to watch it from the armchair without craning my neck at an awkward angle.

“You can sit here,” Nolan says, shifting to make room. “Better viewing angle.”

Now what is he playing at?

It’s a test. It has to be. He’s seeing how much I can take before I break.