Page 19 of Operation: CuddleDom (The Port Haven Omegaverse #9)

I placed the drink in front of Becky with more brightness than I actually felt. Her eyes danced. She had gotten used to my surprise drinks, especially now she wouldn’t have to pay for it.

She leaned forward to watch the progression of the glass as it made its way to her lips. She swooned as the sweetness of the chocolate martini hit her tongue.

“How do you always know exactly what I want?” Becky asked in wonderment, not for the first time.

“That’s why I get paid the big bucks,” I said before turning to Helena. “Why don’t you take off?” It was just Becky and the alpha and a table of betas in the far back.

“I’m waiting on them to cash out.” She jutted her chin toward the table. They popped in a couple times a month and were pretty decent tippers.

I crumpled the instant cocoa envelope and tossed it in the trash.

Of course, I missed. I always missed. Keeping my grunt of disgust to myself, I swooped it off the floor and placed it properly in the trash, folding over the cardboard holder for the six-pack of ginger beer I had just restocked.

I took a step away from the bar and couldn’t move any further, like I had gotten caught up in some force field.

Damn it.

My sigh was very audible and very annoyed as I smacked a highball glass on the bar and reached for one of the ginger beers.

The clatter of the ice would have been soothing if I was in the mood to be soothed.

I free-poured 2 ounces-ish of Kappa Dark Rum.

The spicy bite of the alcohol tickled my nose.

I spun the ice in the glass with two bar straws.

I always liked my booze to be icy before I put in anything fizzy.

My epic stretch for a bottle opener displaced my locket.

It swung beneath my shirt. The top of the ginger beer gave me a happy-sounding pop.

I grabbed a fresh lime from the basket behind the bar.

I had plenty cut up, but I wanted a twist, not a slice.

The channel knife pulled the perfect strip of rind off the lime.

When I could, I liked to zest citrus right over the glass to not waste all those potent essential oils.

I rimmed the glass and dropped the twist in.

He was lounging in his usual spot without a care in the world.

His whisky, neat, still on its little paper napkin.

He was deep in concentration. One hand lovingly cradling the book, the other absently pinching his bottom lip.

I’d seen him do that quite often. When he thought no one was looking, he’d fall into these idiosyncratic habits, like pulling on a strand of hair or pinching his lip.

The second he registered attention paid to him, it was like a curtain fell, and his entire demeanor changed. His aura changed, too.

Well, not completely. Your aura was your aura.

You were born with it and you died with it.

It grew and shifted as you matured and gained life experience.

Only trauma could cause sudden changes. But auras shifted all the time.

Their colors and textures changed like an octopus.

It could flush with sudden intense emotion.

It was his aura that sucked me in at first. His stereotypical bad boy in a suit look didn’t hurt either.

But his aura was what got me. It was powerful but constrained, like a wind-up toy cranked to the max but not allowed to uncoil.

Powerful alphas typically had a different signature.

They toned down their auras rather than held them back, like a stained glass window on a cloudy day before the sun burst through it with startling color, taking over the entire room.

His aura was seeking something. A tendril of energy whipped around him, a tentacle of longing reaching out for completion but held back by obligation.

And that was downright weird. He had no pack bonds, no mate attachments, no scent match markers which usually rooted an aura to obligation.

It was like he was beholden to something that didn’t exist.

Condensation on the glass made it slippery. I tapped the heavy bottom of the glass to the spine of his book before setting it down.

“How do you accidentally become a vampire? What do you fall on someone’s fangs or something?” I cocked my hip and crossed my arms with the table between us.

He folded the book around his middle finger to keep his place. He tilted the cover toward me so I could read the full title and not just the spine.

“Ego and hubris.” His voice was audible velvet, deep and smooth. He set the book aside and eyed the drink I had delivered. He picked it up with three fingers and promptly took a sip. He never asked what it was or why I brought him a different drink every day.

His usual was Bedivere Whiskey. That did not suit him at all, but I was a good girl and gave him what he wanted.

The drinks all flopped, and it seriously irritated me.

Not that he would know that. He drank every single one, savoring it like it was the elixir of life.

He might smell like a White Russian Croissant but that wasn’t what it tasted like. No taste suited his aura.

When I had started this drink obsession, I had thought I was matching flavors to scents. But it went deeper than that, or as deep as a boozy drink could get. Figuring it out, debating it in my head, secretly testing my ideas helped me cope with the sensory overload, especially in crowded spaces.

“Moxie,” he said, picking up the glass with a sense of reverence, like I had given him a priceless treasure. As the glass touched his lips, he closed his eyes, blocking out other senses to fully enjoy the experience. “It has a bite.”

Bites. Knots. This was a mistake. Why do I always have to play with fire?

“I like my drinks to be assertive. They let you know who’s boss.”

“Well, I’ll be a good boy then,” he nodded towards the glass, “for the drink at least.”

And this is how it went, every day for at least a month.

He’d saunter in with a book, order a single drink, and turn page after page after page.

Occasionally, someone would get rowdy in the bar and I’d have to break out the bat.

He’d do nothing more than close his book and stand, and let his aura and presence do all the bullying for him.

He didn’t intervene, just let me handle the show, but he made it known that he’d clean up if he had to.

I liked that more than I wanted to admit. It was a rare alpha who could sit back and let an omega go to town. But he didn’t know I was an omega. Like everyone else who wandered into the Delta Lounge, they all believed that Moxie Scheele was enough of a beta bitch to hold the joint down.

“Who are you? Do you have a name?” I normally never asked personal questions of patrons. It was never necessary. People treated the bar like a therapy session and just vomited their problems with no prompting.

“You have a nickname for me. You have one for all your regulars. Low Boy, Becky…” He nodded towards the girl at the bar.

“That happens to be her government name, thank you very much.”

“Really? That tracks.”

“Yo, Moxie.” Low Boy, the aforementioned beta regular called out from his table, and his little crew got to their feet.

He waved the receipt folio and slapped it on the table.

Helena double timed it to cash them out.

The alpha didn’t move a hair, but his aura stood at attention like the pack of gamer boys was going to be a problem.

I bit the inside of my cheek. Fucking biology. Alphas were hard-wired to protect what was theirs. Most omegas couldn’t help but respond to that.

Fuck all the way off with that. I didn’t need anyone or anything that I couldn’t make for myself.

I turned to bus the table and get closing underway.

“Alistair.” His voice went right to my core and rumbled there.

I took two steps away and paused.

“Book Nerd,” I said over my shoulder, giving him his nickname. His deep, rich chuckles chased me into the kitchen.