Page 11 of Overeager (Extra Credit #1)

Noah

T he lecture had been …

Well, honestly, Noah had no idea how the lecture had been. All his concentration had been spent keeping his wayward pheromones in check.

Because there had been Eli— his Eli—right in front of him, and Noah had wanted nothing more than to run up to that teaching podium, shove his head in the crook of Eli’s neck, and scent mark him like nobody’s fucking business.

But that would have been uncool to the millionth degree—for more than one reason—so Noah had been forced to just sit there, watching Eli but not being able to touch or scent or speak to him, and it had made something primal in Noah … frustrated, to say the least.

Chase had cast him more than a few concerned glances, but Noah had only shaken his head at his friend, forcing a smile to let him know it wasn’t anything dire. Noah would definitely have to rely on Chase’s notes later because he hadn’t exactly been soaking in all the info Eli had given them.

Eli. Professor Miller.

Noah knew Eli had seen him. He’d watched the blatant shock appear on Eli’s face, had made brief but electric eye contact with those warm brown eyes before Eli had recovered his composure and started looking everywhere else but Noah.

But now the other students were gone—fucking finally—and it was just them. Noah and Eli.

It would have been perfect, if not for the completely panicked look on Eli’s face, the one that had appeared the second Noah had asked him for a moment together.

“Noah,” Eli squeaked, his voice coming out about an octave higher than usual.

He opened and closed his mouth a few times, no more words coming out, and right when Noah was about to speak, he finally whisper-yelled (even though no one else was in there, and the lecture hall door was closed), “You said you were a grad student!”

“Um …” Noah scratched at his jaw, taken aback. “No, I didn’t. I said I was taking business classes. And I am. It’s my major. My undergrad major.”

He gave Eli a reassuring smile, since the omega seemed to be freaking out. Or he thought he did, but Eli’s panic didn’t seem to be lessening, his tasty omega scent taking on a bitter, distressed note. “And you don’t, um, teach middle school, I take it.”

“Middle school?” Eli said it like it was the most preposterous thing he’d ever heard. “I would never. They’d eat me alive.” He stared at Noah for another long moment, then scrubbed at his face with his hands. “Oh my god, I slept with a fetus.”

Noah wrinkled his nose. Gross. And a little offensive. He wasn’t a child. But Eli was going through it—clearly—so Noah let it slide, pressing on through the awkwardness. “I should have known you were a total brainiac,” he said, pride welling up in him at the thought. “You have a PhD, don’t you?”

“I—what?” Eli took a moment out of his panic to frown at Noah, as if he was offended by the implication that he might not. “Yes, of course I do.”

“Awesome.”

Eli seemed to register the no doubt adoring look on Noah’s face, and even more of his panic receded, suspicion taking over the shell-shocked cast to his features. “Why aren’t you freaking out right now?” he asked warily.

Noah shrugged, unable to contain his grin. “I was starting to think I’d never hear from you. And I had no way to find you. But now you’re here.”

He was. And he looked so fucking good too. Even all dressed up for lecture, there was still something warm and approachable about Eli. He was probably a fucking fantastic teacher. Look at how well he’d taught the class, even with the shock of Noah’s presence. Calm under pressure for sure.

“I’m here as your professor,” Eli said slowly, like Noah might not have caught that bit, never mind that he’d already called him “Professor Miller.”

But Noah didn’t want to get into all that right now. Not when they’d just found each other again. He hiked his backpack up higher on his shoulder. “Why didn’t you use my number?” he asked, trying not to let the insecurity of the past few days come through in his voice. “You did get my note, right?”

“I—” Eli gaped at him. “You’re my student .”

“Yeah, but you didn’t know that at the time.” Noah leaned in, lowering his voice. “I missed you.”

Eli flushed at the admission, his eyes dropping to Noah’s lips.

Finally, maybe they were getting somewhere.

Noah stepped a little closer, not afraid to press his advantage.

It wasn’t nearly as close as he wanted to be, but despite his selective deafness re: their student/teacher status, Noah was aware Eli was majorly freaking out.

He wasn’t going to jump the gun and add to that panic.

And, yeah, maybe Noah should have been freaking out, too, but he was just so fucking happy to see Eli. He’d been dealing with this steady, simmering despair at the thought that he’d let the best thing to happen to him in forever slip away, but now he knew he hadn’t.

Eli was right there, and that had to be like … fucking fate, right?

And now that Eli was in front of him, Noah was surer than ever that the connection between them had been real.

He hadn’t imagined it, hadn’t exaggerated it in his head.

Sure, Eli might have been stressed as hell at the moment, but he wasn’t indifferent to Noah.

That would have been unbearable—indifference. But a case of nerves?

Noah could deal with that. Easy.

“Can I scent mark you?” he found himself asking.

Jesus. So much for not jumping the gun.

Eli spluttered at him for a minute or so, which was pretty fucking cute, before he gathered his words. “What? No. Jesus. We can’t—”

“Just a little,” Noah told him. “I’m kind of losing it here.”

It was true. He might not have been freaking out about the teacher thing—all new couples had their setbacks, right?

—but there was a strange, jittery energy dancing under his skin, and it had been there ever since he’d caught Eli’s scent in the classroom.

It was like the inner alpha part of him was all over the place.

He knew he and Eli weren’t bonded or anything, but it still felt like his omega was here, smelling nothing like him, and that seemed weirdly unacceptable.

Was this a virgin thing? This … clinginess?

Eli eyed him skeptically. “Our versions of losing it are very different.”

Noah threw his head back and laughed.

Eli’s lips twitched, but he still looked skeptical.

“For all anyone knows, we could be casual acquaintances,” Noah reasoned. “Scent marking wouldn’t be totally out of the realm of appropriate.”

It was a stretch, and he knew it, but after another moment of studying him, Eli held out his hand. Noah grabbed Eli’s wrist immediately, his thumb sliding along the scent gland there.

He let out a sigh of relief, his tense muscles relaxing.

Eli gave him a small smile. “Better?”

“You have no idea,” Noah told him with a smile of his own. He kept rubbing his thumb along that gland, willing to stay there as long as Eli would let him. “Why didn’t you call?” he asked again.

Eli shrugged, his gaze dancing away toward the back wall. “I thought—I thought maybe you’d have realized it was a one-time thing.”

Noah didn’t miss the fact that Eli hadn’t said he had realized it was a one-time thing. Hope blossomed in his chest, and his pheromones swelled before he could stop them. “You did?”

Eli’s gaze returned to his, and Noah’s breath caught. He was right; he knew it—there was something there. Something real. Something good.

But Eli pulled his arm back, out of Noah’s hold. “And I was right.”

He twisted away, bending to stuff his laptop and USB stick into his satchel. “This can’t happen, Noah. What we had—it was really, really great. But that was it.” He turned back, not quite meeting Noah’s eyes. “I—I have to get to a meeting. Are you going to be okay?”

Noah recognized temporary defeat when he saw it. It was probably even reasonable of Eli, as much as Noah might hate it. “Sure,” he made himself say agreeably. “I’ll be fine.”

Eli nodded once and then hurried out of the lecture hall.

Noah watched him go. It was easier to handle than it might have been, now that Eli smelled a little like him again.

And really … a one-time thing? With the connection they’d had?

Yeah fucking right.

With the rush of the semester’s classes starting and the roommates’ tendencies to take all their meals together, it was Wednesday evening before Chase cornered Noah without Spencer around.

Noah should have been expecting it, really. Chase may not have had the lock on pheromones that an alpha or an omega would have, but he was observant as hell.

He found Noah sprawled on his bed, surrounded by textbooks, his laptop, and the notebook where he liked to jot the important things down by hand.

Noah’s door was open, but Chase knocked on the doorframe anyway, always polite like that. His ever-present cap was off, and his dirty-blond hair flopped from a perfect center part, like some sort of nineties teen heartthrob. “You doing your reading for Omega Studies?”

“You know it,” Noah told him. They had their discussion section tomorrow, and Noah wasn’t going to be caught slacking in that class, not even by one of Eli’s TAs.

Chase came to sit on the edge of the bed. “You knew our professor.”

“Yeah.” Noah cleared his throat, his eyes on his laptop. “We’ve, um, met before.”

It was weird keeping secrets. Normally Noah would have told his roommates first thing once he’d found Eli, especially after all that moping he’d been doing about not getting a text.

But with how freaked out Eli had been about their …

statuses, Noah wasn’t going to go blabbing it to everyone.

He was young—as Eli loved to point out—but he wasn’t stupid.

Unfortunately, neither was Chase.

“You said your older omega was a teacher. The one from Sedona.”

“Yeah.” Noah nodded. Super casual. Super chill. “Middle school.”

“You said you thought it was middle school,” Chase corrected mildly, fiddling with the spine of one of Noah’s textbooks. “You hadn’t actually asked him.”

“Oh. Um. Right.”