Page 50 of The Omega's Alpha

“I want the money.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I hear that.” He pressed a kiss against my temple and I let myself lean back against him, tipping my head back to scent along his jaw. He huffed and drew a sharp breath up into his mouth, and I knew he was scenting me too. Hopefully this damn photographer would be done soon—we still had a few hours before the pups had to be picked up. He chuckled low against my neck and I knew he was reading my interest in my scent.

“Perfect, perfect,” the photographer muttered, barely aware of us as anything other than an image on his screen.

I glanced down my nose at him, then decided to ignore him and turned my attention to my alpha love. My head rested against his shoulder and I lifted one hand to scratch fingernails softly over his cheek. He huffed again and his eyes narrowed. His hands slid around my waist, one thumb sneaking up underneath the waistband of my jeans to stroke teasingly across my skin, back and forth, back and forth. I gritted my teeth and turned a little toward him, to stop that maddening movement before my body’s own desire for him fogged my awareness of where I was and who was there. I wasn’t planning on pictures of that sort. Well, not for public consumption. But what would it be like to have naked, sensual pictures of ourselves, something only for us?

Embarrassing, probably. I sighed and tipped my head to the side, my eyelids gone lazy so the world dissolved into an out-of-focus blur.

“Okay, we’re done,” Freddy announced, breaking the spell.

Quin let go of me and I forced a polite smile onto my face and kept a grip on him with one hand. “So, how does this all work?” I asked politely. “Thom never really said.”

Freddy snorted and began taking his camera apart and putting it in a small square bag. “Thom wouldn’t know a beauty shot from a vodka shot. But he’s got a good eye, and you’re not the first model with potential he’s put me onto.” He zipped up the bag and set it beside his other ones. “I’ll send a couple of pictures off to that designer I know. If he wants you, you’re going to need an agency to check over your contract. And get you more work if you want to keep doing this.” He took the now folded backdrop from Stella and helped her tuck it into a duffel bag. “And better pictures, but these will get you started. You’ll need a portfolio, a book of your pictures, blown up big. And next time,” he stood up and looked at the two of us. “Go to the photographer. I’m good, and these will be too, but I’m better in my studio. And if you want to make a career of this, then you want good pictures. And any jobs you get, make sure you get copies, or cut them out of magazines or whatever.”

He kept going, advice, warnings, recommendations, until my brain wanted to melt out of my ears. I smiled and nodded and wished he’d leave, and eventually I think his wife caught on to how overwhelmed I was and she took him by the arm. “We should go get supper and get some sleep. The plane leaves at silly o’clock.”

Quin called Security to have someone come over to guide the humans back out of the enclave. Stella wrote down my email address and the pack’s mailing address, and then we watched them get into the elevator and disappear from sight.

I followed Quin back into the apartment and closed the door behind us, setting my back against it and gazing meditatively up at Quin. “Well. Whatshallwe do with ourselves now?” I mused, as if I couldn’t smell his arousal drifting toward me on the dry air.

“Finish what you started, mate,” Quin growled. He tossed me over his shoulder as if I weighted nothing and clapped a possessive hand on my ass. “Let’s go to bed.” And then he carried me across the apartment to our bedroom, and we made excellent use of our stolen hour of intimacy.

Chapter Forty-Three

Christmas had been a rousing success. Midwinter Wolf had visited and left wonderful gifts for everyone. Including me—Quin had bought me shirts, fine dress shirts in expensive cotton, dyed in deep rich colors that made my eyes shine. New jeans and long coat of butter soft leather. I’d been upset at first, thinking of how much money he’d spent on me, but he’d said flat out that it was a measure of how much he valued me, with that tone in his voice that always made my omega side sit up and wag its tail.

He’d seemed pleased with what I’d gotten him. He had all the clothes he needed and he wasn’t a man obsessed with owning things. So for him, I’d framed pictures. One of him and his brothers when they were pups—Cas had had it tucked away, and Garrick had taken it into the city for me to get it copied and blown up. Another that I’d stolen off his phone, of him and Harris overseas, in their soldier’s gear, asleep against a stone wall. Harris had tipped over at some point and landed with his head on Quin’s shoulder and someone had thought to capture it. I got the sense that his men had liked and respected him more than he’d realized, but that was also typical of Quin. A third of him and his mother just before he enlisted—again borrowed from Cas for long enough to get it copied and blown up.

I’d sat looking at that one for a long time, trying to find her in him, trying to read her expression, her body language. Desperate for hints about what she’d be like. She was coming here for the big ceremony, but wouldn’t be here for the private one. I wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sad for that—I couldn’t figure her out at all. All three of her boys living in Mercy Hills adored her, but they all freely admitted that sometimes she was better with a bit of distance. But every time I tried to pin them down, they’d just shake their heads and figuratively pat me on the head. “Don’t worry, she’ll love you,” they’d all said in one form or another. “Once she’s met you.”

I wasn’t so certain.

But Quin had proudly hung the pictures up in his office, pulled on his new sweater in a dark brown that looked wonderful on him, and then had spent the afternoon watching puppy movies with Agatha and Dorian and me.

The movies weren’t the only things the pups had gotten. Clothes, of course, but also paints and crayons and paper and stamps. I’d taken an old piece of canvas that had once been part of a tent and spent days coloring it to look like Mercy Hills, with roads and parks and trees, and then we’d wrapped it around a small box filled with tiny toy cars that Bram had found for us in the city. Modeling clay, a couple of coloring books that Bram had also brought back for us, and some regular story books. They’d been overwhelmed and over the course of the day Quin and I had had to deal with a series of tantrums as the pups fought to deal with all their emotions, both good and bad. They missed their home, they missed their old friends, and, most of all they missed their parents.

It seemed to get better, though, after we took them out for a walk and Quin led us into the woods at the far end of the enclave.

“This spot is for your Ma and Da,” he’d said gravely to the pups, crouching down to be at their eye level. He held out a couple of lengths of flat board, narrow and thin, sized to be easily pushed into the ground. “Jason is going to help us pick out some trees in the spring that we can plant here. One for Ma, and one for Da—I thought we could mark their spots with these boards. You can think about what you’d like to plant for a while, maybe pick something they’d like, and then we’ll all go together to get them.”

“But it’s not Ma!” Agatha had wailed and plunked herself down on her little bum.

I tried to sit next to her but she pushed me away and I looked helplessly at Quin. He’d studied her a moment, then patted my hand and duck-walked over to pick her up and set her on his lap. Dorian, his face crumpled with sadness but not quite at the point of crying, came eagerly to my arms when I held them out, and I thanked Lysoonka that at least with him, I seemed to be doing the right things.

Quin held Agatha and rocked her until her sobs started to slow. “No, it’s not. I wish I could give you your Ma back, but I can’t. It’s okay to be mad and scared and sad. That how I felt.”

“You didn’t lose your Ma,” she said in a watery voice.

“No, I know. It’s not fair. It’s okay to feel broken for a while, but it gets better.” He hugged her and reached over to thumb away some of Dorian’s tears. “Your Ma and Da loved you, both of you. So very much. And they didn’t want to leave you, but sometimes you don’t get to choose. Holland and I are so sad you lost them.” He hugged her and rubbed her back. “You can always come talk to us if you need to.”

Agatha clung to him, never saying a word, but something in her sobbing changed and I thought that maybe Quin had started her down the path to learning to live with this giant hurt. And maybe himself, too, because something eased inside him as he rocked the little girl and hummed off-key with her head pressed against his chest.

Dorian had glued himself to me, one of his hands shoved inside my jacket and under my new Christmas shirt to lie possessively over my heart. His fingers moved rhythmically over my skin, scratching lightly at it very much like I’d seen the babies in the pack doing with their bearers. I rocked him in time with Quin’s tuneless humming and felt his body slowly grow heavier in my arms, until he was as heavy as the earth, but he was still a burden I would gladly carry.

I glanced over at Agatha. “I think she’s asleep too.”

“Thank Lysoon,” Quin said quietly and got his legs underneath him. “I know I could use a nap.”