Page 12 of Two For the Show (Trapped On The Tightrope Duet #2)

I’m not supposed to be awake, and I definitely shouldn’t be eavesdropping on Rich, Greg, and Tripp, but they were so loud, and I heard my name. I couldn’t stop myself from creeping out of my room in hopes of overhearing them.

“Alex isn’t what you promised us,” Tripp hisses. “You said she was perfect. Timid, malleable.”

“And she is!” Rich insists. “She’s been thrown off by this new development, but she’ll get on board. She always has”

Greg grunts, and I hear the sound of liquor being poured into a glass.

He doesn’t speak much, but when he does, it’s never good.

“The deal was we get a female Omega, and then you get what you wanted. If we wanted any Omega, wouldn’t we have grabbed one off the street?

We are looking for a well-bred and trained female. That’s what you promised us.”

“And that’s what you’ll get!” Rich’s voice is growing higher-pitched, which it only does when he’s upset.

None of this is making sense. When he introduced me to the guys a few weeks ago, he said they were his college pack. But this doesn’t sound like that anymore. Now it sounds like he made a deal with them .

A deal for me.

“I promise. Alex is everything you need her to be. She’s beautiful, smart, and looks great on your arm.”

“Too smart.” Tripp’s voice is deep and aggressive. “She’s hiding her scent from us with those fucking suppressants. How are we ever going to get her to bond with us if she doesn’t go into heat?”

I knew going on those suppressants was a good call. The voices get lower, like they’re farther away, so I take a couple of steps out of my bedroom and sit at the top of the stairs. It’s still quiet, but the sound carries, and I can hear most of what they’re saying.

“…in her next heat. Without that bond, you can kiss my father’s appointment of you as Designation Director of Florida goodbye.”

The governor of each state appoints the Designation Director to oversee the specific laws and regulations within the Department of Designation Services.

The department oversees everything, from processing pack formation documents and maintaining records of designations and presentation registrations, to enforcing laws related to each designation.

The Designation Director would be able to set the tone of how all designations are treated within a state, with a direct line to the federal government.

I knew Rich was ambitious and had big plans for his life. He’s always been very charismatic, a natural-born leader. Politics wasn’t where I thought he would go, but I’m not surprised that he wants that role.

I am surprised that he sold me to the devil to get it.

Footsteps sound up the stairs, and I dart back to the bed, praying that my heart calms down enough for me to appear asleep, but no one was listening.

Pressure in my abdomen has me yelping and sitting up in bed.

I’m going to be sick.

Again.

But when I reach out for the bucket that Sylvia has been leaving beside my bed, I touch a warm, firm body instead.

“Mmm, Doc, a little to the left, I’ve got a sore muscle,” Quinton slurs with sleep. “Never been woken up with a massage before.”

I’m disoriented from the dream I was having.

Did that actually happen, and I just forgot about it due to the trauma that came after?

I feel like that would’ve been front and center in my mind.

Maybe this is my brain trying to invent a reason, no matter how shitty it is, for Rich to let me be treated so poorly.

Or maybe it’s been locked behind the paddock gate in my meadow.

“Sick,” I manage to say, trying to untangle myself from the sheets and make it to the bathroom. I’m completely boxed in by Alphas and a handsy Beta who is gripping my thigh. “Let me up, guys!”

“No,” Jude mutters, grabbing me around the middle and pulling me down to lie flat on top of him. “You’re not actually going to be sick. You’re queasy because of the FOS. You just need more of our pheromones.”

“What, are you going to shove my face in your armpit and hope I get enough?” He places his hand on the back of my head and does, in fact, shove my face into his armpit.

Fuck. It smells good. A man’s sweaty armpit should not smell good, and yet here I am, sniffing like it’s a goddamn drug. The nausea is slowly reducing as the salty-sweet, slightly fruity scent of taffy fills my senses. When I squirm to get away, he pops me lightly on the ass.

“Quit wiggling. This is what you need. It’s why we decided that we’d all sleep in here together.”

Right, we did decide that.

Can I blame hormones or something? I was so overwhelmed when I saw Jude, when my Omega nature recognized what he is to me, that I felt like a different person, boiled down to this secondary sex characteristic that seems bound and determined to make my life more difficult with every passing day.

It felt like the most right thing in the world to agree to a sleepover.

I’m sick, and so is Quinton. He needs me to get better, but I can’t help him until I get this FOS under control.

I came back here for a reason. They can protect me from Rich, sure, but this is my pack. Sylvia has told me a thousand times that I deserve a good pack, and that love is something I shouldn’t let slip between my fingers.

So I’m going to give this a try. Get to know each of the guys. Go on dates with them separately and together, like they wanted from the beginning.

Maybe, just maybe, we can figure out how to function well as a pack.

Despite the soothing pheromones I’m getting from Jude and the soft ones coming from the sleeping members of our pack, I’m still feeling worn down.

There is a long road to recovery from FOS, and I’ve only taken the first step. In the morning, I’ll throw out the light suppressants I’ve been on. That’s step two.

But, until then, I’m going to sink into the comfortable embrace of Jude Oliver.

“Shut up, you’re going to wake her up.”

The hissed words are louder than whatever was happening to cause them.

“It’s been twelve hours, she needs to eat!”

Wow, someone is feeling argumentative this morning.

I sink further into the bed’s plush embrace, luxuriating in the lingering scents of the Cirque de Mordu boys.

After that first wake-up, my sleep was dreamless.

I don’t exactly feel well. My limbs are still stiff, I have a headache that won’t stop stabbing me in the left side of my head, and a low level of nausea has made itself at home in my gut.

This is definitely the Foresaken Omega Syndrome, and I’m going to have to accept that I’m not operating at full capacity until I get better.

I stretch my feet out, curl my back, and attempt to loosen some of the stiffness that comes from a long sleep.

My toes brush against something soft.

When I sit up, I can see that my feet are lightly resting on Dario’s head. The trapeze artist is stretched out, his face relaxed. He looks so much younger like this.

Not that I ever asked him how old he is. He said he’s been here a decade, and joined as soon as he could, so maybe twenty-eight? That’s not much younger than I am.

Dario carries a lot on his shoulders that others don’t see. It must be hard always being the light for those around you.

I can’t help but stare at him. He’s so beautiful that it almost hurts to look at him, like staring into the sun, but it’s worth the pain .

“I thought we were pretending to be asleep?” he whispers, not opening his eyes.

I lie on my back and adjust myself so our heads are side by side. “Is that what we’re doing?” I ask quietly. “I’m in no rush to run in the middle of whatever is going on out there.”

The voices I now recognize as Dexter and Quinton are going back and forth on the merits of waking me up to force me to eat something. Every once in a while, Matteo chimes in with a reminder that I have been sick and not getting much sleep, so it’s probably best if they let me rest.

“I can’t believe you’re back.” Dario pops open one eye. “I mean, I hoped you would come back to us, but…”

“But you weren’t entirely sure,” I finish for him.

“As soon as we figured out that someone here had contacted Rich, we knew that you wouldn’t see the circus as a safe place for you. Hell, we didn’t see it as a safe place for you. I didn’t know if we could ever convince you otherwise.”

I’m staring up at the ceiling, hoping to reduce his exposure to what has got to be a gnarly case of morning breath that I’m sporting. “I haven’t felt safe in a very long time, Dario. But this is the closest I’ve gotten.”

He reaches his hand up to find my own, and we awkwardly weave our fingers together. I don’t even flinch. After yesterday’s puppy pile on the couch and all of us sleeping together, my body seems to be immune to, or at least always primed for, their touch.

Our feet are pointed in opposite directions, and we’re not cuddling exactly, but Dario’s presence is soothing to my weary frame.

“I’ve been there before. After my mom died and Dad went to prison, we lived with some distant relatives.

They didn’t want me or Dexter. They had always lamented that they were supposed to live a child-free life whenever they had to do anything for us.

They felt obligated to take care of us. I got into some trouble as a kid, acting out and trying to get their attention. Didn’t work, of course.”

“What do you mean, acting out?” I can’t imagine Dario doing anything nefarious. Sure, getting into mischief, causing a little trouble, but nothing dangerous.

I can feel the bed move as he gets more comfortable. “I caught the attention of this… group. At first, it felt a lot like it does here—a family of misfits that deserved to be together. Until…” He tapers off, as if he needs to collect his thoughts. “There was a fire.”

“A fire?”

He inhales heavily, like he has to brace himself for the words he needs to say.

“Yeah. I was a dumb teenager, like… fourteen or so at the time. The guys said they wanted to mess with someone who disrespected them. I mean, what fourteen-year-old isn’t disrespectful?

But I went along with it, and stood by and watched as the people I thought were my friends set this kid’s house on fire. ”

That sounds an awful lot like gang activity. Was Dario in a gang? He doesn’t seem like the type, but then again, it’s not like I’ve met many gang members. I roll over on my belly, bracing myself over his head on both elbows as I look down at him.

“You didn’t set that fire.”

“But I may as well have. I watched it happen. Didn’t call the cops or anything.” Guilt wracks his features, his forehead creasing in his discomfort.

I rest my head on his and sigh. “But you were just a kid—a kid who had witnessed an awful trauma. And you said yourself that your guardians didn’t care about you. All of that is a recipe for a kid who gets caught up in something he’s not supposed to be in. It doesn’t make you a bad person, Dario.”

He reaches up and plays with my hair. “It’s nice of you to say that, Doc.

Luckily, no one died. But after that, I distanced myself from those guys and threw myself into my studies.

That summer, Dexter found a circus camp, and he was able to get a scholarship that would cover both of us, so our guardians had no reason to stop us from going.

We fell in love with the trapeze and tightrope, and now we’re here. ”

“I’m glad you’re here,” I whisper.

“Right back at cha, Alex.” He wiggles out from under me and rolls over, lording over me until our lips are level. He grins as he props himself up on his elbows and stares down at me with a charming smile before slowly pressing his lips to mine.

Our first kiss is upside down, and for some reason, that makes sense. It feels right. Dario Reynolds spends most of his time upside down, flying through the air. Why wouldn’t our kiss be the same way?

But it is really awkward, and doesn’t make for a very deep or sensual kiss.

Dario doesn’t let that stop him. He flips his body around, finally lining us up perfectly. The handsome Alpha dips his head and drags his nose up my throat, stopping at my ear.

“Truth or dare?” The words send shivers down my spine, and my back arches involuntarily, seeking to press our bodies together.

“Dare,” I whisper back.

“I dare you to go on a date with me and let me treat you how I will every day if I’m ever lucky enough to receive your bite. ”

Dario ghosts his lips across mine again, and I sigh, wanting to chase them. But that’s not how the game is played, is it?

“You’re on.”