by D. J. Heart
He wasn’t.
Spotting an empty chair by the bar, Chad walked confidently across the crowded room and took a seat.
“What can I get you?” the single female bartender asked him, smiling invitingly as she finished pouring an ale for the beta sitting next to him.
“Can I start a tab?” Chad said, handing her his credit card. If the drinks were more than ten dollars and they didn’t take credit, he didn’t want to embarrass himself by not being able to pay.
“Sure thing.” The bartender took his card and swiped it in her machine. “What can I start you with?”
“Whatever you’d recommend that you have on tap,” Chad said. The bartender—her nametag read Jane—looked surprised.
“Really?”
From the look on Jane’s face she hadn’t meant to say that.
Chad laughed. “Sure, why not?” He unzipped his coat and put his elbows on the bar, leaning forward.
Jane was cute, and Chad wouldn’t mind getting to know her a little better. He’d always enjoyed flirting, and there had been precious little of that in the eight weeks he’d been off working with a group of nothing but alphas.
“Oh, it’s just… you know. Alphas usually tend to know exactly what they want, you know?”
Chad wasn’t offended. That kind of posturing—where you pretended to know everything—had always seemed foolish to him. He was an alpha; he didn’t have to prove it to anyone by being an asshole.
“It’s just a beer. Why? Would you like me better if I growled my order at you and slammed my fist on the bar?” Chad grinned, quirking his eyebrow in a way he knew women found charming.
Jane blushed.
“No. It’s just a nice change, that’s all,” Jane said. She took a glass and started filling it up, looking down and smiling.
Chad had this in the bag.
Just as Jane was sliding his beer toward him, still smiling and making eye contact, Chad felt an alpha push his way into the space between him and the beta sitting on the stool to the right. Looking up, annoyed, Chad swallowed his protest at the sheer dominance radiating off the newcomer.
The alpha was taller than Chad by several inches, and he was bulky with muscle in a way that made Chad look lean. There was a cruel smile on the alpha’s face, his eyes mocking as he stared down at Chad.
“Are you trying to score with the bartender, kid?” the alpha asked, laughing like it was funny. Chad couldn’t help the way his head tilted back to expose his neck, acknowledging just how outmatched he was.
“Yes,” he responded honestly. He might be intimidated, but he wasn’t going to cower. Not unless he was forced to.
The intimidating alpha’s grin widened. He reached back and physically pushed the beta sitting behind him out of his seat, taking the stool without so much as a look at the poor guy he’d shoved to the floor.
“So you’re not saving up for a cute little omega?” The alpha took a sip of his bottled beer, looking at Chad as he swallowed.
Chad shrugged, confused. What did saving to buy an omega have to do with hitting on the bartender?
“Well?” the alpha demanded, his tone suddenly hard.
“Yes, I’m saving for an omega. Why?”
The alpha shrugged, looking Chad up and down like he was sizing him up for parts. The scrutiny made Chad want to shrink back, and his stomach felt weird and fluttery.
He didn’t want to be here.
“No reason. I’m not allowed to be curious?”
Chad thought the question was rhetorical, but when the silence stretched out and the alpha’s stare turned into a glare Chad realized it hadn’t been.
“Of course you are.”
“Good boy,” the alpha said, his lip pulling up in a smirk. Chad shifted in his seat, wondering what the other man wanted.
Was he just unaware of how he affected people? Chad dismissed that idea right away. The alpha was playing with him, and he knew exactly what he was doing.
“Name’s Aiden,” Aiden held out a big hand for Chad to shake. “And you are?”
“I’m… uh, Chad.” Chad took Aiden’s hand, wincing when the alpha squeezed down like he was trying to crush his hand.
What was this, third grade?
“That hurt,” Chad said when Aiden let go of his hand. Aiden frowned, like he hadn’t expected Chad to comment.
“It was supposed to,” Aiden said, like it was nothing.
Chad looked around the room, wondering how he was supposed to get away from this dude without getting his ass handed to him. While he was usually confident in his ability to win a fight, he’d never had an alpha like Aiden come at him like this before.
It was bizarre.
“I’m sorry, have I done something to offend you?
The area around Chad and Aiden had cleared, the whole room pointedly looking the other way. When Aiden didn’t answer, just smirked like an asshole and looked at Chad like he was trying to figure out what sauce to barbeque him with, Chad started to panic.
What the fuck did this guy want from him?
“Aiden, what are you doing? Leave the poor kid alone.”
Chad jumped at the deep voice coming from behind him. He twisted his neck and felt his jaw go slack.
It was Peter Tank, the owner and CEO of Tank Security, and his boss.
“I’m not bothering Chad here. We’re just getting to know each other a little better,” Aiden said, suddenly sounding more jovial.
Chad was too surprised to say anything. He knew who Peter Tank was, obviously, but he’d never actually met the man. Peter Tank had a reputation as being something of an uber-alpha—dominant in the extreme and ruthless in the way he ran his company—and looking at him now Chad could believe it. Peter radiated confidence, and just the idea of trying to take him on made Chad’s balls want to crawl back inside his body.
“Chad, I’m Peter. Don’t let my friend here bother you. He doesn’t mean any harm.” Peter put his hand on Chad’s shoulder and squeezed down, and Chad couldn’t help the shudder that ran down his spine. Peter’s hand was huge, and Chad could feel its warmth like it was burning him.
He did not like this.
“Oh, but I do. I want to wreck his cute little—”
“Aiden!” Peter scolded, his voice hard, and Aiden shut up mid-sentence. He glared at Peter.
“What, are you saying you want him? I saw him first.” Aiden was talking like he was challenging Peter, but his body language was verging on submissive. He was holding himself back, his shoulders pushed slightly forward, and he was just barely baring his throat.
Peter responded by growling, and Aiden ducked his head in defeat. The rumble in Peter’s chest came to a stop.
“Watch it, Aiden,” he said, still holding a possessive hand on Chad’s shoulder.
What were they talking about? Aiden saw him first—what the hell was that?
Chad’s stomach clenched with the realization that the two alphas were into him. The way they stood, facing off, Peter’s hand on his shoulder and Aiden’s earlier posturing…
They were coming on to him.
The realization left Chad feeling stunned. This wasn’t… this wasn’t something he was interested in.
“I’m sorry, I’ve just got to… I’ve just got to go. Sorry,” Chad mumbled, staring at the floor as he pushed off his seat and wrenched himself away from Peter’s heavy hand.
“Not so fast,” Peter said, grabbing his wrist as he tried to slink away. The large fingers felt like a manacle, and Chad’s whole body froze.
Being held like this was distinctly different from having Peter’s hand on his shoulder. He felt unsafe and trapped. “We’re just messing around. Don’t leave. Let me buy you a drink.”
Chad wanted to pull on his wrist, but he just couldn’t make himself do it. He felt like he’d been hypnotized. He could smell the scent of Peter’s body, warm and musky and reeking of alpha, and the heat coming off the other man was like a furnace.
Looking up, Chad caught Aiden’s
eye. When he saw that the alpha was smirking at him—like he knew exactly how trapped and ill at ease Chad was feeling—he felt shame well up inside him.
What kind of alpha let himself be played with like this?
“Please let go of me,” Chad forced the words out, looking away from both Peter and his mean friend. Then again, Peter was the one holding him. Maybe he was the mean one.
“Right,” Peter dropped his wrist, the laughing note gone from his voice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
Chad didn’t stick around to hear what Peter didn’t mean to do. He walked toward the exit as fast as he could without running, slipping out the door and onto the sidewalk and feeling like he’d just escaped an execution.
Was that what it felt like to be hit on by an alpha? The thought was disquieting. Hailing a cab, his hand shaking as he lifted it up, he thought back to how he’d been flirting with the bartender. He was sure he hadn’t made her feel anything like Peter and Aiden had made him feel.
A cab pulled over and Chad jumped inside, purposefully not looking behind him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the pair of alphas were watching him leave and laughing at the puppy with his tail between his legs.
“Where you headed?” the driver asked, already pulling off the curb as he asked the question.
Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, Chad let the breath out slowly before giving the driver his address.
He just wanted to go home and sleep for another twelve hours.
***
Peter watched with a sinking feeling in his gut as the young alpha ran away. He’d completely misread the situation.
“What the fuck was that?” he growled at Aiden. His friend just gave him a look, and Peter turned his face away, feeling ashamed.
He couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t known that the young alpha—Chad—was uncomfortable. It had been clear in the way he held himself and the way he’d kept looking around the room for an escape.
Peter liked seducing alphas—liked making them squirm and wonder why an alpha was making their knot throb—but Chad hadn’t been seduced in the slightest. He’d just been cornered.
“Oh, come on! We didn’t do anything wrong,” Aiden said, lifting his bottle up high and draining it. “It’s not like we were gonna take him out back and rape him. We were just having some fun.”
Peter bristled. Sometimes Aiden could be a real jerk.
“We were assholes,” he said. “Fucking grade-A douchebags.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Aiden smirked.
Peter rolled his eyes. When Aiden had a few beers in him and got into this mood, he was impossible to deal with.
“I’m gonna head home,” Peter said. He’d been in the mood to find himself someone hot and willing to pound into the mattress, but now he wasn’t feeling it.
“Seriously?” Aiden looked pissed.
“Yeah. I’ll see you this weekend. Thanks for coming out tonight, even if you were an asshole.”
“Sometimes you can be such a sanctimonious prick,” Aiden said with no heat, putting his empty bottle down on the bar.
Peter didn’t answer. He clapped Aiden on the back and headed out, noting with a twinge of guilt that the bar was notably less crowded than it had been a few minutes ago.
No one wanted to be caught in the middle of an alpha fight.
Zipping up his coat and hailing a cab, Peter made his way back to his empty apartment. Alone and with guilt twisting in his stomach was not how Peter had expected his night to end.
Chapter 4
Peter leafed through the resumes of applicants Dawn wanted to hire for her division, trying to figure out what they all had in common. He wasn’t going to deny any of her requests—she had a budget and the people she hired on that budget were up to her—but he wanted to learn what to look for.
Peter wanted to understand what she was doing. He wouldn’t ever be a hacker or have the technical know-how Dawn and her people possessed, but he needed to speak their language well enough to effectively lead them.
With his mercenary teams, Peter knew exactly what to look for. But these technology hires? As far as Peter could tell, they were all over the map.
There was a knock on the door, and Peter put the resume he was studying down on the desk.
“Come in,” he said, leaning back in his chair. The door opened and David walked into the office. The young beta looked prim and proper, his suit impeccable and his hair neatly coiffed. Peter allowed himself a moment to wonder what he was like outside the office. He couldn’t be this buttoned up all the time, could he?
David’s left eye twitched, Peter’s scrutiny obviously making him uncomfortable, so Peter shifted his gaze to his monitor.
One of the drawbacks of being dominant was that Peter never really got to see what people were really like. Just about everyone wore a mask of respect around him, and sometimes Peter wished that he could see what they were really thinking.
Though it was probably best for everyone else that he didn’t.
“Mr. Tank, Mr. Merchant just delivered the evaluations you were asking about,” David said, holding a stack of folders in his hands. Peter waved him over and accepted the folders, shaking his head when David asked if he needed anything else. The young beta bowed his head respectfully and left the office.
Peter grabbed the first folder, reading over Merchant’s recommendation carefully.
The first four evaluations were pretty much the same, with Merchant writing that the alphas in question were evil bastards who would fit right in with Tank Security. But when he opened up the fifth folder Peter’s breath froze.
Chad Brand. The alpha from the night before—the one Peter had cornered and practically molested—stared back at him from the photo attached to the upper right-hand corner of the report. He was smiling, looking bright-eyed and happy, nothing at all like the hunted look he’d had when Peter met him.
Fuck. An employee.
Peter never fucked his employees. He already had an unfair advantage by nature of his dominance, and adding the unequal power dynamic of being a person’s employer on top of that took things just a step further than Peter was comfortable with. Mostly because it opened him up to sexual harassment lawsuits.
Licking the corner of his lips, Peter studied the picture.
Chad was pretty. Blond hair clipped military short, complementing his perfectly tanned skin, he had a straight nose and a dimpled chin that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the pages of a magazine. Just the thought of fucking into that hot mouth made Peter’s cock swell. He forced himself to look away from the picture and read the report.
Peter frowned. The report was the shortest one yet, and Merchant didn’t mince his words.
Nice kid, not cut out for this. Do not recommend.
Peter rarely ignored Merchant’s advice when it came to judging if new recruits were a good fit with Tank Security, but in this case he had to. Firing someone the day after they rejected his bullying advances was a lawsuit waiting to happen.
He phoned Merchant to ask if Chad was really as useless as the report indicated.
“What’s up, boss man?”
Peter cut right to the chase. “This Brand kid. How bad of a fit is he?”
Merchant made a scoffing sound. “He’s a boy scout. You put him anywhere interesting and you’ve got a guaranteed whistle-blower on your hands. I think you should get rid of him.”
“And if I can’t?” Peter leaned back in his chair, mentally cursing his boorish behavior. The guilt he felt over how poorly he’d treated Chad was nothing compared to how angry he was that he’d done something that could fuck with his bottom line.
“What do you mean?”
“If I fire him now it could look… bad. I ran into him at a bar last night and I wasn’t exactly the nicest version of me. I didn’t know he was one of our new hires.”
“Not the nicest version of you, what does that mean? You beat him up? Humiliated him in front of his friends? Raped hi
m?” Merchant laughed.
“What? No!” Peter growled. He might not be a good person, but he wasn’t a rapist.
“So what’s the problem?” Merchant sounded unconcerned. Peter lifted his hand to his face and rubbed his chin, wondering if maybe Merchant wasn’t the best person to have this conversation with.