by D. J. Heart
But Merchant is right. They don’t want to be stuck in the preserve after dark.
As they walk back, Logan smiles. Whatever Merchant’s intentions with him are, he now knows that he doesn’t have to worry that Merchant isn’t taking him seriously.
Quite the contrary.
***
Merchant jacks himself off three times when he gets home. The memory of Logan’s glazed-over expression as Merchant pumped a load onto his face makes his balls feel full and heavy, and he can’t help the proud rumble in his chest every time he thinks about it.
It was the best sexual encounter of his life, and he hadn’t even knotted the boy. Crawling into bed, wishing for the moment that he hadn’t been polite and kissed Logan goodbye at the door, he burrows his face into his pillow and grins in happiness.
Everyone who sees Logan is going to know that he’s taken.
Merchant knows that he should have asked Logan for permission to mark him—to stake a claim like that—but he can’t bring himself to regret it. Logan just looks too good with his neck bruised to hell and reeking of Merchant’s scent.
Since Logan hadn’t been able to shower or properly wash up until he got home, Merchant’s scent had plenty of time to seep in and make its mark. Everyone Logan comes into contact with is going to know that he’s off-limits.
Claimed.
Satisfied that things are going his way, Merchant falls asleep with his hand on his dick and a smile on his face.
Chapter 9
Merchant takes Logan on another date the next day, picking him up at seven in his ridiculous SUV and taking him out to eat. The restaurant is just casual enough that Logan doesn’t feel underdressed, but the food is delicious.
The clientele is almost exclusively alphas and their dates. Here, Logan doesn’t stand out at all, other than the fact that Merchant has a dangerous air about him that has some of the more blatant betas sniffing in his direction without an ounce of shame in their bodies.
Merchant doesn’t notice. His attention is wholly on Logan, and it makes Logan feel deliciously smug. When he catches himself unconsciously stretching his neck to show off his mark, his blush is instant and intense. Merchant stops talking, staring at him with a quizzical tilt of his head.
Logan is quick to move the conversation along, and Merchant has the kindness to let him.
The conversation is easy and effortless, though they don’t talk about Logan’s work promoting omega rights or where Merchant stands on alpha issues, and at this point Logan is afraid to ask. He’s never felt like he feels with Merchant, and he isn’t sure he has the strength to walk away if Merchant turns out not to share his views.
“What are you thinking about?” Merchant asks on the way home. The interior of the SUV is dark, and Merchant’s face is cast with dramatic shadows. It emphasizes the sharpness of his cheekbones and the line of his jaw. He sounds curious, glancing away from the road to take a look at Logan’s face.
Logan decides that they might as well have the conversation now.
“You know that I’m an omega rights activist, right?” he asks. He doesn’t look at Merchant as he asks the question, staring at the car in front of them.
“Sure. It’s why Lloyd went after you—because you exposed him. Why?” Merchant just seems curious. There’s not an ounce of the hostility Logan is used to from alphas when he discusses his job.
“Does it bother you?” This time he looks at Merchant’s face. The alpha looks at him, a small grin curving his lip.
“No. I wouldn’t be dating you if it did.” Merchant reaches over the dashboard and lets his hand rest on the back of Logan’s neck, and Logan lets his head fall back. He closes his eyes and smiles.
“Does it bother you that I’m not for omega rights?”
Logan’s head jerks up, and he looks at Merchant with a frown. Merchant looks perfectly serious.
“Are you against them?” he asks. Because the truth is that he does care. He cares a lot.
“No. I just never really thought about them. I wouldn’t be upset if they were all liberated tomorrow, but I’m not about to quit my job and start volunteering with you.”
Logan doesn’t know what he thinks about this. Merchant sighs.
“I’m not going to lie and tell you what you want to hear. This is me being honest, okay?”
Logan nods. “I’m not mad. I just… you’re not even a little bit for omega rights? Like, if you got to be the one to decide if omegas were going to be emancipated, what would you do?”
Merchant grins and shakes his head. “Then I would emancipate them, but only because it would make you happy.”
Logan licks his lips and thinks it over. Merchant obviously isn’t a strident traditionalist, right? So what does it matter if he doesn’t care about omegas? Most people don’t.
Logan can live with this. He might even be able to convert Merchant to his cause.
“Are we okay?” Merchant asks when they’re almost at Logan’s apartment. Logan looks around, a little surprised. He hadn’t realized that Merchant was taking him home.
He’d been looking forward to spending the night with Merchant.
“We are,” he says, smiling at Merchant to prove the point. Merchant looks relieved.
“Good.”
Merchant pulls onto the curb outside of Logan’s building, parking his car illegally before jumping out and going around to open Logan’s door.
“You can’t park here,” Logan says. He gets out of the car anyway.
“It’s fine. I’m just walking you to your door.” Merchant puts an arm around Logan’s waist and steers him toward the stairs.
“You are? You don’t want to… come in for coffee or anything?” Logan blushes fire truck red as he makes the offer, unable to look Merchant in the eye.
When Merchant laughs, his whole body moving with it, Logan wishes the ground would swallow him up.
“Hey, no,” Merchant says, pulling Logan into his arms and kissing him. “I would love to, but I have to work tonight. I wasn’t even going to ask you out, but I really wanted to see you tonight and I couldn’t help myself. How about you come to my place tomorrow night? I could make you dinner and… coffee.”
Logan laughs and buries his head in Merchant’s neck, nodding. When he looks up, Merchant is smiling.
“I would really like that.”
“Good. I’ll call you and we can plan the details.”
They’re almost at Logan’s door, but he doesn’t want to move. In the end it’s Merchant who pulls away, leading him the last few feet and leaning against the wall as Logan unlocks his door.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he says. Merchant grabs him by the lapel of his jacket and pulls him in for another scorching kiss. When he pulls back, Logan’s lips still aching from a slight brush of teeth, Logan is breathless and horny.
“Tomorrow,” Merchant agrees, taking a step back and turning around. Logan watches him leave, meaty bubble butt and all, waving back when Merchant salutes him before heading down the stairs.
He heads inside and closes the door, heading straight for the shower. If he doesn’t jerk off soon, his balls feel like they’re going to explode.
***
Merchant wasn’t lying when he said he had to work. He’s just happy Logan didn’t ask him what kind of work he’s going to be doing.
He gets the feeling his young beta friend would not be impressed.
“Okay, I’m going to give you one more chance, Miles. Give me the drive and I can be on my way and I promise you’ll never have to see me again.”
Merchant holds the alpha to his chest in a parody of intimacy, pinning him against the wall of his home office as he holds a knife to his throat. Miles is an employee at Executive Security, a small firm with ambitions of taking on Peter Tank, and for the past year Milo has been Peter’s mole in the company. Only now he’s gotten cold feet and has ignored Peter’s last two requests for information.
It just won’t do.
; “I can’t. They’re watching me,” Miles says, whimpering and scared. Merchant almost wants to gut him just for being so pathetic.
“Not my problem,” Merchant growls. “Now tell me where the drive is in the next ten seconds or I slit your throat.”
“I can’t!” Miles blubbers.
“Five seconds.” Merchant angles his wrist and makes a shallow cut on Miles’s throat. The resulting scream is an embarrassment to all alphas.
“I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you! It’s inside the picture frame on my desk. The one of my nephew.”
Merchant slams Miles’s head against the wall and lets him drop to the floor, and stalks over to the desk. He has no idea what’s on the drive, and he doesn’t care. All that matters is that Peter wants it and that Miles is holding out on him.
It’s obvious which picture Miles was talking about. It’s the only one with a kid in it, an adorable boy with a gap-toothed smile in an elaborate macaroni frame. He picks it up and pops out the back, a slim thumb drive falling out.
That’s when Miles decides to be an idiot. Merchant steps away right before the clumsy blow hits, letting Miles crash into the desk in an ungraceful heap of limbs. He then takes the hilt of his knife and slams it down on the back of Miles’s head. The alpha is out like a light, though Merchant is pretty sure he hasn’t killed him. Probably.
Leaving Miles where he is, Merchant gets behind the desk and boots up Miles’s computer, logging into the guest account and plugging in the thumb drive. Three minutes later he has confirmation from Dawn that it’s the correct drive and that he should destroy it and leave.
“Miles, you alive?” he asks the still-slumped-over form hanging over the desk. He puts his fingers on Miles’s throat to feel for a pulse, but he gets nothing.
Fuck. Peter isn’t going to be happy about losing his mole, no matter how defiant he had been recently. Merchant pockets the drive and shuts down the computer. He’s wearing his gloves, so he’s not worried about fingerprints, but he can’t help the way his scent has spread over the room and marked his presence.
He reaches into a pouch on his belt and pulls out a eucalyptus oil scent bomb. The police will either think he’s an alpha covering his tracks, or a beta trying to make them think he’s an alpha. Either way, the cops have no way of knowing.
Walking through the house, careful not to linger and let his scent settle, Merchant finds a duffel bag in the closet under the stairs. He holds it up, wondering if he can cram Miles’s body inside.
It should work.
Heading back to the office and the dead body, Merchant is completely relaxed. He’s done this, or something like this, too many times to count, and even when he was new he was never really nervous.
Miles was betraying his employer and being a cowardly sneak. He knew what he was risking, even if he probably never expected it to come to this.
Getting Miles into the bag takes some effort, but in the end Merchant has it zipped up. He takes a look at the desk and areas where he banged Miles into the wall, but there’s no blood or sign of a struggle other than the mess on the desk.
Merchant takes out his phone and dials an entrepreneurial beta he knows who sometimes makes a habit of burglary.
“Toby, I’ve got a house for you,” Merchant says, rattling off Miles’s address. “Usual rules apply.”
“You need this now?” Toby asks, not sounding particularly enthused. Merchant growls in irritation, and he can practically hear Toby’s heart leaping into his throat.
“You’re welcome.” Merchant hangs up and hefts the duffel bag over his shoulder, carrying it out the back door and around the house to his car. He puts his mask on just in case any curious neighbors are watching.
He drives away, heading for the city pound. He has his own key card, and this time of night it’s deserted. He walks past rows of cages, all of them occupied with strays ranging from adorable to pitiful, and into the back where the cremation machine is located. One of the dogs gives him a look like he’s going to start barking, but Merchant lifts his lip in a silent snarl and the dog bows his head submissively. Merchant grins in satisfaction, having established his dominance.
He shoves the whole bag into the round opening, closing the door and programing it so that there will be no trace of Miles by the time morning hits.
Except for the ashes, that is. But no one at the shelter will think it’s unusual that the machine wasn’t emptied out after it was last used.
Having disposed of Miles’s body, Merchant gets in his SUV and calls Peter. He tugs off his gloves and stretches his neck as he waits for Peter to pick up. Once he’s explained what happened, Peter is silent.
“It’s taken care of?” Peter asks after a few seconds. He sounds tired, and Merchant feels guilty for waking him up in the middle of the night.
“Yeah. I just got finished.”
“Good. At least we got what we needed. I’ll let you know when I have another job for you.”
Peter hangs up the phone and Merchant feels relieved. He must have caught Peter in a good mood. He was expecting at least some yelling.
Turning on the radio, Merchant tunes into his favorite old rock radio station. The song playing is a favorite of his, and he taps his fingers to the rhythm on the steering wheel. After a few beats, however, he turns it off.
He feels weird. Anxious.
It’s a creeping sort of sensation, and it takes him almost until he gets home to recognize the feeling. But when he does it’s clear as day.
He’s anxious about Logan. He wants Logan to be his, to claim him for real with a scarring bite, but he knows that’s never going to happen if the beta finds out what kind of alpha he really is. Merchant is not the kind of person a man who dedicates his life to helping others falls for.
Merchant has never thought of himself as a bad person, but he’s uncomfortably aware of the fact that if given all the facts, Logan would.
Parking his SUV in the underground lot belonging to his building, Merchant takes the elevator up to his apartment. He locks the door behind him and strips off, trying not to imagine how Logan would look at him if he knew that Merchant had just killed someone and felt nothing.
Not an ounce of regret. Hell, Merchant had felt worse for waking Peter than he did when he realized Miles was dead.
Except, he is feeling regret, but only because of what Logan would think. It’s guilt that he doesn’t feel.
Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, waiting for the shower to get warm, Merchant studies his muscular body and looks into his own eyes.
There’s no reason he has to tell Logan about the details of his work. He’s not even allowed to, come to think of it. He’s signed more non-disclosure forms than he can count.
Looking away from his own assessing gaze, Merchant steps under the warm spray and lets the water soothe him. He imagines Logan being there with him, maybe on his knees as he lovingly soaps up Merchant’s thighs, moving closer and closer to his heavy cock and balls, and the fantasy nearly brings him to his knees.
He wants.
He knows what he has to do. If he wants to keep Logan—and he’s never wanted anything more—then Logan can’t know about his darker side. He has to be protected and kept in the dark. The only other option would be to let Logan go, and selfish as he is, Merchant won’t even consider it.
Everything is going to be fine.
Chapter 10
Logan hangs up the phone and sits down. His landlord, the owner of the office space in the strip mall where Logan has been operating for the past couple of years, has exercised his right to terminate Logan’s lease, and it feels like the straw that broke the camel’s back.
His insurance covered the repairs needed after the blast, but nothing else. Logan is left with no office, equipment, or money in the bank. He’s right back where he started when he graduated college, only his youthful conviction and belief that he could change the world has diminished considerably.
He needs to call Chad and tell him the news.<
br />
“So what do we do now?” Chad asks after Logan has explained. He sounds put out and frustrated. Logan knows how he feels, even though he can admit that there is a part of him that relishes the excuse to walk away. To get a real job and let his mom stop worrying. To pay his own fucking rent.
“I’m not sure. To be honest, I’m thinking about taking a job with my uncle and just doing this part-time. The donations we get aren’t nearly enough to support even one full-time employee, and my mom can’t afford to support me anymore,” Logan admits. Chad is silent and Logan keeps talking. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not quitting. It’s just… I need to be realistic.”