by Aspen Grey
“I – I don’t know, Cole!” I spat back as I snatched my pants from the floor and struggled to get back into them.
“Keiran, stop,” he said gently. “What are you doing?”
“I just – I need some air, Cole,” I replied, moving to the door as I slid into my shirt. I moved to the door, but it was shut and I didn’t see a handle or a knob. I pushed, but it didn’t open. “Cole…”
I turned and looked at him. He was still naked, and as much as I didn’t want to admit it right then, just seeing him had an undeniable effect on me.
“Open the door, Cole,” I told him. He stood there defiantly, unmoving. I stared at him and repeated, “Open the door.”
Finally, he moved and picked up the little remote he’d used earlier, pressed the button and the door clicked and swung open. I was out in an instant, retracing my steps through the incredible house and on my way to the front door. I shoved it open and took a deep breath.
The evening air was warm – something I wasn’t used to after spending so much time in Maine. I was still so hot, though, from what had just gone on in the dungeon that I would have killed for some nice cold air in my lungs.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” I muttered to myself, pacing in a circle in the driveway. “Fuck!”
What’s a guy supposed to do at a time like this?
The world was simply moving too fast. I’d gotten on a roller coaster that had led me to a plane, which had taken off and was now heading for outer space. And I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to go there yet.
I turned and looked at the house. Somehow, it felt even bigger than when I’d first seen it.
“I can’t stay here tonight,” I said out loud. Somehow speaking the words gave them some real gravity and made me realize what I was actually thinking. Cole was probably cleaning up inside and would be out here any minute. I didn’t have any time.
Quickly, I raced back up the steps and through the front door into the house. I turned into the main room and looked around. A coat was hanging over the back of one of the stools at the counter. I felt guilty as I did it, but I went through his pockets and found a fat stack of bills. There must have been a few thousand dollars there.
A sound came from the bedroom. I only had a few seconds before he came out here. Stuffing the wad into my pants pocket, I raced from the room and back outside.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I told myself, urging myself forward. I raced up the driveway, leapt over the fence and landed easily on the other side.
I ran. I ran and I ran and I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. Illustrious homes blurred in my peripheral vision as I pushed forward.
I had to get away from him.
I had to get my head right.
I had to make sense of what was going on, and what I was going to do.
12
Cole
Standing in the back yard, looking out at the gorgeous view of the night skyline of Los Angeles, I’d never felt more crushed, broken and alone.
A single tear fell from my eye and slid down my left cheek. I didn’t even bother to wipe it away.
There’s no shame in crying, I told myself, but one tear was all I could allow. Any more than that and I would break down. I’d taken a risk, a big one, and told Keiran what I’d felt about him, and it had backfired – big time.
And now he was gone.
Where was he? Los Angeles was a big city, and one he didn’t know, which meant he would probably find a hotel. He could afford that with the money he’d taken from my jacket. I wasn’t even mad about that. I would have given it to him if he’d asked, and deep down, he must have known that or he wouldn’t have taken it.
But I’d scared him off.
“Goddamn it, Cole!” I cursed, throwing my entire glass of whiskey into the pool and turning around. “Why’d you have to open your fat mouth? If you hadn’t said anything, Keiran would still be here now, probably in bed with you. And now I’m fucking talking to myself like a weirdo!”
I kicked one of the potted plants the decorator had picked out, cracked the pot and sent the rest of it flying out into the yard. I wanted to tear the whole house down. This was an uncharacteristically emotional outburst from me. But I guess the fact that I hadn’t had any real feelings for an omega in years was one of the reasons this was getting to me so hard.
That and the fact that I may have just blown it with my fated mate.
He couldn’t have gotten far by now, but the hills were such a maze that all he’d have to do was hop a fence or hit a side street and it would be impossible for me to find him. I could track his scent, and had thought about it, but wouldn’t that only make things worse?
I don’t know what his opinion of me was at this moment, but he wanted to be away from me, and I wasn’t about to go trailing him through town like some crazy stalker. That would only make things worse. It was times like this I wished my parents were alive.
So what if I was almost thirty? Was it so wrong to want someone to talk to after something like this? Then, as if on cue, my phone rang.
“Jesus Christ!” I shouted, almost jumping out of my skin as the ringtone rang out through the silence like a fucking banshee.
“Hello?” I shouted, picking it up and answering.
“Uh, Mr. Greyson?” It was Jamie’s voice – the last person I wanted to hear from. “I’m out front?”
“You’re what?” I snapped, spinning around and striding to the front door. Looking outside, I saw Jamie standing on the steps. “What are you doing here at this time of night? Did you jump the gate?”
“Well, I didn’t jump. More like, scaled? I had some documents for you on the case?” he replied, seemingly unfazed by my anger. “I can bring them in if you’d like…”
“No, no,” I said quickly, opening the door and stepping outside. I knew what this guy was all about. “Bringing in documents” would turn into a house tour, which would turn into him finding some excuse to get his hands on me, and that was the last thing I needed – or wanted. “Just give them to me.”
I took the documents from him. What was he thinking just coming onto my property like that?
“Rough night?” he called over the gate. I turned to see him on his tippy-toes looking at me.
“What makes you say that?” I replied indignantly.
“You just seem…upset,” Jamie said, a smile on his face like he thought he was some kind of psychic or something. “You know I don’t mind working overtime if there’s anything I could do for you.”
The way he raised his eyebrows made me want to hurl. All Jamie was interested in was my money. Nothing else. He probably knew my life like a resume, though, having studied every aspect of me from day one at the office. But if I wasn’t interested before I met Keiran, I sure as fuck wasn’t interested now.
“Boundaries, Jamie. Boundaries.” I turned around and walked back inside. I heard his mouth open as he took another breath to speak, but he didn’t say anything. I shut the door behind me and leaned back against the wall until I heard his car pull away.
“Fuck.”
The amount of documents on this case were ridiculous. We were in the midst of a pretty enormous lawsuit with a food supplier that had knowingly shipped contaminated products to several major chains in the United States. The potential payout would be enough to fund the firm for decades and make everybody rich. But as I took a breath and thought about what had gone on tonight, I didn’t care about any of it. I only cared about one thing – Keiran.
“Keiran, baby,” I whispered, alone in the hallway of my massive home. “Where are you?”
13
Keiran
Big Dick’s Motel. That’s what the neon sign read. No joke. And below it: We don’t ask, so you don’t have to tell!
“You gotta be kidding me,” I said to myself, shaking my head as I made my way across the parking lot. The pavement was stained with oil and/or throw-up, and I couldn’t tell if the overwhelming smell of weed was coming from the room
s or one of the many cars parked and still running in the lot.
It was a dump. An obvious spot for the dregs of society to get up to all kinds of depravity – I should be right at home.
The man at the office was sitting behind about an inch of bulletproof glass with one of those small rotating security door things built in that allowed him to pass things back and forth without exposing himself. He gazed up at me with eyes that let me know he was probably enjoying the same kind of fun as the folks in the parked car.
“Welcome to…Big Dick’s…M-Motel…” His voice drawled on like a surfer dude who’d been hit on the head with a large metal pipe. “Rooms are seventy-nine dollars.”
“One kind of room, huh?” I asked, not surprised. The place didn’t exactly seem like the kind of place worried about a large menu. Careful not to show off the wad of cash I’d stolen from Cole, I pulled out a few twenties and slid them onto the counter. He spun the security door and grabbed them and counted them slowly.
“How many nights?” I’d given him eighty dollars, so the answer should have been pretty obvious, and given the mood I was in, I decided to screw with him.
“Four,” I told him. He nodded, raising an eyebrow as though it was a rare thing for someone to book more than a single night, then stuffed the cash in the drawer and pulled a key off the wall. Well, I guess I had the room for four days!
“Room one-ten,” he told me, twisting the security door. I pulled the key out, gave him a very forced smile and headed for my room.
It was a typical grimy motel, with paint that should have been redone years ago, cracked lighting fixtures and pots that once housed plants that were now home to overflowing piles of cigarette butts. I’d been to places like this before in my life, more times than I wanted to admit. It made me feel strange as I rounded the corner to the back where my room was.
On one hand, I was furious, terrified and on the edge of an emotional breakdown. After what had happened with Cole, I was questioning everything – leaving Thatcher’s, coming to Los Angeles and going home with Cole. But on the other hand, I almost felt…at home at this place.
It was familiar. It was what I knew. Cole’s house in the Hollywood Hills was so far off from being a part of my world that it might just as well have been another planet. I hadn’t even met any of his friends – how would I behave around them? These people, the ones who frequented spots like this, I knew how to handle them. I knew how they moved, what they wanted, how they thought. Cole was a mystery.
A beautiful mystery. A mystery that shook me right down to my core, but a mystery nonetheless. As I made my way past the row of rooms, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what my next move would be. I didn’t know if I should stay in Los Angeles and work, take Cole’s money and head back to Maine, or run back to his home back in the Hollywood Hills and leap into his arms.
“God, I’m so fucked up…” I muttered as I found my door. As I slid the key into the lock, I heard a voice behind me.
“Join the club, brah.” I turned around to see a small omega lounging on a couple of milk crates propped up against a truck that looked like it hadn’t moved in years. He motioned around him like a king displaying his grandeur. “This is the land of the fuck-ups.”
He was a working boy. That much was obvious, and he probably had a habit. He’d been around the block, but beneath the scruffy brown hair and the tattered clothes, there was an innocence that broke my heart.
“Big Dick’s Motel of the Fuck-Ups?” I joked, leaving my room locked for the moment.
“They should rename the place to the You’re Fucked Motel,” he grinned, lighting a cigarette. “Would be a bit more accurate.”
“No big dicks around here?” I grinned.
“Not unless you count the personality of most of the alphas around here,” he replied, smoke spilling softly out of his mouth as he spoke. “Or the betas. They’re worse actually, but a lot less scary.”
“Been here long?” I asked him.
“I’m not really here,” he replied, motioning for me to take a seat. I slid one of the milk crates up in front of him and plopped down, leaning back against a post. “I meander around from here to there, whichever way the wind blows, ya know? No commitments. Nothing to tie me down. The only way to live. Mikey.”
“Keiran.
You don’t sound too keen on this place,” I replied. He offered me a drag from his cigarette but I shook my head. He shrugged and took another drag.
“Oh, that’s just me talking shit,” he laughed. “Getting paid to take dick? What could possibly be better in life?”
“A mate?” I shrugged. “A family?”
“Fuck all that,” Mikey replied, shaking his head. “Overrated. Bunch of fairytale, bullshit romance stories told to us by conservative dickheads that can’t get laid and don’t want any of us to either.”
“You sure about that?” I asked him. It was strange for me to sit here chatting philosophically with this random guy. Normally I was pretty guarded with what I talked to strangers about. Chat about the weather, business, condoms and cash, and that was about it.
“Lemme ask you something, pal,” Mikey said, leaning in. “You really want some alpha telling you what to do? Where to live, when to move, when to eat, what to wear? They think they own you, man. You really want to be owned by someone?”
I didn’t respond immediately. I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say. Part of me was sure that what he was saying was absolute bullshit, but another part of me was begging me to believe him. If what he was saying was true, then I didn’t have to be worried about Cole anymore. I’d made a decision, and it was the right one. If I believed what he was saying.
I looked up at the sky. There was a soft haze, a subtle orange glow, even at night here. In Maine, I’d be looking up at an ocean of stars above me. No matter how bad things got at Thatcher’s, I always managed to calm down at night by looking up at the stars.
“You know what I’m talking about, though,” he continued. He’d made me just as easily as I’d made him. You do what we do long enough and you can spot the rest of us easily. “You got a couple Johns lined up for tonight?”
“Nah,” I replied, shaking my head. “Just looking for a place to crash.”
“I’ve got a John on the way,” he replied. “Maybe he’s got a few more bucks for you. Care to join us?”
“Thanks, but no,” I said, getting to my feet and opening the door to my room. “I just need to be by myself.”
“I hear ya,” he replied. “But I’m just next door. You change your mind, just knock.”
I closed the door behind me and without even bothering to turn on the lights, pulled off the disgusting comforter and took a seat on the hopefully fresh sheets. I didn’t need to see the room. I’d seen them all before. They were all the same.
After a few minutes, I heard the sounds next door. Mikey and his John. The walls, as I’d anticipated, were paper-thin and I heard everything as they started to go at it. Mikey’s John was eager to get down to business, and it wasn’t long before I heard the bed shaking.
“Home sweet home,” I said sarcastically to the ceiling, feeling like a tiny canoe lost in a storm out on the ocean. Everything next door sounded pretty standard, but suddenly, I heard Mikey cry out in pain.
Something smashed against the wall and I was on my feet in an instant. Mikey screamed again and I heard the unmistakable sounds of a fight. I was out my door and pounding on his in an instant, my fox stirring within me.
“Mikey!” I shouted, trying to open the door. Of course, it was locked. From what I could hear from the inside, he was getting his ass kicked. “Mikey! Open the door!”
The door opened, almost splitting off its hinges, but it wasn’t Mikey. It was his John, an alpha the size of a small house, and he looked pissed.
14
Cole
Keiran’s scent was strong in my nose. I was hot on his trail, heading down the hills toward town. I’d told myself I wasn’t going t
o even try tracking him down – that it would just make things worse. But I just couldn’t sit at home any longer. My mind was just on overdrive and I couldn’t think about anything but him.
I’d tried to look over the case documents Jamie had brought me, but it was pointless. I’d get about two sentences through a paragraph before I was on my feet again, pacing the main room in my house, wondering what was going on with Keiran.
Had I overplayed my hand? Maybe I shouldn’t have come right out and told him I thought he was my fated mate. No, not thought. Knew.
There was no question in my mind that Keiran was my fated mate, but maybe he just hadn’t been ready to hear that yet. After all, he’d just gotten off the bus from Maine. Maybe it was all just too much for him to take in. But at the same time, to me, that was the magic of it all!
What were the chances that Keiran would take a bus to Los Angeles and get a job at a club on the very same night I was going out with Dominic, and that I’d actually run into him? If we were fated mates, meant to be together, did that mean the universe would have a hand in our destiny? And if it did, was I throwing a monkey wrench in the works by sitting at home while he wandered the city?
I came down the slope out of the Hills. Keiran’s scent was getting stronger and I instantly knew where he was heading. That shitty hotel with the ridiculous name. What was it again? I’d know it when I saw it.
He’d taken the money from my jacket. That didn’t bother me. I probably would have done the same thing if I were him. I hadn’t even taken my car. It just felt wrong for some reason. I needed to be out in the night with him, smell him every second and make the same journey he’d made.
His scent was absolutely everywhere as I came up on the motel.