Chapter One
The gazes pinned to Alison made her want to lift her lip and snarl. Instead, she shimmied her hips again to the cheers of drunken, horny men.
This isn’t exactly where I planned on my life taking me.
Then again, when had plans ever taken her anywhere she really wanted to go? Alison floated from one emergency to another like some attention-deficit avenging angel.
That life suited her, though. No distractions. Nothing to tie her down. Just her and her sometimes warped sense of justice.
And the who knows how many men currently staring at me.
She lifted her hands and toyed with her curly blonde hair, knowing it would lift her shirt and show off a strip of skin between the top and her tight leather pants.
“Come on, baby, show us something good!” one of the men called out.
Alison offered him a mocking smile, playing the line between tease and whore, while reminding herself to keep her eyes on the prize.
She wanted to entice. To lure someone into a chase. To do that, she needed the faceless men to covet her, to want to not only have her, but break her.
It was a difficult line to walk, but she had no other choice.
She’d tracked down every lead she had, every shady contact and blackmailable asshole she could find, turned over anything she could follow up on and called in all her favors for what little information existed—her friend Anne had been abducted by local scouts looking for omegas to sell off. It was the only thing that made any sense, but the time to find her was running out.
That thought threw off her rhythm, but she disguised it as an alcohol-fueled slip before she crawled off the table and sauntered toward the back area of the bar where she had her things.
The music pounded in her veins, so loud she felt as though her heart followed its pace. This was the third night she’d pulled this stunt, and still to no avail. Plenty of offers for quickies in the bathroom, a few who’d suggested paying her for the night and one man who had even wanted to become her ‘sugar-daddy’. She’d turned them all down.
She would have even if she didn’t have a job to do. The last thing she needed was to get involved with anyone, let alone the drunken filth at a place like this, the men who thought she was the floozy dancing on the bar top, the ones who saw her as some wild, slutty woman in need of their firm hand.
I’d cut their hand off if they tried.
If they spent five minutes with her—the real her—they’d realize their mistake.
This was a game she was playing. It had started with the tight pants, with the shirt that readOMEGA: BETAS NEED KNOT APPLY, and had continued with the face she knew was a trap.
Her wild, curly hair, her full lips—those things had always made her look young and innocent. A gift from her mother, she supposed, from what she could remember. Not that it mattered. While she didn’t care about looking pretty, she wouldn’t deny that her features had helped her more than once. Men turned complacent when there was a pretty face across from them. They started thinking with their dick, and that always helped Alison.
She opened her water, listening for the click to show the seal was intact, before gulping down nearly half the bottle in one go. Her normal exercise routine didn’t involve things like dancing, and she’d woken the morning after each time with a deep ache in her muscles.
Tomorrow would be no different.
“You look good out there.” The man who spoke stood just beside her table.
One inhalation let her know—alpha. It required a person getting rather close for her to tell, what with all the bodies packed in so closely in the club, but once she found that sickly-sweet smell, it couldn’t be denied.
It was always like tasting fake sugar to her. Something she wanted to like, something she should enjoy…and yet something that she knew to be artificial. One taste and she’d regret it.
Which is why I’ve stayed the fuck away from alphas all my life.
“Thanks,” she said, sliding back into her ‘I’m a bad girl who needs a strong man to put me in my place’ persona. “I justlovedancing.”
“I can tell. This place is a little loud for a good conversation. Want to head out? Find somewhere quiet?”
She fought the urge to roll her eyes. Why did men always try such stupid tactics? Instead, she curled her painted red lips into a smirk. “Thanks, but I don’t go home with strange men—at least not on the first night.”
He returned the smile, then nodded. “Sure thing. Well, maybe next time?”
When he walked away, Alison’s smile dropped. They normally didn’t give up that easily. Maybe he wasn’t as certain he could close the deal as others?
