“Thank you, but I think I’ll be okay.” Matthew blinked a few times to clear his vision, then squeezed his eyes shut and made a face. Did his dad really think he was that lame? Guilt over his daughter aside, maybe going on vacation wasn’t all that bad of an idea. If, at twenty, Matthew’s social life had imploded in such a way that even his dad was taking pity on him, it was time to reevaluate his priorities.
“Alright.” His father was chipper in a way that Matthew seldom heard—he had to be excited to meet up with his friends. “If you change your mind, you know where we’ll be. See you late. Be safe, and have fun.”
“Bye, Dad. Hope you have fun, too.”
The sound of his father’s footsteps receded. No sooner had they disappeared than the alarm on Matthew’s phone went off. It was noon, and he was due to take his birth control and heat blockers. Yawning, Matthew silenced the alarm and unzipped his suitcase, riffling through his belongings until he found where he’d chucked both medications. The week of birth control pills he’d need to get through his heat were sealed in their original blister pack, and his blockers were in a prescription bottle with a wonky lid that Matthew always struggled to get open.
Without thinking much about it, Matthew pushed one of the pills from the pack and popped it into his mouth, then tossed the packaging back into his bag. In a single swallow, the pill was gone, and he moved on to his heat blockers. Just like he did back home, he struggled to get the cap to move. Stupid thing. With two girls under five roaming the house, childproof caps were a godsend, but did they have to be Matthewproof as well?
Grunting, Matthew jammed his hand against the top and twisted with all his might. The cap finally came off. With a whoop of victory, he tapped out a pill from the bottle, capped it, and chucked it back into his bag. It was just his luck that he’d go into heat a day before leaving on vacation. Twenty cumulative hours of cramped flying apparently weren’t awful enough—his body had upped the ante, and he’d spent the entire time terrified that despite his best efforts, everyone around him would be able to smell his fertility on the air. Thankfully Alex, his father’s much younger omega husband, had elected to sit next to him. While Matthew still thought it was weird that his father had fallen for someone so young, he was grateful for Alex all the same. The man took shit from no one, and there was no doubt in Matthew’s mind that he’d go full mama bear on Matthew’s behalf if anyone came to give him trouble.
To be fair to the other passengers, toward the end of the flight, Matthewhadbeen feeling his heat more than usual. Most times while medicated, Matthew forgot that without his pills, he’d turn into a mewling, lust-driven mess. This time… not so much. He’d had to bundle up under the airline-issued blanket more than once to mask an inappropriate erection, and by the time he left the plane, he felt hot. It wasn’t the same scorching fire that had melted his mind the first time he’d become fertile, but it had been enough to make him uncomfortable. When he got home, he’d make an appointment with his GP and switch his prescription out.
No big deal.
If he was lucky, it was a symptom of stress and would wear off now that he was in Fiji. If it wasn’t, he only had a couple more days to go before his heat was over, which meant he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone giving him dirty looks on the return flight.
Responsibilities for the day squirreled away, Matthew rose, stretched, and left his cabin. Well, cabin probably wasn’t the best word, but Matthew had forgotten what his father had said they were called. Over-water bungalows? Maybe, but there was a different word that escaped him—something traditional.
Whatever they were called, the bungalows had glossy wooden floors and large windows all along the back wall that overlooked the ocean. Matthew’s particular bungalow had a deck with stairs that led directly into the water and an outdoors bathing pavilion, which he liked to think was a fancy way of saying disappointing swimming pool. While they were small, the open floor plan and high ceiling made them comfortable. Besides, it wasn’t like Matthew needed fifteen rooms to be happy—the idea was that he’d be spending the majority of his time on the beach or exploring the island. The bungalow didn’t need to be large when he was only using it for sleep.
Matthew stepped onto the dock outside the bungalow’s front door and took a second to feel the sunshine on his shoulders. It didn’t bother him in the same way his heat did. In fact, being out here was a distraction, like despite his biological woes, everything was going to be okay. The smell of the salt air and the sounds of life around him—the caw of birds, the hushed roar of the surf as it lapped at the shore, and the distant sounds of lively conversation—grounded him. By the end of the day, the strangers who were vacationing here would leave the island, and only the wedding party would remain. Matthew knew almost all of them thanks to the Single Dad Babysitter Ring they’d set up, and he knew they were all good guys. There was nothing to worry about. The heat thing wasn’t going to be a big deal. Pretty soon, it’d just be sand, sun, and good times.
Until those times came, however, there were still strange people on the island to worry about, and that meant Matthew wasn’t going to take any chances. He shut the door of the bungalow, pulled it flush with the frame, and fitted the key into the lock. Once the others were gone, he wouldn’t bother locking his door, but until then safety felt like a good idea, both for himself, and for his tablet. Emily might actually explode if he went a whole week without video-chatting her.
“Work,” Matthew grunted. He struggled to twist the key in the lock. “Nngh! Work!”
Matthew took a half-step back and tried to tug the door tighter into the frame. Sand from the nearby beach was dusted over the top of the dock, and with it underfoot, he couldn’t get good traction. If his bungalow had been farther down the dock he wouldn’t have had a problem, but no, he was stuck with this one. The one with janky door and the sand.
Perfect.
One hand gripping the door handle, the other struggling with the key, Matthew planted his foot against the doorframe and really yanked. The key twisted. The lock engaged. Matthew, who’d been expecting more of a struggle, found himself knocked off balance. With a yelp, he stumbled backward, fully expecting to fall off the dock into the water.
He hit something solid instead.
“Oof!” the something solid said. There was a clatter, and then the daintybloop!as something small skidded off the sandy dock and dropped into the ocean. Embarrassed, Matthew leapt forward and spun on his heel to look at what he’d hit.
As it turned out, the something solid wasn’t a something at all—he was a man.
And oh fuck, what a man he was.
Matthew’s heart did a strange and potentially worrying thing—it fluttered.
The man was dressed in a loose white linen shirt that caught the same breeze that swept through his dark hair. A Bluetooth earpiece was hooked over his ear. There was a look of perpetual mischief sparkling in his eyes, and the way he held his lips slightly pushed to the side made it seem like he was forever smirking. Still, he exuded power, like the world itself would bow down before him if he so much as lifted an eyebrow in its direction—and right now, the brunt of his gaze was focused on Matthew.
Flustered, Matthew froze. It occurred to him that he should lower his gaze, or smile, or maybe just blink so the man knew he was still alive, but none of those seemed to be options. All of his resources has been redirected to his heart, which was thumping like a startled rabbit’s, and his brain, in which all kinds of irrational thoughts were drag racing to the death.
The stranger captured Matthew’s gaze and grinned an irresistibly cocky grin, then craned his neck to look behind Matthew at the last known location of whatever it was that he’d dropped. “Well, fuck me, I guess.”
Was that an option? Becausefuck,did Matthew want it to be.
3
Matthew
“I’m… I’m sorry.” Matthew raked his teeth over his lip and tried his hardest not to be awkward. Was it possiblenotto be awkward around someone who looked like that? The jury was still out. “I, um, I… didn’t see you there.”
The man looked away from the surface of the water and met Matthew’s gaze. His eyes were two pools of steel—strong, capable, and soulfully gray. Matthew’s knees thawed and turned to mush, and he had to take a stumbling step backward to brace himself against the bungalow door.
