“I’m sorry to worry you like this,” Fennick said, approaching me with the same sort of professional calm that the ESAs I’d been with in the past had. “I’m Fennick, Saint’s brother. You can call me Fenn.”
I swallowed, fighting to let my sense take charge instead of my fear. “Yeah, I guessed.”
“Is Saint with you?” Fenn asked, glancing past me to the kitchen door.
I looked over my shoulder, too, like maybe I could summon my alpha by wish alone.
I reminded myself Saint wasn’tmyalpha and turned back to Fenn. “He’s asleep upstairs. He needed the rest.”
Fenn laughed gently. “Yeah, I can imagine. If you’re anything like your brother—” He stopped, looking sheepish, and said, “Sorry, that wasn’t fair.”
I shrugged and shook my head. “I know what Lucas is like.”
Really, I didn’t know what my twin was like during heat, and I didn’t want to know. Although I’d heard him screaming with orgasm a time or two during the last few hours.
I realized I was hugging myself tightly and standing well clear of Fenn. That didn’t seem hospitable at all. The more time I spent in the room with him, the more I had the sense that Fenn was as good a guy as his brother. His scent was like cedarwood, similar to Saint’s sandalwood, but not as good, in my opinion.
I cleared my throat and dared myself to walk toward the fridge. “I came down to get something to eat,” I said.
“I can fix something for you,” Fenn said. “I do it all the time as an ESA. Saint told you I’m an ESA, right?”
I nodded, glanced over my shoulder again, then whispered, “And a cop.”
Fenn burst into a smile. “That, too,” he whispered back.
I liked him. Not the way I liked Saint, mind you. I had no interest whatsoever in doing anything even remotely sexual with Fenn. Most omegas zeroed in on the alpha taking them through heat alone and developed an aversion to all other alphas when they were in heat. I’d heard stories of omegas who liked to play with that sensation by having multiple alphas during a single heat and riding some sort of adrenaline high that came with being touched and fucked like that, even when the sensation was difficult, but the idea was gross to me.
“I can see why my bother likes you so much,” Fenn said as I moved to the far side of the kitchen island and took a seat on one of the stools.
Despite having cleaned up earlier, I felt a gush of fluid leave me as I sat. “Oh?” I asked, face blazing with embarrassment, hoping Fenn couldn’t smell it.
Fenn’s nostrils flared, but he gave no other indication that he recognized I was in heat. Omegas might have developed a strong revulsion to being bred by more than one alpha during their heats, but I’d heard that alphas responded even stronger to an omega they could sense had already been taken by another. It had something to do with the instinctual drive to supplant another alpha’s DNA, I think. Fenn was very good at keeping his distance and holding it together.
“Have you and Saint known each other for long?” he asked as he went back to the fridge and took things out to make sandwiches.
“No,” I admitted. “It’s kind of a long story, but we only met last night.”
“Really?” Fenn put the things he’d taken from the fridge on the other end of the island and looked at me with mild disbelief before turning back to fetch the loaf of bread on the counter. “For some reason, I got the impression that you and Saint were, like, together.”
I got that impression, too, even though there was nothing to back that feeling up. At all.
“My brother sent me in his place to what I thought was a job interview, but it turned out to be this Dark Fantasies Club omega auction thing,” I explained, surprised that I felt safe enough with Fennick to talk about it. “I was terrified, but Saint won me, and he saw almost at once that something was wrong. He was a real hero.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” Fenn said as he started making sandwiches. His expression changed to curiosity. “How did the two of you end up out here instead of in the mountains?”
Did Fennick know about Kincade Slopes and the auction? Not that it mattered.
“As soon as Saint realized Lucas had pranked me, he insisted that we come straight here and confront him,” I explained, eyeing the sink longingly. I was thirstier than I thought I’d be, too.
Fenn stopped in the middle of making the sandwiches to pour me a glass of water. I was impressed at how caring he was, even though he wasn’t my alpha.
“Saint wanted to confront Lucas immediately, eh?” he said as he brought the glass to me.
“Yeah.” I drank some of the water, letting my thoughts settle as I did. When I put the glass down, I said, “I told him he didn’t have to get involved with me and my brother, but he really wanted to. I was so grateful that I didn’t want to deny him anything.” I remembered something else about how I’d felton our drive here from Kincade Slopes. “I thought it was a little strange that he didn’t want to wait. He wanted to just go for it, like he needed to make everything right before he could rest or something. Do you know what that’s all about?”
Fenn sighed and put down the knife he’d been spreading mayonnaise across the bread with. “I don’t know for sure,” he said slowly, “but if I had to guess, I’d say he’s dealing with some hardcore anxiety right now.”
I sat straighter and popped my eyes open a little wider. “You know, I can’t say why, but that feels right to me. I don’t get it, though. Saint is a big, wonderful, heroic alpha. Why would he have anything to be anxious about?”
