“Does it count as coming in my pants if I am not wearing them?”
Chapter Eighteen
“Tell the camera what happened,Ariana. Spare no detail.”
Bridgette was waiting on the television when I entered my room to get changed after leaving the pack suite. She told me where to find the interview room, saying I had to go there right away while everything was still fresh in my mind.
Like I could ever forget what just happened.
I’m pretty sure the image of Derrick on his knees in front of Grant will live rent-free in my head for the next fifty years.
I thought the room she directed me to was a broom closet when I first explored the house. I’m surprised that it’s actually a small room with green walls, and a single chair with a camera pointed directly at it.
It’s uncomfortable. Almost clinical. I feel like I’m on trial.
Why bother calling it an interview room if no one is here talking to me?
I adjust myself uncomfortably in the chair. What do I even talk about? Where do I start?
This is the first time I’ve been acutely aware of what I look like in the house. The camera directly in my face makes it hard to forget that people will be watching my every move once this airs.
I should’ve brought some water or something. Just to hold onto and keep my hands busy.
“Uh. Yeah. I don’t know what to say here. How much detail do you need? Everyone saw that I had a heat spike. Which, if I have any say in it, can we please minimize the airtime that gets? I know being an Omega is nothing to be ashamed of, and going into heat and having spikes is part of it, but damn. Does anyone want their coworkers to see them try to ravage the guy who lied to them for years?”
I run my fingers through my still-damp hair and sink a bit deeper into the chair. I should’ve put on makeup. I am sure I look wrecked.
“I guess that’s unfair to Derrick. Reducing him to ‘the guy who lied for years’ is an oversimplification of who he is to me. Yeah, he lied, but he’s still Sax.”
It’s his face I saw, his voice I heard.
But the filthy words Ivan whispered in my ears in the bath are not the type that were whispered over the phone.
What does it say about me that I’m starting to differentiate who I was talking to by their dirty talk? Shit, if I’m not careful, that won’t be my only heat spike this week.
“But it’s not just Derrick that is Sax. All three of them are. It’s weird to look at Ivan and Grant and know we’ve talked before and yet feel like we haven’t. They know me, but I don’t know them. I love Derrick. I can admit that. And by extension, doesn’t that mean that I love Grant and Ivan, too? It’s the transitive property or whatever.”
It’s like my knowledge of Sax is a rope, and they’reeach a strand, and now I’m going to have to figure out how to unweave it even though it’s knotted and frayed. It’s like doing a puzzle backward, which doesn’t sound that challenging, but this isn’t a case where I can push it off the table and watch as the pieces scatter. In that scenario, I’m the pieces, and they’re the table, right? Fuck, I don’t know. I’m not making sense.”
A slush of Omega hormones has emptied my head of all rational thought. I’ve never spiraled after an orgasm, but that one I just had may have changed my brain chemistry. All of their scents were smothering me, pushing me higher and higher, and watching Derrick and Grant was almost a religious experience.
It wasn’t just the eroticism of watching two people together. There is a natural intimacy between the four of us. It’s history, even if I don’t know who is mentioned in the books.
“I didn’t cross any boundaries. I’m not going to let myself feel bad about it. They wanted me to watch. Who wouldn’t like to watch two people they love together?”
“Uh. Ariana? We have no idea what you’re talking about.”Drew’s voice from the small speaker on the wall startles me.“Can you tell us what happened during your bath?”
“No. That’s between the four of us. You don’t need those details.”
I can hear his frustration in a sharp exhale.“Yes, we do. Don’t forget that you signed a contract. In areas where there are no cameras, you have to give us the details of what transpired.”
My head is starting to hurt, and I want nothing more than to go lie in my bed. It’s making me a little whiny. “Seriously, Drew? Screw the contract. This is my life. This is their life. Why do you get to know the intimate details of how we try to figure out our relationship?”
My bare feet barely reach the wall when I’m turnedsideways in the chair, so I stretch out the best I can to support myself. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I’m lying on my bed, talking to Marlie.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here. I don’t know where to go from here. My life has changed forever because of this experience. I’m not being a drama queen right now. This isn’t in the ‘Knowing you has changed me’ romance novel way. This is the ‘Life as we know it has ended’ zombie movie way.”
I’m pretty sure there are zombie romance novels. There’s a way to combine those two things into a happily ever after, isn’t there?
