I haven't lost control like that since Marcus.
The memory surfaces in pieces despite every wall I try to throw in front of it. I was nineteen, still new to the role Mom had carved out for me, still learning the precise calibration of appeal without authenticity that kept her schemes profitable.
Marcus Ashford was her latest mark, a recently divorced Alpha in the financial district who wore his loneliness like expensive cologne and didn't bother hiding how his gaze followed every Omega in a room. Mom spent six months cultivating him with strategic restaurant encounters and charity event appearances, laying groundwork with the patience of a woman who understood that the biggest payoffs required the longest cons.
My job was simple, the same job it had been since I was nineteen: be present, be appealing, let the mark catch my scent and imagine the possibilities. I'd gotten good at it by the time we got to Marcus, three years of practice teaching me exactlyhow much to give. Lowered lashes, parted lips, and a carefully controlled sweetening of my scent that made Alphas lean closer without ever tipping into genuine Omega response. I could blush on command. I could perform submission so convincingly that even experienced Alphas couldn't tell the difference between performance and the real thing.
Marcus was supposed to be like all the others. Interested, then obsessed, then ruined when Mom found whatever leverage she needed to extract payment.
But Marcus asked me questions and listened to the answers. He brought me books based on titles I'd mentioned in passing, remembered that I liked black coffee, and touched my shoulder once with a gentleness that had nothing strategic behind it.
The night everything fell apart, we were at a gallery opening in Chelsea, and his hand settled on the small of my back to guide me through a crowd. Instead of performing the practiced response Mom had drilled into me, I leaned into his palm without thinking and let my scent go sweet, a small, genuine sound escaping my throat because I was so tired of pretending.
He heard it. His fingers spread wide against my spine, and when he looked down at me, there was wonder on his face instead of hunger.
Mom saw everything from across the room.
She didn't hit me. She never did back then, too careful about leaving evidence that might complicate her operations. What she did was worse: she sat me down in our rented kitchen at two in the morning and spent three hours peeling me apart with words.
She explained that Marcus had called her that evening to say he wasn't interested in a business arrangement anymore because he wanted to court me properly. She explained that my genuine response had destroyed the entire operation, because no Alpha pays to possess something he believes he can have forfree. She explained that my moment of weakness had cost her two hundred thousand dollars and six months of work.
Then she made me watch while she destroyed him anyway, using photographs she'd been sitting on since the beginning. Marcus lost his reputation, his seat on two boards, and every shred of dignity he had left, all because I couldn't keep my body in check for five seconds at a gallery opening.
I learned from then and built walls so high and so thick that no Alpha's touch could reach the part of me that wanted to respond. Blockers twice a day, mental exercises every hour, and a constant internal audit of my own reactions to catch the first flicker of genuine feeling and crush it before it could take root. Four years of discipline so rigid that I sometimes forgot there was anything underneath it worth suppressing.
Amos shattered all of it with one arm around my shoulders.
I shove myself to my feet and pace the length of the cold room, trying to burn off the electric current humming beneath my skin. The blue-and-black décor offers nothing to anchor me, no warmth, no softness, and no trace of the nest I left behind in my apartment across the city. Someone brought my items up here during dinner, everything stuffed in a corner, but there’s nothing in there I truly need.
My scent thickens in the enclosed space, coconut and wood turning syrupy and sweet, and even without another person in the room, the smell of my own need makes my face burn with shame.
The blockers. I need more blockers.
I dig the bottle out of my jacket and shake it, dismayed by how few pills rattle inside. My doctor’s voice hangs in the back of my mind, reminding me that while there’s no such thing as an overdose, taking too many at once will heighten my tolerance.
Whatever Dominic and Amos' scents triggered in me, it's blown straight past the pharmaceutical barriers I've relied on for seven years.
I dry-swallow two more anyway, pacing the room while I wait for something, anything, to dampen the arousal that's been building since the foyer. The minutes stretch past in silence. My scent keeps sweetening. The ache between my legs deepens into something so insistent it makes my vision blur at the edges, slick staring to gather around my hole, before coating my underwear in obscene amounts.
Fine. I'll handle this the way I've always handled it, quickly, clinically, without involving another person. Biology is biology. My body has needs, and I am more than capable of meeting them on my own.
My clothes come off in graceless, frustrated stages, the cool air against my bare body providing approximately two seconds of relief before the heat beneath my skin roars back, settling low in my belly. I lie back on the bed and wrap my hand around my cock, stroking slowly at first, trying to coax the tension toward a manageable release.
The pleasure barely registers. I adjust my grip, change the angle, and even use the slick between my thighs to ease the friction. The arousal climbs and plateaus, each cycle winding me tighter without ever tipping me over, frustration building in my chest.
My body knows what it wants, and my hand is a poor substitute.
It wants someone else's strength holding me down and making decisions so I don't have to. It wants warm skin and murmured words and a voice low enough to vibrate in my chest, telling me to let go, telling me I'm allowed to fall apart, telling me the desperate aching emptiness inside me can befilled by something other than willpower and pharmaceutical suppression.
When my hand fails completely, I rush over to my belongings and dig through my bag for the toy I keep packed in a toiletries bag, wrapped in an old t-shirt and buried beneath socks like contraband. It’s the only reason why I know Mom would have grabbed it, not even knowing what was truly inside.
The dildo is a practical, unremarkable thing, midnight-shaded silicone I bought from a shop in another borough years ago. I've used it maybe five times, always in desperation, always with the grim efficiency of someone taking medicine they'd rather not need. It's a tool for managing biology. Nothing more.
Tonight I need it to be enough.
I climb back up the bed and pull one leg up to my chest. Slick eases the way as I press the toy inside, and the initial stretch wrings a gasp from my throat that I muffle against my forearm. For one moment the fullness provides relief, my body clenching around the intrusion with a greed that sends my hips rocking forward to chase the sensation. I adjust the angle, searching for the spot that might push me past the wall my body keeps throwing up.
It doesn't work. The silicone is too smooth, too cold, and too lifeless. Every thrust highlights what's missing instead of compensating for it, no hands gripping my hips, no breath warming the back of my neck, no voice in my ear telling me I'm doing well.
