He didn’t stay to help me through my heat, even though I vividly remember begging at the top of my lungs for him to come save me.
Nope. All he did was work the funeral and then leave. Which somehow makes all of this worse.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Maybe I can just die and save myself the embarrassment of working next to a man I begged to have sex with me.
I drag a hand over my face, scrubbing hard over my stubble.
The whole time that eccentric lighthouse funeral was happening downstairs, I was acutely aware that Ember was close by. My body ached for him to come upstairs and take care of me as only an alpha could. When I heard the door close downstairs and everything finally went quiet, I couldn’t help myself. I called out to him, desperate for relief and almost scared at the ferocity of my hormones.
I heard the door slam as he apparently fled away from me and all my omega hot mess. He couldn’t get away fast enough.
Guilt settles in my chest like a heavy stone. I shouldn’t have put him in that position. Not many alphas have the ability to turn down a begging omega in the throes of heat.
I sit up slowly, feeling almost normal now. I’m tired, and a little hollowed out, but normal. My heat broke sometimes in the night. I remember the sharp edge of it fading and my body finally unclenching. I remember looking out the window thinking," My alpha doesn’t want me.
Which totally isn’t true.
I think.
My hormones blasted me yesterday, and he was doing the gentlemanly thing by not taking advantage. Logically, I know that. My heart still hurts at his rejection, though.
I glance at my phone on the nightstand.
I don’t know what I was expecting to wake up to this morning. Maybe frantic messages about funeral-related fiascos? But instead, all I woke up to was a voicemail notification on the funeral home phone from a missed call this morning.
I flop back onto my bed and groan pitifully into my pillow.
“I am an embarrassment to all of the world,” I mumble. “No wonder my family doesn’t talk to me.”
The house is quiet, but there’s a smell that I didn’t notice earlier. Coffee.
He’s here.
My heart trips over itself as my mind tries to figure out what I should do, but really, there’s only one option.
Resigned to my decision, I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand carefully. My ass twinges with minor soreness from working out my heat alone with my silicone buddy. Yes, he’s shaped like a tentacle. No, I don’t think it’s weird. We don’t kink shame in this house.
I shuffle slowly toward my closet, pulling out clothes and ignoring the ache in my ass with every step I take. Halfway through getting dressed, I hear him humming.
Humming.
Like a fucking psychopath.
Who hums first thing in the morning?
“Ember?” I call out, just in case anactualpsychopath decided to break in, make coffee, and murder me.
In that order.
“In the kitchen,” comes the easy answer.
Each step feels like I’m walking toward a meeting with HR, and they have all the evidence of me trying to get my poor alpha employee into my bed last night.
I reach the kitchen and pause.
He’s at the counter, burnt-orange Henley sleeves pushed up over his forearms, sunlight cutting across his broad shoulders. He looks well rested and put together. Not anything like a man who barely escaped his deranged boss with his virtue intact.
