Page 83 of Use Me Up

“Oh, fuck, thank you,” says Ellis, taking them from him.

“His suppressants,” says Kane. “He says a double dose might cut the heat off.”

“Is it safe?” I say, as Ellis shakes four pills out into his hand.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” says Ellis, swallowing the pills with water. “Can I have your cock now, Gatlin?”

Obviously, he can have my cock. Obviously, he gets it whenever he wants it.

hannah

“Where the fuck have you been?” Andrew says as I walk across a Walmart parking lot to where he’s standing, right next to Calliope’s car. He looks haggard and stressed, and I can tell he’s not really thinking clearly either. He’s probably in a rut triggered by his omega’s heat, since that is how it tends to work for bonded pairs. “I have been texting you for hours.”

“Hey,” I say, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“God, you smell like him, and you smell like… alpha?” Andrew shakes his head at me. “You smell… what the fuck, Hannah, why do you smell like that?”

“Have you called Mom?” I say.

He rubs his forehead, furrowing his brow. “Uh, no.”

“Have you texted anyone besides me and Callie?”

“Well, I haven’t texted Callie,” he says, pointing into her car, because her phone is sitting out, right there, on the passenger seat. “No point in texting her when I traced her location to this exact place, and she wasn’t here.”

“Right,” I say. “Well, I’m going to text Mom, then.”

He runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know why I didn’t think to do that. I went into the Walmart, but it… everything was too overwhelming. The lights were too bright and all of the different scents and I got lost—seriously, lost—in Walmart. I don’t know how long I was in there, and I just kept thinking that if she went in there, the same thing would have happened to her, and that I had to stay in there and keep looking—”

“Andrew, you’re in a rut,” I say. “You’re overly sensitive—”

“I mean, that’s why the lights were so bright. I’m not an idiot.”

I pat his shoulder, composing a text to my mother, explaining the situation.

My mother texts back right away. Where are you?

I send her our location. I squeeze Andrew’s shoulder. “Okay, so Mom’s coming, and that’s going to help.” I look around. “Callie, um, she probably went somewhere where there’s a bar or something.” I point to the strip mall connected to the Walmart. “That Mexican restaurant over there has one, right?”

“Why would she go to a bar?”

“Somewhere to be around people, to dance, she might have… I don’t know.”

“You think she went somewhere to get fucked,” says Andrew stonily.

“Well, she already fucked Ellis today,” I say, annoyed.

“What?” says Andrew. “Then why do you smell like you scrubbed your whole body with his scent?”

“Because he went into heat, too!”

“Fuck,” says Andrew. “They always do this to each other, tripping each other’s heat like that. I don’t even know why. But if she’s fucking someone else right now, she could get pregnant.”

“Let’s go check the Mexican place,” I say.

He groans, rolling his head on his shoulders. “I don’t want to walk right now. Everything’s too much, Hannah.”

“You are the whiniest alpha I know,” I tell him.