Page 98 of Use Me Up

“Let me do your makeup,” he says.

I sigh. “Oh, fuck it. Fine.”

He crowds me in the bathroom and blocks my view of the mirror and gazes at my face and gives me orders in his soft and scratchy voice, and his dark curls hang down into his eyes as he tilts his head this way and that way and then smears eyeshadow on me and uses his thumb to put lipstick on my bottom lip.

He backs away eventually and lets me look at myself in the mirror.

I have to say it’s one of his better makeup jobs. I don’t look like someone other than myself, but I do look good. I smile at my reflection. “Not bad,” I say.

He slides an arm around me. “You look amazing.”

I look up at him. Has he ever said anything like that to me?

He looks down at me, and the expression on his face is familiar, and I realize this is the way he looks at me, and I can see that there’s something in it, something that… I don’t know if it’s love, like he said, or something else, something less intense, but he, uh, he likes me. It’s real, genuine fondness in his expression, and I don’t know when that happened. But whenever it did, I was entirely oblivious, and I didn’t even think I was ever going to get that from anyone.

I take a deep breath, and I push out of his arms. I go into the bedroom.

He follows me. “You like my alphas?”

I turn to him. “I mean… am I allowed? We’re going on a date, so I guess I’m allowed?”

“You’re allowed.” He grins. “They’re very easy to like.”

I grin, too. “They are. But I don’t understand, Ellis. Since when am I allowed, because you kicked me out for having sex with Gatlin—”

“That’s not why.”

“You were jealous.”

“Okay, maybe that’s why, and maybe I was jealous, but I’m not now. It’s different.”

“Why is it different? Because I could be pregnant and you want Gatlin to be around to compensate for your lack of fathering capacity?” Maybe this is a little sharp, but he deserves it.

“No,” he says. “No, I swear, it’s just… I felt jealous, but then it faded, and I don’t anymore.”

I don’t believe him. But I keep going, because there’s more. “How did you end up with them? And why are you the way you are about them—well, the way you were—why did you keep them a secret? Why did you practically melt down when they were mentioned?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I’m dramatic. I overreact.”

“No, you’re an omega,” I say. “My mother is an alpha, so I know all about big reactions. It’s okay. I don’t mean to imply that because your actions were surprising, there’s something wrong with you. What I mean is, is there something about them I don’t know that I should?”

“No,” he says. “No, there’s nothing bad about them. I mean… maybe Kane talked Gatlin into letting me leave them. Kane’s very easy-come-easy-go. He likes big parties and lots of fun drinks and buying new suits you’re only going to wear once. He can move through things quickly, and I think he decided—when I got to be a little bit of a handful—that maybe I could be one of those things he moved on from.”

“That’s… maybe bad,” I say.

Ellis thinks about it. “No, because he didn’t mean it. He’ll say shit, and then go back on it immediately. He’s been the one trying to get me to come back with them. He told me he loved me. Gatlin doesn’t say that.”

“He doesn’t?”

“He did once. I didn’t say it back. We had a discussion, and then it was like, Gatlin wanted it off the table until we were in a better place, and it’s never come back on the table. We’ve just gotten into worse and worse places, admittedly.”

“But why?” I say.

“It’s my fault,” he says.

“It can’t all be your fault,” I say. “And if you want me to be in a relationship with these men, too, if you want me to even consider having a baby and letting them be involved, I need to understand everything.”

He lets out a breath. He gestures for me to sit down on the foot of my bed. “Okay, well, if we’re starting at the beginning, you should sit down.”