Page 99 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

After lunch, I appear at Sophie’s borrowed workstation.

“Sophie.” I’m carrying my tablet, scrolling through the afternoon’s schedule. “Can you come with me to the product design lab? I’d like you to see the other side of what we do here.”

“Sure, Mr. Brooks.” She closes her laptop and stands. “Lead the way.”

We walk through the atrium together. People nod and smile as we pass.

“The product design team is small—five people,” I say, holding a glass door open for her. “They take the formulations we develop in research and turn them into the physical products. They’re a good group. Quiet, focused. Most of them have been with us for years.”

She follows me through a short corridor into a section of the building she hasn’t been in before.

The corridor opens into a wide, well-lit space, and the first thing I notice is that it’s empty. The overhead lights are on, but no one is here.

“Huh.” I frown. “They must all be on break. I’ll just show you around a bit anyway, since we’re here.”

I walk her through the workstations, explaining the process.

We’re passing the main display case, and I’m mid-sentence when I notice that Sophie has stopped walking. Her eyes drift to the left—a quick, involuntary slide of her gaze toward the display case while the rest of her body stays pointed at me, as if she can look without being caught as long as she doesn’t turn her head.

She’s looking at the dual-shaft model. The one with the double knotting mechanism.

Her gaze lingers for maybe two seconds. Then she feels my attention shift and her eyes snap back to me so fast it’s almost violent. Her expression doesn’t change. But there’s a faint wash of color along her cheekbones that wasn’t there before, and her arms tighten against her chest.

She got caught. She knows she got caught. And she’s pretending it didn’t happen, and I should really leave it alone.

But something comes over me. A dark, quiet compulsion that I don’t understand but can’t seem to stop. I reach into the display case and lift out the dual-shaft model.

“This is one of our flagship products,” I say, holding it between us. It’s sleek, ergonomic, matte-finished in soft gray. Two shafts, slightly offset, each one tapering to a knotting mechanism at the base.

Sophie’s eyes drop to it. Quick and involuntary. She pulls her gaze back to my face within a heartbeat, but in that heartbeat I see it. She’s curious. She’s trying so hard not to be, but I can see right through it.

“Right.” Her voice is slightly higher than normal.

“This device mimics the experience of an omega being knotted by two alphas simultaneously.”

The air between us thickens. I can feel it in my skin, in the way the room seems to contract around us. Sophie’s resolve finally breaks. Her gaze lowers to the device and stays there, her breath catching just enough for me to hear it, and she bites her lower lip—slow, unconscious, the kind of gesture that tells me she’s forgotten I’m watching.

“Simultaneously,” she says, as if she doesn’t know what it means. I can see the flutter of her pulse at her throat, the faint sheen of sweat at her temples. She’s thinking about something, and she bites her lip again, and I stare at her mouth.

I find the button on the side. “Yes, simultaneously. When you press this—” I press it. “—the knot starts inflating.”

Sophie watches it, and I watch her watch it, feeling my heartbeat hammering in my chest.

The mechanism activates and the base of the first shaft begins to swell—slowly, expanding outward in a gradual curve designed to replicate the pressure of an alpha’s knot. I can see the slight widening of her eyes as the knot fully inflates, and I can feel it all the way to my cock.

Fuck.

I watch the slight dilation of her pupils. The quickening of her breath. The way her lips part, barely a millimeter, such an unconscious thing but one that tells me everything.

It’s turning her on, and she’s fascinated and curious, and I should stop talking and I’m not going to.

“Of course,” I say, and my voice has dropped lower, unable to stop now, “some omegas prefer larger devices. Separate units, so they can control each one independently.”

“Independently,” she says softly. Her voice is barely above a whisper, and she hasn’t looked away from the device.

“Different speeds. Different pressures. Different sequences.” I turn the device slowly. “The user controls everything. That’s the point. Full autonomy over the experience.”

She’s so close now. Close enough that I can see the faint freckles on her nose, ones I never noticed before, and the way her lashes cast tiny shadows on her cheekbones. Her lips are still parted from whatever she was about to say and if I tilted her chin up, my lips would be on hers. And the terrifying thing is, I think she’d let me.