Good Girl by Sam Hall

Chapter 15

One thing I loved about Madam Colette, she could create a dress that would make you feel strong, even if you didn’t before putting it on. Made from a boned black velvet, it hugged my body tight, due to the strapless sweetheart neckline. And to complement that? A wide collar of pearls to be clasped around my neck, making me look claimed, repelling anyone who’d try to take a bite. The makeup artist had conceded, giving me a killer winged eyeliner to go with the updo and makeup in shades of gold and bronze. I was the perfect alpha bait—desirable but untouchable.

“Well, well, Madam triumphs again,” George said, holding out a hand and twirling me around. “Miranda, you must have a stout stick lying around, living so close to the forest. I think I’m going to need one, escorting your daughter looking like this.”

Mum snorted, but her smile, when she looked me over, was genuine.

“You look lovely, Cyn, and Madam has outdone herself. But this is beta fashion, George. Shouldn’t she be wearing those little floaty things that all the other omegas wear?”

“She doesn’t need to. Her scent will announce to one and all what she is, and she’ll be all the more fascinating for her fashion choices. Madam is right—why be a sheep when you can be a wolf?”

A wolf. Yeah, right. Nothing could be further than the truth, but I could work with sheep in wolf’s clothing, if that was what it took.

“James Chadwick. Let’s do this. Go, go, go,” I said, waving my hand at the door.

“Choose some suitable pieces and let the dealer know, Cyn.”

“Really?” I paused there for a second, studying Mum’s face. “I… Of course, I’ll find some that fit your decor.”

“Goodnight, sweetheart.” She kissed me on the cheek and then disappeared into her office.

“Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod…”I hissed as the driver pulled up in front of the gallery, the lights blazing in the darkness, marking the way to the promised land.

“First rule of secret season is to act bored at all times,” George said when the car came to a stop. “Any sign of enthusiasm or interest is strictly verboten. Face serene, so as not to develop wrinkles, a little disdainful hauteur is even better. Now, show me your resting bitch face.”

He wouldn’t let me out of the car until I did, with cars backing up behind us, so I schooled my face to smoothness.

“Hmm…I can pass the shine in your eyes off as omega heat or something, but we’ll have to work on this. Bored face training begins tomorrow, my darling.”

“Of course.” I snickered, and he opened the door with a sigh, onto a whole other world.

My first and only season had been trotting from one of the official events to another, filled with academy omegas vying for alpha’s attention, proud mamas and papas looking on. But they were always deathly boring, consisting mainly of standing around making small talk, dancing, or dinners. But this? We stalked up the steps that led to the gallery, spied the silhouettes of people within, but I brushed past them all.

“Jesus Christ, Cyn. You’ve got the right background and the right look, but if you want more invitations like this, get some fucking chill,” George hissed, wrapping his arm in mine. “This is a game, a very old game, with rules no one talks about and yet everyone is aware of them. Everyone who stays.” He took me on a gentle stroll around the gallery, even as I wanted to stop and stare at the works on the wall. “Your James Chadwick is not a player, just a pawn picked up and put on a pedestal by the rich and powerful until they say otherwise. Now, here’s a good place to stop.”

“Why here?” I asked, but my eyes were drawn to the massive drawing in front of us.

Chadwick, to my mind, had done something terribly daring. Eschewing the weird minimalism of contemporary art, with its dog skulls and poorly rigged pieces of rope to illustrate the semiotic confusion of modern life, he drew things that people could recognise and appreciate. Unrepentantly romantic, a woman curled in on herself, a book in hand, despite the fact she looked much like a faerie princess herself. His lines were the flowing organic whips of Art Nouveau, yet with a contemporary twist. He hadn’t plumped for mere reproduction, but took the sensibility of the movement and made it his own.

Yeah, I know. I took some art history classes online when I worked out university would be near impossible. Some omegas chanced it, but I…

“This one, I think, George,” I said.

“What? Oh yes, it’s quite beautiful. And so it should be for thirty K. But it’s not the artwork that made me stop here.”

“It wasn’t?”

George looked at me like I looked at the artwork, like he got some sort of deep aesthetic pleasure from doing so.

“You were always one of the more beautiful, more accomplished omegas, and positioning ourselves under this spotlight, central to the room, it makes sure that every eligible alpha that walks in that door notices what I do. The light reflects off your skin, your hair, your pearls, and people can’t help but stare.”

His eyes slid sideways and mine followed, and from the corner of our eyes, we saw people pause to take a look. At us, not the works on the wall, which didn’t sit well for me, but he took my hand and squeezed it.

“You want to find your alpha?”

“Yes,” I replied, without hesitation this time, which my therapist would have called progress. I did. This afternoon, the dildo, getting myself off… Self-pleasure was an important part of an independent woman’s arsenal, but right now, I knew I needed more. I’d gotten into this to try and relieve Mum of her burden, but now… That frantic thrash of ecstasy in the car had awakened something in me, and I wanted more.

But I wanted the security of knowing the hand, the tongue, the cock inside me belonged to my mate. Mine. A tiny growl grew in my chest, quickly smothered. I wanted someone who would claim me as I would claim them.

“Well, sit tight, look at your precious art, and let people see the way that gold clasp bites ever so slightly into your skin,” he said, making me shiver, even when he ran his finger down the thin bar of metal joining the pearls together. “I’ll get us some champers.”

And so I did, feeling somewhat self-conscious, until my eyes were drawn back to the artwork. It would piss George off, but I stepped in closer, peering at it, at the almost seamless pencil strokes over the top of a base layer of watercolour. It was odd for such a large work to be so detailed, the thirty grand price tag actually seeming quite meagre.

“I’m sorry for interrupting. You seem to be looking at that artwork rather closely. Is there anything I can help you with?”

When I turned, there was a thirty-something man standing there dressed in what I would forever dub as hipster chic. Black stovepipe pants that were cut close to shapely thighs, heavy boots on his feet that had seen better days, the leather peeling a little over the steel caps. A thin grey turtle neck so dark as to almost look black, the grey relieved by tiny flecks of white. And then a shock of dark hair, a mobile mouth, and thick-rimmed glasses that tried to hide brown eyes that sparkled with a light that didn’t require artificial ones to illuminate them. There was something inside him that lit him from within, evident in the twist of his smile.

“It’s just people don’t usually look at the artwork. I was so surprised, I thought I’d come over and make sure everything was OK.”

“More than OK,” I gushed. “Do you work for the gallery? I love James’ art so much. Have since I first saw his work on the cover of some of my favourite author’s books. He doesn’t do illustration now—Shit, you must know that working here. Sorry, I’m gushing, but my mother, Miranda Rhodes, you’ve heard of her?”

“Wunderkind of the tech world?” His eyebrow jerked up. “Yes, of course. She has an account at Delozian, doesn’t she?”

“Yes, and she asked me to identify some works for her to buy and I haven’t looked at all of them, but I see there’s red dots going up already, and this one… I think this one. Can we put her down for this one? She has to approve the purchase, but she usually does.”

“OK, just take a breath now.”

It was right about then, I realised this gallery attendant was an alpha. His scent came in late, muted perhaps by de-scenter, it was a strange combination of ground coffee beans, sandalwood, and leather. I frowned slightly, the insanely masculine scent a little at odds with his more refined façade, though the roughly raked back hair hinted at something else. But I found myself taking that breath, of course, and was rewarded by his smile in response, which was dazzling.

“Oh, hello, James. You found her,” George said, passing me a glass of champagne.

My fingers closed around it on automatic, but I just stared, brave, brazen even for an omega.

“James?” I asked weakly.

“James Chadwick,” he said, that smile broadening, a large hand held out for me to shake.

I didn’t have to feign weakness, since my hand was like a dead mouse in his, and he took my fingers and brushed a kiss across my knuckles in response. When he was there, he paused, just for a second, looking for all the world like a courtly gentleman, but it wasn’t old-fashioned manners that kept my hand in his. I heard the sharp intake of his breath as he sucked it in, sucked me in. He was breathing in the scent of my cunt, only partly washed away, on my fingers.

“A pleasure,” he said finally, straightening up and fixing his eyes right on me. “Now, I can put a tentative dot against this artwork, but how about we look at the others before you make any specific commitments?”

And then he fucking offered me his arm, the arm he used to move his hand to make the artworks I drooled over. Or one of them, I didn’t know if he was a righty or a lefty. ‘I love you’ I mouthed over my shoulder at George, and he just smirked, tipping his glass at me, and then wandered off to chat to his friends.

“So what was the theme of this show?” I asked. “Shit, I should just read the catalogue essay.”

“Oh no,” James said, shooting a smile my way. “If your mother is prepared to buy some of my most expensive works sight unseen, then an impromptu artist talk is definitely in order.” He brought us to a stop in front of a drawing of two figures, one male, one female, facing off against each other, bristling with…something. I couldn’t tell if it was love, lust, pain, or what, and that was what made it so fascinating. “Heaven and hell or thereabouts. I wanted to explore contradictions and how they seem so at odds with each other, and yet at their core, they contain common ground. Like alpha and omegas.”

He reached out, tracing the line of my pearl choker with his finger in the way that alphas did, always ignoring social niceties and pesky things like personal space to put their mark on everything. But rather than being oppressive, I shivered. His eyes flicked up, dancing with that same light, but perhaps just a little brighter.

“Control, submission, claiming—none of those things are exclusively omega or alpha, despite what social conventions dictate. The model for the woman in this piece is an omega.”

My eyes jerked back to the artwork, taking in the defiant stance of the girl and her heated expression.

“And so is he. They are mated.”

“What?”

“That’s the job of the artist, to look past the bullshit messages we transmit out self-consciously and look beyond to what is. I find myself fascinated by all the ways our dogma about designations fall down, in the beauty of that.”

“And that’s what you put in your catalogue essay?”

“Of course not!” he replied with a snort, then winked at me. “The gallery paid an art critic to write something pompously post-modern. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari.” He held up his beautiful long fingers and ticked off each theorist. “First thing you need to know about the art world is no one actually explains what they are doing. It leaves them too open, too naked.”

I couldn’t look into his eyes as he spoke, instead watching that wonderful mouth move with meditative focus. And as they formed that last word, something twitched inside me.

“Are you…” James stopped, put his too hot hand on my arm, and looked down into my eyes. “Are you all right, Ms Rhodes?”

I wasn’t, I knew that. I’d woken calmer, sadder, emptier, and ready to go out and have some fun, but a good fireman goes back and checks over embers to make sure they had really gone out. At his touch, at his proximity, at the heady cloud of his scent, what had burned before flared alight.

“Ms… Omega?”

The command was light, questing, testing me out, and when I didn’t reply, caught up way too much in the way I was physically responding to actually say anything, his grip tightened slightly and he escorted me over to one of the leather upholstered benches in the gallery.

“Water, I think, would be a smarter choice.”

The champagne flute was removed from my hand, soon to be replaced by a glass of ice water. Yes, cooling. I put it up to my forehead, damn the makeup artist’s work, and rubbed it against my now sweating brow.

“Dear god,” he hissed, crouched down before me, a hand going to my bare knee, “you’re tipping into frenzy.”

“So I’ve been told,” I ground out, then gulped down a mouthful of water.

“Good girl. You’ll need to stay hydrated. Do you have any suppressants with you, Ms Rhodes?”

Somehow that was naughtier, more carnal than calling me omega. I felt like I was back at school, but all of a sudden, my art teacher was a helluva lot younger and hotter than old Mrs Collins. And that hand… His fingers twitched against my skin, like he’d like to do something else altogether.

And when I looked up, I wanted him to.

My tongue flicked out, scraping over my red slicked lips, and he followed every movement.

“Ms Rhodes? Suppressants?”

“Yes, of course.” I grabbed my super small, super useless little cloche bag and opened it, popping out a few pills and palming them before taking the glass of water from James again. He watched me swallow them down, then more water.

“James,” an older man said, bustling up. “We need to open the show.”

“In a moment, Oliver. This is Miranda Rhodes’ daughter, Cyn.” Oliver was backing the fuck up at the sound of Mum’s name. “She’s just had a little turn, and I’m making sure she’s OK. Most of the people aren’t here to see the art, so delaying things for a few minutes won’t hurt.”

“Of course. I’ll circulate more brie.”

“Now, Ms Rhodes, I need you to take nice long breaths for me, in and out. Very good. In and out, holding your breath for two beats between each breath. Good girl.”

This, this was what society had shaped us into, alphas and omegas. He didn’t want to fetch me water or watch me breathe, I could feel that in the electrical pulses that thrummed between us. But if he lifted me up, stripped me bare in front of all the betas, plunged his tongue into my naked cunt, then slammed into me, forcing me to take his knot just like he wanted to, it made it very difficult for us to exist in a society mostly made up of betas.

Their way, of sensible, stable, productivity, had been shown over and over to work best for the collective. So instead, alphas prided themselves on caring, sheltering, protecting omegas, to show they, too, were worthy of their place at the top of the social ladder.

Which was what I had to remind myself. His quiet concern, his firm commands, they weren’t for me. He didn’t know me. They were for the unruly omega designation that was a part of me, to stop me from embarrassing myself.

Of course, he had to ruin that quickly constructed defence, didn’t he?

“You look quite beautiful right now,” James said, staring, the previously mischievous look in his eyes transmuting to something much harder. “Those flushed cheeks, those glowing eyes, that bloody pearl collar. Did you mean for me to imagine ripping it off, sending all those pearls bouncing across the marble floor, and replacing it with my hand?”

“I…”

“What the hell is going on?”

His voice was a cold slap across the face, breaking the spell James had been casting and leaving me gasping in response.

Orion.

“I asked you what you were doing, Chadwick.”

James straightened up, squaring his shoulders as he did so.

“Did you put her in this state?” he snapped in response. Silence at that. “What the hell were you thinking, and why is she roaming these shark tanks, shedding blood into the water?”

“It wasn’t me.”

“But you know who did. Jesus Christ, Orion, I thought better of you. She’s about to tip right over into frenzy.”

“I know.”

“And you let her out?”

“She’s not mine to say yea or nay too. We offered her somewhere safe to see this through, and she refused.”

“Well, she’s taken some suppressants and had some water. You should take her home.”

“She’s also right here,” I croaked out, standing up myself. I was a little wobbly, dwarfed by the two of them, but still, my chin jerked up. “I’m fine. I’ve never experienced a frenzy before, and I underestimated the effect it would have. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” James assured me. “You’re hardly in the right mind to gauge that. Are the suppressants kicking in?”

I nodded, lying, still feeling the rapid pulse between my legs at the thought of him destroying my collar, but I’d had enough experience shouldering dumb impulses aside that this wasn’t going to be an issue.

“Thank you for starting to show me your work. Please put the red dot on the artwork I looked at first,” I replied.

“Of course.”

He paused, then reached into his back pocket, pulled out a wallet, then a business card, all to the musical sound of Orion’s growl, but that didn’t stop him from pressing it into my palm and closing my fingers around it.

“If you’d like a private showing any time or…” Watching an alpha swallow, lose his cool, even just for a second, was like the fucking sexiest thing I’d ever seen, even if turtlenecks were for total hipster douchebags. “I’d very much like for you to sit for me, Ms Rhodes. While you hover on the edge of frenzy, if possible. There’s something…radiant about you, pulsing with a need that must be satisfied, but you resist.” His eyes darted to the painting behind us, of the warring omegas. “Bring your alpha, your chaperone. Bring a whole army, if that would satisfy the conventions of polite society, but if you’re willing…”

I seriously felt like the breath had been punched out of me, at his offer, at a description of me that was so completely at odds with my own perception of myself that I was struck dumb.

“She’s not stripping down for you and ‘posing’ while she’s in frenzy. Not ever,” Orion all but growled, his fingers biting into my shoulders. “C’mon, omega.”

I’d like to think shock or wonder or the hazy rush of the suppressants as they tore through my system, changing me, altering me temporarily into one of them, were what left me limp and docile as Orion hustled me out of the gallery. His car was parked in the no parking zone outside, his boys all lined up, leaning against the side of it.

“She’s still in frenzy,” he announced as soon as they got close, not letting go until Rhys pushed himself away from the car.

“No shit,” he said, prising Orion’s hand off my arm and then pulling me close, the size of him, the weight of his arms, making me sag on my heels. “It’s OK, omega. I’ve got you now.”

And for some reason, that just made me want to cry, the world going brighter and hazier with every second.

“Look, what the hell are you four playing at?” George, that was George, and I twisted in Rhys’ grip to look at him, but he held me where I was. “One or two events, I can swing with Miranda, but this? It’s going to get back to her. People are already starting to talk.”

“Let them,” Marcus growled.

“It’s all right for you. You’ve made your bed, and a damn fine one it is with that club, but she doesn’t have an alpha designation or a fancy business to fall back on. She can’t go to university or hold down a job or do anything but be an alpha’s mate. You know her best chance of finding that is in there.” The sound of my chaperone sucking in a breath. “Miranda won’t go for this…whatever you have going here.”

“Don’t worry, Georgy boy, we know that better than anyone, but the point is moot,” Marcus drawled. “Omegas don’t share. It’s not in their nature. They want one alpha, one man or one woman to belong to, and as much as we’d love just that, no one comes between us. No one. And anyway, notoriety, some colour, teetering on the edge of frenzy—that’s alpha bait, and you fucking know it. Add in those doe-like eyes and that highly fuckable body, and she’s done. Someone will hunt her down before the season is done, and your reputation will remain intact.”

“I’m not worried about my reputation. I’m worried about hers.”

“Mr Artist Man already gave her his card, wants her to sit for him. Nude, I assume,” Orion drawled. “She’s claimed a scalp in the time it took you to get her a flute of champagne. Don’t worry about your girl. We’re better security than anyone can ever be.” The sardonic tone grew harder, more insistent. “No one will fuck with her while we’re with her.”

“And what do you get from all of this? Hoping to pull one over on daddy?”

“I am, and if you help us, there’s a nice little earner in it for you,” Marcus replied.

“Not at her expense. Never. I’ve been through that once,” George insisted.

“Couldn’t if we tried,” Brendan said, joining the conversation finally. He reached over to pull me from Rhys’ arms, moving over to breathe me in, but pressed his body against mine when his mate wouldn’t let go. “She’s our little taste of heaven. We won’t let that go until we have to.”

“So where are we at tonight?” Orion prompted. “Where’s our hunting ground?”

“The Lasseters’,” George bit out. “Cocktail party.”

“Those tedious fucks? Fine, jump in, we’re taking my car.”