Page 107 of Captive Omega

“But?” he prompts me.

“I realized that is probably what they want.” I swear the tension in the room drops until I look at Blaine. “You offered to teach me self-defense.”

Then all the tension in the room ramps up again.

Eyes flick from me to Blaine and back again.

“You want to learn?” Blaine asks.

“I would like not to be a mess that needs cleaning up. If anyone is making a mess, I’d prefer it was me.”

Vaughn snorts a laugh.

Blaine’s expression doesn’t change. He closes his laptop with a soft click and I start thinking maybe I shouldn’t have said anything at all.

“I can teach you,” he says so reluctantly that I know for sure he’s regretting having offered in the first place.

Vaughn bounces his gaze from me to Blaine. “I’ve got some time free.”

“For?” I ask him.

He tosses his bloody cloth in the sink. “I’ve always wanted to be a dummy.”

We all stare at him.

“You heard me. I can be the guy who gets beaten up.” He winks at me. “Just try not to make too much of a mess of me. What do you say?”

Chapter 31

Resa

“Blaine said bare feet and comfy clothes, right?” I try not to stare at Vaughn’s bare chest and the sweatpants he’s wearing low. Like, way down, I’m getting hints of a dark blond triangle peeking from?—

Stop. Staring.

I wrench my gaze from Vaughn’s pants to his face. He’s stretching out the kinks in his neck. He stops long enough to give me a lazy smile. “This is comfy.”

I eye him with suspicion.

Thirty minutes, Blaine said, and he’d meet us in the gym where we’d start my self-defense lessons. I’d slipped upstairs to dig through the closet I’d started filling with designer clothes Lex keeps bringing me.

Halfway through my digging, I realized I was riffling through clothes that hadn’t been there a day before. New clothes. Expensive clothes. When I got a glimpse of the price tags, I winced at leggings way too pricy to sweat in.

The soles of my feet no longer hurt from the glass. They’re a little tender, but the black mat is spongy.

I’m in a pair of black leggings, a sports bra and a dark gray tank that hits the top of my thighs, my hair pulled back into a ponytail. I did not have hair ties yesterday or any of the clothes I’m currently wearing. Lex is like the clothes fairy or something.

“My clothes are multiplying,” I’d told Vaughn when I’d found him flat on his back in the middle of the mat, shirtless, texting someone called Cynthia, who was trying to steal his job.

His eyes had flicked up after he’d finished complaining, and a slow, sexy smile had pulled on the corners of his lips. “You look beautiful,” he said, patting the mat beside him. “Come sit here.”

Sit on a mat beside a shirtless Vaughn while he’s smiling up at me like I’m dessert?

“No, thanks.”

He slid his phone off the mat and he’s spent the last several minutes slowly stretching out muscles I don’t think need stretching at all.

“Do you think I pushed Blaine into this?” I’m starting to think I have. If it was something he really wanted to do, he’d be down here already.

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