Page 24 of Excess

His idiocy was exhausting. It always had been, but my patience for it had dropped significantly in the past year.

As I drove home through the quiet streets, ignoring Leo’s cursing and pained groans as he came back to the land of the living, it was the image of Inika’s face that was at the forefront of my mind. Specifically, that mischievous smile she’d given me when she asked whether I was freaking out.

What would it be like to come home to a mate? To crawl into her nest—crawl between her thighs—and lose ourselves entirely in each other?

“What happened?” Leo groaned, his words thick and slurred. “Did I lose? I fucking had him, I swear. Let’s go back. Why’d we leave the club?”

It wasn’t like I hadn’t considered having a mate in an abstract sense before, but now my brain was unhelpfully supplying Inika’s face—and Inika’s thighs—to taunt me with the future I would never have.

“Blake! Did you hear me?”

“I heard you,” I murmured, keeping my gaze fixed on the road ahead and my head in the clouds. Anywhere but here.

Chapter 8

INIKA

For reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely, I found myself standing under the scaffolding on the second floor on Saturday morning, even though I knew Blake wouldn’t be back until Monday. The staff weren’t cleaning in this part of the house until the work was completed, which I was extra grateful for once I realised that the spare nest still had the distinctive scent of Eau de Alpha and Omega Sex hanging in the air.

Though, that wasn’t exactly a surprise, since I’d made no attempt to air it out since our little tryst in there yesterday. I hadn’t even stripped the bed. It smelled like us because I’d wanted it to smell like us.

It was a little embarrassing in a non-sexy way, but whatever. Alphas smelled good—and Blake smelled particularly good. And alpha-omega sex smelled incredible, provided you’d been the alpha or omega engaged in it. It was probably foul for everyone else, but as the staff weren’t coming in, I could wallow in my own filth to my heart’s content.

Though, I did want to ensure that the bedding was clean for when Blake came back to work on Monday. Just in case we had need of it again.

I grabbed supplies and stripped the bed, lugging the sheets down both flights of stairs to the laundry room, and eyeing the indoor pool guiltily as I went past. It was so much work for the staff to maintain, and while I’d told them countless times that they should feel free to use it as well, none of them ever did, and I only swum in it a few times a year at most. So many of the amenities in this house were wasted on me, and it served to make me feel wasteful about having them.

Fortunately, no omega—no matter how stupidly privileged—would let someone else touch their nest supplies, so I at least knew how to operate the washing machine. The rest of the appliances in the house presented slightly more of a challenge.

I grabbed fresh linen and headed back upstairs, not seeing anyone on the way since it was more of a skeleton staff on the weekends, anyway. Usually, I quite liked the added peace and privacy, but I had the odd urge to seek out some human interaction today. Mama would be happy to see me, of course, but dinner last night had already tested my patience on that front. It had been two straight hours of my parents trying to convince me to stay at their house while the renovations were happening. Graeme’s fretting had been particularly effective with Mama, who’d been all but hysterical about my lack of compromise by the end of the evening.

I could message the girls and see what they were doing, but they’d just want to talk about Spencer’s friend Hugo, and I was even less enthusiastic about that.

Perhaps I was being unfair. He might be lovely. I doubted I’d have one eighth of the chemistry with him that I had with Blake, and he’d probably just want to talk about Om-Guard the entire time, but that was to be expected. One eighth of the chemistry was probably the best I could hope for, in all honesty. Most of the time, I wasn’t attracted to the alphas I was set up with at all.

Setting the clean bedding on the armchair in the corner, I sifted through it until I found the fitted sheet. Already, the room smelled significantly less like a sex dungeon, and it was deeply disheartening.

Finding the fitted sheet, I kneeled on the hardwood floor to tuck the sheet under the mattress, pausing at the sight of something under the bed.

A wallet.

It was worn, dark brown leather, with B.A. engraved in gold on the front. I flicked it open, smiling like an idiot at Blake’s scowling license photo.

Shoot, he probably needed this. Had he noticed it was missing yet? I had no idea what he got up to in his free time, but I imagined Blake slept in on Saturday mornings and hadn’t noticed that it was missing yet.

Then again, he should have noticed last night, right? Perhaps I was stereotyping alphas, but I assumed he went to the pub on a Friday night to let off steam after work with his friends.

Blake was such a mystery. In all honesty, that was probably why I was so interested in him. He was a mysterious, gruff alpha who was good with his hands. And the sex was filthy, and perfectly pushed all of my buttons—both the “tell me I’m pretty ones,” and the “call me a slut” ones. That undoubtedly helped.

But once the mystery had worn off, so would my interest. The alphas that were chosen for me had no mystery to begin with, and I always grew frustrated with the ones I chose for myself. In every other area of my life, I felt confident in my ability to make decisions and commit to that path.

Just not love. I couldn’t commit on that front for the life of me.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, pulling up the message thread with Blake and hitting call.

“Inika?”

I suppressed a shudder at the sound of Blake’s deep, rumbling voice down the phone line. It was unfair that he sounded that good.

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