Page 32 of Stella

“I don’t want you to think I’m a spoiled omega.” I looked down at my hands and fiddled with a bracelet. “I don’t need you to buy me a bunch of stuff.”

“I know.” He cupped my face in his hands. “I want to buy you stuff. It makes me happy.”

I looked into his eyes. He seemed sincere.

My last pack had been sincere too. At first.

“Okay,” I said. There was a good chance that he wouldn’t be around long enough to start feeling annoyed.

I shouldn’t have felt so disappointed at that thought. This relationship, my thing with Jerrick, it all had an expiration date. I needed to keep reminding myself of that. They would get me through my heat and go on their merry way.

Suddenly the thought was too much. I stood up. “There’s a whole part of the store we haven’t looked at yet.”

The easy going alpha let me drag him to the art deco section, but once we were there, he stopped me and made me face him. “Did your last pack make you feel like that? I have a hard time seeing your sisters acting like that.”

Wow, he was actually calling me out, and in the department store, no less.

“Yes.” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I wasn’t fooling anyone. “At first they wanted to do anything and everything for me. But, after a while, they got snappish if I asked for them to swing by and get milk on their way home.”

That last month or so had been bad. I knew things were going wrong, but I didn’t know how to fix it.

“Well.” Evan took my hand in his. “That’s crappy and they’re assholes.”

“They are. Idon’tneed someone to wait on me hand and foot.”

“I know.” He kissed the back of my hand. His little, casual touches warmed me. It went beyond desire, even though I could have happily thrown him down on that chaise lounge and ridden him until we were both screaming.

But brushing my shoulder, holding my hand, they were all comfort gestures and warmed up parts of my soul that I hadn’t known were cold.

“Iwantto do things for you.” He looked at me. “It’s fun to go shopping. To touch things and think about what it would look like in your house.”

“I didn’t know alphas nested,” I said with a smirk.

“We do, but it’s through our omegas. I want to give you whatever you need to make your home a happy and comfortable place.”

My heart clenched. “Okay, fine. Make yourself happy.”

Evan grinned. “I plan on it. Permission just means you won’t be mad when that chaise lounge gets delivered in a few days.”

I rolled my eyes at him, not sure what to say. My throat was tight with feelings it was easier to pretend didn’t exist. It was so much easier to think I wanted him because he was dead sexy and had a knot. And I was pre-heat. It was a no-brainer.

But these soft touches and bonding experiences? That was different.

Chapter9

Stella

Evan took me to get Chinese food, and then we hit up two more stores where I also got some snacks. We climbed back into the Jeep, and I assumed we were finally headed to the grocery store.

Once I finally stopped expecting Evan to get annoyed, my hormones settled, the desire to nest being satisfied. I didn’t go on a shopping spree every four months when I went into heat, but I did like to wander around and touch things for while. The hunter-gatherer instinct went bonkers while I had all the hormones coursing through me.

Evan was good at being an alpha, and not the dickish way of being an overbearing asshole.

Jerrick had told me that they’d had an omega before, Ava. Maybe Evan was used to Ava, how she liked things. He certainly had the ‘loving Alpha’ role down perfectly.

“What?” Evan squeezed my hand. “You’re thinking too hard.”

I shook my head, opening a bag of peanut M&Ms. We just had lunch but I wanted a snack. Again. “It’s not really…polite, to ask.”

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