Page 3 of The Faceless Omega

His gruffly honest response seemed to catch her off-guard and she snorted. She quickly clamped a hand over her mouth and looked away, and he was absolutely positive her cheeks would be stained with pink under all her layers of obscurity. The thought made his cock stir and forced Lennox to shift his weight a bit. He disguised the movement by extracting a handkerchief from his inner coat pocket and offering it to her.

She flicked another glance at him, hesitated for a split-second, then tucked her clutch under her arm and accepted the offering. After a quick, careful dab at her face, she folded the fabric down and said, “I daresay you don’t really know what kind of woman I am, sir.” She smiled. “But I think I like your impression of me better than most of what I’ve heard tonight.”

Lennox pulled in a deeper breath, silently cursed the strategically placed odor diffusers hidden in the overhead air vents, and met her words with a question. “Have you had a hard time?”

The blonde beauty let out a telling sigh, her eyes sliding up and back in a half eye-roll before she seemed to catch herself and straighten her posture. “It’s my first time,” she said, almost sheepishly, “and apparently that makes me something between an interesting new plaything and a leper.”

Lennox made no effort to hide his eye-roll. “Most of these tools can’t loosen up without obscene amounts of alcohol and an hour with a masseuse.” He gestured to the awful mask on his face. “They don’t make us wear these every year because it’sfun.”

Her laughter was soft, sweet, and did nothing for the bulge in his pants. “You come here often, then.” She said the words as a statement, not a question to verify, and finally tipped back the rest of her wine.

For a singular moment, Lennox watched the way the glass rested on her lips and the way her throat constricted when she swallowed. All the wrong things flashed through his mind. Her on her knees, those darkly painted lips stretched around his shaft as he pushed as deep as she could take. How it might feel to fuck her face until her mask of paint and her tears were smeared across his pelvis, until his cum dribbled off her chin.

By the grace of whatever gods remained, he managed to keep those heated and highly indecent thoughts to himself. Instead, he spoke with scarcely measured honesty. “This is my fifth year, unfortunately.” Since his parents quit them, anyway. But that he would keep to himself for the time being.

Her gaze slid away from him, sweeping out to the room beyond. “Five years, huh?” She said it almost in disbelief. Then she straightened again, her smile back in place. “Well, I better go return this.” She lifted the emptied wine glass for emphasis. “Thank you very much for the rescue earlier. It was nice to meet you, such as it were.”

Before Lennox could do more than turn in place, the captivating vixen was sauntering away. He had neither her name nor her scent, and she seemed to think she was done with him.

Chapter 2

Masquerade pt II

Brinleyhadtoldherselfto brace for the probability of an alpha or two at the masquerade. She’d even made sure to apply an extra lather of her scent-blocking lotion just before slipping into the dress, for which she wasextremelygrateful. One rubdown with the lotion was usually sufficient defense, in combination with her daily hormone suppressants, for a full day. But on an average day she didn’t have to mingle in such close quarters with so damn many alpha types!

Most had no interest playing social hour with the new girl. Anonymity or not, odor diffusers or not, it was clear the majority of the attendees were returners and well familiar with each other. Whether that was from too many drunken masquerade parties or life outside the masks, Brinley didn’t know. Regardless, she was a stranger to them and most everyone knew it. She hadn’t been lying when she’d told the hottie in the wolf mask that she was generally being received one of two ways—she’d just oversold the balance.

Heat flashed through her for not the first time in the past hour, and again she regretted her ironclad rule of not more than one drink on the job.

She’d tried to escape from the wolf-masked alpha who seemed so intent on chatting her up. He was sexy as sin in his black suit, with the coat unbuttoned and a dark forest green button-down shirt stretching across his chest beneath that. His attire actually complimented her own dress frighteningly well. He wore no tie, and the top button was, of course, undone. His cufflinks gleamed gold and might even have been styled something other than perfectly polished and circular, but she hadn’t gotten a close enough look. With the dark scruff dusting his visibly strong jaw, the mask choice almost blended in in a very strange way.

Her escape had been short-lived. He’d reappeared at her side after barely ten minutes apart, sliding back into conversation as easily as he slid back into her space. He wasn’t making any effort to haul her off somewhere, or even being overly touchy, he wasthere. Practically hovering.

Brinley wasn’t sure if she minded more that his presence clearly made some of the others somehow less inclined to include her in their gossip, or that there was a part of her very much enjoying his nearness. Both were problematic.

She was a freaking omega. She could not be socializing with an alpha.

That was the real issue, and there was no way she could vocalize it.

Brinley had meandered back to the hors d’oeuvres table, pretending to mull over the ridiculous selection. She held her head with a slight tilt so the camera in her earring could grab at least a few quick shots of the poorly disguised senator practically drooling over a statuesque-looking woman with a tight grip on her mask. How the woman could hold still and let herself be salivated over that way was beyond Brinley’s understanding.

“Do you have a preference?” the unfairly sexy man in the wolf mask asked, his voice a low rumble over her opposite shoulder. “Allergies?”

Right. Food.Brinley pursed her lips. “I feel like cheese. Something savory with a touch of sweet.”

The words were barely past her lips before he lifted a napkin and proceeded to pull together several sets of cheese and crackers. He selected multiple types of cheeses, carefully avoiding the moldy blue-cheese crumble, and finally handed over the napkin. “Try some of these,” he said.

Brinley stared at him for a beat before smiling. “You really didn’t have to do that.” She accepted the napkin anyway, telling herself it was to avoid an argument or a scene. She told herself she ought to be irritated. But all she really felt was flattered, something inside fluttering stupidly. She lifted one of the cracker sandwiches at random and took a delicate bite.

The cracker flavor added the perfect touch of buttery saltiness to the sharp, savory rush of soft cheese that cascaded over her tastebuds. A subtle hint of sweetness followed, like an aftertaste, easing the initial tang before it became too much. She gobbled down the second half of the cracker as demurely as she could.

“Well?”

“Delightful,” she told him honestly.Dammit.“Thank you.”

His lips lifted in a smile that made her body tingle. She really hoped her suppressants hadn’t chosen this night to malfunction for the first time. It wasn’t like they were a magic cure-all for the basic nature of an omega. They didn’t make her a fully human non-shifter. The medicine merely decreased the intensity and frequency of her omega-specific biology, but the hormones were still active on a lower level. It wasn’t impossible for them to respond to a strong enough stimulus, especially if she ever slacked in getting her dosage adjusted.

She was munching on another flavor of cheese-cracker sandwich in an attempt to distract herself when the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She saw her self-appointed escort’s distinctly hazel eyes snap to something beyond her, the brown shade that encircled his pupils seeming to expand and encroach on the outer layer of green. She’d definitely spent too much time appreciating those eyes while they’d been talking.

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