Page 31 of His Gift
I didn’t want to entertain those thoughts, and I didn’t have to for long. My phone rang, and when I pulled it out of my pocket, it flashed with an unknown Norwalk number. Somehow, I knew.
“Hello?” I answered the call nervously.
“Shawn,” Enzo’s small, tight voice sounded terrified on the other end of the line.
Something was very, very wrong.
“Enzo, where are you? What’s going on? You sound like you’re in trouble,” I said.
“I…I am in trouble,” he said, strained and almost whimpering. “I’ve gone into heat, but I’m trapped in my apartment. Creepy Mr. Tindall keeps knocking on my door to see if I’m okay, and my dad and…and this other guy keep callingme. I can’t leave my apartment or else…I just can’t leave my apartment.”
“I’m on my way,” I said, picking up my pace as I raced to my car. “I’m actually in Norwalk, right around the corner. What is your apartment number.”
“Thank God,” Enzo moaned. I could tell he was crying, which fired something dangerous in me. “I’m in apartment two-two-three.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I said, practically jumping into my car. “I’m on my way.”
CHAPTER TEN
Enzo
The knock on the door was loud, but it wasn’t the knock I wanted.
“Hello? I know you’re in there, omega, and I know you’re in heat,” Creepy Mr. Tindall called out loud enough for anyone who was home in the other apartments on my floor to hear, too. I was just glad the ugly alpha who lived at the end of the hall worked the day shift or I was sure he’d be out there, too. “Come on, omega. Open the door and let me in. I’ve got exactly what you want right here.”
I had no doubt that Mr. Tindall grabbed his crotch with those words.
I squeezed tighter into the corner of my bedroom on the other side of the mattress that served as my bed, hugging my knees to my chest and shivering with heat and fear. It didn’t matter how scared I was, slick poured out of me, soaking the seat of my sweatpants and probably the floor under me.
The pounding came again. “Let me in, omega. You can’t hold out forever,” Mr. Tindall called.
I’d been super excited by my heats before. I’d been embarrassed a few times and annoyed a few times when they’d come in the middle of Papa’s treatment, when he really needed me but I had to leave his care in the hands of a nurse. Also while I trusted myself to the care of a nurse, come to think of it, because that the alpha who had been on hand that one time and I couldn’t afford Bangers & Mash.
But I’d never been so fucking scared of my heat as I was this time.
“Please, Shawn, please,” I whimpered, hiding my face against my knees as the knocking continued.
I’d known this heat was coming. I was usually as regular as clockwork with a heat every six months on the dot. This one was only a few days early, nothing out of the ordinary. But I hadn’t made arrangements for one of my alpha friends to take me through. I’d thought of calling up the same nurse from Papa’s hospital who had been there for me six months ago, right after Papa died, and who had been sympathetic, if somewhat indifferent. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make the call to anyone.
There was only one alpha I wanted anywhere near me during this heat, and though I’d fought to deny it, tried to convince myself I was miles beneath him and that I would only screw up his life if I called him, it had to be Shawn.
The knocking continued, and I groaned and slipped to lie on my side on the floor. It was cool, but it wasn’t exactly a relief. I’d opened the window to let in the cold, early-November air, but that wasn’t doing me any good either. I needed an alpha to fuck me, I needed Shawn to fuck me, and I needed it now.
But how humiliating was it to call someone so gorgeous and powerful and rich to service little old me in his threadbareapartment? Shawn had so many other things to do that were worlds more important. I should have been strong enough to tough it out for three days. I should have swallowed my pride and called Rick Deluca and told him to sell me to someone fast.
I couldn’t do it, though. The very idea had me wanting to hurl. What had I been thinking to even entertain the idea that I could sell myself to someone as a sex slave? And how could I have been so naïve as to think the money from that sale would go anywhere other than into my dad’s pocket? I didn’t know how Dad had found out about my crazy plan, but he had, and I had the sick feeling I wouldn’t know a moment’s peace until he had whatever price I earned in his pocket.
The knocking sounded again even more insistently than before. I turned my face into the dirty floorboards and moaned. I’d waited way too long to make the call to Shawn. Technically, I’d already gone through one excruciating heat wave alone. This was the second, and because I’d had an empty wave for the first, it was even worse. If things kept going like this, I would break down and open the door to Mr. Tindall, whether I wanted to or not.
“Enzo?” The knocking continued, but I perked up, because it was Shawn’s voice, not Mr. Tindall’s, coming from the hall. “Enzo, are you in there?”
I uncurled from my ball, wincing at how badly it hurt, and scrambled to my feet. I rushed almost blindly around my bed and through the door into the main room of my apartment. The only furniture I owned was a half-collapsed sofa, a table with two chairs, one of them broken, and a bookshelf filled with all the second-hand books I’d picked up to entertain myself, because I couldn’t afford a TV or cable. That was all there was, but I still managed to slam my toe into one leg of a chair as I flailed my way to the door.
“Enzo?” Shawn’s knock came again.
I unlocked the door and fumbled with the chain of the extra lock before throwing open the door to him, panting and sweaty.
“There he is,” Mr. Tindall growled from several steps down the hall behind Shawn. He had his shirt unbuttoned and his jeans were tented with a large wet spot on the front. He tried to lunge at me, but Shawn, who stood there in an expensive suit and tie, looking like some kind of corporate Adonis, wheeled around and punched him hard in the nose.
