Page 2 of Use Me Up

He’s just gazing at me like he wants to tunnel into my skin or something, a really intense gaze, and he’s so fucking beautiful, I don’t know what to do with myself.

I’ve never been alone with him like this. It’s never been just me and him in a room together.

“Obviously,” I say, letting out a laugh that’s too loud, “you know.” I laugh more. I feel my face heating up. God, stop speaking, I tell myself. God, what is wrong with you?

But then, he doesn’t say anything. He just rubs that towel all over himself, down the front of his wet shirt, which is clinging to every dip and swell of him, his perfectly formed pectoral muscles and his flat, flat stomach. He’s shaped like a V, but in that elongated way so that he looks like a dancer or a poem or everything in the world I’ve ever wanted.

Oh, fuck me, I find him attractive, but I would never deign to say that I have a crush on him, because a crush would indicate that I ever thought, in a million years, I would have a chance with him, and I would not.

For one thing, he’s an omega.

Omegas do not end up with mousy betas like me.

For another thing, he is ruinously in love with my brother’s wife. My brother’s omega. My brother is an alpha, and he claimed Calliope two years ago. They had a big, big wedding, but she was already bitten, and she wore a sleeveless, strapless wedding dress that showed off her bite mark, right over her heart, right in the place where her perfectly shaped breasts start to swell.

Ellis holds my gaze as he moves the towel up to run it over his dark curls, moving them this way and that way, making them tousled and messy, but they settle in an artful way. Mess looks good on him. Everything looks good on him.

He leaves the towel around his shoulders and he takes a deep breath. Then he breaks our gaze and talks to the floor, as if he’s somehow embarrassed or ashamed or something. It’s that vulnerable element to him, the way he’s so self-possessed and a little unsure at the same time. It’s intoxicating. “Uh, Calliope said things about you, and I sort of thought they were true, but now I’m here, and…”

I wait, but he never finishes the sentence.

We’re just standing here in the hallway. My bedroom door is open. It’s a one-bedroom apartment. The bathroom is off of my bedroom, so there’s nothing in this hallway except the closet and my bedroom. There’s no reason to stay here.

“Um, maybe you want to sit down?” I say. “We could go sit in the living room, on the couch. Or you might be hungry or thirsty or something, and I could get you—”

“I want to be clear about what this is before it goes any further,” he says. “This isn’t… you know about me and Callie.”

What what is? I just stare up at him, and my heart starts beating really fast.

He shifts on his feet, and then he meets my gaze again. There’s something cocky in the way he holds himself now, something very self-assured. “Have you ever had a boyfriend, Hannah?”

“I mean, yeah,” I say, because I have. Michael and I dated for two years. It turned out that he was gay, and that he was just dating me because he was having trouble facing that element of himself. He took me to prom, and we stayed together for the summer after high school and part of our freshman year of college. We kissed sometimes, but we never did much of anything else besides that. At the time, I thought he was being romantic and waiting for the right moment. Later, I realized it was because he wasn’t interested in me at all.

“But have you ever…” He tilts his head to the other side, sizing me up. “Are you a virgin?”

I let out another far too loud laugh, and my face is heating up again. “Um, so, you might want, like, a hot drink or something, because you’re all wet and cold, and I could make tea.” I maneuver around him in the hallway, which is not exactly easy, because he is taking up a lot of space, since he is enormous. I brush into him, and he’s soaking wet, and the coldness of the rain sears into my pajamas, and I shiver.

He catches me by the arm and stops me. “Hey.”

I look up at him, my pulse thrumming under my skin.

He lets go of my arm. “I see the way you are around me,” he says. “Callie says it, too. It would piss Andrew off. I know it’s not cool, and I’m not saying you deserve it, or whatever, but I thought you might be interested.”

Interested?

“It would be, uh, an arrangement,” he says, shrugging eloquently, his muscles rippling under his wet t-shirt. “You don’t have anything else going for you. What do you say?”

I’m stunned. I try to make noise, and nothing comes out. My face is burning up, and I think I’m shaking, but I can’t really make sense of my body right now because I’m looking up into his eyes, pinned there by his dark gaze.

He swallows, and his Adam’s apple bobs in his long, elegant throat, and I feel a strange loose and warm feeling spilling all the way through my body.

“Okay,” I say, my voice a squeak.

He smirks.

I can’t catch my breath.

He reaches out and touches me. He feathers his long, long fingers over my jaw. “I want there to be pictures. On all your socials, okay? Can you handle that?”