“Ha! I wish. That’s just there to taunt me.” He turns a couple of pages, looking longingly at a chocolate cake with a river of silky red running through the middle. “You haven't seen a cookbook before?”
“They might have one in the kitchen, but our food never looked like this.” I watch as he flicks through another couple of pages and look up at him in admiration. “You can make all these things?”
A touch of pink appears on his high cheekbones. “Well, I'm no Julia Childs, but I can do a mean grilled cheese.”
I sit back, trying to put a picture to the name. “I don’t think I’ve had that before.”
“Good. Then your expectations are suitably low.” He smirks as he opens the refrigerator and starts stacking ingredientson the bench. As he arranges them on an oven tray, another steaming cup appears in front of me, but this time it smells sweet. When I take a sip, I give an appreciative moan, and his smirk turns to a satisfied grin. “You can’t go wrong with chocolate and marshmallows.”
I’m too busy chasing a glob of gooey sugar with my tongue to answer, but when I glance up, Rowan is staring at me, his blush now spreading all the way to the tips of my ears. “So, food porn is really a thing,” he mutters.
I’ve decided that porn is a topic best left untouched, watching quietly as Rowan feeds the tray under the grill. While he’s wiping down the counter, he casts little glances my way, and I can almost smell his curiosity in the air. “So, when you said Lusciousstoleyour slick, you mean she was a customer? Of a slick factory?”
I jerk at the question, remembering the angry way the nurse confronted Royce at the clinic. “Is that what it is? A slick factory?”
“I don’t know.” Rowan ducks to collect the food from the grill, but not before I see the flash of worry in his eyes. “I’ve heard of The Serenity Center, but they call it an omega rehabilitation center. For traumatized omegas…” His voice drifts off as he plates the food and pushes it gently my way. “But there are always rumors. And I guess you’re the proof that you can’t trust the brochure.”
I ponder that as I start to eat, the cheese as gooey and delicious as the marshmallows in the hot chocolate. I burn my mouth a couple of times, but it’s worth it, and I don’t look up until my plate is clean. Rowan hasn’t touched his food, and he now swaps our plates, a soft smile on his face as my stomach growls in appreciation. I’ve polished off my third piece when he suddenly asks, “Could anyone be looking for you? I mean, family or friends?”
I freeze, the events of the last couple of days crashing down on me. Here I am, eating the best grilled cheese sandwich ever made, while Kane is lying in a hospital bed and gangsters threatened to snap Dex’s neck.
“I’m a bad mate.” I don’t realize I’m crying until the bread in my fingers turns soggy, and I look down to see tears plinking onto my plate. “And now I’ve ruined your beautiful sandwich.”
“Forget the sandwich. I can make you another. But what did you mean about your mate?”
“Mates.” I have to swallow a sob to correct him, but it’s important that I acknowledge Dex out loud. He might not feel exactly the same way I do, but until he tells me that, I’m going to claim him in my heart. “Dex was my caretender at The Serenity Center, but then I met Kane, my alpha, and he broke us out. We’re mates, even though he hasn’t bitten me yet.”
“Uh, okay…” Rowan blinks rapidly, his scent sharpening. “That sounds…”
“Perfect?” I stare down at my damp plate, feeling forlorn. This is more than just bittersweet, because I didn’t just leave something behind, I put the people I love in danger. “It was, except then we got shot, and an awful alpha threatened to snap Dex’s neck if I didn’t come here with him.”
Rowan watches me for a long minute, then slowly pushes his coffee aside and gets to his feet. He fills two glasses with iced water from the fridge, setting one into my hands. It has a sliver of lemon floating in it, and I gulp it down, loving the chilly bite at the back of my throat. But before I can thank him, he takes my arm and leads me over to his sofa. He settles me in the middle, then hands me a blue blanket that’s so soft, I can’t resist rubbing the corner against my damp cheek. “Is this… velvet?”
“It’s cashmere, but the sofa is velvet.” Instead of settling beside me, he pulls up a chair and sits in front of me. “Do they have furnishings like these at the center?”
I shake my head, stealing another brush of the fabric against my cheek. “I’ve never heard of cashmere.”
“Well, omegas like us are partial to soft things.”
I nod and smooth the blanket carefully over my knees. “A counselor explained that to me. They said we couldn’t indulge in soft things because we needed to channel all our emotions into our deposits.” Just saying it aloud makes me squirm and I try to count how many hours it’s been since I was in the slick suit. I don’t have any desire to get back into one, but the need to empty my body of slick is like an itch under my skin. I don’t know if I’ve conjured it to the surface by my thoughts, but as I breathe in Rowan’s scent, the blanket soft against my cheek, I feel a telltale trickle from my core.
It's enough to make me rocket off the sofa, my thighs clenched tight as I blurt, “Please, Rowan! I need a slick suit!Now!”
CHAPTER TEN
Rowan gapes at me. “You needwhat?”
“A slick suit!” I squeeze my thighs as tightly as I can, but his scent has sharpened even more, and every ragged breath pulls in another delectable mouthful of cookie sweetness. I shouldn’t be hungry, not after eating all that grilled cheese, but this is a different kind of craving. My gaze darts over him – his eyes, his hands, the breadth of his shoulders, and the hollow of his throat – and I have to wet my lips with my tongue to force the words out. “It’s how they collect our slick. They take us into the collection room and zip us into a plastic suit. They feed us pheromones, and the suit tightens, the stimulators in the lining drawing out our slick…” I break off, alarmed at the look on his face. “What?”
“That’s… fuckingbarbaric.”
I don’t know that word, but I understand his scent like it’s my own. Shock. Disgust. Fury. It stings my tongue like another hit of that awful coffee. “It’s the only way to capture it all.” I shudder, remembering the way Kane said every drop of my sweetness belongs tohim. It seemed like a dream come true at the time, butnow… “Luscious says she owns me. She said she pays a premium to have exclusive rights to all my slick.”
Rowan makes a broken sound in the back of his throat and pulls me down onto his lap, his arms rough as they encircle me. “That bitch needs to shut her goddamn mouth.”
I squirm, caught between soaking up his comfort and trying not to soak his jeans. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“Of course you don’t. They lied to you to control you.” His hands feather over my lower back, like he’s trying to soothe the hurt away. “But you’re not with them now, and the only thing you have to listen to is your body.”
