June’s face colors again. “Oh. How would you know that?”
“I have eyes. Duh. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed his package. I know you have.”
“I thought you…” She waves a hand vaguely in the air. “Did you ever…?”
“Hook up with him? No. But I wouldn’t mind going down on my knees for Zach, to be honest with you. That cock looks like a good mouthful.”
Her cheeks turn redder. She chokes a little. Maybe she’s imagining it, too. “I bet he wouldn’t object.”
“To me going down on him? Who knows? He has a gaggle of betas and omegas following him around.”
“He likes you, Coco.”
“I don’t know about that. Maybe as a little sister. Not a lover.”
I frown at her dark blush. She fancies him, too. Who wouldn’t? That could be why I hesitate to flirt with him. He’s hot property and I don’t know if I can afford him.
I lead June down the street toward our building, feeling unsatisfied with today’s venture and fascinated with her still red face.
This girl is no blushing maiden, take my word for it. After all, she is my collaborator on these sniff-out-the-hunks missions. But her skin flushes at the drop of a coin and makes her look like an innocent little girl.
As for me, I rarely blush. And I can keep a straight face, because one thing you need to know right off the bat is that I have no filter and the inside of my head is a filthy, filthy place.
The only thing that can make me blush is my own dirty thoughts, and I have plenty of those.
I am a girly girl, okay? Loving sex doesn’t contradict my nature. People think omegas are sweet babies, but we’re all sex-crazed bitches, and that includes the boys.
“Do you really think he likes me?” I ask as she lingers by my door before climbing the rest of the stairs up to her apartment.
“Who?”
“Santa. Who do you think? Zach.”
She giggles, looking much more like her normal self. “Sure. It’s the way he looks at you, didn’t you notice?”
“I bet he looks like that at all the omegas.”
“He never looks like that at me,” she says and leaving me with that little tidbit, she skips up the stairs and vanishes around the next landing.
Well, damn.
Evening is falling and I’m curled up on my divan-like window-seat, a sea of pink-hued pillows and rugs around me. I’m working on a comic I started when I was about fifteen, about a girl born in a world full of dragons, a girl who loses everyone she has ever loved and dies, but then is reborn and vows to take revenge.
Why such a tragic storyline? I don’t know, okay? Maybe it was teenage hormones, moodiness and maudlin-ness. Or simply an allegory of life, the idea that you have to lose everything before you realize what matters and what you need.
Well, all I need is a cat or a small dog and I’m set. Who needs humans when you can have a furry friend by your side? Humans are complicated.
What if that’s what I need? To stop thinking of alphas and just cuddle a cat? Sawyer has a super cute one, Potato, and I’m jealous.
But even Sawyer said it, in a prophetic fit, before he got his pack: animals can’t replace the need for a pack.
Sighing, I draw a black cat next to my comic’s heroine. This is a scene before her world went to shit. Her name is Kat and the cat’s name is… Girl? I giggle to myself. No, the heroine’s name is actually Rae and she returns to life later in the story as something else, something other than human, redefining herself.
A rebirth.
My pen stills against the paper. Is that why I like this story? Could it be this simple? Are we the same, trying to define ourselves against the expectations of the world? Is it?—?
The doorbell rings and I roll onto my back with a groan, flopping against the cushions like a starfish. “June? Is that you?”
