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The guy from the blog seemed to agree with that. He just took it in a different direction than I was expecting. If he was strong enough to make his own choices and decide his future, why couldn’t he decide how he wanted his sex life to be as well?

It was a good question, but it felt wrong even asking it. I had a feeling it was something I’d have to get over if I was going to understand what Tanner was going through—and even if nothing happened between us, I wanted to be able to help him.

Thinking about helping him find someone else almost had my dinner making a reappearance, but helping with the club was something I could do. It would free a lot off his plate. It would also make sure that any help I gave him was accurate. I couldn’t very well give recommendations for contractors if I had bad information.

Maybe that would be the best way to approach it.

If we could talk about the club in a professional manner, then he’d be able to see I was fine with his preferences.

Wait.

Was I fine with his preferences?

I looked back down at the screen and started wandering through some of the blog posts again. One sentence caught my eye.

Why should I be alone forever just because society tells me what I want is wrong?

Spelling it out like that made the answer clearer. I might not be comfortable with everything I’d seen so far, but I couldn’t imagine any of it changing the way I saw Tanner.

Well, some of it changed how I saw him…but I wasn’t sure he’d be upset with those.

I should’ve tried harder to push the images out of my head, but I couldn’t shake the fantasy of Tanner bending over the large, impressive desk in his office. His eyes would flash with need and he’d be shaking with desire, especially if he was around his heat.

Had he been serious about that?

Every omega I’d ever met after puberty had been religious about taking their heat suppressants. I’d never really thought much about it. I’d always put it in the same category as I did my own birth control, just something I did automatically. But from the little doodles he’d made on his list, Tanner hadn’t been as oblivious.

Had he ever fantasized about being in heat in his office, desperate and frantic to be knotted? Something about his submission in a place where he was so powerful was…erotic. Would that appeal to him or was the office off limits for those kinds of fantasies? Had he really thought through everything that might happen?

Sex ed in school had made it very clear that once a married alpha and omega couple decided to have a child and the omega went into a heat cycle, the alpha was supposed to knot and impregnate the omega right away. No dawdling, no dragging out the heat…that way the omega didn’t suffer.

Suffer.

That was how it had always been described to me. Of course, teenage guys talk. One smart-ass I couldn’t remember the name of had been adamant that when his neighbors had been trying for a baby, they’d stayed holed up in their house for days. And in a hushed whisper he’d said that when they’d finally come out, neither one of them had looked like the omega had been suffering at all.

We’d all just shoved that off as complete BS, but he’d been so sure.

I was starting to think I owed him an apology.

Unfortunately, there were just some things you didn’t second-guess, some things you didn’t challenge because they were so ingrained…and not dominating an omega was one of those things.

But what if he wanted it?

Consent and desire changed everything, didn’t it?

I had a feeling Simon would simply roll his eyes and snort like it was a stupid question. How had he put it? Accept his crazy or don’t?

I wouldn’t describe the things I’d seen on the list as crazy, but they were definitely outside any box I’d ever seen.

Accept his crazy or don’t.

It was Tanner.

I pictured his focused, piercing eyes softening and staring at me from across the room. My mind went back to earlier in the week when he’d been pacing around his office on the phone, cool command in his voice as he walked through problems at one of the ports. Needy or dominant and in charge, it was still Tanner.

Accept his crazy or don’t.

There was really no question.