Dancer in the waves, p.45
Dancer In The Waves, page 45
“A strong-enough emotion could make him go deeper into Alice’s mind, and then we trap him there while a team searches for him. He shouldn’t be too far away to get a proper hold on her.”
“What kind of emotion?” Alice asked.
“Only two types would trap an alpha, when it comes to an omega. Pain or pleasure.”
“Forget it. No one can hurt an omega, at least on our side,” Gabriel said while shaking his head.
“I agree, hurting an omega would be complicated for us. And it’s not something I would like to do either.” Matts let that sentence hang in the air. He was waiting for them to realize something. Gabriel got his meaning first.
“Sex? You want to use sex to trap him in Alice’s mind?” Gabriel scoffed.
“I know how it sounds, but it would give us a good chance to catch the man who killed Bruno,” Matts threw back.
Both men looked at each other, Matts trying to stay calm, and Gabriel ready to punch him.
“What do you mean, sex?” Alice interrupted their silent fight. “We’ve had sex plenty of times since this started, and I didn’t notice him before in my mind.”
“Yes, because it wasn’t enough to keep his attention. But something stronger or different could be enough to draw out the alpha in him and make him linger in your mind,” Matts explained. “And then I can trap him in your head while Elijah searches for him. His body would remain unconscious, and his people wouldn’t be able to move him, or they would risk his sanity.”
“Considering their pattern, they might just leave him behind,” Gabriel offered, a thoughtful look in his face.
“All the better for us. He’s the head of the pack—take him down, and they should scatter,” said Matts.
“Might just work,” Gabriel pondered.
“Are you insane?” Alice asked him. “Do you understand what Matts is not saying?”
“I do, Alice,” Gabriel admitted, giving her a sheepish look.
“And you’re okay with that?” She asked him, feeling incredulous. “Matts, are you planning on just being in the room?”
She could feel it from him. Lust was always the hardest emotion for an alpha to hide.
“It’s not like that, Alice,” Matts begged. “You can’t expect that level of self-control from any alpha, including me.”
She looked between both men, completely lost for words.
“Can you promise me we will get him?” Gabriel asked Matts. “If we do this, will we get the man who killed Bruno?”
“You know I can’t make a promise like that, Gabriel. But there is a very good chance.”
Alice threw her hands in the air, astonished that they were actually considering this, and started pacing the room. All of a sudden, it felt too small a space to be in with two alphas.
“Alice,” Gabriel said gently. “They are trying to capture you again.”
“Yeah, I got that,” she snapped at him.
“It means they found a way around the tracker,” Gabriel explained.
Alice stopped moving. “What? So soon? But Matts just finished putting trackers on the others.”
“Yes. But they wouldn’t risk capturing you again if they weren’t sure they could deal with the tracker.”
“I will have to let the other alphas know.” Matts sighed. “It’s too dangerous for the omegas again.”
Alice slumped into a chair and hid her face in her hands. What they were saying made sense, even if she hated it. If they were crazy about security now, Elijah would go berserk when he found out the tracker was not safe anymore.
Gabriel crouched in front of her and tried to push her hands away. “If we capture him, it would be safe for you again.”
“How?” Alice asked, face still hidden. “How would we do this?”
“I can plan it with Gabriel, but we can’t give you details,” Matts replied. “We don’t know how much information he is getting from you, and we need to keep him as unaware of our plan as possible.”
This was insanity.
“Would sex with me be that horrible?” Matts joked, but Alice could feel his pride hurting underneath the humor.
“It’s not like that, Matts. I never cheated on anyone before, and this feels like cheating.”
“It’s not cheating if I’m there with you,” Gabriel offered.
Alice couldn’t help rolling her eyes. She looked between both men. Matts was eager to try this, and not just for the chance to capture the stray leader. And Gabriel—Gabriel’s jealousy was contained, but still there.
“How long do I have to make this decision?” Alice asked them.
“Until the time to act comes around, you are always free to say no,” Matts replied cryptically.
“I see.” Alice got up and made her way to the door. “I’ll think about it.”
And she left both men to their own devices.
Alice thought it odd that Gabriel wanted to return to the beach house that same day. She could have bet that he would never let her return there at all.
As soon as they entered the house, she was pounced on by Boss, who was a nervous wreck. She sat down on the floor and hugged him, and Boss let out the deepest, longest howl she had ever heard.
“It’s all right, baby,” she reassured the dog, covering him in kisses. “I’m all right.”
When Boss finally accepted that she was okay, Alice went straight to the shower to scrub that horrible Tube smell from her skin. When she came out, she was ready to eat half the fridge and sleep all afternoon. She put on her comfiest yoga pants and one of Gabriel’s T-shirts, knotting it so it didn’t fall past her waist, and, with her stomach growling, she went in search of food.
But when she reached the kitchen, she stopped in her tracks. Matts was there, cutting up vegetables and putting them in a pot.
“Hey there, darling. Had a nice shower?” he asked her casually.
“What are you doing here?” Alice asked him from the doorway.
“Cooking.” He pointed at the food, then reached into the fridge and took out a box with various cheeses, distributed them artistically on a plate along with some bread, and put it on the kitchen island. “Here, for you to nibble on while I make lunch.”
Alice sat on a stool and pulled the plate toward her, hunger winning over her distrust of Matts’s intentions.
“I meant what are you doing here, in the house?” Alice asked again between bites.
Gabriel entered the kitchen. “Matts is going to stay with us here for a few days.”
Then he stole a piece of cheese from her plate and turned to Matts. “I put your bag in her old room.”
“You’re staying in my room? Why not the guest house?” Was this their plan? Were they planning on pouncing on her when she least expected it?
“Because I can’t help you if there is another attack on your mind and I’m in the guest house, can I?” Matts asked, like she was being unreasonable.
Alice quietly huffed in her seat and watched Matts cook while Gabriel set the table outside. She felt caught between two predators who were ready to grab and eat her. She wasn’t surprised by the lust coming from Matts—he wasn’t even trying to hide it anymore—but she was surprised by how much Gabriel was turned on. She blushed at the emotions coming from both men.
“Do you think he will try something again so soon?” she asked Matts.
He gave her one of his intense stares, the kind that made her feel like he could read her mind. A bit of anger flared in his emotions, but he quickly snuffed it.
“He was frustrated this morning, and tired. From what Gabriel tells me, the ‘distracted’ state you were in came and went, right?”
“Yes,” Alice replied, guilty and embarrassed. She should have talked to Gabriel instead of dismissing what was happening. “It felt just like him. Like Bruno.”
“Hey!” Matts touched her chin so she’d meet his eyes. “This is not your fault. He knew how to play with your emotions, and he manipulated you into doing what he wanted. Don’t feel guilty because of that asshole.”
“I believe the technical term is cunt,” Alice teased him.
Matts laughed. “Yes, there seems to be quite a few of those in your life.”
Gabriel joined them and stole more cheese from her plate, earning a protest from her.
“So what’s the plan now?” she asked, hoping their good mood would encourage them to share what they had in mind.
“Don’t worry about it.” Gabriel kissed the top of her head. “You have plenty of time to decide if you like Matts’s idea.”
“I already decided I don’t like it, remember? We can try pain instead,” she suggested.
Both men froze.
“There is absolutely no way anyone could hurt you, and no way an alpha would let it happen,” Matts chided her. “Get that idea out of your head.”
“I could hurt myself,” Alice argued.
The animosity in both pairs of eyes stunned her. She lowered her own eyes to her plate. As soon as they started moving again, she picked up her plate and took it to the table outside.
Peeking inside, she saw Matts and Gabriel leaning together, discussing something. Were they really intent on going forward with this madness? She closed her eyes and reached for the bond with Gabriel. He wasn’t jealous or angry, which confused her even more. She sighed, exasperated with the situation.
The next few days were unexpectedly fun. Their friends would come over and spend the hot afternoons in the pool, Matts’s cooking actually winning some goodwill points from Naomi.
When Gabriel went to work, Matts would go with her on runs and on walks with Boss, and when Gabriel was there, the three of them would go out for lunch, go sightseeing, and have interesting conversations long into the night.
Alice watched as Gabriel and Matts developed a friendly camaraderie that surprised them. She had felt it before, their reluctant feelings of friendship for each other. If it wasn’t for their rivalry, they might have become good friends before this. And now that her heart wasn’t an issue, and they were working toward a common goal, they both had come to terms with the fact that they actually liked each other. Well, at least one good thing had come out of this whole mess.
But at night, there was always a sense of unease coming from both. All this time, Matts kept careful watch over her, sometimes touching her unexpectedly. The intensity of his gaze unnerved her. And neither of them concealed their lust for her. For Gabriel, that was normal, ever since they bonded—he liked that she knew just how much she turned him on. But now he was cuddling up and going straight to sleep every night. And Matts, who had always been careful to disguise his desire, was giving free rein to his feelings. The peaks of arousal that came from him made her very self-conscious of everything she did. On a particularly hot afternoon, she could feel Matts’s eyes on her as she came out of the pool. He was sitting in a lounge chair, reading one of her books. He had his sunglasses on, but the lust in the air told her he was not focused on the book at all. Her own arousal rose in reply and she had to take a very cold shower after that.
Both men were affecting her, making her libido rise through the roof, and Gabriel’s refusal to have sex was frustrating her.
Alice was cooking and cursing her new celibacy when she felt another tug on Bruno’s bond. They had been increasing again, his voice sometimes calling her in the wind. Even now, when she knew who it really was, it still affected her.
“Alice? Come to me,” Bruno’s voice whispered in her ear while she stirred a seafood stew on the stove.
Matts and Gabriel were outside, their voices echoing all the way to the kitchen.
“Alice, I need you to join me,” Bruno called again. She looked around the kitchen. His voice felt so close.
Alice took a deep breath to steady herself before taking the pot to the table outside. Matts’s intense gaze followed her every step. He whispered something in Gabriel’s ear.
“Eat up while it’s hot,” Alice said as she put the pot on the table. She was trying to keep her voice steady, but the pull on Bruno’s bond was hurting. She scratched the skin above her heart again.
“Where’s the wine?” she asked.
“No wine tonight. I think we drank the whole lot this week.”
“This smells wonderful.” Matts lifted the pot lid and quickly helped himself.
The sun had set already, but the evening was pleasantly warm. The radio was on and playing some relaxing tunes. A citronella candle was burning on the table to shoo away the bugs. It gave the evening a very romantic touch.
“It’s going to be a hot day tomorrow,” Gabriel mused.
“How do you know?” Matts asked him.
“The crickets.” Gabriel pointed with his fork at the lawn. “When they sing so loudly at night, it means the next day is gonna be hot.”
Matts smiled and turned to the grass, listening. “Loud little critters, aren’t they?”
“Alice? I’m waiting,” Bruno whispered in her ear.
“You all right, Alice?” Gabriel asked her.
“Yeah,” she lied.
Matts turned to look at her. He reached out and grabbed her hand before returning to the food.
“Do we have any dessert?” Matts asked after finishing dinner. He walked to the kitchen.
“There’s ice cream in the freezer.” Alice called after him.
I need to go shopping tomorrow. Alice mused as she watched two boxes of ice cream disappear into the stomachs of the two alphas. Good thing she served herself first, or she might have been left dessertless.
Both men chatted happily, but something had changed. There was a feeling of anticipation coming from both now, and a nervous itching coming from Gabriel’s bond. Alice scratched her heart absentmindedly. Matts was telling funny stories about his team, but she wasn’t really listening. The emotions surrounding her were a bit overwhelming, and her attention kept slipping somewhere else.
“So Georgie decided to prove herself by hacking into Henryk’s phone. She posted photos of her cat all over his social media, and replaced the photo with one of his when he was drunk. He was so confused by all the comments.” Matts chuckled. “His friends really liked the cat.”
Gabriel laughed and Alice chuckled, only half listening to the story. Then she noticed something odd.
“Not smoking tonight?” she asked Matts. He usually smoked after a meal.
“Not tonight, no,” he replied, not looking at her.
“No wine and no smoking. Has Daniel been on one of his rants again?” Alice joked.
“Sometimes I’m surprised the powers at work didn’t just decide to do away with nicotine all together.” Matts chuckled.
“Do you know them?” Alice asked. “The Potentia ad Opus?”
“Some of them. But not all. I met a few when I was converted.”
“Did you become a bookkeeper after conversion?”
“You don’t become a bookkeeper after conversion. It’s something you already have potential to be, like being an alpha or omega.”
“So how did you become one?”
He smiled and looked between her and Gabriel. Alice could tell he trusted both of them, and he seemed to make up his mind about something.
“Remember when you asked me about my age, Alice?”
“Yes. I thought it was odd you looked older than most men who went through the Tube. And you gave me a bullshit excuse.”
“You knew it was bullshit?” Matts laughed. “Well, thanks for not calling me out on it.” He played with his empty glass. “I met Jerome around ten years ago. I was just coming out of the military, and he wanted to recruit me for a top-secret project. It took two years of interviews and physical and psychological exams for me to be accepted into this project. When I was finally accepted, I was introduced to one of the scientists who’d created the Tube. I was to be among the first, outside their own group, to test the machine.”
“Eight years ago?” Gabriel gasped. “They already had the Tube then?”
“It was not the same, you know. It was imperfect, and results varied. It’s why I look older than most converted men,” Matts explained. “I stayed fifty-four hours in the Tube, one of the longest male conversions to this date.”
“Alphas are supposed to take only up to forty-eight hours,” said Alice. “Was it because you’re a bookkeeper?”
“Yes. Alterations to the brain take the longest. Only omegas take longer than bookkeepers to convert.”
Alice sat back in her chair, processing all this.
“But how did you know you were a bookkeeper?” Gabriel asked.
“The Opus knew it was a possibility. They were fishing for one and got lucky with me,” Matts replied, smiling smugly. “All the others that came after me were easier to identify. If it’s a male and conversion takes longer than forty-eight hours, it’s a bookkeeper. If it’s a female, then it’s probably a bookkeeper.”
“So there are women bookkeepers,” Alice exclaimed.
Matts laughed. “Yes, but they are rarer than men. All bookkeepers are alphas, remember?”
“I wonder why they made it so that only women are omegas, and most alphas are men,” Alice mused out loud.
“They didn’t. The dynamic you’re turned into depends on a shit ton of factors. All attempts to predict what a human will turn into have failed so far. When mass conversion started, they expected a good distribution between the three dynamics, in all genders. It was rather shocking to the powers at work when only a few omegas emerged. Each new omega was a celebration for them.”
Alice made a noncommittal noise. She wasn’t sure how she felt about this.
“Eight years—that’s almost five years before mass conversion started. How did you manage to keep your powers to yourself during that time?” Gabriel asked.
Matts was clearly offended by the question, so Alice kicked Gabriel under the table.
“Sorry. No offense, Matts.”
Matts gave Gabriel a thoughtful look. “The compulsion to obey has been in the Tube since its inception. I couldn’t disobey and use my powers for my own benefit even if I wanted to.”
Matts fumbled around his pocket for his cigarettes, but gave up when he looked at Alice. “Do you really think so low of me?” he asked Gabriel, still upset at the question.
