Page 68 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

I end the call and toss the phone onto the bed.

Be careful. As if I’m ever anything else.

Griffin’s question follows me into the quiet. They’re treating you well?

That was never where the danger was. I know exactly where the danger is. It’s a server rack and a narrow gap and the half-second last night that I forgot I was supposed to want out. It’s a kiss I started weeks ago, in Finn’s suite, and have been running from ever since.

So I do what I do with anything that could get me killed. I take the memories and I bury them somewhere deep and dark and locked, and I promise myself I won’t go looking for them again.

I sink into the chair at my desk, pulling my laptop closer. The report from Declan sits in my inbox. I should open it now and start combing through the data.

Instead, I stare at the wall, and the promise lasts all of a minute.

The first thing that claws its way back up isn’t even the dangerous one. It’s Finn, earlier today. That color... it almost looks like you’re not wearing anything at all.

Which is almost a relief. Anger, I can use. Because Finn Preston is an arrogant, insufferable twat, and it is so much easier to be furious with him than to sit with the alternative.

The way he looked at me in his office. That slow, deliberate sweep of his gaze, like he had every right to assess my body, to comment on my clothing, to make me feel⁠—

What? What did he make you feel?

Nothing. He made me feel nothing. Just annoyance. Irritation at being micromanaged by a man who clearly has control issues and too much time on his hands.

That’s all it was.

I can’t wait for this assignment to be done. To get back to my real job instead of having three alphas breathing down my neck, demanding I solve the mystery of who’s trying to destroy their precious little company and their dildos.

Three insanely hot alphas, a treacherous voice whispers in the back of my mind. One of whom kissed you in a way you’ve never been kissed before.

I shove the thought aside viciously.

It’s because they’re attractive. That’s all. Any woman with functioning eyes would react the same way. It’s biology, pure and simple. Pheromones and physical symmetry and the primal part of the brain that responds to power and beauty.

It doesn’t mean anything.

I’m here to do a job, and when it’s done, I’ll never see any of them again.

I arrive at the office early the next morning.

As per Finn’s request, and I use that word loosely, I’m wearing black pants and a simple white dress shirt, collar buttoned, sleeves down, not a hint of skin visible below my collarbone.

You couldn’t get more professional than this, I think grimly as I catch my reflection in the elevator doors. Not unless I showed up in a hazmat suit.

This afternoon I have to go to their house and walk them through Declan’s report.

It’s a debrief. I’ve done a thousand of them. There’s no reason it should be sitting in my stomach the way it is.

The marketing wing is quiet when I step through the glass doors, only a handful of early risers at their desks. Finn’s office is dark.

Good. The less I see of him, the better.

The morning ticks on. People trickle in, filling the space with the low hum of conversation and clicking keyboards.

Finn walks in at exactly nine, as predictable as clockwork.