“HEY, BOSS.”
I frowned as I looked up to find Bomber hanging in the doorway of my office at the club, his
eyes bright and excited.
“Don’t call me that.”
Bomber’s grin twitched. “Hey, handsome? Hey…captain?” I resisted the urge to growl, and his smile relaxed. “Hey, Prez.”
My frown deepened and Bomber sighed and slid into the room, nudging the door shut behind him. I raised my arm up to the back of the couch, hoping he’d take the invitation to slide in next to me.
He did, and some of the building tension of the day melted away. I pressed my face into his hair. He still smelled like me from the night before and it smoothed down the barbs spearing anxiety through my chest.
“You gotta get used to us calling you that, Scorch,” Bomber said. His head tilted back to look at me and I took the opportunity to dive down, snatching a kiss off his lips with a nip of my teeth.
“That’s a process,” I said, leaning back. “I can still be Scorch if it’s not club business, right?
Speaking of, what did you need?”
I was hoping it wasn’t club business. I’d only been Prez for three months and already I was missing the role of VP, being the one to advise but not decide. I missed Nine too, as a Prez for the club and friend to me. A better alpha. I was learning to live with that pain, just like the rest of the pack. I also preferred when things between Bomber and me were personal. Always more fun. I slid my hand between his thighs and he grinned at me with that all-knowing look of his.
“It’s club business…sort of,” Bomber said, and I stiffened. “Pack business.”
That wasn’t quite the same.
“The Omega Center called. They want us to renew.”
I frowned and leaned back from him. “It’s been three years.”
Three years since we’d stopped paying our dues, after eight years of waiting for an omega to choose us. There’d been close calls, few and far between, but no omega wanted a strip mall and a pack of bikers.
“I know.” His lips were twitching and that glow was flickering in eyes.
Suddenly, I understood. “You think it’s about her?” The omega who Bomber had helped, and then came home practically dripping with her scent. I’d been so wound up, waiting for him to bring back the news from Devil’s Noose regarding our truce. And the scent had been so… I’d never smelled anything like it.
I still wasn’t sure whether or not I owed Bomber an apology for how crazy I’d gotten when he
was in reach, smelling like that. It wasn’t just the scent, not entirely, even though it’d been a long fucking time since I’d smelled a ripe omega, let alone one who was all honeysuckle and beeswax and cake batter. It was that it was Bomber and that scent. Like I thought he’d magically turned himself into the omega of my dreams.
“It’s gotta be,” Bomber said, grin blooming. “I mean it’s been, what, not even a week since I dropped her off? And she was losing her damn mind every time she got a whiff of you. If they kept our file…”
“What’d they say?” I asked, rising up off the couch. It was impossible, but just the mention of her and I thought I smelled her sweetness in the room with us. I wanted to pin Bomber down to the cushions, suck him dry, and then fill him up all over again. Just like I had that night.
“They have an interested omega. She wants an interview. We don’t have to turn in back pay, just renew. Let them know if we have any new members.”
We’d lost a member. But we hadn’t gained any.
“She’s not gonna choose us,” I said, glancing down at Bomber. He scowled at me, and I raised my hands in response. “Hey. They never do. Those binders are full of mansions and doctors and private planes. Omegas want pretty nests, they don’t want bars and dispensaries and motorcycles.”
“She can have a pretty nest,” Bomber said, voice rising. “Come on. The guys would say yes.”
“And then feel like shit all over again when we don’t get picked,” I yelled back.
“Scorch. Man. I’m telling you, if you’d been in that bar, she’d’ve presented herself like a goddamn dessert tray.”
I swallowed. Bomber had described her, Baby, at length. Tall, moon pale, red hair, freckles on every inch he could see. Curves measured out in explicit detail. If she was the dessert tray, I would’ve been the rabid dog laying waste if my reaction to Bomber was any sign.
“The pack can afford the subscription,” Bomber said.
Nasty words rose to my tongue. That Bomber wasn’t even an alpha, what the hell did he care.
Except he didn’t care about being an alpha or a beta. It was what I loved… Shit.
“What if she doesn’t want you around?” I asked, my stare dropping to my boots.
Bomber sucked in a breath. He needed to be prepared. I needed to be prepared. Omegas didn’t like their alpha’s scent drifting around on just anyone. If she chose the pack, which was unlikely, my relationship with Bomber could be an issue for her. An unhappy omega made for an unhappy pack.
Fuck, I was kind of scared about how readily I might give Bomber up if an omega asked me to. I couldn’t imagine it now, but I knew how these situations sometimes went. An unbonded alpha was wild, free, a bit feral. But one good knot in an omega and priorities shifted.
I’d also seen how beautiful a home was with an omega at the center. And I wanted that. Bad.
Bomber sighed and crossed the space I had put between us, lifting his hands and settling them on my chest. “I will always be in your life. I am a part of this club and this pack. But if some day down the line, I’m not in your bed, you and I will be okay. If she’s the right omega for this pack, it’s only gonna make everything better.”
That wasn’t what I really wanted to hear. “We’ll take a vote.”
Bomber snorted and shook his head. “A vote. Sure. Wonder how that will go.”
It was unanimous, of course. The pack renewed.
