Lola & the Millionaires: Part One Read online

  “Will you be offended if I admit I came here pretty much for this reason?” I asked, glancing at him from under my lashes. What did he want me to be? Shy and innocent? Or a vixen?

  “Me specifically?” he asked, stilling and frowning.

  What? I laughed and frowned at him. “Why would I be here for you specifically? I mean, after you crashed into me, yeah, you specifically.”

  He relaxed and shook his head, smile returning. “Right. Dumb question. Come here.”

  Hmm, maybe the fancy suit wasn’t from the finance district. Maybe my handsome mark for the evening was one of those low-key famous people? Either way, I was less interested in that than the fact that I was pretty sure his lips had extra muscles for how perfectly they clasped and took control of mine. The awkward puzzle of his question passed with one kiss after another until I was panting and clinging to him.

  “You wet for me, gorgeous?” he whispered, and I shivered at the rougher edge of his tone as he grew more aroused.

  “Find out for yourself,” I answered, desperate to be touched.

  He hummed, smiling into the kiss and holding me with one hand at the center of my back as the other delved under my skirt, brushing like feathers against the inside of my thighs. Higher and higher his touch skimmed, refusing to be hurried even as I squirmed closer. The second he touched my sex, we both moaned, his fingers sliding through generous moisture and my hips bucking into the touch as it echoed up into my heart, making it thump twice as fast.

  “More,” I moaned, hands stroking over his chest, tugging the crisp gray shirt loose from his pants, fumbling at his belt and then back up to his collar to undo the top buttons.

  “Christ, you’re soaked. Lemme taste,” he hissed, hand drawing away and up to his lips.

  I watched, breathless, as his tongue flicked out to taste the shining slick I’d left on his fingers. His thick eyelashes fluttered and he groaned, sucking hard on his own digits until I tugged his hand away and replaced his fingers with my tongue, fucking it into his mouth and whining at our shared taste.

  His hand immediately returned to my pussy, stroking and dipping inside as I blindly tore at his buttons. Even the stretch of his fingers was good, and I rocked into the intrusion, encouraging him deeper.

  “Condom.”

  “Counter.”

  “Put it on,” I said, laughing.

  We leaned away from each other, both of us grinning, and my heart clenched. Why was this guy making me feel more than the others? Making me giddy and laugh, and more than just helping me scratch an itch that was less about desire than mastery?

  “This first,” he said, sliding one finger deep inside of me, hissing as I clenched around him. I shivered and tried not to collapse completely as his thumb brushed against my clit, making me stiffen and cry out. “Yes, that’s it.”

  I whined and shuddered as he repeated the careful touch, the sensation both sharp and gentle, the beginning every bit as delirious as the coming finale.

  “Enough,” I gasped.

  “Not nearly, gorgeous. Come on, you like that?”

  It was so simple, but I loved it, my body rolling as it had on the dance floor as he pumped one finger, and then two, all while slowly rolling my clit under his thumb. His other hand stroked up from my hip to my breast, working it gently through the fabric, gripping briefly and testing my cry as he squeezed tighter.

  “Yes!”

  I was so close and I wanted to draw some of the reins back. I leaned forward, pushing aside the collar of his shirt to suck on his throat. And then I saw it, a set of shining crescent scars facing another. I froze just as he crooked his fingers inside of me, drawing out a stuttering and surprising orgasm that left me crumpling forward into him, his arm curling around my back and drawing me to his chest.

  “You want our mark, don’t you, beta bitch? Yeah, you want to pretend you’re good enough to belong to an alpha. Except you’re not, and you know that, don’t you?”

  “Stop! Stop, stop. Let me go.” I gasped and pushed at his chest, his hands immediately retreating and then grasping my shoulders. Ice shot through me like knife wounds as I fought my way free from the beta’s grasp.

  “Hey. Hey, what’s wrong? I’m sorry! What happened?”

  “Nothing,” I said, trying to catch my breath and knowing I wouldn’t find it. Not while he had his hands on me. Not while I was stuck in this shitty little bathroom with him. “Let me go.”

  I twisted and squirmed, my eyes fixed to that mark on his throat as I pulled myself free of his hold. He stilled, and I glanced up into his eyes briefly, and then immediately back onto the scar. The bonding mark. The bonding mark only an alpha could give. His hand reached up to cover the scar as his eyes widened.

  “Oh, this? It’s not— We’re not like that,” he said, although I could hear the lie in his voice, the rickety wobbling notes.

  “I don’t need to know what you’re like. I just need to go,” I said, my own voice hollow as I rounded him carefully, waiting for him to strike, to grab at me again. Fuck.

  See Lola? It doesn’t have to be an alpha. You can always be at risk. Now look at what this routine has gotten you into.

  “Seriously, wait, please. Let me explain,” he said. He held himself back, hands raised and open, non-threatening. He didn’t need to do anything to be threatening. He had that mark, which meant that somewhere out there—maybe not in the club, but probably not far—was an alpha with a claim on this beta.

  I rushed for the door, let out a brief, terrified whimper as he lunged to follow me. The sound stopped him, my back braced against the door and my entire body trembling, waiting for him to strike.

  “I would never hurt you,” he said, eyes huge. His lips were still bitten pink with my kisses, and his fingers were still shining with my release.

  Stupid. Stupid, stupid, fucking stupid.

  I slid to the side and opened the door, ignoring the twist of my heart and the flinch in his gaze, before rushing out into the hall. I ran down the hall, refusing to look over my shoulder, the lines of the walls seeming endless as my heart rate started to speed.

  Breathe. Breathe you fucking idiot. Breathe. Just breathe.

  I shoved my way through the crowd, pulling my coat check ticket from the small pocket at the front of my dress, and spared a glance behind me. No sign of him. There was a brief, contrary pang of disappointment, but it evaporated quickly, my heel clicking against the floor as I waited for them to bring me my purse. People were passing me, brushing up against me, and every point of contact was excruciating. My own skin fit wrong as I tried to hold onto the remaining threads of calm, to keep breathing, to pretend that the ceiling wasn’t crashing down on me.

  Fucking stupid.

  I avoided the coat check girl’s fingers as I took my purse, rushing for the exit as I drew up the app on my phone to call a beta-only cab. I was never coming back to this club. Never risking another chance meeting with that beta.

  It might be time to give up the routine altogether if I could stand it.

  I marched two blocks in the dark, in my heels and my skimpy dress and my old leather jacket, meeting the cab outside a nearby bodega.

  “Look at her, arching like an omega for that bite. Never gonna fuckin’ happen, Showgirl.”

  “How’s your night goin’ gorgeous?” the woman asked me from the driver’s seat, making me twitch at the endearment. It hadn’t sounded so cheesy and unfamiliar on his tongue, but now the word was abrasive.

  “Long,” I said, and there was a tense pause before the woman nodded and turned the radio on. The music was soft and moody, and I slunk down in my seat as we passed Philia, my eyes growing wide, panic rising in my chest. There he was, standing outside the doors between two of the security guards, scanning the sidewalk with wide eyes and a brow furrowed with worry.

  With my fucking panties in his fist.

  Two

  Lola

  I stared at my blaring phone the next morning, waiting until the last possible s
econd to swipe.

  “Hey,” I said, frowning at the crack in my voice. After my failed attempt at Philia ending in a shattering disaster, I hadn’t really gotten any sleep, which sucked considering it was my—

  “Congrats! It’s your first day at Designate,” David sing-songed, voice too loud and echoey. He was on speakerphone, probably Bluetoothing it from his car service.

  “I hadn’t forgotten,” I said, lips twitching. “Just like I hadn’t forgotten to set my alarm, in case that’s why you called.”

  Not that his call would’ve done the trick. I hadn’t had my ringer on in over a year.

  “I’m calling because this is a big day, Lo,” David said, losing his attempt at chipperness. Which was good because David was acerbic through and through, and chipper just came off as manic on him.

  “I’m not gonna fuck this up, I promise,” I said, staring at my reflection in my bathroom mirror, trying to force the disappointed weariness off my features by will alone. When that failed, I flipped open my makeup case. When in doubt, paint it on.

  “I didn’t—I know you’re not!”

  “I know you went out on a limb for me,” I said, and David huffed. “I’m gonna rock this for you.”

  “Lo…Jesus. Look, did I point their team to your old web series? Yes. But that’s it.”

  “You put my application in.”

  “Only because you were about to miss the deadline.”

  I raised my eyebrow and then smirked when I remembered he couldn’t see me. “Thank you,” I said, slow and sincere.

  I really needed this job. I really needed any job now that I’d finally put the bulk of my savings into this new apartment. It stung a little that in my attempt to get out of David’s hair, he ended up having to find me not just any job but my actual dream job in the Beauty Department of Designate Magazine.

  “Ehn. Literally no one in this industry got in on merit alone, okay? We all knew someone, so I’m your person. I’m good with that. You just need to be good with that too.”

  “I’m good with it,” I lied, faking brightness.

  “So there’s gonna be a car waiting for you.”

  “David!”

  “I’m not doing it every day. Just be glad I didn’t send flowers to your new desk.”

  I blinked, staring down at my sink and waiting for the bout of teariness to pass. “You just wanted to make sure I wasn’t late.”

  David scoffed again, but this time there was a little laugh mixed in. “Dinner tomorrow.”

  “Dinner tomorrow. No fucking flowers, David.”

  “No fucking flowers,” he said, imitating me in a gruff, nasal tone. He was quiet for a beat, and I was ready to hang up when he said, “Your mom would be proud of you.”

  Low blow, David, I thought. And probably not the target he was aiming for. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, and then ended the call.

  My mom would not be proud of me. Relieved maybe, just to see I was employed again after a year of hiding in David’s guest bedroom. But luckily for my mother and for me, she’d missed the past five years of my life. Still, if there was one thing my mother would want to say to me, it wouldn’t have to do with pride. Pretty much the opposite.

  I told you so.

  She’d warned me about alphas, about what they wanted from betas, and I’d tried and failed to prove her wrong over and over again.

  And then I’d gone to the Devil’s Noose that night, with my best friend Baby.

  As if summoned by my thoughts, my phone rang again, this time with Baby’s name across the screen. I dropped it on the counter, flipping it to speaker and ignoring the twinge that always hit my heart when I dealt with Baby. Baby, who had undergone that magical—okay, rare but biological—transformation I’d always dreamed of. One day she was a beta, and the next night at a dive bar in Old Uptown, she was a newly perfuming omega.

  “Putting my face on, babe, what’s up?”

  “HAPPY FIRST DAY OF WEEEERRRRKK!” Baby screamed through the phone, the horrible shrill tones bouncing around the ghastly drab pink tile of my bathroom.

  “Dear god,” I muttered.

  “Hi, sorry, I love you. What kind of look are you going for?” Baby rattled at rapid-fire. “Bold and daring? Pristine and angelic? Classic noir?”

  “Alive,” I said, dabbing primer onto my face. “Tell Chef not to give you so much caffeine straight away in the morning, you’re supposed to pace that shit.”

  “Nah, I just tell each of the guys I haven’t had any yet, so they bring me fresh mugs to bed,” Baby said.

  I squawked a laugh. “Oh, the privilege of a lazy omega with a devoted pack.”

  “Damn straight,” Baby said. “Late night?”

  I hummed, and she hummed back. It had taken us a while to find our ease after Baby found out she was an omega—the blessed minority to be coveted and cherished and adored by alpha packs—and not a beta as she’d assumed for twenty-five years. I’d always wanted to be an omega and desperately craved the approval of alphas, so the sting when I’d first learned that Baby had been granted my wish was keen and sharp, cutting through the camaraderie between us. It didn’t help that while she was going through the deliriously happy process of getting to know her pack of alpha bikers, I was going through a personal hell with another.

  Baby didn’t approve of my new weekend routine, but she definitely wouldn’t have approved if she knew I was doing it alone, and not with a small group of other betas like I lied and told her.

  “It was a bust though,” I said. “How’s the crew?”

  “Same, same,” Baby said. “Wanna get lunch soon? Maybe somewhere fancy Downtown? My treat!”

  More like one of her alpha’s treats, but Baby and her guys were always very careful to keep her alphas out of my way. Sometimes Seth, her beta, would join Baby and me on our lunch dates, but mostly they let her hang out with me alone.

  “It’s a date,” I said.

  “Yay. Okay, I’ll let you focus on your wing liner,” Baby said. Baby mostly skipped a makeup routine, which was good because she could injure herself and three others with a liner pencil.

  “Love you, babe.”

  “Love you, Lo.”

  I sighed as she hung up and rolled my shoulders. Okay, so we were mostly back to normal. I still got a bit tense, but I didn’t want Baby to carry that for me. My mistakes were on me.

  I glared at my reflection again. Limp blonde hair. Hollow cheeks. Lips chapped from nervous biting and picking. I couldn’t decide if I was the before picture in a self-improvement ad, or the after image from a serious wreckage.

  I used my foundation to paint on clean, even skin, hiding away the dark circles under my eyes from lack of sleep and the bouts of acne on my chin and forehead from stress. Despite getting a job as an assistant beauty editor, I was planning on keeping it low-key. I wanted to go in and get my work done at Designate. I wanted to earn the place David had found for me, but I didn’t want to catch a lot of attention. At least, not from my appearance.

  Because there would be alphas at Designate. The head of my Department was an alpha, although I’d been hired in my interviews by a team of betas. But it was a major magazine, and even the CEO of the media company that owned Designate was an alpha, not that I expected to run into him in the offices. I’d learned my lesson when it came to alphas. I was done being one of those betas who chased after a pack that couldn’t care less about me.

  Designate was located in the Stanmore, one of the tallest buildings downtown, not to mention one of the most beautiful old Art-Deco buildings in the country. It’d been the same location for the magazine for over sixty years, and the magazine was as much a part of the history of the building as the building was to the city. I stepped inside and allowed myself a good twenty seconds to gawk at the angled chandelier, the gold framing details, the intricate tiling of the floor, to just enjoy that I was here—not as a spectator but as someone who worked in the building. Then someone bumped my shoulder, and I let the moment pass.
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  I was early, thanks to David’s car service, dressed in a simple black dress that was designed to hang loose and formless, and I blended in with the sea of men and women in business attire and wool trench coats that squeezed their way into the building. I didn’t know the full rundown of the offices in the Stanmore, but I did know that under the five floors Designate occupied was a well known and entirely beta run legal company.

  I wiggled my way through the crowd, breathing through my parted lips to avoid the few faint wisps of alpha pheromones I caught, and headed for the security desk. The woman behind the gorgeous stone counter was a bulky beta woman who took a remarkably unhurried look up from her newspaper after I cleared my throat.

  “I’m a new hire for—”

  “Name?”

  “Lola Barnes,” I said.

  A few clacks of keys and a screeching old printer at work later, and the woman passed me a flimsy cardboard square with a barcode across the bottom. “That’ll get you up to your floor, and they’ll manage the rest. If you don’t have your pass by tomorrow, you can come to the desk for another. You check-in at floor fifty.”

  I blinked and took the temporary key card, resisting the urge to make the snarky comments hovering on my tongue. I slipped through the turnstile with my pass, tucked the card into my pocket, and headed for the elevators, wincing as I stared at the crowds. The people in the lobby were packing themselves into the carriages like sardines in a can. I may have been early to work for Designate, but the rest of the building was filling up quickly.

  Just breathe.

  I dove onto an elevator at the last second, everyone shifting by tiny increments to make room for me, a briefcase jammed against the back of my left thigh. I held my breath as the door slid shut in front of me and wiggled my hand over to hit the button for the fiftieth floor. I took tiny breaths as the seconds passed until I realized I was in an elevator with no one but other betas and then relaxed. I didn’t like being crowded, but the elevator was gradually emptying and I was able to actually slouch against the wall, well out of reach of the last four occupants when we reached the fiftieth floor.