The Mating Game - ohwise1ne (2024)

Chapter 1: The New CEO

Chapter Text

As far as backdrops go, Rey was hoping for something a little more exciting to set the stage for her mission to reinvigorate Skywalker Biotech's image.

The shelter is about as visually stimulating as a can of scent-neutralizing body spray. It is the blandest building on the block, all inoffensive angles and tinted glass—the glass being a particular nuisance, since Rey must position herself at exactly the right angle to avoid capturing herself in its reflection.

She understands the need for discretion, at least, even if it makes an uninspiring setting for a photograph.

The last thing any Omega wants to do is broadcast the arrival of an unplanned heat to the entire neighborhood by walking into an emergency heat shelter.

The second-to-last thing, apparently, is to revisit the very same shelter several months later for an hour-long photo shoot, the evidence of which will be plastered across subway stations and grocery basket-bottoms city-wide during the upcoming Skywalker promotional blitz (roughly eight to ten weeks, depending on the train line and the grocery store).

This is a surprise to no one, least of all Rey. She's got a pretty good handle on the typical hard-no dealbreakers for her own designation. It was always going to be a tough sell, convincing former shelter patients to volunteer a morning for a poorly disguised public relations crusade that would force them to relive what is very likely to be, for any Omega, the most miserable week they've had all year.

But after her first four proposals received seals of disapproval personally penned by Lord Lucifer himself, Rey was left with few other options.

It wasn't until she slogged through hundreds of unreturned voicemails and half as many abrasive dial tones that she discovered the key to her persuasion was hiding in plain sight all along, right in Satan's very own corner office.

"That shelter is part of Skywalker?" a woman asked, after lingering on the line a full ten seconds longer than the point at which most other Omegas had already told Rey to shove off. "Isn't that the place with the new CEO? You know... the Alpha?"

The Alpha.

After making this connection, it only took Rey exactly five more phone calls and roughly as many rounds of C-suite scheduling Tetris to arrive here: armed with her camera, her tape recorder, and half a dozen Omegas arranged in a perfect semi-circle before the architectural equivalent of a yawn.

The group story-time portion of the afternoon went smoothly enough—not counting, of course, their abrupt ejection from the waiting room; as it turns out, an emergency heat shelter is a rather disruptive setting for an interview that involves an audio recording.

But now, as the photo shoot draws to a close, the conspicuous absence of a seventh figure has begun to spark signs of unrest among the other six.

"Is he still coming?"

Rey lowers her camera and grabs the phone from her jacket pocket. Her text message thread with Mr. Egomaniac still only contains a screen stuffed bezel-to-bezel with escalating variations on the theme of "WHERE ARE YOU???" Her latest effort simply contains a message-bubble-defying string of 18 question marks.

Rey plasters a smile onto her face. "Of course." She hits send and pockets her phone. "Just running a little late."

"Hopefully not too late," says Tabitha, a tall, dark-haired woman who Rey stationed in the center of the group. Tabitha has two toddlers, works as a dance teacher, and was struck with an unplanned heat in the dairy aisle at her local Food Palace. It could happen to you, too, Food Palace shopper.

Rey clicks another photo.

"Yes, I can't miss my bus," adds an Omega named Nell, who apparently traveled three hours for the opportunity to recite Rey's suggested phrases in front of Skywalker's new tyrannical overlord. "What's he like in person, anyway?"

"If I'm being honest?" All six Omegas sway toward Rey with wide eyes, waiting on her assessment. "Pretty underwhelming."

A collective gasp. "No way!"

"Yes, way." Rey injects a great deal of confidence into this, considering she has never actually met the man in the flesh. Not many Skywalker employees have. Their corporate deity is usually too busy playing god in his executive sanctuary to grace the peasants on the lower floors with his presence.

But ten weeks worth of highly antagonistic email exchanges have provided Rey with more than enough exposure to speak with authority on this point. It's in every Omega's best interest to steer clear of Skywalker's controversial new CEO—her own included. Rey was rather dreading today's photo shoot for this exact reason.

Turns out she had nothing to worry about. The only thing more difficult than herding a group of Omegas back to an emergency heat shelter, it seems, is getting Benjamin Pain-In-The-Ass Solo to put a single ounce of effort into rebuilding his public image.

"But he's so dreamy on television," says Nell. "Always the tallest Alpha in the room."

"Camera tricks," Rey says, and snaps a photo from a squat to prove her point. "He's pretty below average, by Alpha standards. Rumor has it he shows up to press conferences in platform shoes."

"No!" From the expression on poor Nellie's face, Rey might have just told her that a beloved family pet was being sent to the farm. The other Omegas exchange similar murmurs of pity.

"I know, I know. Very sad. Though... not as sad as the real reason he took over Skywalker." The group ripples with interest. Lowering her camera, Rey walks closer to deliver this piece of information in a conspiratorial whisper, for maximum effect. "It turns out our new CEO has a personal stake in the success of those new performance pills. Very personal, if you catch my drift. Practically sleeps in the lab, desperate for updates."

She supposes it might be self-sabotaging, to sh*t-talk her own client in front of members of the general public. But Leia specifically instructed her to humanize him, didn't she? And if Solo can't lift a single stupidly giant finger to help (because the man really is quite large; Rey is only an Omega, after all, and has spent as many late nights zooming in on those press conference stills as the rest of them)—if he can't even put in the bare minimum to convince the world he's not a raging megalomaniac hell-bent on torching his uncle's legacy—well, Rey will simply have to make do with what he gives her. Which hasn't been a whole lot. Her imagination will just need to fill in the rest.

Lucky for Solo, Rey's got a fairly vivid imagination, as far as he's concerned.

"Sounds like he's committed to his work," says Penny, whose unplanned heat episode in the middle of an emotional divorce hearing makes her a particularly compelling candidate for this campaign. Rey plans to lead with her story on Skywalker's more career-focused audience platforms.

"He sure is," Rey says, her tone painfully bright. "We all are at Skywalker Biotech." All right, so Rey may not technically be a Skywalker employee, as a consultant—but she's not about to waste an opportunity to workshop the rest of her message. "Despite what our fearless leader might lead you to believe, Skywalker is not just another transnational biopharmaceutical conglomerate. In fact, our success in revolutionizing Alpha-Omega healthcare is precisely what allows us to invest in grassroots community initiatives, just like this one." A grand gesture toward the soulless black glass of the shelter's facade. "And hearing the experiences of our courageous patients is what drives our company's relentless quest toward a healthier, happier future for the entire designated community."

The Omegas all nod along in eager agreement. A good sign, she thinks—though this may simply be a residual effect from the group's recent communal swooning over an Alpha as uncompromising as Benjamin My-Way-Or-The-Stygian-River Solo.

Rey will have to find a more critical focus group before she sends that one to print.

Ten minutes later, when it's abundantly clear that these Omegas will not be getting their promised celebrity sighting, Rey digs out six Skywalker-branded totes from the chaos in her hatchback. At the last minute, she throws a few extra scent enhancers in each bag to ease their disappointment. "Mr. Solo is deeply sorry he couldn't make it," Rey says, to the crestfallen coos of the Omegas. "You can expect a personal thank-you letter from him in seven to ten business days."

Only when the last Omega disappears from sight does Rey march back to her car. The moment the door slams shut behind her, she mashes the microphone button on her steering wheel.

"Hey Skyphone, call Mr. Egomaniac."

Rey pulls away from the curb a little too sharply. As the phone rings, she cycles rapidly through her litany of complaints for this morning's voicemail. He better have emptied his mailbox by now; she finds she has quite a lot of them today.

After the fourth ring, Rey takes a deep breath, preparing for her cue. Out of all the short-sighted, inconsiderate, myopic decisions you've made this month—

"Miss Niima."

The voice floods her car. Deep and commanding. It is nothing like the now-familiar monotonous tone of his voicemail robot, listing the digits of his phone number. It is not even Mitaka, whose appearance, while ultimately a dismissal, might still be counted as a small victory of acknowledgment.

No. This voice is unmistakable. Nine out of ten households in America would recognize it, according to their most recent consumer sentiment analysis—and not for good reasons.

It's his voice.

Rey's mind goes about as blank as the heat shelter's bland exterior. Her car nearly veers into a street sign. She wrenches it back into the lane and attempts to dredge up her typically overflowing capacity for speech.

"Mr. Solo," she says, and is immediately disgusted by the startled squeak of his name. At least it didn't come out as Mr. Egomaniac, the way it did the last time he actually bothered to pick up his phone. "I didn't expect you to answer."

"How many times do I need to tell you to delete this number?"

The sh*tty speakers in her hatchback vibrate with the subsonic frequency of his words. Rey nearly knocks the NutriCycle thermos from her cupholder as she throws out an arm to turn down the volume. "Hmm, let me think. How many times will it take you to respond to my emails?"

"We've been over this, Miss Niima. Repeatedly. All correspondence goes through my assistant."

"Oh, you mean Dopheld?" Rey says, following the route back to her office on auto-pilot. "We're well acquainted. Did you know how much he likes gluten-free eclairs? I bring him some every morning."

"The only piece of information you need to know about Mr. Mitaka," Solo says, "is that you should be bothering him. Not me. He is in charge of all executive communications."

"Wow, thanks for the tip! Fun fact—he also arranges your schedule. You know... that pesky list of obligations you have every day? The one everyone else bends over backwards to accommodate, just for the chance to speak with you?"

An ominous pause. "Is my time a joke to you, Miss Niima?"

"If your time is so precious, Mr. Solo, perhaps you should lead by example for once and try taking your own calendar seriously."

The line goes deadly silent. It lasts so long, Rey rips her eyes from the road to make sure the call has not ended.

It has not ended.

"You flood my phone with nonsensical text messages," he says, his contempt filling her car like a tangible force. "You interrupt my eleven-thirty with an unscheduled call. And then you presume to lecture me on the importance of calendars?"

Rey's brain takes this opportunity to remind her of an article published shortly after the acquisition, vividly describing the way in which Skywalker's previous board chairman literally pissed his own pants after challenging Ben Solo during the first post-takeover board meeting. The only post-takeover board meeting. Two days later, Solo dissolved the board right out of existence altogether—along with the company's communications department, its ethics and safety teams, and more than half the positions of its employees.

In the background, the muffled noises of frantic speech interrupt his rant. Before Rey can unleash the laundry list of her own morning's derailments—each and every single one of which can be traced directly back to him—Mitaka's high, panicky voice replaces Solo's slow-building fury.

"Hey, hey—Rey? It's me. Listen—so sorry we couldn't make it this morning. Something important came up—"

"Something important?" An unexpected stab of hurt slices through her. "Dopheld, we've been planning this for weeks. Two of those women traveled across state lines for this interview!"

"I know, I know—terrible timing—but we'll reschedule as soon as we're back in town, I'll make sure of—oh!"

Solo cuts off Mitaka's apology like a guillotine. "We're done here, Miss Niima. Delete this number from your contacts as soon as this call has ended."

"But—" Rey directs her outraged scowl at the stopped car in front of her. "This number is the only way to actually reach you."

"Yes. Exactly. This is my personal cell phone. For personal matters."

"Don't you think the stewardship of your reputation is a personal matter?"

"You are not personal, Miss Niima. Do not contact me here again."

"Then why did your mother give me this number and say, 'Call him on this phone, Rey. This is the only way my stubborn son will actually speak to you, Rey.'"

"Do you work for Leia Organa?" Solo asks, dangerously low. "Or do you work for me?"

Rey swallows thickly. "Well, technically, as an independent contractor—"

"Answer the question."

The authority in his command is as harsh as the crack of a whip. Rey hears herself speaking before the shiver racing down her spine has even reached her tailbone. "You, sir," she says, very softly. "I work for you."

Goddamn f*cking Alphas. Rey can't stand them.

"Very good." He sounds slightly appeased—and oh, Rey despises how this appeases something in her too. She absolutely loathes it. "Remember that next time you feel compelled to contradict my orders."

The line disconnects with a click.

Rey checks to make sure the call actually has ended before she tells her silent car exactly where Benjamin Burn-In-Hell Solo can put his goddamn orders.

When she's finished, she releases a long, furious breath through her nostrils.

Well. She supposes that went better than last time.

At least she didn't greet him as Mr. Egomaniac today.

"Tell me there's more coffee."

The familiar slam of the office door jolts her from her laptop, but only just. "Enough for a whole week of all-nighters," Rey says, eyes still skimming her email draft. "The NutriCycle gods blessed us with more samples this morning."

"Oh, sweet, sweet caffeine." Rose's heels click on the wooden floor as she makes a beeline for the coffee machine beside the window. A sigh of relief accompanies the ripping of NutriCycle's easy-open cardboard packaging—recently redesigned for clumsy, impatient fingers during that time of the year, thanks to Rose's latest round of customer satisfaction surveys. "Gee, you weren't kidding. We could open our own cafe."

"It'd be a pretty slow cafe, if it's running on single-serve coffee pods."

"Dream crusher." The aroma of high-protein soothe-brew fills the air. "It wouldn't have worked out anyway. Even NutriCycle can't compete with Poe's dark roast."

"You didn't stop there on your way this morning?" It's not like Rose to show up anywhere without the signature coffee cozy from Poe's bakery clutched in her hand.

"No time." The thump of Rose's bag hits the floor. A roll of the desk chair, and Rose plops down beside her at the wooden counter that serves as the shared workstation for their two-person public relations firm. "A week of all-nighters is not so far off, at this point."

"That kind of Monday already, huh?" Rey says, as she highlights another question in bold. And then turns the text red. And then adds several asterisks. It's unlikely Solo will even open this email before his Alpha Deal Watch appearance this week; but on the slim chance that he does, Rey will make damn sure his thirty-second attention span can quickly assess which of his latest and greatest public f*ck-ups are the most important to prepare for.

"You have no idea." Rose puts down her mug so she can rummage through her bag. "The good news is that the new MateSync devices have finally finished beta testing." She slaps a thick folder on the desk. "The bad news is that they're delivering Alphas emergency alerts every time their partner sneezes. Or coughs. Or... well, I'm pretty sure this report is keeping things PG, but I'll let you imagine all the activities that can make an Omega's body clench."

Rey can't contain her snicker. "I can see it now. Honey, was that the jalapeño poppers, or are you just happy to see me?"

Rose snorts. "If only the Alphas in the trial were so relaxed. One tester actually called the damn cops after a notification. The police kicked down his Omega's apartment door. Turns out she was just getting a little excited watching—are you ready?—an interview with your favorite CEO."

"Eurgh, that does sound like a medical emergency." Rey pulls a face at her laptop. "I hope she got some serious help."

"The medical emergency is going to be in Lando's office later when I tell him we need to scrap the demo. The expo is next week, Rey. There's no way we can present these in front of a live audience."

"sh*t." Rey tears herself away from the interview prep sheet she's been drafting and turns to face her friend. "What will he fill the stage time with?"

"Not a freaking clue," Rose chirps. "And that only brings us to 9 a.m. After that delightful Monday-morning panic attack, the vineyard called to say they apparently double-booked NutriCycle with another client for Friday's farm-to-table investor dinner. I already left messages with every partner venue within a 25-mile radius to see if someone else can take us. And"—she continues, without taking a breath—"it turns out that O-Fit sent the wrong color samples to the fashion bloggers. Neon green instead of black. Neon green, Rey! What Omega wants a slickguard the color of a radioactive lime?"

"Your single-serve cafe idea is sounding better by the minute."

"At least we'd have a place to host the investor dinner," Rose says, deflating.

Rey's chest tightens at the look of exhaustion on her best friend's face. This is all just too much work for one person—even if that person is queen of crisis management Rose Tico. Rey's mind begins to race. She's only got four days to put together the content calendar for the shelter interviews. If she can't edit the photos now, she'll have to find time later—which might work, since she has no Skywalker events on her schedule tonight. Maybe she can still find a few minutes this afternoon to call some venues herself?

"Stop that." Rose's sharp tone jerks her out of her thoughts.

"Stop what?" Rey says innocently.

"I know your guilty face, Rey Niima. You are not allowed to feel guilty."

"The only thing I feel guilty about is not capitalizing on the untapped market of glow-in-the-dark slickguards."

"I'm serious, Rey. You've got enough on your own plate over there. No sneaking bites off mine."

"Not even a nibble?"

"Not a single crumb."

"All right. Fine." Rey huffs a breath out through her nose. "It's just—you've taken on so much extra work these past few months, you know? The least I can do is help you put out some fires."

"You are helping." Rose softens her tone. "The Skywalker account is paying more than all the others combined. And you definitely have no shortage of flames to put out yourself, with Lord Lucifer pelting you with daily firebombs over there."

Spending all her time wrangling the Alpha equivalent of a corporate dumpster fire wasn't exactly what Rey envisioned when they started this firm together two years ago. But it doesn't feel right to complain when Rose is juggling the rest of their client portfolio with only two hands.

Rose, however, seems to notice Rey's shift in mood anyway. "I can't believe I didn't ask you yet. How did it go?"

"The interviews?" Rey turns back to her laptop. "Considering Plans A, B, C and D were all shot down on sight... They were fine. Great, even. Nice to highlight some of the good things Skywalker does, for once."

"Yeah, yeah. Save it for the press release. You know that's not what I'm asking." Rose looks at her carefully over her coffee mug. "I want the dirt, Rey. What's he like? Does he smell as good as he looks?"

The very concept of Solo's scent contorts Rey's face into a full-on scowl. "If Solo smells like anything, it's got to be sulfur."

"If? What do you mean, if? Was he wearing blockers? I'll bet he takes enough to tranquilize a horse, to smother an Alpha like that."

Rey keeps her eyes carefully glued to her laptop. "He didn't show up."

Even from the corner of her eye, she can still see Rose's jaw drop. "You're kidding."

"Nope."

"But—you made this appointment two weeks ago!"

"That's what I told him."

"You told him?" A beat. "As in, you spoke to him?"

"I... might have called the number Leia gave me." A few times, she doesn't add. More than a few times, if they're counting beyond this week. Honestly, Rose doesn't need to know Rey has been clogging up the man's voicemail with heated tirades just about every morning over the past month.

"Well, good for you," Rose says, with great enthusiasm. "What did he say?"

"Oh, he was practically tripping over himself to apologize. Said we could expect a bouquet this afternoon."

"Wait—really?"

"No, Rose. He hung up on me. Obviously. "

"Of course he did. Insufferable jackass." Rose takes a long, thoughtful sip of her coffee. "You know, I had a favor to ask you, then decided against it—but now I see it's really a favor for you."

Rey spins slowly in her chair to face her friend. "Why does that sound like a trap?"

"Not a trap," Rose says, far too casually. "A favor."

"What kind of favor?"

Rose studies her over the rim of her mug, then places it on the desk. "Remember that account from last year? Primal Encounters?"

"You mean the kink club?"

"The matched Alpha encounter service."

"So... the kink club."

"Okay, sure, there are usually kinks involved, but—"

Rey swivels back to her laptop. "Not interested."

"Girl. Listen to me. You've been so stressed lately. All the melodrama with Mr. CEO-From-Hell is pushing you to the brink. And Primal's algorithm is seriously top-notch! If you're worried about the kink part, you should know that they get to know your preferences first—there's bound to be someone else in their database who also isn't into—"

"It's not the kink part." In fact, she considers herself pretty wide open in that department, limited though her personal experience with it may be. "And I remember all the voodoo with the algorithm, Rose—I helped edit the product descriptions, remember?" Rey adds an extra few asterisks to the first question in her email. "I just have no interest in doing any of that... with an Alpha."

"Oh, come on. Not even a little?"

"Rose. I haven't even met a single Alpha that I could stand as a person. Never mind one that I want to jump into bed with."

"You know, I thought the same thing," Rose begins, and Rey resists the urge to roll her eyes. Here we go. "But when they first brought me Armitage's scent, it's like they just knew. Out of the thousands of Alphas in that database, he was the one." That vaguely nauseating glaze of Omega-adoration enters Rose's eyes. "It was a little scary."

"Thanks, but if I want to be scared, I'll rent a horror movie," Rey says. Or ask you to talk about your Alpha, she doesn't add. "A lot less clean-up afterward."

Rose makes a frustrated sound. "Fine. Let me start over. I'm asking you this as a work favor."

"Nice try, missy. Primal's contract ended months ago. Their IPO was in... when was it? June? May?"

"June. But they want our help again to promote their new location in the village." Rose definitely has that glint in her eye now. She leans forward, putting her elbows on her knees. "I was supposed to meet with their comms director this afternoon. You'll remember her—Maz? Round glasses? Skywalker refugee?" Rose smirks. "I think you should go instead."

So it is a trap. Rey turns slowly back to face her. "What does your afternoon look like otherwise?"

"Honestly?" Rose's smile wavers. "A disaster. I need to schedule a call with Lando to discuss the expo. And I need to spin up a new pitch for his demo before I speak with him. And I need to reach out to those bloggers to see if they're still willing to do their O-Fit reviews—maybe if we get the original colors to them at a later date..." She trails off, attention drifting back to Rey. "I know I said no nibbles, but this would just be an hour or two for the initial tour. Seriously, Rey. It would be a huge help."

"And you're sure this has nothing to do with me trying out Primal's algorithm?"

Rose sighs. "Okay, fine. Maz might have mentioned they'd give a complimentary pairing session to our representative as a token of their appreciation. But it's entirely up to you whether you use it or not."

"I won't use it," Rey says quickly.

"Sure you won't." Rose winks. "Does that mean you'll do it?"

Groaning, Rey leans back in her chair. "Yes. Fine. But only if you give me one of those glow-in-the-dark slickguards."

"You can have the entire box," Rose says, with a devilish grin.

When she turns back to her laptop, Rey rearranges the questions on her screen a final time. She'll be lucky if Solo even gets past the first one. Far more likely, Mitaka will be forced to distill her meticulous work into quickly muttered bullet points on the ten-minute drive to the studio.

Even more likely than that, Solo will set fire to the entire script and throw a live grenade mid-interview, leaving Rey scrambling after him to sift through the flaming debris.

Maybe it will be nice to spend an hour or two with a client that isn't intent on blowing up his entire company.

With an unexpected twinge of optimism, she hits the send button.

Chapter 2: Meet Your Alpha

Chapter Text

Rey almost forgot what it was like to work with someone who actually values her expertise.

Maz Kanata greets her at Primal's glass-paneled entryway, with—well, not a smile, exactly. But she's got an Omega with her whose radiant grin seems to be a permanent fixture on her face.

That's already an improvement over Benjamin Thinks-He's-A-God Solo, who Rey has still yet to meet in person, and whose own Omega assistant must be coaxed with cream-stuffed pastries from his usual state of terror-induced paralysis before he's comfortable enough to even hint at a smile.

Even without the smile, though, Maz radiates warmth and professionalism as she shakes Rey's hand.

"A delight to finally meet you, Miss Niima," Maz says. "I very much admire the work you did with Leia on the scholarship fund."

And that's another difference. A pretty significant one, actually, considering how Solo reacted at the time to that particular sh*tshow.

Rey must strain to keep her own smile on her face, with thoughts of Ben Solo intruding on her focus. She banishes them with a forceful shove.

"Yes, well, Han was very important to me."

"To me too, dear. To me, too."

Rey's palms suddenly feel clammy. She's not sure if she wants to ply Maz for details or turn on her heel and bolt right back out the door.

To her relief, Maz does not linger in this emotional minefield. Instead, she introduces the Omega at her elbow as Kaydel Connix, the recently appointed director of guest experiences for this location. The job duties accompanying this nebulous title apparently extend to pampering their hired consultants as well; Connix offers her a bottle of pomegranate-infused water and then vanishes with Rey's jacket before she has even set foot in the lobby.

The lobby, however, provides immediate justification for the woman's title. Stepping into it is an experience all on its own.

The space feels like the inside of one of Skywalker's luxury biotech gadgets: sleek, polished and meticulously designed. On the room's far wall, a floor-to-ceiling expanse of cascading water stretches behind a black marble counter, parting over Primal's logo like a veil of liquid silk. In the same way, intimacy seems to ripple and cascade over every detail of the room. Pools of soft warm light gather beneath sculpted sconces, stamped at even intervals along the lobby's southern wall. Tucked in between are shadowy alcoves, offering glimpses of cushions and plush throws that beckon beyond flowing drapes of velvet.

Come and indulge, each one seems to whisper. Let us take care of you.

Rey can hardly keep herself from whipping out her camera and diving straight into her work. This place is a brand strategist's dream. Lightyears away from the graveyard of creativity that sets the stage for her current work as Solo's one-woman cleanup crew.

From Maz's brisk pace, though, it's clear they won't be dawdling here long.

"We've already rolled out early access to this location for our premium members," Maz says, ushering her through the lobby as Rey tries not to gape. "Their feedback has exceeded all expectations. Our private immersion rooms are already fully booked three months out."

Rey's eyebrows climb up her forehead. "A three-month wait? Remind me again why you need a consultant?"

"Ah, well, the immersion rooms are VIP-only," Maz replies with a wink. "We're getting ready to open our doors to the general public now, too."

Maz Kanata may be petite, but she strides with the confident purpose of a woman accustomed to setting her own pace. Rey nearly trips over her own feet in her effort to keep up—though the looming sculpture at the mouth of the hallway probably bears at least some responsibility for the stutter in her step. It's definitely to blame for the near-face-plant that follows, when a double-take confirms the statue's undeniable resemblance to a certain Alpha anatomical feature.

Rey cannot resist at least one snapped photo of this particular detail, before she follows Maz down the hallway. You know. For science.

"When we were discussing our Omega outreach strategy," Maz says, "we immediately thought of R2. Those influencer collaborations you arranged ahead of our public offering were key to capturing that segment of our investor population."

Rey feels a surge of pride for her best friend. Influencer networking is Rose's forte. In contrast, Rey has always gravitated toward crafting stories—sifting through the client's objectives for the human faces behind the sterile product briefs. It gives her work meaning. She finds great satisfaction in her ability to peel back the layers of business strategy to find the human core.

Except for her current client, of course.

Rey is pretty sure there's nothing human hidden at the center of Ben Solo's tootsie pop. She certainly isn't interested in peeling anything away from him to find out.

"We're honored." Rey puts more conviction into her mental shove this time, when she realizes Solo has wormed his way back into her thoughts. Again. "Omegas are a diverse community, and we're committed to serving them."

Maz gives her a knowing smile. "As are we." They turn down another hallway, this one flanked on either side by smoky glass walls. "Every facet of the Primal experience is built around the Omega," she says. "As you can imagine, there's no shortage of Alphas chomping at the bit to get paired. And Betas are generally quite unrestricted in their preferences. It's our Omegas that we need to establish credibility with."

"Must be quite the challenge." Indeed, all the credibility in the world couldn't persuade Rey to go looking for an Alpha here. Though she wouldn't say no to a nice long nap in one of those cozy lobby alcoves.

"To be quite frank, the greatest challenge is getting them through the door." Maz halts before a glowing panel set in the wall. "Once they're here, the appeal of the service tends to speak for itself."

A few taps to the screen, and the wall parts right in front of them.

Rey's jaw drops. The room beyond looks like it's been plucked straight from the cover of Nests Illustrated. Just past the threshold, three wide steps lead down to a sunken space that sprawls across the rest of the room. Every inch of the place is swathed in fabric—from the tufted walls, to the piles of pillows scattered across the deep-cushioned floor.

Never mind the lobby alcoves; Rey will happily take her nap right here.

"Since we're focusing on general membership, most of our visuals for this campaign should be from standard play environments, like this one. Though you're welcome to have a peek at an immersion room too before you leave," Maz adds, with a smirk. "If you're curious."

In fact, Rey finds herself nearly overflowing with curiosity. She steps into the room, snapping photos so that she might indulge her sudden interest from behind the safety of her viewfinder.

"Are all the standard rooms so…" Fluffy? Marshmallow-adjacent? "Soft?"

"Each room is prepared to a couple's specific needs," Maz says, following Rey while she moves about with her camera. "During the match process, we compile meticulous profiles of each partner's preferences so that we can make every session as unique as our members. Our standard rooms can be transformed into a variety of themed environments, depending on the scenario."

"And what scenario would this be?"

"Comfort. Caretaking. Some couples retreat to a space like this after a particularly intense session. By far the most popular use, though, is for those who choose to spend their estrus with us."

Rey's eyes nearly bug out of her head. She lowers her camera, gaze sweeping across all the fabric-covered surfaces. "That must be a lot of laundry."

Maz laughs. "We have an active partnership with Skywalker Biotech. One of the few they decided to maintain, after the takeover." A hint of bitterness enters her voice; Rey remembers that Maz Kanata worked in the communications department that Solo completely cleaned out in his first few carnage-filled days as CEO. "All our play spaces are outfitted with the same cutting-edge self-cleaning tech-fabric used in heat clinics and hospitals. The facility's high-efficiency ventilation also performs a complete recycling of the air in each room twice a day. It's important to remove any lingering scents between couples." Another sly glance. "Our Alphas often appreciate the ability to mark their territory."

Rey wonders if Maz is referring to the room, or the Omega. Her face suddenly feels hot. She resents that unrelenting thoughts about Benjamin Alpha-hole Solo continue to plague her in such a way that they must appear in such close proximity to this image.

"We also provide props, costumes, scent-scapes—anything necessary to elevate the experience." Maz gestures at the row of sleek cabinets where Rey is setting up a shot. "Of course, our new immersion room technology handles this for us in real time."

When Maz turns her back, Rey cannot resist opening a drawer—and then promptly slamming it shut again. As much as her curiosity beckons, she's not about to go poking around that particular Pandora's box with Maz Kanata standing a few feet away. And certainly not while the unwanted image of a particular Alpha marking his territory is still so freshly seared into her mind's eye.

"Well, this space will certainly make a great first impression for the campaign," Rey says quickly, in a desperate attempt to corral her focus. "Very non-threatening."

"Our partners should never feel threatened here. Unless that is part of their pleasure profile, of course." Maz throws another wink over her shoulder. "We invite our members to explore their most intimate fantasies with us. Ensuring a safe environment is our guiding principle. Every space in this building is equipped to recognize the sound of a member's safe word, courtesy of the latest Skywalker voice-recognition technology. If a partner is uncomfortable at any time, they simply need to speak their word and the session will end."

Rey wishes mildly that she could safe-word out of this site tour—at least until she's purchased enough gallons of bleach to scrub these stubbornly persistent images of Solo from her brain.

God. This is exactly why she needs to scrap the late-night scrolling through her Mr. Egomaniac photo album from her bedtime routine.

"Can't turn a corner here without running into something from Skywalker, can you?" she says, a little weakly.

"Indeed," Maz replies. "And we haven't even gotten to their biggest contribution."

Down another network of hallways, Maz leads her into a space that feels almost clinical in its sterility. A stark contrast to the rest of the facility, this new room is a sea of white floors and walls, dominated by a holographic projection on its center pedestal.

The moment she realizes where they must be, her stomach drops.

"This," Maz says, "is where the real magic happens."

The doors slide shut behind them with a definitive clunk.

"More magical than Marshmallow Palace?" Rey asks, her voice too high.

"You'll see for yourself soon enough."

Panic begins to tighten in her chest. Mind whirling, she scrambles for the words to tell Maz she has no interest in being paired with an Alpha today. How is she supposed to convince this woman that R2 will be an effective ambassador of Primal's credibility, when Rey doesn't even trust it enough to try out the service herself?

Oblivious to Rey's deteriorating mental state, Maz approaches a glowing console beside the pedestal. "Kaydel will be here any minute with our volunteer."

Rey's mounting panic slams into a wall. "Volunteer?"

"A new member has generously agreed to allow us to take photos of her pairing in exchange for a complimentary session." Maz begins to type. "We'll get started as soon as she arrives."

A new member.

Not Rey.

The relief that floods her body is overwhelming. Granted, the awkward conversation about her own reservations will probably still happen at some point today. But with any luck, it can wait until after the tour. At that point, she'll hand this account safely back to Rose, who is quite unrestrained in her enthusiasm for Primal's other locations, and there will be no question of R2's commitment to the client.

"Just make sure to focus on the mechanics of the process—not the Omega herself." Maz taps a button; on the hologram, a glowing banner bearing the phrase Meet your Alpha! replaces the rotating Primal logo. "Discretion is a cornerstone of our community's trust. We take every step to safeguard the identity of each member. In fact, our partner database is completely inaccessible outside of the pairing procedure."

"No faces," Rey says, sounding more like herself, thank god. "Got it."

Shaking herself free from her brief terror-filled spiral, she lifts her camera and gets to work. As Maz types at the console, Rey adjusts the white balance on her camera to compensate for the coolness of the overhead lights. She tests the color settings with several shots of the gallery arrangement on the far wall, which features some rather suggestive macros of various fruits, split open and plump with shiny juices. She even snaps a few photos of Maz, face hidden behind her chin-length curtain of black-silver hair, focused intently on the screen. A behind-the-scenes series could go a long way toward making this place feel a bit less intimidating, especially for a general audience.

By the time the doors slide open again, Rey is already sketching out ideas for short-form content to share with Rose later. She's so lost in thought that it takes her an even longer moment to notice that Kaydel Connix has finally joined them.

Alone.

"Bad news," Kaydel says, as the doors shut at her back. "Our volunteer just backed out. She won't be able to reschedule until next month."

For the first time, Maz's polished professionalism reveals a discernible crack. "Next month?"

"Family emergency, apparently. She'll be traveling for several weeks."

"That brings us to mid-November, Kaydel. We're trying to wrap this up before Thanksgiving."

"I know the timeline, Maz."

"Do we have a back-up?"

"I tried calling the other names on our list, but I haven't heard back yet."

Maz looks stricken. "The pairing process is the most misunderstood part of our service. This is our chance to demystify things for prospective members. How are we going to do that without an Omega to pair?"

"Aren't there any other visuals we could get?" Rey asks, still standing by the sexy fruit photos. "The sample trays, maybe?"

Both women's heads swivel toward her, as though they'd forgotten she was there.

Kaydel answers her first. "The samples are locked in a containment unit unless an active pairing is underway. The lock won't release otherwise. It's a safety measure, for the privacy of our clients."

But Maz has a far more troublesome look in her eye as she studies Rey from across the room.

"Weren't you going to be paired today too, Miss Niima?"

A beat of silence, in which Rey feels herself begin to slip back down her spiral again.

"What a great idea, Maz!" Kaydel lights up in that bliss-inducing smile so specific to Omegas—the one that Rey has never quite figured out how to access herself. "Couldn't we just take some photos then?"

"Well, I—I wasn't planning to trouble you—"

"Nonsense," Kaydel interrupts, continuing to bathe the room in the purity of her delight. It's rather disconcerting, when coupled with Rey's simultaneous and rapid descent into distress. "It's no trouble at all."

Rey's hand clenches around her camera lens like an anchor. "As much as I'd love to—and believe me, I'd like nothing better—I can't exactly photograph the process if I'm the one being paired."

There. Flawless logic. See if they can talk their way out of that one. Rey enjoys the briefest moment of respite—before Maz jumps back in again.

"Oh, I can handle the photos," she says, to Rey's horror. "If you're comfortable with me using your camera, that is." Is she serious? Rey couldn't care less about Maz Kanata borrowing her camera for a few pictures. The rest of it, however—"We only need a handful of visuals, anyway. The gland sensors. The scent vials. But the real value will be in what you take away from your pairing. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. What better way to introduce you to our methodology than for you to experience it firsthand?"

There are many ways. So many ways. With desperation, Rey grasps for any one of the dozens of excuses that materialized in her mind before, when she first stepped into this room and realized precisely where Maz had brought her. When she opens her mouth, however, she finds herself instead gesturing wildly (and rather unprofessionally) at Kaydel Connix. "Why can't she do it?"

"Me?" Kaydel says, completely unperturbed. "I've already got an Alpha. Met him right here at Primal, actually." Her dreamy smile turns eerily reminiscent of the one that infects Rose's face whenever she talks about Armitage Hux.

Rey wonders if they're sneaking some Omega-brainwashing drug through those gland sensors.

She wonders if she's the only Omega in the world who's not interested in finding a compatible Alpha.

The true problem, of course, is that there is no compatible Alpha. Not for Rey, at least. Sometimes, in her weaker moments (usually between the hours of midnight and 4 a.m., after she's finally finished her nightly perusal of Mr. Egomaniac's photo collection)—sometimes, Rey lies in her lonely bed and wonders if there is simply something wrong with her. If she was born with some fundamental piece missing on the inside.

It's not just that she's never caught a whiff of an Alpha that smelled even remotely attractive. She's also never met an Alpha who's been attracted to her.

She's just not all that desirable, as far as Omegas go. How could she be, when she's only ever been made up of temporary things—her pieces rearranged with each new town, each new bedroom, each fervent, fleeting hope? Rey supposes she must have come into this world with the same bits as everyone else—but they've long ago been stretched too thin, spread between all the places she's tried to plant them. No one has ever stuck around long enough to teach her roots to grow. She carries all their faces with her, the people who have left—a catalog of her inadequacies, each staring straight past her (always past her) from her bedroom ceiling every night.

In these moments, the intensity of her longing is so acute that it could fill the ever-vacant left half of her bed. She's spent so much of her life wanting, she doubts there's space left inside her that doesn't already overflow with it. Peel back her layers, and there is only aching air, desperate for someone to see it. What would anyone even want, with someone like that? What is there in her to desire when the only thing she's got to offer is a lifetime of her own persistent yearning?

"We don't need to waste anyone's time." Rey forces the words through a painful smile. "I'm sure your members are looking for something more serious than a publicist doing a photo shoot."

"Don't be ridiculous." Kaydel is suddenly at her side, hand cupping Rey's elbow as she ushers her toward the cluster of plush armchairs arranged around the pedestal. "There's someone for everyone at Primal. We're proud to boast a database of more than half a million members, and growing every day." She leans closer, a secret smile playing on her lips. "You don't need to find your mate here. Just someone we can guarantee you'll have a little fun with."

"From a marketing perspective, I'm not quite sure if you want to guarantee something as elusive as fun—"

"Oh, we can guarantee it." Maz's fingers fly across the console as she types. Atop the pedestal, a holographic column of floor-to-ceiling metrics whirls in a looping spiral. "Our members leave their sessions with a ninety-nine percent satisfaction rate. But if you still have doubts after we find your partner"—and god, she says this with such confidence, it might make Rey laugh if she weren't feeling so goddamn nauseous—"you can always elect not to schedule a session with your match."

Kaydel has already swept Rey into one of the chairs and relieved her of her camera by the time she has processed this statement. "I can?"

"Of course," Kaydel says. "Though I can't imagine you'll want to do anything else."

Maz hits a final button, and the hologram shifts to a new screen. "As I said before, Miss Niima—the service tends to speak for itself."

Pairing Initiated, the hologram informs her.

Rey is going to murder Rose, she decides. Right after she gets her box of glow-in-the-dark slickguards.

The lights dim. Soft ambient music fills the room. From a rolling tray beside the chair, Kaydel procures a small glass bottle.

"Before we begin," she says, "we just need to quickly wake up your glands."

"My glands?" With a surge of panic, Rey clutches her wrists. "What makes you think they're sleeping?"

"It's just so we can get a good sample." Kaydel opens the bottle and hands her a dropper full of amber liquid. Rey is vaguely aware that Maz has disappeared behind them and is snapping photos with Rey's Canon. "You can place the solution under your tongue or directly on the glands themselves—either the ones at your wrists or those on your—"

Rey empties the entire dropper into her mouth before Kaydel has finished her sentence. No way in hell is she rubbing their mystery love potion all over her glands. She's seen the star-struck looks on the faces of Rose and now Kaydel Connix. If they think she's going to bathe her glands in their Alpha-loving Kool-Aid, they're sorely mistaken.

"Someone's feeling eager," Kaydel says, eyes glittering with mirth.

Rey opens her mouth to argue this point, but she must first swallow the oil from the dropper. And not before she rolls it around on her tongue. Just a little.

It turns out the Kool-Aid tastes pretty good.

Before she can fully process this, the walls begin to glow a muted blue.

"Omega detected." The voice seems to flow from the room itself. "Please present your glands for pairing."

In the corner of her vision, Maz squats with her camera, training it on Rey's left wrist. With a prickle of irritation, Rey lifts her hand to see what's so interesting—and is surprised to find the raised shape of her gland there.

Kaydel seems to mistake this movement for Rey presenting her glands, whatever that means. The other Omega's fingers gently grasp the back of her hand.

"This should only take a second."

It takes less than a second, actually. A quick swirl of a swab, and Kaydel has already collected the sample. It's over before Rey can even get through the opening prelude of her panic attack.

A perfect caption for an Instagram reel, she thinks. Primal Encounters: You Won't Even Have Time to Hyperventilate!

Maz was right. This will be a great way for her to whip up some authentic content for the campaign.

At least this new development temporarily redirects Maz's attention away from Rey's wrists. Which also gives Rey an opportunity to study the patches of pink skin that have emerged there.

Truth be told, she doesn't get to study them often. Most days, she prefers to forget their existence altogether—and they make it fairly easy, vague and indistinct as they are. Another strike on her personal docket of Omega-related deficiencies. Their presence is usually a bright-red gland-shaped flag that she's about to head into a very long, very lonely week with the box of emergency toys beneath her bed. (Thanks to Skywalker's heat control pills, at least, she can remove the grim prospect of completely losing her mind from this list of pre-heat certainties. Even if she still comes pretty damn close.)

Today, though, they don't fill her with the familiar dread that typically accompanies their appearance. It's odd to see them in this context. Soft, instead of throbbing and swollen. She's a little stunned they've decided to reveal themselves at all.

At the pedestal, Kaydel twirls the swab in a vial of solution while Maz photographs the sample collection from several angles. When they've apparently compiled enough visual documentation of this highly mystical procedure, Kaydel caps the vial and places it in the center of the pedestal.

It hovers there for a moment—the shutter snaps furiously as Maz deftly captures the little vial pirouetting in the air—before a perfect vial-sized slot opens in the pedestal's surface and snatches it from sight.

The room's walls melt into the pale yellow of the morning sun.

"Thank you, Omega," the voice says. "Your sample is processing. One hour remaining."

Fresh horror washes over her. "An hour—?!" Do they really expect her to sit here for an entire sixty minutes, just to learn that Rey's wasted all their time and there's no one in their database for her?

"Incredible, right?" Kaydel beams at her like she's said something flattering. "It used to be a full day. Skywalker technology at its finest." She produces a sleek bracelet, a glowing strip illuminating the underbelly. Rey tries not to squirm as Kaydel positions it over her gland. "Typically, we take this time to go over a member's pleasure profile. Between you and me, it's really just for show—once we identify your Alpha's scent, your biometric readings give us far more information regarding your preferences than a survey will." She snaps the cuff around Rey's wrist into place. "Still, we've found it's a good way to acclimate new members to some of the more taboo concepts they'll be encountering here, not to mention a way to fill the time while the system is—"

The walls suddenly glow deep green.

"Match identified," the voice announces.

Kaydel's explanation cuts off mid-stream. With wide eyes, she wheels around to look at the hologram, then at Maz.

"My apologies, Miss Niima," Kaydel says, in a nervous rush. "This is a new location, so we're still ironing out some of the kinks, so to speak. Glitches like this are to be expected. Please give us a moment to investigate."

Rey thinks she might throw up. Of course it's glitching. Their fancy algorithm has probably never encountered an Omega so incompatible with every one of Primal's half-a-million-and-growing members. It probably came back empty on its first preliminary sweep.

Nope, she abruptly decides. She can't do this. Rey moves to stand, prepared to beg them if she has to—she's not above begging, when it comes to the preservation of her pride, and she's not sure her pride can tolerate the humiliation of a second rejection—

—when a new, larger slot slides open atop the pedestal.

A delicate shimmer of ascending piano arpeggios ripples across the room, scattering the green light into a glittering sea of rainbow.

"Congratulations, Omega." Even the voice has a hint of that post-Kool-Aid smile. "Get ready to meet your Alpha."

A velvet case the size and shape of a ring-box emerges through the slot. As though tugged by an invisible string, it keeps on rising, up, up, up above the pedestal—until it stops at eye-level, hovering directly in front of Rey.

All three women stare at the box. Even Maz lowers the camera, revealing an expression of surprise.

Kaydel blinks rapidly. "Well… That's a new record, isn't it?"

"It certainly is." Recovering, Maz lifts the camera to her face again. "Go on, Miss Niima. Have a look inside."

Rey's heart trips over itself in her chest. She supposes there's no avoiding it now.

With a deep breath, she reaches forward and plucks the case from the air.

She half-expects it to be empty. The little container is so lightweight, she wonders if it will be as hollow as she is. Perhaps that's why the processing went so quickly. Meet your Alpha, they tell her, cruelly—just so that she'll open the lid to find no one.

With jittery fingers, Rey flips the latch.

The box isn't empty.

Inside, a small white cloth is folded in a flawless diamond. Its corners are crisp and precise. Whoever arranged them clearly took considerable care to ensure that every angle was perfectly creased.

But that's not the part that demands all her attention.

The cloth has a scent. A visceral scent. It hooks deep into her consciousness, carving new, electric space within her. A single, shallow breath, and she's riveted to her seat. Utterly incapable of breaking away.

The pull is gravitational in its intensity. Every parched particle of her emptiness seems to stir, a heap of formless iron dust that lifts in the presence of a magnet. She can feel each line of their quivering edges, all the places where they brush up against one another as they hover, making space. Drawn toward the little box cupped in her palm.

"There are always other options." The nervous sound of Kaydel's voice seems to arrive from behind a wall of heavy glass. "If this partner isn't to your liking—usually, the system suggests at least a few—"

Rey doesn't hear her. Her fingers creep into the box, learning the crisp edges of the cloth. He touched this. Whoever he is—and it is a he, this man who throbs with masculine authority, this Alpha who defies existence. He pinched its edges, stroked its soft, silky interior. He poured his scent (that f*cking scent) into the fabric, drenched each fiber so that there'd be no doubt in his Omega, when she found it.

When she found him.

Her Alpha.

"Pairing analysis complete for Alpha Option 1. Compatibility score: One hundred percent."

The announcement jolts her as if from a trance. She realizes, with no small horror, that her face has somehow made its way into her hands. The right one cups the precious cloth against her nostrils, her mouth; the left molds against the back of the right, so that it might press the fabric more firmly against her rooting, nuzzling nose.

Rey drops the little cloth as if it's transformed into yet another fuse-lit grenade, still fresh with Solo's sulfurous fingerprints.

"A perfect pairing." Kaydel stares at her with an expression of awe. "I don't think that's ever happened before."

Rey's fingers twitch, inching toward the cloth on her lap. She wrestles them into a fist. "I'm sure you say that to all your Omegas."

"We don't," says Maz, very seriously. "Pairings in the ninetieth percentile are known around here as Unicorn Matches."

Of course she would say that. Maz Kanata is the communications director. A corporate-grade salesperson, just like her.

"Would you like to proceed with this partner?" Kaydel asks, tapping at the console screen.

Rey still feels like she's climbing out of a dream. "Partner?"

"Yes, Miss Niima. Your match. I take it this is the one you'd like to request a session with?"

In her lap, the Alpha whispers his compelling call. A burning fuse. A threshold.

"Did we get all the photos we need?" Rey asks, unsteadily.

With a frown, Kaydel looks up from the console. "Well, yes—"

"Then we're done with this part of the tour, right?"

Maz lowers Rey's camera. A crease of confusion forms on her forehead. "Is something wrong? Did you want to try another match?"

"Of course not." The denial bursts out of her in a rush—but not for the reason it might have a few minutes ago. It's just that… now that she's found this Alpha (her Alpha, something whispers, deep inside)—the idea of sniffing some other member's cloth fills her with stomach-curdling revulsion. Like they've asked her to inhale a wad of used toilet paper. "I just—I'm not a member of Primal. I couldn't take advantage of your generosity that way."

She couldn't take advantage of this Alpha's time that way, either.

No matter how magical Maz Kanata claims this place is, there is no universe—marshmallow or otherwise—in which an Alpha who smells like that would do anything but devastate her.

Even if he wanted to meet her. Even if (and it sounds so unlikely, even in her own head) he found something in her scent half as enticing as his own.

Rey thinks of the empty, unmade bed waiting in her apartment. She thinks of her evenings, blurring together in their loneliness, bookended by her nightly hate-scroll through images of the client that makes her days a living hell.

And then, before sleep, the procession of faces staring down from her bedroom ceiling. Looking past her.

The only thing more frightening than this Alpha's rejection, she thinks, is the prospect of letting him look inside. He would take everything. There would be nothing left, when this man leaves her.

"No need to worry about that." Kaydel smiles. "Your Alpha is VIP. Very VIP. His membership fee includes admission for his partners as well."

His partners. These two little words whip her thoughts into a brand new storm of uncertainty. How many partners has he had here, anyway? What are their compatibility scores? She wonders if the entire database matches with him on some level. How could anyone resist him, this Alpha who smells like a deity? What person could breathe in his scent and remain indifferent?

Her body buzzes with these questions, desperate for her voice. It takes all her restraint to contain them.

It takes even more effort to lift the cloth from her lap and place it back in its velvet box. Safely out of sight.

"This just isn't a good time for me right now." Rey keeps her tone deliberately bright as she rises to her feet. With supreme self-control, she leaves the box sitting atop her seat. Behind her. "I appreciate the perspective this has given me on the pairing experience—and what an experience! But—well—the thing is, you see, I'm about to do a lot of traveling myself."

"Traveling?" Maz repeats, lifting a single eyebrow.

Kaydel's jaw is slack with confusion. "Are you sure? We can always set up a meet and greet, upon your return."

"No idea when that will be, unfortunately." Rey speaks very quickly as she unlatches the cuff on her wrist. "I'll be gone for quite a while. Though—not before we get this campaign off the ground!" Mustering her best customer service voice, she claps her hands together. "What do you say? Let's move on to the rest of the tour, shall we?"

It's the right decision. She knows it is. Her choice was already made before she even set foot in this building today; no amount of marshmallow rooms, Kool-Aid juice or achingly delicious Alpha-scent will change that.

She just never imagined it would be so difficult to say no.

For the remainder of her visit, Rey puts all her effort into channeling the soothing Omega-bliss that Kaydel projected so effortlessly before.

From the looks on both their faces, she is, as always, unsuccessful.

Rey is sitting at her kitchen table when she gets the notification.

It's nearly midnight. She's only eaten half a slice of leftover pizza and a NutriCycle bar since her morning waffle. By the time she arrived back at her apartment in the far upper heights of the city, the sun had already set, the street-lamps stamped slanted shadows across the shag rug in her living room, and the slice of river visible from her window was already inky black and bleeding stars into the night sky above.

Editing the shelter photos has taken up most of her evening. Longer than she anticipated—though this is, she thinks, mostly because she keeps sneaking little peeks at the velvet box on her table.

Just to make sure it's still there.

Kaydel sent her home with the thing. In fact, she refused to let Rey leave without it—not that Rey put up much of a fight. It's just a box, she reasons. What harm could a faceless, nameless box do? The scent will fade within a few days time, Kaydel explained—the sample is single-use—but this way, Rey can still have it ready nearby. Just in case she changes her mind.

Rey won't change her mind.

That doesn't mean she won't be swapping tonight's regularly scheduled Solo hate-scroll for some time alone with her Alpha's scent instead.

Fortunately, she is on her last task of the evening—and very much looking forward to testing out this new change in her routine.

Spread across her kitchen table are six identical copies of what she's come to consider her Solo two-for-one special: a thank-you-and-apology combination template that she has used on at least two other occasions, in addition to this one, in her ten-odd weeks as his consultant.

The dated pendant lamp hanging from her kitchen ceiling throws yellow light across the paper. Rolling her bottom lip between her teeth, Rey addresses the letter to Tabitha the Food Palace shopper. Then, for the third time that evening, she begins to copy Benjamin Solo's signature.

It helps to keep the paper slightly askance, she's found. Makes it easier to nail the intricate, self-indulgent embellishments that Rey is wholly convinced are an overcompensation for other parts of this man's anatomy.

She's finally made it to the final unnecessary loop of the S when her phone vibrates, dancing across the tabletop.

Her pen slips. She curses. With a scowl, Rey reaches over to silence it—before her eyes catch on the message lighting up her screen.

The pen rolls right out of her hand.

Primal Session Request
From Partner: Alpha Option 1 (Match Score: 100%)
When: Tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct. 24, 8 p.m.
Reply to this message with YES or NO to confirm.

Chapter 3: The 29th Floor

Chapter Text

From: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>
To: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>

Happy Tuesday, and welcome to this week's edition of Ben Solo's Top 10 Unforgettable Media Mentions!

First things first—please accept my congratulations. For the eighth consecutive week, your most recent round of unscripted sound bites regarding the Q3 lay-offs made it to all 4 major cable news networks! 🎉

Even more impressive was the number of far-reaching operational decisions you were able to cram into the last seven days, even with an apparently double-booked calendar. Your commitment to ruthless efficiency is truly beyond reproach.

You may also notice today's installment includes an exciting new addition: gifs! I've hand-picked these myself to accompany each press clipping. They should provide instant visual feedback regarding the level of public outrage in response to each of your latest and greatest contributions to the news cycle.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Rey Niima

From: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Miss Niima,

Do it again. Correctly, this time.

No commentary, no images.

9:30.

Ben Solo

From: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>
To: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>

Mr. Solo,

Here is a brand new version of this week's media round-up, as requested. You'll be pleased to find it as raw and unfiltered as your recent DIY press statements.

Though I would urge you to reconsider your position on gifs. As a man of renowned frugality, you'll discover they are an extremely effective stand-in for your unmatched skill in letting animated bursts of action cut out the need for pesky words.

Best,
Rey Niima

From: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Miss Niima,

Your job is to follow my directions. Not question my communication style.

And even if it was, your technique is fundamentally flawed.

Your choice of images fails to communicate any meaningful degree of comparison when they only contain depictions of various waste receptacles on fire.

Ben Solo

From: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>
To: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>

Mr. Solo,

As a career connoisseur on this subject, you should know better than anyone—not all trash fires are created equal!

Three of those gifs contain measly wastebaskets, four contain dumpsters of varying sizes, while the prize winner for this week's media mentions countdown (see number 10: "Ben Solo should be tried for crimes against humanity for the corporate massacre of his employees' livelihoods," Oct. 22, DNN) features drone footage of a flaming landfill.

(I ripped that last gif myself from a YouTube video—I hope you appreciate R2's enthusiasm for keeping you up-to-date with the immediate pulse of your public disapproval rating.)

Best,
Rey Niima

From: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Miss Niima,

No need for YouTube. Keep wasting my time, and the heat of the fire I put under your seat will be live, blistering, and inescapably direct.

Ben Solo

From: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>
To: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>

Mr. Solo,

A direct heat source? In this frigid basem*nt you've assigned me? How uncharacteristically thoughtful! I'll finally be able to feel my toes again.

Rey Niima

From: Ben Solo <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Chilly toes are about to become the least of your problems.

Do your job. The way I expect it. Or I'll make sure the next fire gif involves your resume.

Ben Solo

Two levels beneath Skywalker Biotech's ground floor, Rey sits over her laptop at an empty conference table, grinding her teeth.

This is just one of at least a dozen emails she's sent her corporate overlord in the last week. And it's the only one so far he's deigned to give a response.

Over the past two months, Rey has been experimenting with increasingly predatory email-marketing tactics in the hopes of increasing this man's abysmal open rate. Clever subject lines. Urgent subject lines. Ethically questionable subject lines about long-lost royal relatives who share Solo's obsession with grotesque wealth. Bullet point lists. Bold formatting for the important words and phrases in the bullet point lists. Copious use of asterisks. Even more copious use of the text-fill color-swatch icon, set to heat-gland red.

At least the gifs were successful in one thing. They were able to finally capture his attention.

Rey tugs her wool cardigan more tightly around her shoulders. It's freezing down here. Which makes Sub-Level 2 a perfect home for Skywalker's internal servers, its genetic sequencing lab, and its corporate archives—but less so for public relations consultants in desperate need of easy access to the departments operating several floors above her head.

Case in point: An email has just arrived from legal, finally sharing their feedback regarding Rey's copy for the shelter campaign. She's sent daily reminders to her contact there for the past week, reiterating the urgency as her deadline (which has been further accelerated by Solo's first four rejections) rapidly approaches.

Their answer?

They need final approval from Benjamin Dead-On-Arrival Solo.

With an aggressive click, Rey forwards Solo the email chain with legal, even though he's already copied on the thread. Then forwards it to Mitaka, even though he's already copied on the thread. Then forwards it to both of them, with a note: "Need an answer to this by tomorrow, latest!!"

The email departs for the 29th floor with a satisfying swish. But Rey is all too aware of the inexorable weight of gravity, poised to claw it back down again.

As usual, Rey will need to roll this boulder uphill herself.

Shutting her laptop, she snatches up her paper bag from Poe's and navigates through the weaving, narrow path between storage bins toward the door.

As Rey understands it, this place was once a proper conference room, mostly inhabited by the subterranean staff in the Corporate Archives department. Of course, within a week of the takeover, this department was an instant candidate for Solo's lengthy list of "non-revenue-producing inefficiencies" and unceremoniously dismembered shortly thereafter. The entire team now consists of a single part-time employee, who lacks both the co-workers and the permitted hours to require a conference room for a meeting.

In the twelve months since, Sub-Level 2 Conference Room B has atrophied into a graveyard of Skywalker memorabilia, promotional materials for abandoned services, and dusty storage bins filled with new employee welcome handbooks that instantly lost their relevance right after Solo's hiring freeze.

For two of those months, it's also become the assigned workspace for Rey.

As much as she enjoys her rambling one-sided conversations with the many dusty portraits of former-CEO Luke Skywalker that share her windowless dungeon, Rey often wishes Lord Lucifer would consider providing her a desk with better temperature control. Or a coffee machine. Or a window that doesn't require an elevator to inform her of the sun's position in the sky. When she's feeling generous, she likes to imagine his choice in location is actually a compliment; after all, Sub-Level 2 is the deepest point at which Skywalker's office complex plunges into the earth, and out of all 29 floors in this building, it likely bears the closest resemblance to Solo's native habitat in the fiery depths much further below.

Most of the time, though, she seethes with irritation over his far more likely objective: to sequester her as far away from his own top-floor office suite as humanly possible.

Unfortunately for Ben Solo, Rey is not someone who lets a 29-floor elevator ride stop her from getting what she wants.

The journey takes about ten minutes—half of which are spent switching to a second, special elevator that provides the only lift access to Skywalker's executive suites, free of any peasants. Typically, Rey uses the latter half of this vertical commute as an opportunity to practice looking confident, firm and unflappable in the mirrored wall, on the off-chance that Mr. Egomaniac actually agrees to meet with her that day.

Today, though, her reflection informs her that her hand has once again snuck into the left pocket of her cardigan.

The resulting eruption of butterflies in her stomach obliterates any hope she might have for practicing Solo-proof power poses in the elevator mirror.

When she left for work that morning, Rey had every intention of leaving the little box on her nightstand. The same way she intended to leave it in the kitchen as she slept—rather than nestled on the pillow beside her cheek, where the Alpha within might spend the night accompanying her in a series of hazy, rapturous dreams.

As it turns out, however, Rey has very little self-control when confronted with an Alpha-scent that actually does something for her.

And oh, what this Alpha's scent does for her.

In the privacy of her bed that night, Rey spent several radiant, glistening hours becoming intimately acquainted with all the sensations a single Alpha's scent can provoke.

There were the ones, of course, that she expected—ones that leapt like liquid flame along all her nerves, that plucked its hot electric pulse in every place this Alpha would fill her (god, how he would fill her). Starting with her lungs, where he already staked his claim on that very first shivery breath, a tentative invitation—to the secret, aching places touched only by fantasy. He demanded it all. With slow, unyielding adamance, this Alpha's scent kissed her throat, her wrists, her open thighs before the night was through. Each inhaled breath taught her the murmur of invisible lips; and as the night progressed, their wicked promise cast her body into something combustible.

In the smallest hours of the morning, Rey learned how an Alpha could stretch her muscles taut across a bed, could curl each one of her toes so that they gripped her sheets, her body sparking, flaring, incinerating—with just his scent alone. Whole oceans of sensation, from just this tiny piece of him.

These, at least, she expected. Sure, nothing could have prepared her for the intensity with which they would consume her—but Rey always knew, on some academic level, all the ways an Alpha should make her feel. She certainly knew the ways they didn't. Never like this. Never like him.

Yet the true revelation came in the sacred hush that followed. A foreign stillness descended in the aftermath—when she lay panting in her ruined sheets, her bones untethered, exposed, fragile—and, for once, completely unafraid. With this Alpha's air in her lungs, Rey experienced a serenity unlike any she had ever known. A blanket of pristine calm settled over her. The sedative of his presence infused every vulnerable crevice, quieting each one's insistent throb. Stroking them—soothing them—until their edges no longer felt so shameful.

Rey's explorations may have only left her with a few hours to sleep; but with this Alpha on her pillow, they were among the most blissful, restorative hours of rest in her life.

So that's how she ended up returning to her bedroom just before work this morning—wrapped in an extra-warm cardigan, since it's one of the three soul-sucking weekdays she wastes on-site at Skywalker—and fluttering with nerves.

Yes, she intended to leave the box on her nightstand. But what was the harm, really, in bringing her Alpha with her to work? A precious little secret in her pocket, shared only with this man she's never met, but who her body seems to know like he's been carved straight from its aching core. Why not indulge this fleeting gift while she still has it? After all, the sample will only hold for so long—especially (her cheeks warm) after a few more nights like the last one—and Rey will never have another opportunity to know an Alpha like this again.

Since she'll never meet him.

She absolutely, positively cannot meet him.

Against her thigh, her phone sears through her pocket with the presence of that unanswered text. His question simmers at the top of her message list, burning as hot and untouchable as a lit stove.

Deep down, she's already settled on her response. Even if she cannot yet bring herself to send it.

Rey is no idiot. She knows how disappointing it will be, when the fading scent of him finally departs this piece of secret cloth. But the disappointment will be abstract. Impersonal. Like learning her favorite NutriCycle shake sample flavor didn't make it through last month's tasting trials.

A real-life, face-to-face encounter with this Alpha, she knows, would be anything but impersonal.

Besides, Rey doesn't need to meet him in order to reap the benefits of his scent. There are still so many layers for her to savor, both during future midnight explorations—and here, ascending to the 29th floor, preparing to confront an Alpha who is his opposite in every way.

In the corner of the elevator, Rey withdraws the velvet case from her cardigan. A lung-deep, eyelash-fluttering breath against its seam (his lips, his breath, his whispered kiss)—and the euphoria of his essence rolls over her anew. He is a fount of liquid safety, pouring light over her most resilient corners. Nothing can hurt her, with her Alpha singing in her veins. Not fear, not anxiety. Certainly not Ben Solo.

Here, his scent whispers. This is where I'll stay. This is where you'll find me. You don't need to do this alone anymore.

By the time the lift glides to a stop, Rey has replaced the box in her pocket. Her reflection glows back at her: spine straight, chin lifted, ready.

The doors have hardly cracked to a sliver when a large figure in a lab coat charges inside, nearly crashing straight into her.

"M-my apologies." The newcomer wedges himself into the far corner of the lift. With a jolt of disbelief, Rey realizes this cowering, terror-stricken man is Dr. Ackbar, the Nobel-prize-winning scientist who leads Skywalker's innovation and research division.

Down the hall, a door slams so loudly that the elevator trembles in its frame.

Typically, this sort of executive-office-welcome would fill Rey with enough dread to keep her heels glued to the elevator floor.

But that was before she knew the scent of her Alpha.

Rey offers Ackbar a tight-lipped look of sympathy before she steps outside.

The energy in the executive suite this morning is incendiary. A hissing gas leak, begging for a spark. As she crosses the spartan waiting area, Rey decides she's actually quite grateful for her Highness's decision to dump her in his dungeon. No matter how cold, solitary and sunless Sub-Level 2's second conference room can be, it's vastly preferable to sitting in Dopheld Mitaka's seat each day.

Behind the semi-circular reception desk, Mitaka pecks at his keyboard with frantic precision, as if his keystrokes might diffuse the thick cloud of tension rolling down the hallway at his back.

"If it isn't my favorite ferryman!"

At the sound of Rey's cheerful greeting, the poor man nearly falls out of his chair. Recovering quickly, his frantic gaze finds her and then settles into a look of weary resignation.

"Hello, Rey."

Leaning her elbows on the high glass counter, Rey pastes on her most charming smile. "How's the river of woe this morning?"

Mitaka glances furtively over his shoulder, as if the mere mention of their infernal majesty might summon his presence. Rey feels a prickle of envy; if only it were so simple.

"Molten." Mitaka's voice is hushed. "On the verge of eruption, to be precise. Seriously, Rey. Now is not a good time for this."

Still leaning against the counter, Rey props her chin on a fist, the picture of innocence. "For what?"

"For whatever it is you think you're going to get out of him. Today is not the day."

"Is it ever a good day to wrestle with the devil?"

"This is different. We're on the brink of a Pompeii event in here. Didn't you see his emails this morning?"

"Oh, you mean the ones where he threatened to light my chair on fire?"

"You're the one that started talking about fire!"

"Not sure how well that equivalency will hold up in a court of law." Rey treats him to a smug grin. "But it got him to read the media briefing, didn't it?"

Mitaka throws another anxious glance over his shoulder. "Yeah, well, find another tactic next time. For my sake. The emergency escape route is 29 flights of stairs up here. I'd never make it down."

"How's this for a tactic?" Rey lifts her paper bag up in the air and gives it a little shake. "Coins for the ferry?"

For one bright moment, Mitaka looks like he's trying to suppress a smile. Then the light vanishes from his eyes. "No thanks."

"What?" Rey's hopeful grin drops into a pout. "But I got extra cream today."

"Mr. Solo says no more food at the desk."

"No more food?" Outrage flares in her chest. "How does he expect you to sustain yourself without food? I know he mostly subsists on the blood of small children, but—"

"He didn't say all food," Mitaka interrupts quickly, cringing at her volume. "Just food from you. I believe he used the phrase bribery pastries, if we're being specific. So thanks for that."

sh*t. Rey scowls at the bag in her hand. So that's what she gets for furnishing Mr. Egomaniac with helpful facts about his own employees. "Does it still count if you don't eat it at your desk?"

Mitaka's mouth thins. "Rey..."

"I won't tell if you won't."

"It's not going to happen, Rey. Seriously. Not today."

"But there's coconut filling! With extra cream! And," she adds, when he opens his mouth to argue, "I really really need his approval on that legal clearance. It's for the shelter interview. You know." A pointed look. "The one you swore he would be there for?"

Guilt flickers across Mitaka's expression. He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Rey, I'm sorry about the interview. Really, I am. But you have no idea what he's been like today. Trust me. I'm doing you a favor."

Fine. Solo wants to play like that?

Well, she can play dirty, too.

Rey takes her time opening the paper bag, letting it crinkle. "Mmm..." She makes a great show of peeking into the shadowy contents within. "Poe made these fresh this morning, you know." A deep lungful of breath at the lip of the bag. "Chocolate and coconut. Like heaven, huh? Is there a better combination? I bet they're so soft and creamy..."

"God damnit, Rey." Mitaka seizes the phone from the desk and nearly jams the intercom with his pointer finger. His glare never leaves her the entire time.

Rey smiles sweetly back at him.

"Hello, Mr. Solo." His voice becomes suddenly light, as though delicately placing each of his words in a field crowded with land mines. "So sorry to disturb you. Would you happen to have a moment for Miss Niima?" Mitaka flinches. "Yes, that's correct, sir. The consultant." Rey seethes silently at this indignity while Mitaka listens for a long moment. "Ah, well, that won't be necessary, sir. I've already seen the schedule. In fact, I'm the one who left it on your—all right, all right! Christ, I'm doing it!" Frantic rapid-fire clicking of his mouse. "Okay. I have it open." A flash of irritation. "Yes, sir. In kindergarten. Don't you think this job would be pretty difficult if I never learned how to—ah. Right. No, sir. I don't see her name, though, as a reminder, I am the one who creates this every—of course, sir, I—please, I am well aware she's not on the list this morning, but as I tried to tell you yesterday—"

Cringing, Mitaka separates the phone several inches from his ear as the muffled sounds of indistinct, furious shouting drift from down the hall, an echo to the bursts of distortion on the phone.

He waits several moments after it's ended before leaning toward the receiver again—slowly, as though handling a live viper. "Mr. Solo...?" A beat of silence passes before Mitaka's entire body sags. With an enormous sigh, he drops the phone back in its cradle.

"I hope you're happy." Mitaka snatches the paper bag off the counter with a scowl. "Now I'm supposed to take away your executive elevator access."

"What–?!"

"I tried to tell you."

"Can he even do that?"

Mitaka has already ripped an entire rabid bite out of his eclair. "He owns the company, Rey. He can do whatever the hell he wants."

Rey fumes the entire ride down to the lobby. Then even more on the peasant-lift to the basem*nt. By the time she storms into Conference Room B, she's feeling downright feral.

Furiously, she rips off her cardigan. Her blood runs so hot that not even the arctic chill of Sub-Level 2 can cool her wrath.

"Bribery pastries," she spits, as she slaps on the flickering overhead lights. "As if a coconut eclair could unclench that man's death grip on his calendar."

Her cardigan hits the chair with an unexpected thunk.

All at once, her anger vanishes.

That. That's exactly what she needs right now.

Rey is prying the tiny velvet box from its pocket before she fully realizes what she's doing. She wonders, distantly, if this is what it feels like to become addicted to something: the urgent, unquenchable thirst; the manic determination to temper it, despite the very real risks to her health and safety.

In the same way, her caution disintegrates the moment she unlatches the lid.

Tenderly, Rey lifts the cloth from the box. The fabric is still folded in its diamond—though showing signs of wrinkling from her enthusiastic attentions the evening before.

A single breath is all it takes for the tension to drain completely from her body.

Alpha.

With a blissful sigh, Rey drops into her chair. She nuzzles her face into the soft little cloth, basking in the instant flood of calm that melts over her.

God. Who knew Alphas could be good for something other than driving her to the brink of insanity?

From that freshly ignited corner of her soul, a new voice wonders what other places this Alpha might be able to drive her to instead.

"Don't give me that look." Eyes snapping open, Rey glares at a particularly disapproving likeness of Luke Skywalker, which looms from its precarious position on a chipped side table. "You're the one who gave the tyrant the keys to the kingdom, remember? If you were still in charge, I wouldn't need to resort to huffing Alphas to keep my sanity."

Luke Skywalker's stern expression suggests he's not convinced.

Truthfully, Rey's not so sure if she is, either.

The knowledge of this Alpha's existence is beginning to feel far more significant than her daily Sisyphean battles with the 29th floor.

If a mere taste of his scent is enough to wash away the acidic bile Solo always leaves on her tongue—then what other transformative powers might this man's physical presence have in store for her?

Rey leans back in the chair, eyes fluttering shut. Perhaps she's overestimating the danger here. It would just be one night, after all. In the back of her mind, she can hear Kaydel Connix's reassurance, guiding Rey toward that shining pedestal.

You don't need to find your mate. Just someone we can guarantee you'll have a little fun with.

When was the last time Rey could guarantee anything, apart from the consistency of Lord Lucifer's contempt?

Maybe Rose is right. Doesn't she deserve to blow off some steam after everything that man has put her through over the past two months? God knows he's filled her with enough steam to require a valve fit for a pressure cooker.

She can just keep things to a single night, can't she? Rey is capable of being strict with herself, when she needs to be. And she would need to be, when it comes to this. A single night, so there will be no fear of him leaving.

Heart fluttering, she reaches for her phone.

Just one night with this Alpha, she thinks. And then Ben Solo may very well never get under her skin again.

Chapter 4: Alpha Time

Chapter Text

"I was starting to think you stood me up."

Rose waits outside Poe's with her arms crossed, planted at the edge of the pedestrian evening rush.

"As if," Rey says, breathless from her pace. "More like Lord Lucifer stood between me and the exit." She's already slid her bag off her shoulder by the time she reaches the bakery. Behind the glass storefront, a toasty tableau of yeasty temptations attempts to entice her from the October chill.

But Rey has no time for that tonight.

"His Majesty," she continues, digging through her bag, "decided to wait until a quarter to five to have Mitaka inform me that he suddenly needs a new media audit and response plan. By tomorrow."

Rose's eyebrows climb up her forehead. "What, did he finally Google himself?"

Rey snorts. "The plan's not for him. It's for R&D." Extracting her camera from her bag, she begins to dismantle the telephoto lens they share. "He's demanding a retraction strategy for every quote the innovation team has given to a media outlet over the past five years. Every. Single. One." She punctuates each word with an aggressive twist of the lens, retracting the zoom as violently as Benjamin Control-Freak Solo wants to retract any remaining shred of goodwill between Skywalker and its press contacts. "I swear to god, if that man cared half as much about his own reputation as he does about the trials for those stupid pills—"

"Hang on just a minute." Rose peers directly into her face. Her gaze narrows. "Rey Niima. Is that mascara?"

The rest of Rey's rant unravels mid-word, replaced by a rush of jittery warmth. "Could be soot," she says, ducking her head. "Solo did threaten to torch my desk today, you know."

"So an ordinary Tuesday, then." Her friend's suspicious gaze remains locked upon her as Rey engages in an exaggerated performance of checking the lens for debris. "That is—if we ignore the fact that you're wearing makeup." An accusing stab of her finger. "Don't think you can lens-wipe your way out of this one, Niima. Who are you all gussied up for?"

Rey replaces the cap and thrusts the lens toward her with a glare. "Can't a girl slap on a little war paint when she's spending her day in the trenches?"

"Of course she can. On your face, though, that isn't war paint." Rose snatches the lens from her hand. "That's f*ck-me paint."

The heat surges back, twice as intense. Blindly, Rey marches toward the intersection.

"Oh my god. It is f*ck-me paint!" Rose says, right at her heels.

"It's absolutely not f*ck-me paint."

"Like hell it's not. You're blushing."

"Hazard of the job, Tico—when you work surrounded by hellfire—"

"Oh, cut the sh*t, Rey. This has nothing to do with Lord Lucifer, and you know it."

The intersection, of course, immediately throws up a glaring red palm in the exact direction Rey is heading. She halts. "Fine." How much should she share? She tips her hot face toward the twilight, contemplating. "I might have... a date."

Rose squeals. "With who–?!"

"Not with Solo," Rey says firmly. "That's all you're getting."

"Of course it's not with Solo." Rose gives her a look of bewilderment. "Why would you even assume I'd think that?"

With an abrupt pivot, Rey begins crossing the opposite intersection instead, even though she's not technically headed that way. If only to hide from Rose the effects of any other unpredictable surges of heat upon her face.

"Well, let me walk you there, at least!" Rose says, chasing her through the crosswalk. "I'm heading downtown too. Hux made a reservation at that new fragrance bar in the village."

"Another one?" The light finally turns as she reaches the curb, and they begin heading in the proper direction. "Why assault your nostrils like that?" Rey can't think of a less enjoyable way to spend her evening than polluting her sinuses with a stinky smorgasbord of strange, intrusive smells.

Up until quite recently, she never understood the appeal in deliberately inhaling another person's scent at all.

Beneath her jacket, the magnetic tug of the box in her sweater pocket electrifies the tips of her fingers. The rest of her nerve endings follow suit, at this small reminder of all the other new appealing things she might discover tonight.

All the new appealing things she might discover about him.

By mutual instinct, they both swing wide to avoid a pair of suited Alphas, locked in heated debate beside a street cart. "Scent bars are like flavor enhancers," Rose explains. "Think of it like an aperitif. Gets your palette ready for the main course."

Her brow furrows. Are fragrance bars just one of those things an Alpha and Omega do together when they're in a relationship? She's never considered it before. Questions like this one have always been off-limits; she sidesteps them as reflexively as she out-maneuvers chest-thumping Alphas on a city sidewalk.

Rey curls her tingling fingers into a willful fist. Still off limits, she reminds herself. Since she has no intention of getting into any relationships with anyone at all, anytime soon. Anytime ever.

"Speaking of which..." Rose cranes forward to direct another grin at her. "What's on Rey Niima's menu tonight?"

Rey picks up her pace to match the new gallop in her pulse. "Oh, just a five-course meal of none of your business."

"Five courses, huh? He sounds like quite a mouthful."

"Enough to choke on, if you keep prying."

"Aw, come on. Give me a flavor, at least." They arrive, unfortunately, at yet another red-palmed intersection; Rose takes this opportunity to spin around, so that she can continue her interrogation head-on. "Is he sweet? Spicy? He's got to be at least a little spicy, for you to bust out the war paint."

With great effort, Rey attempts to prevent the memory of her Alpha's flavor from awakening a fresh swarm of butterflies in her stomach.

She is unsuccessful.

Rey's eyes drift night-skyward as she considers her friend's question. "Spicy," she decides at last. "The way smoke can be spicy. Like... something caramelizing over a flame. And... and wood, maybe—you know, that rich, layered smell it gets when it's seasoned—"

"Oh my god." Rose's jaw drops. "You're going on a date with an Alpha."

"An Alpha?" To Rey's irritation, her voice leaps toward the tremulous octave it occupies whenever Mr. Egomaniac actually answers one of her calls. "What gave you that idea?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's that dreamy smile on your face? The one usually reserved for imaginative discussions about wringing Lord Lucifer's neck?"

sh*t. Rey wrestles her disobedient expression in the opposite direction, until she's certain it feels like a frown. This has got to be a direct result of her recent exposure to Primal's goddamn Alpha Kool-Aid. It's been at least 36 hours by now—how long can the stuff possibly take to wear off?

"It's nothing serious," Rey blurts out. "We're keeping things casual."

For some reason, this makes Rose dissolve into a peal of snickers. "Sorry, sorry, I just—god, I forget how new you are at this. Listen. Sweetie. Alphas don't do casual when it comes to dating Omegas."

"Well then, I suppose it's not a date," Rey snaps, face burning as hot as a furnace. "Not technically, anyway."

"Don't give me that. Not a date? So, you're meeting a mysterious new Alpha in the village wearing f*ck-me lashes for—what, exactly? A platonic stroll through the park? Some late-night friendship bracelet knotting? Unless... by not a date, you mean..." Abruptly, Rose stops talking. Her eyes widen. The dawn of realization across her face is as slow as it is horrifying. "Holy sh*t," she says. "Isn't Primal's new location in the village?"

Rey decides not to stick around for part two of this epiphany. She has already jay-walked half the street before her friend manages to catch up to her.

"I can't believe it," Rose says, nearly breathless with her excitement. "You actually did the pairing session!"

"Yes, Detective Tico. You've caught me. I did it for the photo shoot."

"Oh, yeah? And are the f*ck-me lashes for the photo shoot, too?"

"Would you please stop calling them that? I already told you—they're my anti-Egomaniac artillery system."

"Are you seriously still talking to me about Ben Solo when you're on your way to meet your Alpha?"

Your Alpha. Anticipation twists her insides into a tangled snarl. She whirls around to face her friend. "We're not exchanging mating vows, Rose. It's just a one-time thing, all right? Casual."

"Okay. Jeez. Casual." Rose beams at her. "I hope he casually helps you burn through every single one of those slick-guards."

God. She'd better be getting all her blushing out of the way during this conversation right now. How is she going to survive the evening when the mere thought of this Alpha's attentions unleashes red-hot flame across all her skin? Her fingers adjust her jacket, seeking a breath of crisp evening air beneath the heavy fabric. What if her Alpha thinks she's too desperate? Desperation isn't an attractive quality on anyone, least of all her. Will he find it unattractive, how much she already yearns for him?

"Hey." Rose grasps her by the shoulders, gazing straight into her face again. "This is a big leap for you, all right? It's perfectly normal to be nervous."

"Nervous?" A scoff. "What's there to be nervous about? I'm just... handing my body over to a complete stranger for a few hours. Nothing nerve-wracking about that at all."

Rey accompanies this declaration with a fresh attempt at the firm, confident, hard-faced expression she typically rehearses on her upward ascent to the 29th circle of hell. Judging from Rose's eye-roll, however, this morning's disruption to Rey's regularly scheduled practice time has clearly diluted its effects.

"Rey. Listen to me. These Alphas are hardwired to make you feel safe." Rose squeezes her arms. "Seriously. They go crazy for it. A happy Omega is like catnip for them. Especially if he's someone Primal matched you with." Her eyes twinkle. "Just how close was the match, anyway?"

"Oh, you know." A very casual, noncommittal gesture. "Close enough." There's no way in hell she's about to tell Rose she's found a 100% match. Her friend would launch a full-scale intervention to make her reconsider her single-night pledge.

Fortunately, Rose's wide grin suggests she's too excited to dig any deeper. "That's all it needs to be. You'll see. Once you meet him, this Alpha is going to charm the nerves right out of you."

Rey, of course, is already quite convinced of this Alpha's ability to manipulate her nerves. In fact, she almost wishes she were back beneath the flickering fluorescents of her subterranean cell, so that she could tear the cloth from her pocket, press his scent to her lips and let her Alpha's calming presence wash away her worries once again.

In a very short time, she'll soon be able to press her lips to the man himself.

She just prays he still thinks she's someone worth charming, once he meets the Omega that awaits him.

"He's not going to be doing anything if I don't hurry up." With a deep breath, Rey glances at her watch. "Solo's eleventh-hour surprise nearly made me late for my appointment with him."

"Yeah, well, Satan's reign ended at Skywalker's door." Rose slips a hand through her elbow. "Come on. It's time to go somewhere not even Ben Solo can touch you." With a mischievous grin, Rose pulls her down the sidewalk. "You're on Alpha time now."

Her first clue that something is off arrives in the dressing room.

Kaydel Connix leads Rey there herself. The private suite is in a wing of the facility too exclusive for yesterday's tour, reserved specifically for Primal's VIP members.

Rey wonders if the director of guest experiences escorts all new members to their destinations this way—or if Kaydel singled her out as a potential flight risk on the verge of escape at the first opportunity.

"Your Alpha is quite eager to meet you," Kaydel says, as she leads Rey through the suite's entry lounge. A warm, inviting space, it feels like one of the fire-lit common areas she photographed last winter for a mountainside heat retreat's centerfold in Better Dens & Gardens. In other words, the sort of place people like Rey are only meant to experience from behind a viewfinder.

Nervous energy skips along her spine as she takes in the oversized chaise lounge beside the hearth. "Is he?"

"Very much so. We typically prefer a more supervised meet-and-greet, at least for the pairings that involve Beta partners. But now that he's finally matched with such a compatible Omega, well..." A sly smile. "He's made it quite clear he wants you all to himself."

Does this mean her Alpha only usually plays with Betas? Rey isn't sure if the fluttering in her chest is from relief or the increased potential for catastrophe. What if he isn't all that interested in Omegas? Even worse, what if he's been waiting for a more meaningful connection? What will he do when he discovers, of all the Omegas in Primal's database, he's ended up with Rey?

Oblivious to her discomfort, Kaydel hovers at the doorway, scrolling through a paper-thin tablet. "Your Alpha has booked this space for..." Her eyebrows rise. "Wow. For the entire evening."

She blinks. "You mean... until midnight?"

"Yes, and the rest of the night after that, too. This suite is yours for a full twelve hours."

Rey's stomach performs a quick, uneasy flip. When she accepted the request this morning, she assumed she'd be here for maybe an hour. Two, at most. And thanks to Mitaka's 4:55 p.m. email, she now needs to get home to finish Solo's media audit before morning. Her mind begins to race. What will they need so much time for? How long do these things usually take, anyway? "That's... a lot more hours than I was expecting."

Kaydel slides a grin up at Rey between screen-swipes, as though she's made a clever joke. "You're free to leave at any time, obviously. But many of our Alphas prefer to spend the night joined with their partners. You may want to clear your evening calendar, for future commitments."

Rey's not exactly sure what joined is supposed to mean in this context, but seeing as there will be no future commitments with this Alpha in her calendar—evening or otherwise—she decides it's not worth pressing. Especially since Kaydel is already moving on.

"The play space is through those double doors. Your Alpha has requested you wait for him there, after following his instructions in the dressing room."

"What, no guided tour tonight?"

"Oh, definitely not." From Kaydel's disbelieving laugh, Rey might have suggested the woman pitch a tent in the suite with them. "Our Alphas tend to be very territorial. I wouldn't want to risk polluting the air with another Omega's scent."

This obviously won't be a problem, when it comes to Rey. She has never inspired feelings in anyone that could be even remotely described as territorial. By its very nature, the word would imply a desire to stick around.

"Your Alpha has a gift waiting for you in the dressing room," Kaydel continues, before Rey can argue this point. "Looks like some kind of new Skywalker device. Custom designed to work with our immersion room technology."

Of all the startling new pieces of information in that statement, Rey's mind gets stuck on only one of them. "I thought Maz said the immersion rooms were fully booked."

Kaydel smirks. "This is a very special suite, Miss Niima. Exclusively reserved for our most premium VIP members. It comes with an immersion room fully loaded, ready for whatever scenario your Alpha dreams up. And considering your pleasure profile..." Her brows climb higher and higher as she swipes between screens. "Well, I'm sure you wouldn't be satisfied with anything less. Goodness. Your Alpha, too. The two of you certainly are a one-hundred percent match, aren't you?"

The churning of Rey's thoughts swells to a fever pitch. She has a thousand new questions, and hardly any time left to ask them, with just minutes remaining to the hour. This is all Solo's fault. Everything is always his fault. If he hadn't kept her at the office so goddamn late—

"The most important thing to remember," Kaydel says, interrupting these early sketches of tomorrow morning's voicemail, "is that you're the one in control. Always have your safe word ready, especially given your preferences. Using it will stop the session at any time."

Right. Slowly, Rey exhales. Just the knowledge of this power makes it difficult to imagine a situation in which she would even want to use it. She's here to blow off some steam, isn't she? The way she deserves, after these hellish two months spent in Satan's dominion.

Perhaps more importantly, she's here to meet her Alpha.

With a start, Rey notices that Kaydel's gaze has dropped to her hip. This is also when she realizes her newfound calm blossoms not from Kaydel's reassurance, but from the presence of a new, smooth weight in her palm. The velvety seam presses soothing whispers against the pad of her stroking thumb. Gentling her.

She cannot convince her hand to release it.

"I can get another one of those for you, you know." Kaydel's eyes glint. "After that sample expires."

Rey's heart skips. Her grip tightens. "Thank you, but that won't be necessary." Having a second, fresh sample would be rather detrimental to her decision to keep this a one-and-done deal.

Kaydel, however, is already waving her off with a smirk. "I'll see what I can do," she says, as she heads to the door. "You have ten minutes to prepare for your session. Enjoy your adventure, Omega."

And then Rey is alone.

The dressing room is tucked behind a cascade of dark curtains. Cozy and intimate, it holds a mannequin, a vanity, and a tufted high-backed chair. Rey's eyes skim over the variety of products on the counter—soothing creams, knot-easers, a pack of highly absorbent towelettes Rey associates with the agony of peaking heat-cramps—before they land on the tray.

A charge of tingling anticipation pulses through her.

In half a breath, she crosses the dressing room, sets down her box, and snatches up the note.

Change into the robe. Nothing underneath. Go to the chair, tighten this cloth around your eyes, and wait for me.

Rey reads his message at least a dozen times, far more than is required for her to comprehend its meaning. Her Alpha wrote this; he wrote this for her. Wonder-filled fingers trace each word. His handwriting is impeccable—all fluid, sophisticated strokes, weaving effortlessly across the page in a river of ink. It's—familiar, in an odd sort of way. As though even in this small, insignificant detail, they are perfectly matched.

She never knew an Alpha could have such beautiful handwriting.

Except for Lord Loops-A-Lot, of course.

Ben Solo's handwriting, however, serves mostly as a calligraphic mirror for the size of his ego. It is nothing like the careful, considerate craftsmanship of her Alpha.

Not least in part because Solo's missives are typically carved with a pitchfork.

Rey scowls at the paper. What the hell is she doing? She's supposed to be getting excited about meeting her Alpha—not drafting a comparative analysis between her partner's lovely penmanship and that of her least favorite client.

Before undressing, Rey glares squarely at her reflection and makes it promise not to give Solo any more mental space this evening. Always a challenge, considering the sheer size of him, but even more crucial now that she's removing her clothes. As a general rule, she prefers to avoid thinking about Ben Solo while she's naked, at least outside of her nightly review of his latest media appearances—and only then because she hates wearing pajamas to bed.

But here, at Primal, on the cusp of something life-changing, she's certain she does not want to think of him at all.

The mannequin looks nothing like Rey: busty where she is flat, curves where she has always had sharp lines and, more recently, swells of hard-earned muscle. But she supposes the sheer fabric draped upon its shoulders might forgive their differences.

The robe is a soft sigh of chiffon, speckled with tiny fabric pearls. It is nearly transparent. Rey's reflection acquires a rosy-cheeked glow as she turns in the mirror. Beneath flowing silk, the shape of her body is clearly discernible, the pink peaks of her nipples nudging between white beads of fabric.

It is likely the most expensive thing she's ever worn. Better suited for a claiming ceremony, or one of the lovely Omegas in Rose's influencer spreadsheets.

The tray's blindfold, on the other hand, is black as midnight. Two strips of cloth, crossed in the middle, webbed with the peculiar woven texture she associates with tech-fabric. Skywalker tech-fabric.

Her brow furrows. There truly is no getting away from him in this place, is there?

As she exits the dressing room, a wave of unease washes over her. In the hours since she confirmed Primal's session request, Rey's imagination has been thoroughly preoccupied with all the ways in which her Alpha might choose to begin their night together.

Nearly naked and blind in Primal's most advanced play environment was definitely not one of them.

Alpha is designed to keep you safe, her Omega rushes to reassure her. He'll know the very best way to start their evening together. His note said something about a chair, didn't it? Perhaps the immersion room will be transformed into a garden, fragrant flowers surrounding a feast set for two—or even (her heart flutters) just for one. Would he hold her in his lap, while he feeds her? Drown her in taste after delectable taste, intensified by the absence of her vision?

Rey must take a deep breath to clear her head. The tempo of such ridiculous thoughts has been quickening throughout the day; she finds them even more compelling the closer the clock's second hand creeps toward the hour. She's not sure if this is due to his increasing proximity—in this building somewhere (her entire body tingles with this knowledge), he must have already arrived—or if the feeble bindings that have contained her Omega since she first opened his velvet box are unraveling in real-time.

They're good for something now, at least. Clutching at her Omega's hopeful anticipation, Rey lets it carry her across the lounge to push open the double doors.

The chill of the room beyond inhales the lounge's warmth in a rush of air, stirring the robe at the backs of her calves.

All of Rey's confidence rushes away with it.

There is no garden. No romantic dinner spread. The room is dark and spartan, stripped of any furniture but the single chair at its center. There are no sexy fruit photos on its matte black walls; no rugs for the tile, so bare and hard that it echoes the audible catch in her breath. Her darting gaze finds not a scrap of fabric. This place somehow feels even more sterile than the one they use for the pairing process, for its nakedness—and infinitely more foreboding.

Perhaps there's been a mistake. Is this what an immersion room looks like before it's been put to use? But then, she assumes, it might be closer to the pairing room—white. Blank. An empty canvas for the fantasies of its occupants.

No. Rey has seen enough of Primal at this point to know every inch of this facility is intentionally designed.

And this space has been intentionally designed to intimidate.

The tile is hard and frigid against her bare feet, a rude interruption from the plush carpet of the lounge. Rey feels very small and very naked as she pads toward the chair. High-backed and rigid, it resembles one of the exam chairs they use down at the heat shelter, complete with mounted stirrups and (her stomach flips) leather buckles for an unruly Omega's legs. Thoughts racing, she tries to remember what his letter said. Does he expect her to stand next to it? Sit down? Strap herself in?

Just what exactly is she getting herself into here?

At her back, a sudden noise nearly makes her jump out of her skin. But it's only the immersion room's doors, drifting shut.

All right. Okay. So this is—not what she was expecting. The complete opposite, actually, of all the delirious imaginings that have crowded her thoughts since she accepted Primal's request that morning. She might even think they've given her the wrong Alpha's room, if Kaydel hadn't escorted her here herself. Her Alpha is comfort, pure and distilled. Not this chamber of cold menace where Kaydel has led her. This place speaks of possibilities that never even brushed the edges of Rey's daydreams earlier that afternoon—but oh, the way her overactive imagination considers them now.

As she stands beside the chair, Rey's mind floods with a torrent of such images, each one more explicit than the last. By the time she finally manages to cobble together a mental dam, her skin is tight and prickling with the precision of these visions, strung tighter still by the lurid nature of their details.

No. Her Alpha would have no interest in the things that should happen in a room like this.

Would he?

Would she?

Out in the lounge, a door opens and slides shut.

Rey's heart rockets up her throat. Without thinking, she hops into the chair. She cannot bring herself to put her legs in those stirrups, but she does find the hem of his blindfold, pulling it over her face with trembling fingers. You're in control, she thinks repeatedly, as her heart attempts to hammer its way straight out of her chest. You can stop this at any time.

She has only a moment to observe that the cloth isn't very effective, as far as blindfolds go—she can still make out the shape of the door, along with the inky silhouettes of her arms and legs—

And then the room is swallowed by darkness.

With a whoosh of warm air, the doors swing open.

Chapter 5: First Session

Chapter Text

The exhale of warmth from the lounge arrives first.

By the time it reaches Rey's lungs, there is no further question of who this room belongs to.

He is here.

Over the past thirty-odd hours, Rey thought she had learned her Alpha's scent. She's passed so many of those hours with his cloth stuffed against her nose, she can practically recall it from memory, even without the aid of his scent-soaked sample.

Rey's first true taste of his presence, however, engulfs this fragile comprehension in a single, overwhelming gust.

The cloth is but a pale imitation of him. The flatness of a shadow, cast muddy and dull against a wall.

On the tide of her breath, the new reality of this Alpha reshapes her world in multi-dimensional clarity.

And Rey can do little but submit to his remaking.

His dominance invades the room's every corner. It radiates from him without pretense, a visceral compulsion. The very walls seem to stand straighter at his arrival; the air bends and yields to accommodate his presence.

This is a man deeply accustomed to the sway of his power. A man who brings other Alphas to their knees, simply by opening his mouth. Would he want her on her knees, too? The prospect is mouthwatering, in the most literal sense—just the thought leaves her tongue wet and tingling.

For the second time, Rey experiences a sensation like all her cells awakening, aligning to their attracting force. But tonight, they are swept up and wrenched toward him as swiftly as air rushes to escape a punctured airlock. Her desire clamors at the flimsy barrier of her skin, seeking its master; her entire body feels electrified in her anticipation to serve him.

A growl rips through the air.

"Omega."

His voice floods the room. Deep and commanding. It, too, is familiar—like the marks he put on that paper for her. Every cell in her body seems to recognize it—as if he's been murmuring in her ear night after night, on the cusp of each sleep, waiting until she falls into dreams of him.

It's his voice.

Her Alpha.

Her one-hundred-percent match.

This is what her Alpha sounds like. And—better still—what he sounds like when he's calling her by that name.

Rey usually hates hearing Alphas speak that particular word. Whenever it surfaces during a Solo YouTube binge, she invariably loses the rest of her night to it, rewinding the video over and over, returning to the exact timestamp where she can isolate those three syllables in that plush, arrogant mouth of his. It's important that she identify the specific failings of his tone, you see; such attention to detail helps her better articulate them during her voicemail the following day.

But when her Alpha says it...

Perched at the edge of the chair, Rey furrows her brow. Her breath stops.

Come to think of it... when her Alpha says it...

"So this is the Omega they found for me."

All her thoughts scatter. Goosebumps break out across her skin. His voice is so deep. It makes it hard for her to think. Almost like when she's talking to—

"I didn't believe it." The door clicks shut behind him. There is something in his tone, she thinks. Something... off. She can't quite put her finger on it. "Yet here you are."

Danger, Rey realizes, with a terrible jolt.

The current simmering beneath his voice is danger.

Everything in her body rebels against this conclusion. Her Alpha is no threat. Even here, smothered by the shadow of this stranger's dark authority—in the rather distressing venue he's chosen for their encounter—even here, her Alpha's scent seizes her. Soothes her, in the clutch of its recognition.

His mere arrival has catapulted her Omega on the wings of a whirlwind. Each breath sends her spinning, soaring ever upward on the swells of its rapturous glee. Her Alpha, her Alpha, her Alpha has arrived, for her (all for her), in the flesh—and even more magnificent than she ever imagined. He called her Omega. He called her his. The impatient press of his scent suffuses all her senses, hungry to know its mate. There is no trace of danger in its embrace. Nothing but the divine promise of his pleasure and protection.

But when it comes to her Alpha's tone... Well.

The warning in this man's tone tells a very different story. Rey would recognize it anywhere.

It greets her every single time Ben Solo opens his mouth.

She braces for the disgust that should follow this comparison. But god help her, the frenzy of her Omega must be nesting deep in her subconscious now—because the possibility of her Alpha (her Alpha!) being anywhere near as powerful, as unrelenting, as indomitable of a man as Benjamin Kneel-At-My-Feet Solo—

Rey slaps a mental hand over her Omega's mouth before it can reach the end of this sentence. And then over its eyes, to snuff out the mental picture of herself doing exactly that. Holy hell. Has she completely lost her mind? She's not sure what disturbs her more: the fact that Primal's algorithm has apparently clocked her for an Omega who is one-hundred-percent attracted to a deep-voiced, danger-drenched, Mr. Egomaniac-adjacent Alpha—or the full-body flush that ignites her in the aftermath of this discovery.

"I didn't believe it either," Rey blurts out, scrambling to escape the quicksand of such treacherous thoughts. She means this as an agreement. But there's something about this Alpha's tone, or the humiliation of sitting nearly naked and blind in this uncomfortable chair—or perhaps it's simply this jarring reminder of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Thought-About, still saturating all her skin in its unwelcome warmth—

It comes out too much like a challenge.

The air flattens into utter stillness.

"No?" he asks, and this time, there's no denying the warning in that single soft syllable. "You certainly smell like you're mine."

In the space of a heartbeat, he moves across the room. One moment, his voice is at the door; the next, he's towering over her, hands gripping the back of the chair at either side. Arresting her in the immense gravity of his presence. Her neck prickles; her pulse freezes mid-throb as he bends his face to hover over her throat. His long, deep inhalation speaks of powerful lungs, the broadness of his upper body as it gradually expands in the space right above hers. Sniffing. He's breathing her in. This Alpha—her Alpha—is breathing in her scent.

And from the throbbing hunger that swells all around her... he seems to find something that he likes there very much.

The realization initiates a molten wave across her body, cresting from head to toe.

A low, husky chuckle rolls in right after it.

"Oh, yes," he says, right above her ear. "That's what I thought." His final inhalation leaves him as a sigh, thick with pleasure. He straightens. "You'll do just fine."

Pathetically, Rey nearly tips out of the chair, her body chasing him into the chilly space of his absence.

But he's already walking away.

His departure is like a heavy fog lifting from her body. The meaning of his statement is briefly swallowed by the haze—one she must stumble through with extended arms to pluck each word from its dense, dizzying grasp.

You'll do just fine.

When comprehension finally arrives, it's accompanied by a surge of irritation so intense, it briefly crowds out the Alpha-fog enveloping her senses. If only for a moment.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" she snaps, flustered.

He takes his sweet time answering, too busy with whatever has absorbed his attention more than the half-naked Omega who overcame twenty-six years worth of deep-rooted insecurities to meet him.

Grinding her teeth, Rey struggles to track the sensation of his air, moving around the room. She has never been so confused in her life. Her body is tight with conflicting impulses: to rip off his blindfold and march right out of this man's cold, barren idea of a good time. To tell this smug, disrespectful Alpha she won't be doing anything just fine, as far as he's concerned. To undo her robe, tear it from her too-hot skin, and beg him to replace it with the firm, grinding pressure of his body instead, so that she can wear her Alpha's precious scent when she falls asleep tonight.

From the far side of the room: the slide of an opening drawer.

"I've never had an Omega in here before." He shares this information in a casual, off-handed sort of way—like he's making an observation about the weather, rather than the blindfolded woman awaiting his dissection. "Never even matched with one."

"Can't imagine why. You'd think they'd be lining up at the door, for a chance to be wooed by you."

This earns her another dark chuckle. "Primal's never found an Omega compatible with my tastes. Not even close. Omegas are too soft for the things I want to do to them."

The idle rummaging of objects in the drawer—some heavy, some whispering. Rey's face feels very hot, as she tries to imagine its contents.

"Then suddenly, they produce you. After all this time—an Omega, just for me. My perfect match." His deep voice acquires that edge again, the one that makes Rey's neck-hairs stand up on end. "Imagine my surprise. What depraved little creature had they unearthed for me? Where has she been hiding?"

The drawer slides shut.

"I have a theory," he says. "Would you like to hear it?"

Rey, in fact, has not the slightest clue what she would like to do right now. She supposes she might as well hear him out. "Go ahead," she says, through clenched teeth. "I'm all ears, aren't I?"

Her Alpha's returning passage across the room is marked by prowling footsteps on the tile; the whisper of an object; recoiling air.

"I thought the good people at Primal might be up to something wicked." A sinister thread weaves through his scent. "Corrupting their algorithm. Trying to lure me back through their doors. My business is very important to them, you see. What better way to whet my appetite than a pretty little Omega?"

A single stroking finger slides beneath Rey's chin, tipping it upward. "And look at you." His mocking tone softens into a contemplative murmur. "You'd be the perfect one to do it, wouldn't you? Dripping wet before I even walked in the door. They must have known how easy it would be."

Hot mortification crawls across her skin. Her desperation feels especially shameful under the spotlight of this Alpha's unseen scrutiny, much worse than any of the anxieties that plagued her on her long walk here.

It's even worse with his suggestion poisoning the air.

He doesn't think it's real.

She should be relieved. This man is a walking tapestry of red flags; Primal could carpet its heat rooms several times over with the sheer number of them. But the thought that her Alpha would question the authenticity of their match only leaves her feeling unexpectedly, unbearably hollow.

Her Alpha, however, is not touching her like he doubts who she belongs to.

Even from this side of the blindfold, Rey can sense the intensity of this man's attraction like an electric current, charging all the oxygen between them.

Fascination pours off of him in potent waves. Despite the cold brutality of this place he's chosen for them, his touch upon her face is tender. Reverent, even. Like she is a wonder, rare and precious, presented for his careful unraveling.

His thumb traces the burning line of her cheek, from nose to red-hot shell of her ear. Her Alpha's hand must be very large; he doesn't even need to remove the finger beneath her chin to span the width of her face. In the cradle of his wide palm, she feels fragile. Small. The way a sparrow might feel, cupped in the velvety claw-ringed paw of a tiger.

"I never stood a chance, did I?" His thumb arrives at her chin. Gently, it hooks into her mouth, scraping her bottom teeth. "Find some tasty Alpha bait... String her up and let me loose with her." He opens her bottom lip with a slow, downward drag—ending with a swift return the instant he releases. "No, little one. There will be no resisting you."

His touch vanishes. Rey must fist her fingers in the soft silk of her robe to prevent herself from chasing his hand again.

"I tried, you know. When they informed me of the situation, I told them I wasn't interested. But they insisted. With no invitation, their little minion showed up on my doorstep—intruded on my home, interrupted my evening—with an irresistible proposition."

A cool shiver kisses her neck as he carefully lifts her hair. Rey doesn't need her eyesight, her dressing room mirror, or her heat to know what he'll find there. The blistering evidence sears its telltale itch beneath her ear, more tender than it's ever been outside her fever-week.

This time, the growl in her Alpha's chest shreds the air without any words to carry it.

"You."

No one has ever touched her here before. Always nestled just out of sight, Rey's glands have only known the clawing of her own desperate need—her mindless, tearful attempts to mimic an Alpha's teeth in the darkest grip of her cycle.

She understands, now, that it was his teeth she was trying to replicate. His fingers. His skin.

Her Alpha.

His touch here is not nearly as gentle as it was upon her face.

Large fingertips pinch the edges of her gland together, rubbing, rolling, as though crushing a petal for its scent. The sharp-edged pleasure nearly blinds her. For an endless moment, the blindfold's black void erupts into white, neon-specked color. Rey's mouth drops open as far as her jaw will allow; her fists twist and clench her silk-covered lap in a white-knuckle grip.

It seems to go on forever.

When his sharp pinch finally loosens, she finds little relief. Instead, the pad of his thumb digs deep into its throbbing center, firm and intrusive—an agonizing, circular pressure that Rey may or may not attempt to imitate with her squirming hips.

She only notices she's whining after he pulls away.

"f*ck." His swear is little more than a tortured groan, followed by a wet noise that suggests (her head spins) the image of his mouth at his fingers. Licking them. His groan descends even deeper into his chest. "Omega. Your scent..." He sounds furious in a way that makes the tips of all her extremities tingle. "You're even more exquisite in person."

With sudden, burning intensity, Rey wishes that she could see him, too.

Her Alpha likes her scent. Perhaps as much as she likes his. She wonders if he'll let her lick his gland as well. She wonders how it might differ from his cloth, transformed by his desire for her. She wonders what expression he wears, as he examines her so intently; if it changes when he makes that guttural noise in the back of his throat.

A few minutes ago, she might have simply torn off the blindfold without bothering to ask. But something significant is happening between them now. Something far beyond her control.

No matter how badly she longs to uncover her eyes and soak in her Alpha's face as he groans for her—she discovers, quite suddenly, that she longs to obey him even more.

"But..." Rey struggles to think through the thickening cloud of all her new wondering. "You said the match wasn't real."

His snarling growl tightens her lungs, trapping her breath. "You misunderstand my theory, Omega. There's no denying how good you smell. Your scent makes me f*cking unhinged." He leashes his ferocity as quickly as it surfaced, his voice softening back into deliberate, dangerous precision. "The question, little one, is whether you'll tolerate all the things I plan to do to you."

Rey's mouth grows very dry. "Could you maybe be a bit more specific, on that last part?"

"I could," he says, sounding thoughtful. "But I think I'd rather show you instead."

A swooping sensation overtakes her, like the floor falling away on her ascent up Skywalker Tower—but it's just the chair, gliding swiftly upward. There's no baseline for her to establish how high off the ground it takes her. She knows only that she must still tip up her face to find her Alpha's scent.

Briefly suspended in such weightlessness, Rey feels uncannily adrift, a puppet without strings.

Until her Alpha steps into her body and gathers up all her threads again.

This new elevation puts her directly within his grasp. No more bending required. His proximity overwhelms her. Rey's legs part for him as automatically as the room's air, the way it reshapes itself to the thrum of his authority; her kneecaps bump the stirrups at either side.

Rey wets her lips and presses backward into the chair. "It might be quicker for you to just—um—you know. Use your words."

"And deny us the agony of your anticipation?" Knuckles skate up her thigh, stirring the silken robe. "What a waste that would be. Don't you know how delectable you are, all keyed up like this? I smelled it as soon as I walked in here. How eager it makes you. Being held in suspense."

At her thigh, his knuckles drift ever-more inward with each lazy pass. They catch all the little fabric beads in their path, igniting trails of goosebumps underneath.

"Anticipation will be just the thing to keep you on the edge for me tonight," he says. "And that's exactly where I intend to hold you."

It's so very difficult to think clearly, with him taking up so much space between her legs. "So I'm just supposed to—what? Trust that I'll tolerate these plans of yours?"

"Your body was designed to trust me, Omega. You'll find it comes quite naturally." His deep voice carries the shape of a smirk against her ear. "If Primal's algorithm is as good as they claim, though... I believe you'll enjoy your Alpha's plans for you very much." His nose brushes her earlobe, and Rey erupts in a shiver. "Most of them, anyway."

Well. That's not ominous at all.

Every last one of Rey's alarm bells, however, apparently began short-circuiting somewhere between her discovery of his blindfold in that tray, and the ruinous upward path of his knuckles between her legs. The only thoughts left to her are the vehement protests of her Omega, insisting that she will enjoy whatever her Alpha has in store for her. Anything he wants. Please, Alpha. Everything.

She finds she wants him to show her all of it.

"So what do you say, little Omega? Will you scurry back to safety?" His voice curls along her ear, her gland, smooth as her silken robe. "Or are we going to test my theory together?"

In a last-ditch effort at some common sense, Rey grasps for any of the apprehension she experienced when she first stepped into this room. When she finally locates it, however, she is shocked to find it's morphed into something quite different. Something that simmers deep in her belly. Churning. Frothing.

Excitement.

She reels. Anxiety and excitement really do feel quite similar, under the light of this new inspection. At her throat, her gland gives another throb from the stinging pinch of his fingers—and the memory floods her with sudden curiosity.

What other sorts of overlapping sensations might she discover under this Alpha's expert control?

Isn't it worth sticking around to find out?

Sure, her Alpha's turned out to be a bit more... intense, than she was expecting. Maybe a little mean, too, when she considers the dark delight that oozes from him as he keeps her squirming.

But isn't Rey the one who squirms under the delivery of such torments?

What other things might this man give her to squirm about?

Besides, it turns out that she might just maybe have a thing for Alphas who are a little mean, if Primal's algorithm is any indication. A horrifying revelation, when applied to her completely unwelcome reaction earlier to this man's Big Egomaniac Energy—but perhaps that's all the more reason to give this a shot.

Here is her opportunity to explore this temptation somewhere safe. Without expectation. And—perhaps most importantly—with an Alpha she'll never have to see again.

This final thought, however, constricts her insides with a grip that has no pleasure lapping at its edges.

"Can I take off the blindfold?" she asks, before she can stop herself.

Abruptly, the tension crackling in the air between them contracts. The knuckles at her thigh flip palm-downward, covering her leg in a single, convulsive squeeze.

"Is that a yes, Omega?"

His low voice carries a note of warning. The one she recognized the instant he stepped in the room. The one that makes her entire body vibrate with fervent desire.

"I want to see you," Rey says, feeling dizzy.

"Answer the question."

He does not remove his hand. Rey's body grows warmer the longer she considers how it nearly engulfs the circumference of her leg.

"Fine," she says, very quickly, before she can lose her nerve. "All right. I'll stay."

"Try again."

Her heart skips. "What?"

"You heard me." His thumb strokes the inside of her leg in long lazy sweeps, up and down. It nearly traverses the entire path, inner-knee to the crease of her thigh, without shifting the possessive weight of his palm. "Again."

Rey chews her lip. The resulting snap of his attention to her mouth is a palpable force, probing and insistent. Flustered, she flings out the title that always seems to appease the other implacable Alpha in her life: "Fine, sir."

This seems to amuse him. "Almost there." His voice is soft and lilting, as his thumb creeps higher on each pass. "But in this room, I'm not your sir."

Rey's cheeks flush with heat. She knows what he's asking, but she's never used that word as a title before. It's always felt degrading, to acknowledge the gulf of power between her own designation and the ones above it.

Here, though... With him... The energy coursing between them right now could not be any further from degradation. Her surrender to this man feels strangely empowering. Here is a place she can let go. A place where she no longer needs to fight the daily tide of her endless to-do list, which swells ever larger with Lord Lucifer's never-ending stream of demands—nor the black, bottomless depths of her nighttime desires. Here, she can step out from the specter of Solo's shadow, stalking every moment of fleeting peace—and instead drift away on the current of her Alpha's confidence. His control.

Her Alpha is here, and he will take care of her.

"Fine," she says, more breathless than before. "Yes, Alpha. Yes. I'll stay."

He makes a low, hungry noise in the back of his throat.

And then he is kissing her.

It takes her by surprise. Not just because of the blindfold—though this certainly magnifies the experience considerably, when his mouth is the only sensation available to her—but because of the profound emotional depth it holds, from this stranger who otherwise seems so determined to dismantle her.

The kiss aches with tenderness. Like this man overflows with his Alpha's devotion, and this is the only way he can express it to her—a slow, tender feeding, tipping the warm nectar of his affection down her throat.

Wrapped around her upper thigh, his hand delivers a kneading massage, as though gentling an animal poised to flee. It's unnecessary. Rey has never felt less like fleeing in her life. But god, how she hopes he doesn't stop touching her like that. Kissing her like that.

By the time he releases her, Rey's head spins. Every inch of her skin hums with longing to know his mouth. "Will that happen every time I call you Alpha?" she says, in a voice laced with breath.

A low chuckle. "You'll be gasping my name too often tonight for that." He says this so matter-of-factly, it sends heat rippling across Rey's entire body. "But if my Omega likes to be kissed... perhaps when she's good, I might consider it."

Her pulse quickens. "How good will I have to be to take off this blindfold?"

There is a pause, brimming with all the electricity between them.

And then Rey's vision returns.

At least, in part.

The blindfold renders the room in black shapes and shadow. Solid objects are reduced to stark silhouettes, their outlines nearly void of any interior detail. It's not much of a downgrade for most of the immersion room, which hardly contained any solid objects of interest to begin with.

But since her sight last abandoned her, a very new, very solid object has joined her in this space.

Her Alpha's presence already eclipses anything else that might attract her attention here. But Rey's first glimpse of him, even cloaked in darkness, consumes all her awareness anew.

She was right. The man is massive. His formidable frame dominates most of her vision. The chair now cradles her several feet off the ground, yet he still towers over her, mere inches from her barely-covered skin. Close enough that she might simply arch her back and find herself pressing up against the broad, unyielding expanse of his body.

And what a body it is.

Even through the blindfold, his posture oozes raw physicality. It simmers in the substantial breadth of his shoulders, the thickness of his arms, which cage her on either side of the chair. So much latent, brooding power—and he inhabits it all with a sense of utter self-possession. Her Alpha's calm, confident control.

Rey is briefly struck dizzy, imagining the things this man must be capable of doing with that body. The things he intends to do with it tonight. To her.

With a tilt of his head, the dark void of his scrutiny deepens. He seems to discern something in her. Something that makes his scent bloom with unmistakable delight.

"Very good," he says, and it takes her a long, head-spinning moment to realize he's answering her previous question. "But don't worry, Omega. I can already see we'll find ample ways to motivate you."

Rey isn't sure if she's disappointed that she can't see the satisfaction in her Alpha's face—or grateful, so that she doesn't disintegrate beneath the hot shame of her painfully obvious attraction to him.

"Just to make sure, though..."

With smooth, confident motions, he lifts her legs, one at a time, and settles each thigh in the cool palm of a stirrup.

"We'll keep these safe up here. So they don't get in our way."

Rey's lungs feel shallow and tight. This shift in position has spilled the robe right up her thighs, pooling its silken folds in the space that tingles at their apex. It still covers her, but only barely. She imagines the translucent material must make a poor barrier for what's spread open for him just underneath.

She doesn't think she's ever felt so exposed. So nervous.

So helplessly aroused.

Those big hands of his are surprisingly deft. They make quick work of the buckles, pulling the strap of leather securely around each thigh. When he's finished, he steps away to inspect his handiwork, with a quiet noise of approval that coils around her stomach even more securely than those straps.

Then his considerable frame expands to its full height, and—god. Rey's breath abandons her all over again.

She can't think of a single Alpha who looms so large in a room like this. Except (her Omega reminds her) for Ben Solo, who ought to have his own zip code just for the size of his head. And another for his shoulders, if Rey's nightly study of his press appearances do them any justice. Each of his hands, too, could probably warrant their own post office, while she's being honest—

But that is more than enough honesty for a single night, thank you very much. Especially when it comes to him. Rey wishes she could seize her Omega by the shoulders and shake her. Violently. Is this really not enough for her—?! Here she is, spread open like a filet before the only Alpha she's ever been attracted to. And all her simpering Omega wants to do is gush about how perfectly this man conforms to the impossible, unattainable ideal of an Alpha who—as strong and desirable as every other empty-brained Omega might find him—Rey happens to loathe with every burning fiber of her being.

She is so distracted by her irritation, she doesn't notice her Alpha retrieving another object until he's snapped it around her wrist.

And then he walks out of sight.

Instinctively, Rey lifts her hand to her face for closer inspection. But the solid black veil shrouding her arm offers no clues to the cuff's function. She only knows, from the exploration of her fingers, that it swallows her wrist. Along with the gland beneath it.

"Would be nice to know what this is," Rey says, feeling lightheaded with nerves. "Since I can't see it."

Somewhere from her left, his deep voice floats to her: "Quite the predicament."

All right. So he's not going to tell her. She chews the inside of her cheek. "Hope it doesn't clash with my outfit."

"We can always remove the outfit, if you'd prefer."

Rey is excruciatingly aware of the cool air between her legs, the sudden lack of it in her lungs. She wrenches her attention toward mapping out the device with her fingers. It feels sleek. Expensive. "This isn't one of those... Primal Kool-Aid bracelets, is it? Because I'm pretty sure my glands are already wide awake. Wired, actually." Her nerves are even more wired. She can't stop talking. "They're not usually like this. It's made things a bit—awkward at the office, if I'm being honest—I never wear my hair down, and if my corporate overlord notices, he's bound to change the dress code, just to spite me—"

"This isn't something from Primal." The authority in his tone cuts off her nervous rambling in one fell swoop. "It's from me."

The instant he reenters her line of vision, the twisting tangle of nerves in her chest unravels. She exhales. God. Even here—even like this—his mere presence manages to soothe her. Though there is a distinctly restless quality in her reaction to him now, as she takes in the hard lines of his body.

As he steps between her legs again.

"It's a prototype of mine. I've been waiting a long time for a lovely little Omega to help me play with it." His knuckles run along the inside of her knee, a distinctly possessive gesture. "Now that I have one of my own... well, I'm very much looking forward to putting it through its paces."

"A prototype?" It's difficult to think clearly through the ensuing rush of Omega-thoughts: Alpha says you're lovely. Alpha says you're his. It becomes even more difficult, when his hand creeps further up her naked leg with far more intention than before. "Is this—" Rey wets her lips. "Is this part of a scenario?"

Another chuckle. "Oh, yes. My very favorite." He sounds deeply amused. "Let me explain it to you."

His hand arrives at its destination. The silk stirs between her thighs, admitting a wash of cool air, thick with her Alpha's scent, and then—her breath stops—his fingers.

"I am the creator of all this technology," he says, in that deep, sinful voice. "And you, sweet Omega, are tonight's test subject. It gives me great satisfaction to observe the fruits of my labor firsthand. So tonight, I'll apply them to your own little fruit. Over and over. Until we've wrung it to the limits of its pleasure."

The room tilts. The doorway's black mouth, the line of the wall—all of it skews sideways. The only thing that remains steady is the solid shape of her Alpha, looming right above her. Fondling the silk between her legs.

"Does that sound agreeable to you?"

The feathery, whispering sensation of the fabric inflicts the most exquisite torture upon her aching, untouched sex. No one has ever teased her this way. Spoken to her this way. Rey breathes through her mouth, struggling to find air.

"I asked you a question, little one."

"I..." Her useless mouth no longer remembers how to form words, now that she's finally in need of it. Her body, however, practically sings with her Omega's answer. Yes, please, all of that, right away—"I—suppose."

"Oh, you suppose?" The words drip with derision. "And what about this slick little Omega-c*nt down here? Do you suppose it finds that agreeable, too?"

A blunt fingertip emerges through the fabric. The long, slow slide of it, the round ridges of his knuckles bumping along all her sensitive places, drags a high-pitched, wanting noise from between her shallow breaths.

"That didn't sound like an answer," he says darkly, and begins to stroke.

Rey can't find the air to breathe. Never mind respond to his humiliating question. Her body feels strung tight between buzzing desire and the burning shame this man seems to relish provoking in her. She doesn't think she's ever been so wet in her life—not that she's about to tell him that. Admitting as much feels like a concession that she's not quite willing to give him just yet.

Unfortunately, it's a great challenge to invent a plausible reason for her rather enthusiastic reaction to him when every iota of focus has narrowed to his probing fingers between her legs. Especially when her Omega only provides her with unhelpful connections between this man's Solo-tier levels of arrogance and the spontaneous underwear changes recently required whenever she mistakenly dons a pair of pajamas for her bedtime hate scrolls.

When her Alpha begins to withdraw his hand, however, her voice comes leaping back to her. "No, wait, please, that—that all sounds—" Rey's face burns. "Agreeable. It sounds very agreeable. It's just—" There was something else, wasn't there? She trips over the words. "I can only stay until ten."

The change in his demeanor is instant. He goes completely motionless. The stillness of his body stands in stark contrast to the eruption of tension in the air between them, as volatile as a lightning storm.

Slowly, carefully, he leans over her prone form. So that his face is directly above her own.

"Does my Omega have someone else waiting on her?"

The only thing that keeps Rey from backtracking as quickly as possible is the thunderous image of Ben Solo's scowl, materializing in surprisingly vivid detail against the black void of her blindfold. Nope. Rey would rather crawl through broken glass than give that man the satisfaction of scolding her for unfinished work.

"Sort of," she says, breathlessly—and then shrinks back against the chair, as far as she can go, when he surges closer. "Wait—no, no, not like that! It's—just a client."

Her Alpha does not yield so much as an inch of the electrified space between them. "What client could possibly require your attention at this hour?"

"It's—it's a project I need to do for him," she says quickly, scrambling to find the right words. "A work project. I need to get it done by tomorrow."

He is still displeased—the scent of it makes her skin itch and crawl with longing to placate him—but his wrath at least ceases its billowing surge. "Procrastination is a poor practice, Omega."

Rey can't help herself. She scowls. "Yeah, well, my client waited until the end of the day to let me know. So perhaps you should tell him that."

"Happily."

She blinks. "What?"

"Give me this man's information. And I'll take care of it."

Oh. Oh, god. "I—don't think that's such a good idea." Rey can only imagine Ben Solo's reaction when he listens to his Wednesday morning voicemail. Good morning, Mr. Solo! Funny story—instead of finishing your terribly important media audit yesterday, I instead gave your personal cell number to a total stranger so that he could give me the most intense sexual experience of my life! When you unleash your volcanic wrath upon Sub-Level 2, please consider that I was naked and tied to a chair when he tortured it out of me. Don't forget I need that legal clearance for the shelter interview by four!

"I didn't ask for your thoughts, Omega." Between her legs, his long finger renews its slide, joined now by a second. Obliterating any remaining hope she might have for coherent speech. "I told you I'd take care of it."

"I... ah... don't think it will be that simple."

"Perhaps I'm not making myself clear." The words are clipped with warning. "You'll find there isn't much that stops me from getting what I want. And what I want, right now, is to keep my Omega exactly where I have her. On the edge of this chair. Soaking wet and trembling for me."

As if to emphasize her condition, his caress between her legs gains firmer purpose, filling the room with her whining, panting breaths.

"So until I tell you otherwise, that's where you're going to stay," he says. "Understood?"

His attention is so intense, Rey can practically see his eyes blazing back at her from behind her blindfold. They incinerate any of the remaining brain cells still bouncing around her head, blackening their edges. Smoldering them—along with all her nerves—to a fluttering crisp. There was an important question in there somewhere, between the mind-melting bliss of his touches. A question, she thinks, she needs to say no to—even if she can't remember why.

To her extreme distress, his fingers vanish—but then they reappear at her lips, and Rey can't complain, even if she wanted to. Her Omega compels her to do nothing but open.

His low, hungry growl rolls across her entire body.

"We'll have to teach this pretty mouth to answer when it's asked a question."

Her Alpha's kiss, this time, is a claiming. Stripped of all his earlier restraint, he delivers the taste of her desire right past her lips, her teeth. He licks into her, ravenous, and Rey can only receive him. Allowing him to brand her.

By the time he finally breaks away, Rey is panting, dizzy with need. Her every molecule feels on the brink of rebellion, fighting to break free of their constraints, each one vibrating with an untamed energy. And all around her, the cage of her Alpha's dark shadow waits ready to tame them.

A pair of blunt fingertips prod at her wet opening. Nestling just inside.

"Let's try this one more time," he says. "I want to hear you tell me. Where does my Omega belong tonight?"

With no further warning, he plunges into her body. A full, tip-to-knuckle sheathing. Leather cuts deeply into her thighs as Rey arches with a soundless cry. Her entire world ignites at this first, delicious taste of her Alpha's body, filling hers.

And, god, it's just the beginning. With steady finesse, his fingers start to work her, their passage made unimaginably smooth by all the slick her body's roused for him. The size of his hands leads him very quickly to that spot inside her. His seeking fingers hook directly over it—and then he begins a shallow, rocking motion, precisely designed to liquefy her remaining thoughts with each wet, grinding palpitation.

"Better tell me soon, sweetheart. While you still can. It may be your last chance for a while."

Rey doesn't know what he's talking about. She can hardly grasp the threads of his original question. Against her Omega's every instinct, she gasps out her denial: "Please, I really, really want to—but I—I can't—"

The air crackles between them. "Fine." His voice is deep with resignation, but his scent—oh. His scent darkens with undeniable, predatory anticipation. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

At some point, his other hand has acquired a glove. Its buttery-smooth glide parts her robe, grazes her tense, quivering stomach—before it finally arrives at her mound. Rey is briefly overwhelmed by the dual sensation of his thrusting fingers, now accompanied by the prodding of a leather fingertip at her nub.

Then, it begins to vibrate.

Stars explode behind her eyes. Rey's bottom lifts clean off the chair seat. Her legs try to kick, but there's nowhere for them to go. She grips the arms of the chair, unwilling to reach for him, afraid he will stop—afraid he will continue.

He is unrelenting. That fingertip wedges along first one side of her throbbing bud, and then the other. Each and every one of its nerves is introduced to this raw, insistent pleasure. Her Alpha gives her no time to adjust to any one sensation. He delivers streams of vibrations: first in scattered circles, then with firm, focused, relentless pressure; then in fluttering pulses, then in the long, slow slides of his entire finger, up and down, making her gasp and plead and curl her toes.

Combined with the way he's filling her, the filthy way he's milking out her slick, Rey feels as though her Omega might lift from her body and soar straight into the ether.

Never has she hurtled toward her climax so quickly. Typically an elusive, mercurial affair, her org*sms tend to require many long stretches of coaxing and cajoling—with the exception, perhaps, of her alone-time with her Alpha's secret cloth the night before.

In person, though, the impact of his presence is exponentially more powerful. His scent is a tangible force in her veins, igniting her body from the inside out. The musk of his desire (Alpha is so pleased with her) burrows deep into each of her glands, stirring her into a frenzy; his expert, methodical touches build and build within her. The connection she feels with this man is profoundly intimate. In her growing delirium, she imagines again that she can see the shape of his eyes, their rapt observation, stamped in her Alpha's black cloth—

"Do you feel it yet?"

He sounds so calm, for the rolling storm of his scent. For the way he propels her toward that peak with unprecedented speed.

That peak, which stretches higher and higher, the nearer she gets.

Rey begins to pant. Her hands claw at the robe, the chair; sweat breaks out upon the nape of her neck. She is so, so close. She doesn't understand. Where is the top? Why can't she reach it?

Beneath the bracelet, her gland burns hot as fire.

"Why—" Rey gasps out the word, hardly able to speak through the spine-tingling waves of sensation he inflicts with his glove; through the increasingly rough f*cking he administers with his fingers. "How—?!"

"I already told you," he says simply. "This is where I'm going to hold you."

Panic slices through her, even sharper for the fever that overwhelms the rest of her senses. Does that mean... could he truly try to keep her from coming? After carrying her to such heights, so swiftly?

How is that even possible?

The buzzing, pulsing pattern between her legs intensifies, wrenching a cry from her. Head thrown back, Rey squirms her hips—toward him, away from him, she isn't sure which. It is both a relief and a catastrophe when he lifts his gloved hand—just for a moment. Just long enough to splay his wide palm across her pelvis before the vibrations converge upon his thumb. And then, with a downward swipe, upon her cl*t.

With one hand thrusting into her, the other spread across her lower belly, he pins her hips fast, so that there's nowhere for Rey to escape. Nothing to do but accept what her Alpha gives her.

"Please," she gasps again; but he either doesn't hear her, or doesn't care. He is but a black solid shadow, enveloping her, consuming her—and always, always watching, the constant weight of that invisible gaze scorching upon her face.

Aren't Alphas supposed to want to make their Omegas happy? With growing desperation, Rey struggles to remember what Rose told her about Alphas—but the words slip through the cracks of her mind like a sieve. Everything splinters beneath the burgeoning storm of sensation he brews beneath her skin.

And there is no end in sight. No way to even beg him for one, when he's robbed her of any breath.

It will end whenever he decides it's over.

She's certain she's never known an Alpha who could be so cruel. Never. Not a single one.

Well, except for—

Rey's breath seizes. The gland at her wrist grows scalding hot.

Except for—

Rey looks up into the abyss of her Alpha's face—at the eyes she's been imagining there—and in a single, horrific flash, she finally recognizes who they belong to.

Him.

These past many minutes, she's been imagining him.

And from the way her straining body convulses, wracked with a new wave of need—this doesn't repulse her nearly as much as it should.

Rey squeezes shut her eyes, fighting to banish him from this moment. But it's too late. Ben Solo's gaze has branded its fiery imprint upon her inner eye, and she still sees him here too, tracking her every movement. The delicious torments of her Alpha and the piercing scrutiny of her true tormenter tangle together, winding, weaving, until her confused, suffering Omega can no longer distinguish between them.

"Does my Omega want to come?"

Despair fills her. Even her Alpha's voice is tainted now. His question is delivered not from his mouth, but from those plush, arrogant lips that have provided the infuriating soundtrack to so many of her evenings. Of course, Solo would ruin this for her, too. But god, how she wants to come. She needs it. Her body is aflame, suspended over one of his fiery lakes, roasting inside-out with desire.

Whining, panting, Rey writhes and gasps out her response to this question, beneath Solo's demanding stare: "Please, Alpha—yes—I... I need it..."

"Then tell me what I want to hear."

Sweat beads upon her brow. Behind the blindfold, Solo's eyes blaze even brighter. She's sick, for how this arouses her. For how her mind would twist a stranger into such a disturbing fantasy.

"Or don't," he says, with Solo's smug satisfaction. "It's all the same to me. I'll do this for as long as it takes for you to get there, Omega. We have all night."

They don't have all night, she tries to say. They can't. Not like this—with Solo haunting her like a specter, reminding her of the hellfire that awaits tomorrow if she shows up to work empty-handed. Especially not in light of this horrific development, where she can't seem to escape from the fiery path of his gaze. Her own personal Sauron, intruding on this one good thing she's finally found for herself.

Fortunately, her Alpha interrupts these whirling, nightmarish thoughts by intensifying his efforts. A third finger squeezes beside the other two, stretching her ecstasy to new heights; his thumb begins to press a deep, grinding, pulsing circle that scatters static across her vision, her burning skin.

"Just say the words, Omega. I know you can." He leans even closer. The heady weight of her Alpha's command ripples across her entire body. "Where does my Omega belong tonight?"

And Rey is compelled to answer as she always does, when her Alpha commands it.

"With you, sir," she tells him, eyes wet and streaming. "I belong with you."

With a snarl, he surges closer. "Again, Omega. Correctly."

"P-please, Alpha—with you! Please, please, please, Alpha—ahh—"

All at once, the inferno trapping her wrist-gland erupts into liquid flame. And some shackle deep inside her shatters with it.

Blinding relief crashes over her, rushing in on the tide of her Alpha's command. Every muscle seizes; her hips fight uselessly against his steady grip; wave after wave of euphoria courses through her body. She has never experienced anything like it. His flooding satisfaction fills her to the tips of her toes, bathing her in bright-white, undiluted bliss.

And all the while, Ben Solo's gaze bores into her own with such focus, such longing, such awe-struck fascination that the sight of it steals all her remaining breath. God. She has no idea how she could even dream up such an expression on that face. It should be like trying to imagine a color that doesn't exist. Or the physical space of a different dimension, layered on top of this one.

But now that she's seen it, even if it's just in Omega fantasyland, Rey doesn't know how she'll ever go back to pretending she can forget it.

Slowly, the world regains its gravity. Her long, slow, drifting descent from the stratosphere is marked by featherlight brushes of fingers along her jaw, sifting through her hair. She feels uncoiled. As though she's been undone and remade, with new luminescent thread connecting her fragments. Every pore, every particle, changed by the touch of her Alpha.

"God. You're f*cking magnificent."

His voice is transformed like this. Soft with surprise. It surprises her, too, that anyone could deconstruct her this way and find anything worth a second glance.

Rey's eyes flutter open.

He is almost finished unfastening the second strap from her thigh. Even through the shroud of the blindfold, the intensity of his gaze is unmistakable. Like he can't bear to look away.

The moment the buckle is loose, large arms scoop her from the chair—then gather her limbs against a masculine wall of muscle. Her Alpha's powerful body, enveloping her.

Rey wonders if she should be indignant. Shouldn't an Alpha ask permission before whisking an Omega off her feet? Not that he asked for permission regarding any of the other things he did to her tonight. Maybe he thinks Primal's knowledge of her preferences precludes the need for such trivilaties—but even so, she has a feeling bridal-carrying isn't a common enough activity here to make the cut for their pleasure profiles.

So why, then, is this Alpha carrying her? Cradling her, like a prize he is unwilling to release?

As he brings her across the room, his murmured words trickle steadily down her ribcage, settling into all its empty spaces. My Omega did so good for me. Yes, baby. The very best. They fill her with tingling warmth, spreading to every dark corner. Rey does not know how she'll ever scrape them out again.

Right now, it's hard to imagine even wanting to try.

Her cheek finds the sleekness of his shoulder's suit jacket, her nose the tantalizing proximity of his throat-gland. Lashes fluttering, Rey cannot resist a deep, soothing breath. God. Its effects on her afterglow are even better in person. Everything about this man has somehow managed to transcend even her wildest dreams.

It's this thought, however, that invites the shame to come barreling in. The cold isolation that accompanies it is as sobering as her loneliest moments in her Skywalker dungeon cell.

Something really is wrong with her. There is no other explanation. This Alpha is her perfect match, and Rey spent their final moments together imagining him. Him! Self-loathing curdles in her stomach. If she hadn't been thinking about him so much—if she could just keep her needy, pining Omega at bay for a single goddamn minute—

A swoop of her stomach, and her Alpha takes a seat, still clutching her in his lap. With confusion, Rey looks down to find the distinct shape of a mattress beneath them. A bed. Where the hell did that come from?

She doesn't have time to wonder. With a hand at her chin, he is already directing her attention back to him.

"What do you need, Omega?"

The way he's staring at her is a little unnerving. Rey's breath hitches. "Well... you saw to my needs quite thoroughly already."

"I plan to tend to those quite a bit more before I let you go tonight. But that's not what I meant." He holds her chin fast, so that she can't hide her blush from him. "Something is wrong."

Rey's throat tightens. "Wrong?"

"Your thoughts. They're unsettled. I can smell them."

Oh, god. He knows. Her stomach churns. What can she possibly say? That she was imagining the arrogant, plush mouth of her mortal enemy on his face, while he commanded her to come? That she saw another Alpha's eyes peering into her soul while he catapulted her into the most intense org*sm of her entire life?

Rey has never suffered an Alpha's wrath before. At least not in person.

But she has a strong feeling this Alpha would be less than pleased with her at such a revelation, if she sticks around long enough for him to pull it out of her.

A furious growl rumbles in his chest, and Rey jumps in his lap; possessive hands yank her hips back down again. "There are other ways to loosen that pretty tongue, Omega. You can either go back to that chair, or stay in your Alpha's lap and answer the question."

Despite the extraordinary degree of overstimulation she just endured, the promise in his voice still manages to inflame her skin anew. He wants to know what she needs? Rey's frenzied thoughts produce about a dozen half-delirious answers: More kissing. A repeat performance of whatever sorcery he just inflicted upon her body in that chair. A psychiatric evaluation, probably.

His proximity, however, continues to reduce her speech to mono-syllables, because her mouth settles on something different: "Food."

Her Alpha goes very still. Probably as bewildered by her answer as she is. "You're hungry? Did you eat before coming here?"

"I..." Rey scrambles for a way to backtrack. God. Her face must be as pink as her wrist-gland was beneath that bracelet. "It was—a late night at work, and I suppose I assumed that you—that we—"

The soft brush of his mouth ends the rest of her stammering. "Of course I'll get you food," he says, surprisingly tender. "I'll get you whatever you want, little Omega."

With little effort, his large hands lift her by the hips, placing her amidst the pillows at the head of the mattress. Rey's breath floods out of her lungs when he rises, just from the way he towers over her again.

"But we'll need to take this off before dessert." A thumb trails across the blindfold. "The next time I make my Omega come, she's going to look me in the eye while I do it."

As he calls the front desk, Rey settles back against the pillows and attempts to calm her racing heart. This task is both complicated and eased by the warm blanket of her Alpha's scent, draping across her body. Soothing her. Stay, it whispers. You are safe here. I will take care of you now.

It is blessedly untouched by the agitation of the man across the room, who paces as he speaks in a low, urgent voice to whatever unfortunate Primal employee is on the other end of the phone. "—a new location, but that's no excuse for inadequate staffing. My Omega is hungry now, and I am not willing to drag her from our room just to—"

He is fuming, by the time the call ends.

Then the weight of his attention pivots back to the bed, and the stench of his anger dissipates.

In just a few strides, he is beside her again.

Rey holds her body in utter stillness. She forces her lungs to slow, her muscles to relax. It is as unnatural as pretending to sleep in front of a predator, even if his grazing fingers across her face right now feel anything but predatory.

Thankfully, her ruse appears to work. Her Alpha keeps his touch light and feathery as he slides a finger beneath the blindfold.

"I'll be right back, Omega."

In whisper-soft movements, the weight of the cloth slides slowly up her forehead before it disappears completely. Its departure is followed by soft lips, brushing each of her closed eyelids.

"My Omega."

And oh, how she yearns to open her eyes and see the look on this Alpha's face, while he calls her that. To know, just for a moment, what it feels like to belong to someone.

To belong to him.

But this will be easier if she doesn't know his face. Especially because (acid climbs up her throat) she fears what her Omega's reaction will be, when Rey tries to replace its delusional little fantasy with someone else.

No. Rey is unwilling to further taint what she shared with this man tonight by opening him up to such unflattering comparisons.

She won't allow Solo to tarnish this precious memory any more than he already has.

The instant the door out in the lounge slides shut, Rey leaps from the bed. On her mad dash for the dressing room, she sheds the bracelet, then the robe. She has never undressed so quickly. When she bursts through its dark curtain, there is no time to marvel at the flush of her skin, the glow of her glands. Frantically, she yanks back on her work clothes—shirt inside-out, pants unbuttoned.

Without thinking, she snatches up her Alpha's little velvet box, still waiting where she left it beside his handwritten note—but Rey forces her feet to halt before they can carry her past the vanity.

In the palm of her hand, the box's familiar weight pleads with her to stay. Her chest constricts. She hesitates.

By the time she exits the room, her cardigan pocket is as achingly empty as the rest of her.

Chapter 6: The 29th Floor, Pt. 2

Chapter Text

"I've never felt more pampered in my life."

Rose's delight floats high above the call's motor-streaked backdrop of rush hour traffic, contrasting sharply with the fuming wreckage of Rey's own emotional state this fine Wednesday morning.

Trapped beneath two stories of earth and concrete, Rey could not feel any further away from the bustling city that hums beneath her best friend's words—or the Alpha-stricken joy that colors them. Thankfully, the distance also hides the glower she gives her laptop as she wrestles her tone into tooth-aching brightness. "Didn't you say that after last week's fairy tale?"

"Oh, you know how competitive Alphas can be," Rose says dreamily. "He always has to outdo himself."

Rey, of course, knows nothing of the sort. She's only got one Alpha that might be used to measure such a claim—and there's no way he could outdo the experience he provided her the night before. That's a summit too high to surpass. Literally. Since it likely shattered the upper layers of the exosphere.

Not that Rey gave him the chance to try before hightailing it out of there.

But now Rey has two Alphas she's forbidden herself from ruminating over today.

Hardening her glare, she forces her attention back to her screen, where the far more loathsome of this pair has racked up a lengthy new record of media misdemeanors in the time since her last two hate-scrolls were unexpectedly postponed. Among them: Half a dozen new headline candidates for next Monday's trash fire gifs, two combative on-camera interviews, and yet another late-night altercation with the paparazzi (and an exceptionally hostile one at that, even by Tartarean standards).

Rey's short-lived hiatus from her nightly Solo media surveillance sessions may have forced her to skip this morning's voicemail, but she isn't about to let him off the hook two days in a row. Especially if it means she gets to indulge in her favorite work activity a few hours early.

In her ear, Rose continues to gush. "We started with a chef-guided scent tour of global flavors—followed by a Hux-guided scent tour of his flavors." The waggle in Rose's brows is practically audible over the phone. "Then he swept me up to Scentsation's rooftop garden for the Eden experience. Let me tell you, that place has more secret kissing spots than a romance novel—and Armitage wouldn't let us leave until we were well acquainted with each one."

At this stage of Rose's habitual Hux-inspired monologuing, Rey would typically be fighting to stifle her gag reflex. Today, though, hearing about her best friend enjoying the real-life version of her fleeting Primal daydream makes her throat tighten for a very different reason.

It's a good thing her own Alpha had no interest in exploring such frivolous fantasies together. In hindsight, Rey is grateful for the brutal efficiency of the scenario he chose for them. Not just because she ended up enjoying the experience as much as she did (though she will certainly be unpacking that little self-discovery for many late nights to come)—but it also made her Alpha's intention for the evening as blindingly clear as her own.

To limit their interaction to a single, impersonal night.

Even if (her face heats) he seemed rather determined to keep her there for every last minute of it.

The reminder of this betrayal, though, threatens to rouse her Omega from the stubborn state of mourning it's maintained since the night before. Wherever her Alpha is today, he must be equally grateful for establishing such a clear boundary with her up front.

Not only did Rey flee after he extracted her explicit promise to the contrary, but—thanks to Solo's unwelcome intrusion on her thoughts—she did so a full hour earlier than planned.

Firmly, Rey returns to her computer before all this off-limits ruminating agitates her Omega enough to interfere with her work again.

On her screen, the tyrant wholly responsible for her evening's abrupt ending is frozen in an expression of bone-chilling contempt. With a single giant fist, he seizes the collar of a bulging-eyed photographer, whose feet appear to be dangling several inches off the sidewalk.

Rey jots down a note in the document: Photo, 10/24 9:36 p.m. - Tie askew. Sloppy look for a CEO. For future altercations with the press, consider a tie clip.

"And that's not even the best part," Rose continues, blessedly oblivious to Rey's plummeting mood. "Afterward, he introduces me to the owner, who tells me Armitage has been talking up R2—isn't he so supportive?—and, drumroll... Scentsation is available to host our investor dinner on Friday!"

"Wait... the NutriCycle dinner?" Frowning, Rey puts a pin in her attempt to eyeball the size of Solo's fist based on the toy-like camera swaying from the photographer's neck. "At the scent bar?" A cramped restaurant in the village is a far cry from the vineyard in the hills outside the city where they originally scheduled NutriCycle's investor schmooze-fest.

"Scentsation prefers the term fragrance experience. But trust me, Rey—the place is literal paradise. They call the garden Eden for a reason."

"The Garden of Eden probably had a few less aphrodisiacs wafting around between hors d'oeuvres."

"When you consider NutriCycle's target audience, aphrodisiacs might just be the secret ingredient for our pitch!"

For the first time all morning, a smile sneaks onto Rey's face. "Leave it to Rose Tico to make lemonade out of a stinky scent flight."

"I couldn't have done it without Armitage. Can you believe it? A single date, and I've got a new client lead, a venue for the dinner, and enough rooftop kisses to put Scentless in Seattle to shame." A blissful sigh. "But now it's your turn to spill. How was Mr. Spicy Five-Course Fiesta?"

Crap. Already? Rey's eyes flick to the clock in the corner of her laptop screen. Usually, asking Rose about her most recent romantic adventures will buy her at least a few minutes more stalling than that.

"Rey? You still there?"

"Yes, yes—sorry. Running on about two and a half hours sleep here."

"Wow. A lot more than five courses, I take it."

"I wish," Rey says, with a fresh stab of rage toward the man on her screen. "Spent the entire night slaving away over Satan's media audit instead. I only stayed an hour."

Rose makes a choking noise. "Only an hour? Gee, your Alpha must move fast. After Armitage finishes, it takes half that time before I can even think about going anywhere, if you know what I'm saying."

Rey imagines being trapped in such a predicament with her own Alpha. Her face grows even warmer. "We didn't really get that far."

"Oh? So Mr. Spicy turned out to be Mr. Sweet and Slow?"

No, actually. Her Alpha turned out to be an absolute menace, in every way imaginable.

And Rey turned out to be very, very into it.

"Not exactly. He just seemed..." Unbidden, her mind conjures an image of towering black shadow, unyielding in its indifference: I'll do this for as long as it takes, Omega. It's all the same to me. "Not too concerned with getting around to that part."

"Huh." A beat. "Are you sure he was an Alpha?"

For some reason, Rey is extremely offended by this. "Of course he's an Alpha!"

"Sorry, sorry! It's just—a bit surprising."

"Why?" Her Omega has swiftly sprung to life at this turn in conversation, abandoning her moping to instead grip Rey's insides with insecurity. "Is that not normal?"

"Not really. Most Alphas can't wait to get around to that part." Rose sounds genuinely bewildered. "But don't worry. I'm sure you would have gotten there if it hadn't been for Lord Lucifer knot-blocking."

This reassurance, unfortunately, does little to assuage her. Now that she's thinking about it, Rey regrets running out before she could reciprocate the earth-shattering org*sm he gave her. Never mind get a chance to discover what an Alpha's knot looks like. Or tastes like. Or feels like, when it's keeping his Omega trapped firmly in place, with no option for escape.

Just another reason this man is probably glad he chose such an impersonal scenario for their session. What Alpha would want to risk wooing an Omega who sprints out the door before he's even had a chance to enjoy himself?

But Rey has officially been ruminating too long again, judging from how tight her Omega's stranglehold on her heart is becoming.

Fortunately, a notification appears on her laptop that swiftly replaces any lingering regret with a safer, far more familiar emotion. At least here in Skywalker Tower.

"Speak of the devil, and he shall appear." Rey opens the link and scowls. "I'll call you later."

"You'd better. Don't think for a second that's all the detail you're giving me. I want the whole enchilada, missy—all sixty glorious minutes of it."

The cold silence of Conference Room B feels especially gloomy without the cheer of her best friend's voice in her earbud. There is only the buzzing hum of the fluorescent lights overhead, the anxious internal chatter of her freshly awoken Omega, and—as Rey presses play—the brass-heavy entry music for the Alpha Deal Watch episode that was filmed exactly two hours ago in a studio six blocks away from this building.

Her Omega, at least, quiets down the moment the graphic gives way to a pair of armchairs, one of which presently struggles to contain the unmistakable frame of Skywalker Biotech's CEO.

Rey leans forward to get a closer look, for the sake of her notes.

Ben Solo has an uncanny way of transforming every seat he sits upon into a throne. It might be in the drape of his arm, weighing down the back of whatever piece of furniture he is currently claiming with his body. Or maybe it's the careless spread of his thighs, an expression of casual ownership over all the space around him. Rey is sure this man would be a nightmare on the subway, if he ever debased himself with such a common means of transportation.

Most likely, though, it's the dark, predatory look fixed permanently upon his face. A wolf, calculating the most tender parts of its next meal. Wherever he goes, Solo wears the expression of a ruler who understands the world has been crafted explicitly for his consumption—or his breaking.

Today, it seems, is a morning for the latter.

By the time she reaches the end of the video, her notes stretch well into the second page of her document. Beyond providing plenty of fresh voicemail material, Solo seems equally determined to create more clean-up work for her, too. He announces an impromptu acceleration of the timeline for his precious performance drug, threatens another round of lay-offs should the company fail to meet this new deadline, and then proceeds to ruthlessly disparage each member of the FDA's regulatory board in a manner so detailed, Rey actually double-checks her interview prep sheet to make sure she didn't accidentally include anything about last year's shotgun mating ceremony involving a certain chairman's son (she didn't).

All that, and still no green light for her shelter interviews. Which are already scheduled to launch. Next week.

Gnashing her teeth, Rey slams shut her laptop.

Solo might have stripped her of access to the 29th floor.

But that doesn't mean Rey can't wait for the 29th floor to come to her.

As it turns out, she doesn't have to wait very long.

When deprived of his morning eclair, Dopheld Mitaka typically makes a run to the salad bar down the block at exactly five minutes to 11. Rey is never quite sure if this is because his internal body clock has been so expertly aligned to her steady drip of pastry deliveries, or if this timeframe represents some narrow window in Solo's regular schedule that diverts his attention long enough for his assistant to snatch a quick bite before the dictator notices he's missing.

Today, though, nothing seems to be going to plan, and the executive elevator arrives early.

Hoping to get some work done while she waits, Rey has already staked herself out at her favorite couch in the lobby, ideally positioned with a clear view of the lifts and a walled corner at her back. The corner is mostly for the benefit of her laptop—both so that there is no glare for the screen, and no chance for a passerby to glance over her shoulder at the wrong moment when she just so happens to have a photo of Mr. Egomaniac's frowning face blown up for her inspection. She wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea, after all.

So when the elevator in the lobby's corner dings a full fifteen minutes earlier than expected, Rey launches into a mad scramble to pack her things so that she can intercept its passenger before he has a chance to spot her and make a hasty escape.

While he does not seem to notice her, he does in fact almost make it all the way to the exit before Rey can reach him.

Mitaka looks even more distressed than usual this morning. Hair tousled, brow pinched in a deep frown, he embarks upon a harried half-jog straight across the marble lobby before the elevator has even finished sliding open.

Just before he reaches the revolving doors, Rey skids to a halt right in front of him.

"Fancy seeing you here!"

The yelp this startles out of him is loud enough to turn several heads in the high-ceilinged entry. When he recovers from his backward stumble, his already strained expression tightens even further when he realizes who exactly is barring his way.

"God damnit, Rey. You can't keep doing that!"

"Doing what? I was just going for a stroll."

"I really don't have time for this right now." To her surprise, Dopheld attempts to scurry past her. Rey neatly blocks his path with a sidestep.

"Well, why don't I walk with you? I was just about to head for a salad myself."

"Salad?" A frantic, half-hysterical laugh bubbles out of him. "There will be no salads today. Please, Rey. I need to get something from Mr. Solo's car. And if I'm not back in the next ten minutes, he says I'm going to be getting an intimate introduction to the inside of its trunk later."

"Yeah, yeah. Very frightening. Real quick, though. Before his Majesty takes you for a drive out to the hills—do you think you could ask him a favor for me?"

"Seriously?"

Rey cuts him off with the thrust of a manilla folder against his chest. "Here it is. All six interviews. I printed them out, to make it as simple as possible. If he gives legal the go-ahead before four today, I can still get the copy to public transit in time for the campaign launch next week."

Mitaka looks at her like she's speaking another language. Muttering, he snatches the folder from her and flips through the loose pages.

Little by little, his features cloud over. But not with the irritation Rey would expect.

"Ah. The interviews." Dopheld shuffles the papers. His eyes dart away. "Right. Listen. About that..."

Oh.

Oh, no.

Rey knows that expression. She recognizes it from the four other doomed campaign concepts she presented during her first month and a half at this hellhole.

A cold, heavy dread anchors in her gut. "No, Dopheld. Please. Don't do this."

"I'm sorry, Rey. He only just told me this morning."

"At least tell me what's wrong with them." Rey loathes the desperation in her voice, but she can't help it. She's worked too hard on this to start at square one again. "Was it the bit about the Skywalker legacy? Because I can take that part out. It wasn't meant to be a jab, but—I can fix it, if he doesn't like it. If he would only just..." She blinks rapidly. Her eyes sting. "Didn't he say what was wrong?"

The pity in Mitaka's gaze is even more uncomfortable than the sensation of Rey's breakfast bumping up at the bottom of her esophagus.

"He told me it should have never been approved in the first place," Mitaka says, very quietly. "He's planning to close all those shelters at the end of the year. The decision was finalized last week."

Last week.

The lobby seems to shrink, high ceiling sinking toward the marble floor.

The decision was finalized last week.

That's nearly a month after he gave her the all-clear. A month after he rejected her four other proposals—meticulously crafted, packed with case studies and supporting data—and still, he rejected each one within minutes of their arrival in his inbox.

Last week. When she was already neck-deep into advertising negotiations—both with the painfully bureaucratic public transit agencies, as well as every single regional grocery chain still willing to brand their baskets with the company name he's spent the past year dragging through the mud. Last week, when she had already contacted dozens of former patients—personally, herself, on her own time—imploring them to participate in a marketing stunt.

Last week. Days before the interview Monday. The one he never showed up for. When Rey dragged those Omegas back to the site of a highly traumatic personal experience—all for the benefit of his public image.

All for him.

"Where is he?"

Mitaka's brow creases with concern. "Rey... are you all right?"

"No, Dopheld, I am not all right. Tell me where he is."

"Rey, you know I can't—" He cuts off, staggering backward, when Rey takes a step toward him.

"You can, actually. And you will. I need to speak with him—so you're going to tell me where he is."

The growing trepidation in Mitaka's face is usually reserved for his desk on the 29th floor. Rey might feel guilty, if she could feel anything at all through her white-hot, blistering rage.

"Just give me a moment," he stammers, "and I'll—I'll pull up his calendar—"

"I don't want his f*cking calendar, Dopheld. I want to know where the hell he is. So that I can speak with him. Right now."

Mitaka brandishes the manilla folder in front of his chest like a shield. "Well, you can't speak with him right now, okay? Jesus, Rey. He's in a meeting."

"Where?!"

"In his conference room. Where else? He's booked for the next hour with a client partner, so you really can't—hey, what are you—Rey, that's my key card, you can't just—Rey—!"

But Rey is already halfway across the lobby. When she reaches the executive elevator, Mitaka's employee pass doesn't turn the card reader red, the way Rey's did this morning for the first time since she started working here.

Instead, Rey is inside the car and jamming the Close Doors button before Dopheld can even finish stammering out his objection.

Her Solo power poses need no practice today. As the lift begins its long ascent, the Omega in the mirror seethes with unbridled fury. Still, Rey's hand clenches at her empty pocket, seeking her Alpha—not for comfort, not for courage, but to channel the dark, crackling power that shrouded him the night before.

Even without his sample, his energy strengthens her from memory alone. For a moment, Rey closes her eyes, leaning into the sensation. The remnants of his scent stir within her veins like the beat of a war drum. He fills her up, swelling her chest, until—just like yesterday's upward journey—she is once again enveloped in her Alpha's invincibility.

God. She can't believe she allowed Solo to ruin this for her, too.

Well, Rey is going to make damn sure it's the last thing he ever ruins for her again. After she's through with him, Ben Solo will either cower before her in fear or fire her on the spot.

Rey finds she doesn't care either way, so long as she finally makes him listen.

When the elevator slides open, Rey sweeps out like a storm into his empty reception area. Without slowing her step, she slaps Mitaka's key card on the semi-circular desk as she passes, heels clicking with firm purpose on the tile.

There is, at last, no one to stop her when she finally enters the long, wide hallway of Ben Solo's executive suite. His conference room is at the very end, and Rey marches directly toward it, chin high, spine straight. The closer she gets, the more her Alpha's memory emboldens her. Her fists clench and tighten around his energy. She feels high on his power. His rage.

When she arrives at the door, her movements contain not an ounce of hesitation. Rey throws it wide open.

Her legs stop short.

The room within could not be more opposite from the basem*nt conference room Rey has come to consider her own over these past many weeks. The space is drenched in natural light. Its far wall is a sprawling expanse of tinted glass, framing a breath-stopping view of the city below. The long shiny table is free of both dust and festering new employee handbooks. It could easily seat two dozen people. Perhaps even more.

Right now, it only seats two.

Her first insane thought is that one of them is her Alpha. He's here, her Omega thinks. He's actually here. Which is—ridiculous. Completely impossible. Rey left both him and his seductive little cloth back at Primal. Is his memory so strong that it can still overwhelm her like this?

And then her reeling, scent-drunk brain locks eyes with the man sitting at the table's very end.

Rey realizes, all at once, that she was wrong about Ben Solo. It's not his thighs, or his arms, or his imperious gaze that lends him the air of a ruler.

No. It's the carnivorous energy that seethes all around him. His complete self-assurance in its deference to his command. It is an energy that would have been impossible for her to truly understand, had she never met him in person.

Except she already has.

Alpha, sings her Omega, who has not yet caught on to the slow-blooming nightmare in this horrific turn of events. Alpha, sweet Alpha, I've found you again.

For an endless moment, Rey's mind goes completely blank with shock.

It's him.

Ben Solo sits at the far head of the table. He is wearing a suit: black shirt, black jacket—the very same one he wore yesterday. Rey knows this from the paparazzi photo she just finished tearing apart, but also from a place of deeper instinct. A thread of delicate, lingering Omega-scent floats across the room, and Rey understands, with a flash of clarity, that it blossoms from the place on his collar where she nuzzled her cheek. When her Alpha clutched her nearly naked body, flushed and pliant in his arms.

Her Alpha.

Ben Solo.

It's him, her Omega thinks again, with a rush of euphoria so staggering, Rey's heart trips and stumbles over its rhythm. It's him. It's really him.

And then the echo of her rational mind, steeped in dawning horror:

It's him.

Benjamin Bane-Of-Her-Existence Solo. Her eternal tormenter. The architect of so much of her daily strife. The very person she was storming up here to flay with two-and-a-half months worth of pent-up grievances.

This man has seen her naked. He's made her thrash and cry and beg for pleasure in his hands. Solo's hands.

Her Alpha is Ben Solo.

Striking is too mild a word for his appearance. There is a terrifying beauty in his features that Rey has never before allowed herself to acknowledge. In person, his mouth looks as lush as it felt last night, brushing against her lips, her eyelids. As soft and arrogant and infuriating as every scowl she's scrutinized, late in bed, imagining all the ways she'd love to wipe it off his face. His hair looks equally soft. Rey is briefly indignant, that she didn't think to run her fingers through it yesterday. Or yank it into a fist, so that she might force this man's glare to finally meet her own.

He is certainly meeting it now. Sitting in perfect stillness, Ben Solo stares back across the room at her with an expression of complete disbelief. Like Rey has just crashed into the room through the ceiling instead of the door. Like he isn't quite sure if he's imagining her there, and she might vanish the instant he removes his eyes from her.

I'm here, Alpha, her Omega thinks deliriously. I'm not going anywhere. I'm all yours.

Rey should be horrified. Furious, even. She allowed Ben Solo—Ben Solo!—to strip her naked. She let him blindfold her, tie her to a chair, and torture her with excruciating pleasure. He kissed her. More than once. Three times, to be exact—not that Rey was counting. She certainly hasn't spent most of her morning recalling the specifics of each one. Especially the softness of his mouth. Ben Solo's mouth. Which has now kissed her three times, and groaned with the taste of her scent, and promised filthy, unspeakable things while he touched between her legs.

The horror of this discovery should fan the flames of her rage into an inferno.

But with her Alpha sitting across the room, staring at her like that, the winds shift to blow them in a decidedly different direction.

The intensity of his interest is somehow even more potent than it was when he first threw open the immersion room doors. In the light of day, she can see the way it transforms his face. Ben Solo's face. The longer she stands there, frozen, the more her perception narrows to the gaze she saw in her blindfold last night. It smolders with the very same hunger that blazed back at her from the darkness—when her Alpha held her dangling at her gasping edge. When he feasted upon the sight of his lovely Omega in the grip of ecstasy.

Every single one of Rey's glands prickle at the memory.

At the end of the table, Solo's nostrils flare. His pupils dilate. The turmoil of his expression contracts into singular, predatory intent.

All at once, Ben Solo stares at her like he wants to devour her whole.

"Well, isn't this a delicious surprise!"

At the sound of another man's voice, Rey nearly jumps out of her own skin. Solo's focus is so arresting, she's almost forgotten they are not alone. At the edge of her vision, she clocks the unexpected presence of MateSync's founder in the seat directly at Solo's right, closest to the window.

"Ben didn't say you were going to be tagging along," Lando Calrissian says, apparently oblivious to the tension saturating the room. "Is Miss Tico here too?"

Rey's thoughts spin so quickly it's impossible to discern the shape of any which one. Tagging along? She's not here to tag along. She's here to verbally eviscerate the man who has tortured her for ten weeks straight. But her Alpha's confidence has abandoned her—mostly because he is sitting (holy sh*t) right there, wearing Ben Solo's expensive-looking suit, staring her down with all the blood-thirst of a wolf that's caught the scent of a fresh kill in its nose.

Down the hall, the door to the fire escape bangs open.

"No!"

Mitaka's wailing shout pierces the silence, and then he nearly charges straight into her. Rey must take several staggering steps forward to avoid a collision—but this also draws her completely across the room's threshold, and even more fully under the spell of her Alpha's presence. His scent sweeps in beneath her thoughts like an updraft, spinning them even faster than before. It's all she can do not to fall on her knees until he bids her rise again. And there's no telling how long that would take.

Distantly, Rey is aware she needs to get the hell out of here before that can happen.

At her back, Mitaka half-sags against the doorway, panting heavily. "I'm—I'm so sorry, sir, I—I tried to stop her—"

"Hey, now, that's all right," Calrissian says, with some bewilderment. "I'm a client of R2 as well. You're more than welcome to join us, Miss Niima."

The instant these words leave his mouth, the room's energy shifts.

The sound of them seems to linger, spinning in the air. For an endless moment, they whirl like a top, attracting all the room's tension into single, swarming convergence.

From across the long table, Ben Solo's attention upon her face condenses into a palpable force.

Infinitesimally, his eyes narrow.

"As tempting as that sounds," Rey hears herself stammer, "Rose is actually the main contact for your account. These days, I'm lucky enough to dedicate just about every waking moment to the very important work Mr. Solo has me doing here at Skywalker."

"Nonsense," Calrissian says, waving her off. "You're already here! I'm sure Mr. Solo knows better than anyone how brilliant you two are. Can't he spare you for an hour or two, for the sake of his favorite client?"

A chair eases backward on the marble, the rolling sound of it low and heavy with the weight of its occupant.

"Rey," Mitaka hisses in desperate warning from the door.

Never removing his eyes from her, Ben Solo rises to stand.

Rey's pulse instantly ratchets up to double its previous pace. "I'm afraid that won't be possible. Mr. Solo keeps me quite busy, you see. He's leading the company in a brand new direction. So many directions. A new one every day—I can hardly keep up with them all."

This brief reminder of her purpose here is almost immediately superseded by the slight tilt of Solo's head, as though he is assessing the most likely route of her escape.

With the slow, measured steps of a predator, he begins to round the table.

"Well, Mr. Solo was just assuring me that his partnership with MateSync is at the top of Skywalker's priority list. Isn't that right, Ben?"

"Rey–!" From the corner of her eye, Mitaka makes frantic, beckoning motions with both arms.

Solo is almost halfway around the table now. He moves with a deadly grace that should be impossible, given his size, but instead only magnifies his command over his composure. Every prey-instinct in Rey's body urges her to run—but both her feet are welded to the floor. They simply won't budge. The intensity of his gaze paralyzes her. Rey feels just as incapacitated as she was with his leather straps around her thighs—and equally as naked. A vulnerable little creature, pinned beneath the force of his will.

Then he speaks, and the sound of his voice paralyzes her thoughts with all the rest of it.

"Miss Niima," Solo says, "is already quite preoccupied with her prior obligations. To me."

How the hell did she not recognize his voice yesterday? Or perhaps she did, and she was simply struck so stupid with lust for him that she didn't care. Its deep, rolling timbre holds the same sway over her today—but this time, its impacts are laced with horror, and rage, and—thank heavens above—the resurgence of her mobility.

Scrambling backward toward the window, Rey nearly trips over a chair leg in her attempt to keep as many solid objects between them as possible. "That's actually what I came to speak with you about," she says, grasping desperately for her anger. "Though I can see this might not be the best time."

Solo, of course, does not trip over a single piece of furniture as he continues his prowling advance. "Am I to believe Rey Niima suddenly respects the value of my time?"

Oh, yes. There's her anger. Rey clings to it like a buoy, back-pedaling as quickly as her feet will carry her. "You of all people have no right talking to me about wasting people's time."

His eyes snap with fire. "If I recall correctly, Miss Niima, I recently carved out a significant portion of my schedule for you."

Ben Solo's legendary wrath is as terrifying as she always imagined, up close and personal like this. It rolls off of him in sulfurous waves as he circles the table, meeting her step for step. For some reason, though, it doesn't deter her. Its scent is oxygen to the flames that beat hot and raging in her own belly. "Well, you can rest easy," she snaps, over the protests of her Omega. "You won't need to trouble yourself with that again."

"Oh, it's too late for that, I'm afraid." He drops into a low, sinister tone that her body instantly recognizes from the previous night. "You're already here, aren't you? You've delivered the trouble straight into my lap. So now I'm going to deal with it. Directly."

It's scrambling all her signals—the sound of her Alpha's voice, coming out of Lord Lucifer's mouth. Rey should be showing him exactly what kind of trouble she came here to deliver. At the very least, she should be plotting ways to maneuver him as far away from the door as possible, so that she can make a break for it.

Instead, Rey finds herself lightheaded with thoughts about her Alpha's lap, and how it might feel to be spread out across those giant thighs of his while he deals with all her trouble.

Before she knows what's happening, this image hooks deep into her core. The drag of its burning anchor stirs up yesterday's restless sediment, infusing all her water. Brand new currents of interest swirl within her. No part of her is safe from its reach. It seeps through every crack, flooding her with memories of the previous night: his breath, tingling above her throat. The languid sweep of his thumb across her tongue. Thick fingers filling her. f*cking her.

An unmistakable pair of eyes, enraptured by her face when he finally allowed her to come.

For the first time since Solo rose from his chair, he stops moving. His body tenses. For the briefest moment, his eyes flutter shut on a sharp, deep inhalation.

When he opens them again, they have gone completely black.

Rey almost spills over backward in her blind, clumsy attempts to navigate around the head of the table, toward the door. "Apologies for the disruption, Mr. Calrissian. Rose will reach out to follow up after your—your meeting today—"

"Really, Ben, there's no need to frighten her," Lando says, visibly concerned. "The girl just wanted to talk."

Solo actually snarls at him, a furious flash of teeth. The growl that accompanies this delivers a punch of scorching heat straight to Rey's belly—and, to her horror, another surge of dampness to her underwear.

She would almost rather she pissed herself, the way Skywalker's former board chairman famously did in this very room a year ago. From the hot flush crawling across her skin, however, there's no denying the source of her new discomfort.

Rey doesn't wait around for Solo to notice. For the first time since she burst through his conference room door, he has broken his unrelenting focus on her, and this may be her final opportunity to escape.

She might be a pretty critical failure of an Omega in every other way. But when it comes to her prey-borne ability to slip away from a sticky situation, Rey can Houdini with the best of them.

As soon as she backs through the doorway, she streaks down the hall as quickly as she can without breaking into a run. Already, the clicking of her heels threatens to betray her; she can only imagine how fast the violent clack-clack of a sprint would summon his pursuit. Halfway there. Her breath is shallow, ears peeled for the imminent signal of his discovery.

When she finally arrives at the lift, she risks a hasty glance over her shoulder.

The hallway is still empty.

The head-spinning rush of her relief is so intense that it summons static to her vision. She tears the keycard from around her neck. Another glance behind—still empty. Rey presses the card to the access reader, then jams her thumb on the down button.

Nothing happens.

She thumbs it again. And again. Each frantic glance over her shoulder both confirms her safety and threatens it for the seconds-long delay in her focus. Still no one there—but the elevator isn't opening—why the hell isn't it opening?—

"Rey! Here—take this!"

Across the lobby, Mitaka pops up behind the reception desk, brandishing his lanyard. Rey's heart lurches. She couldn't care less what Solo says—Mitaka is getting double eclairs for the rest of her days on this account. Which will probably be in the low single digits, all things considered.

She only makes it two steps before all the hairs on the back of her neck prickle with sudden awareness.

Ben Solo claims the full height of the conference room doorway. Nearly the full width of it, too. His scent billows down the hall, compelling his Omega to obey her Alpha, to wait, to stay. There are no solid objects to put between them. Only the distance of the hallway's long stretch, which starts shrinking rapidly as he begins to stalk directly toward her.

Abandoning any hope for the elevator, Rey pivots and slams through the door for the emergency stairs.

The air here is chilly and stale. A single, nauseating glimpse of the spiraling plummet past the railing is enough to keep Rey's gaze fixed firmly ahead. In a blur, she races down one set of stairs, then a second, hoping desperately that the next landing will have an exit.

High above, the metal creak of a door admits the slow-rolling intoxication of her Alpha's scent.

The smack of it nearly knocks her off her feet. Her ankle twists. Clutching the railing, Rey balances on one leg to undo the strap of her heel as fast as possible.

The door whines shut.

"You can stop running now, Miss Niima."

The tall, echoing space magnifies the heavy sound of his footsteps, slow and measured in their descent. In the same way, it carries the deep resonance in his voice so that it seems to come from everywhere, all around her. Frantically, Rey tugs at the buckle of her shoe.

"You have my full attention," he continues, in that calm, easy tone. "And what lengths you've gone to get it. Even without an elevator, you still manage to disrupt my entire day."

Tearing off her shoe, Rey throws her answer furiously over her shoulder. "If I have to climb twenty-nine flights of stairs to do my job, then so be it."

"Is that what you think this is? Doing your job?"

"I'm doing about ten jobs, actually. One for each member of the communications team you fired."

"I wasn't talking about your consulting work, Omega."

Omega.

That word reaches straight into her veins and grabs hold of her pulse as effectively as it did the night before.

He sounds much closer now. A glance over her shoulder confirms (her breath stops) that Solo's long shadow has indeed rounded the landing just above this one. The black silhouette of her Alpha, cut straight from the fabric of a waking nightmare.

Her stuttering heartbeat kicks back into overdrive.

Rey rips the heel from her other foot, breaking the strap. Without thinking, she hurls it blindly in his direction before lunging back into her descent. Unfortunately, this seems to accomplish the exact opposite of her intention; not only does it smack loudly on the wall, missing its mark by a mile—but from the increasing tempo of his pursuit, it only serves to quicken his advance.

Cold, rough concrete slaps against her bare feet. Behind her, his voice stalks ever closer.

"Did you truly think you could barge into my day unannounced, demand an audience with me, and then leave?"

The agitation building in his tone threatens to trip her up again. Rey bounces off the railing as she continues racing downward.

"You? My mother's little pet? The consultant I explicitly prohibited from entering my offices?"

The next shadowy landing swings into sight—and with it, finally, a door. Rey's heart leaps. She takes the stairs two at a time to reach it more quickly.

"That's not how this works, Omega. Not today."

His voice is right behind her now. To her horror, the Omega in her chest seizes control of her legs, stopping them short. Alpha—I'm here—please, please don't be angry with me—

Rey's next step finds empty air instead of concrete. For a horrifying moment, she isn't touching anything at all. The hard angles of the steps rush up to meet the front of her body.

Then a thick, powerful arm snaps tight around her midsection at the very last moment, hauling her backward.

Her Alpha's musk engulfs her. The immediate effect of its sedation smothers what remains of Rey's already questionable survival instincts. She forgets to kick her legs until her back hits the wall—and by then, it is already too late.

Ben Solo looms over her, breathing hard. He plants his palms on either side of her head, hemming her in. An unnecessary precaution; his glare is so penetrating that it nails her to the concrete all on its own.

"Here I am, Miss Niima." His eyes are bright with fury. "You've done it. I'm all yours. Now speak."

Rey's heart lodges itself somewhere in her throat. The sudden overwhelm of his proximity makes it difficult to find her voice. For multiple reasons. "Look, I'm sorry I interrupted your meeting—"

"Spare me the insincerity. Did you actually have something to say? Or was this just another means to torture me?"

Rey blinks, her thoughts stumbling as they try to make sense of his words. "Torture you?"

"As if you don't know." Solo crowds her further back against the wall, suddenly enraged. "Are you really so hell-bent on invading every corner of my life? Did you think it would be amusing? Play the part of my perfect Omega, then snatch her out from under me? Well, you've made it completely impossible for me to focus. Since the moment they brought me your scent. There's been no work—no sleep—not a single f*cking thought without you in the middle of it. Every last one of them, Niima. They all lead straight to you."

The stairwell sways. Rey is suddenly grateful for the cage of her Alpha's upper body; she might find herself tumbling down the steps again without it. Perhaps she already fell down these steps earlier this week. Perhaps she is still tumbling down them now. She might be trapped in some delirious, end-of-life fever-dream—one where she's granted a perfect match with an Alpha, and where that Alpha turns out to be Ben Solo, and where Ben Solo might chase her down a stairwell to confess his all-consuming desire for her.

Solo, for his part, is as close as her imagination might conjure to the real thing, right down to his seething rage.

"I have little experience with Omegas. Perhaps this level of obsession is par for the course. But I do have experience with you, Rey Niima." His scent darkens. "Whatever sick little game you think you're playing... You should know I'm not a man who takes kindly to provocation. So it would be in your best interest to stop provoking me."

"Provoking you?" Irritation quickly sours any lingering dizziness from his confession. "How exactly am I provoking you?"

A humorless laugh rolls out of him. "Everything you do is a provocation. You've practically made a sport of it. But perhaps we can start with the state you were in when you came storming into my conference room just now."

Her state? Is he serious? "If you don't want me to be angry, perhaps you might take a break from doing everything in your power to make my job as difficult as humanly possible."

"I don't particularly care how difficult you think your job is," Solo says coldly, "or how angry it makes you. What I absolutely will not tolerate, however, is you barging into my meeting—with another Alpha, no less—smelling like that."

Her stomach flips. "Like what?"

"You know exactly what." His dark gaze sharpens with warning. "Or do you need me to spell it out for you?"

"Oh, so you mean we're actually using our words today?"

Rey regrets the question before it's even finished leaving her mouth. The echo of yesterday's exchange surges forth to charge every inch of the scarce air between them. She might as well be strapped back in that chair again. Her current situation feels equally helpless: trapped between the wall of her Alpha's solid body in front, the inescapability of hard concrete at her back, the dizzy-making taste of his scent both around and within.

One wide hand slides up the back of her head, winding her hair into a fist. A single yank, and then there is nowhere to hide. Her throat is shamefully bare for him.

"This, Niima. This is what I'm talking about." Solo's grip tightens, tilting her head to better examine her. "It's no wonder you're so needy. Is this what you've been doing all morning? Sitting in my building—on my payroll—playing with your pretty little Omega-glands? Getting them all pink and tasty before you parade them around in front of me?"

Rey's throat throbs helplessly beneath his inspection, aching for the resumption of yesterday's spine-melting touches. She clenches her teeth. "Actually, I spent the morning breaking my back over your pointless emergency media audit. You know—the one you demanded I finish by nine this morning. For absolutely no reason whatsoever."

"Oh, yes. What a good little consultant you are." Solo's voice is crooning. Drenched in contempt. "It must be such a challenge, meeting the very bare minimum expectations for your role. Especially when you're so busy torturing your poor Omega like this."

That dark gaze snaps back to her face. The undercurrent of his fury presses at the cracks of his calm composure.

"And for what? So that you can taunt me by throwing my Omega into the middle of a client negotiation? Drag her around my offices, smelling like f*cking sin?" His voice gains an edge of desperation. "Is this some sort of punishment? Was it not enough for you last night to torture me with an Omega I'll never have? To let me believe, for even a moment, that I could—that you could—"

Abruptly, Solo cuts off. He steps backward, releasing her hair. Any trace of vulnerability vanishes from his features so quickly, Rey wonders if she imagined it there to begin with.

"Well, your game ends here," he says, with harsh finality. "This will be your only warning. Provoke me again, and I will make sure you suffer for it."

For a moment, Rey's mind is completely blank.

He really thinks she's doing this on purpose?

When she finally finds her voice again, her outrage is so intense, it overwhelms even the whining confusion of her Omega.

"Wow. I've got to hand it to you, Solo. This is a whole new level of arrogance. Even for you."

Fixing him with her fiercest elevator-glare, Rey steps toward him. Either all her rehearsing has paid off, or the sudden movement takes him by surprise, because Solo actually steps backward at her advance. Rey follows him all the way to the railing, where she jabs a finger into his very solid chest.

"I didn't come here to torture you. I came to finally tell my least favorite client what a pompous, inconsiderate nightmare he is to work with."

His eyes flash. "Did I give you the impression that I care about your opinion, Miss Niima?"

"Of course not," she snaps. "That would require you to spare a thought for anyone other than yourself, wouldn't it?"

"For the past two days, Omega, my thoughts have been filled with nothing but you."

Her Omega squirms pathetically at the open desire in his face. Rey rises up on her bare toes, so she can glare directly into it. "Two days? Try two months. My entire job is to think about you, Solo. Every single day revolves around someone who I utterly despise."

"Rest assured, Niima. The feeling is completely mutual."

"Then it should be no surprise that I went to Primal to get away from you." Rey's eyes burn with indignation. "The things I let you do to me... The way you made me feel... I'm sure it was obvious that I—I've never done anything like that before. Never mind fake it, just to... what was it? Disrupt your day?" The thought alone makes her stomach twist into knots. "Are you seriously so self-centered to think that's reason enough for me to humiliate myself like that—in front of you, of all people?"

Solo's expression goes completely still. "I seem to remember you being quite eager to humiliate yourself in front of me last night."

"Yes," she hisses. "I was." The reminder pools hot and shameful in her stomach. "And that's precisely my point. I loathe you, Ben Solo." Another stab of her finger. "You are, hands down, the worst person I've ever had the displeasure of working with. You're hostile, unpleasant, and rude. I've never actively disliked someone so much in my life. And you're right—there's a long list of things I'd do if it would give you even a fraction of the grief you've caused your employees. But this?" Rey turns her finger to point at the traitorous brand on her throat. "This isn't one of them."

Solo absorbs most of her tirade with a careful, unreadable expression. But at this final statement, his dark eyes snap down to the place that burns for him beneath her hair.

Their returning slide back up to her own licks a long, hot flame up her throat.

"Then what is it for?"

The sudden intensity in his expression flusters her. Rey must struggle to maintain her glare. Is he serious? "What do you think it's for?"

"I'm more interested in hearing what you think, Miss Niima."

"I thought you didn't care about my opinion."

"It seems my previous assumption was mistaken. So I'd rather hear it from you directly."

His Alpha-scent, so full of churning agitation before, now settles into something hot and liquid. Rey's pulse skips in recognition. "Well, I'm sure you'll come up with a new one just fine on your own."

Solo pushes himself off the railing. One step, then another, before the wall bumps up against her shoulders—then every knot of her spine, as she presses flat against it.

This is because Solo has lost any of his prior concern for maintaining their earlier distance. He leans in to examine her neck, close enough for Rey to feel the heat of his body. Even more distressing, the mouthwatering scent of her Alpha fills any space left in between, caressing all the places that trembled for him yesterday.

"It smells, little Omega, like you want me to kiss you again," he says. "So unless you have another explanation, I'm going to assume that's what you want me to do."

The light, casual tone he uses to deliver this observation unleashes a whirlwind of fluttering in her stomach. "That's..." Rey wets her lips. "That's not..."

"Oh? It's not?" Dark eyes drop to her mouth, lured by the appearance of her tongue. "Then why do you smell like such an invitation?"

This is not how Rey imagined Ben Solo would behave in their final boss battle. And she's imagined it quite often, on the long elevator ride to the 29th floor. She thought he might be repentant (hopefully). Indifferent (probably). Incandescent with wrath (by far, the most likely scenario).

Never did she think he would be murmuring to her in a low, sinful voice about the temptation of kissing her.

"You'd better hurry with that explanation, Miss Niima." Solo's knuckles stroke beneath her chin, nudging it upward. "Or I'll start to think this is what you wanted the whole time."

Above their heads, a door creaks open.

"M-Mr. Solo?"

The tremulous sound of Mitaka's voice floats high above the thick tension of the stairwell. Rey becomes very aware of how little space remains between them. The tips of their noses practically touch in her effort to meet his glare.

Solo does not break it with so much as a blink."Speak."

"I—I didn't want to bother you," comes Mitaka's warble, "but the chairman of the FDA's regulatory board is on the phone."

Solo's jaw rolls. His gaze darts back and forth between each of Rey's eyes. "Tell him I'm busy."

"Well, I told him that, sir, of course. But—he's calling with an update on the board's review. And, just to warn you, he... didn't seem very happy with your interview this morning."

The irony of this fills Rey with almost hysterical relief. Solo, on the other hand, is overcome by a much darker kind of fury than anything he's directed at her so far today. He rips his hand from her chin to scowl up the stairs at Mitaka's disembodied voice. "What exactly did he say about the board's review?"

"That—that there are many ways to—d-delay the process, when the applicant is being uncooperative—"

Rey doesn't get to hear the rest of the board chairman's threat. She'll probably learn all about it later, anyway, when Solo sends his next last-minute request for her to dig up every speck of dirt on the man's life dating back to primary school. Or perhaps, more likely, in a newspaper article several weeks from now, since Rey's tenure as Ben Solo's human shovel will likely expire before the workday is over.

Either way, she won't miss this opportunity to get the hell out of here before Solo can return to his unwelcome interrogation.

It's clear she has no answer for his question. She's certainly not going to find it while he's hovering a breath away, flooding her Omega-brain with a torrent of obscene possibilities: his plump bottom lip, his scraping teeth, the insistent heat of his licking tongue.

Solo's distraction will only last a few seconds. But that's all the time she needs.

Silent as a rabbit, Rey slips down to the landing and out the door.

Rey's bare feet earn her only a handful of odd looks as she rushes through the hallway of the legal department. She doesn't take a full breath until she is crammed in the corner of the elevator that serves the rest of the building—and even then, there is no relaxing until she's safely in her hatchback, pulling out of the parking garage.

In the rearview mirror, her reflection is as flushed and radiant as it was after her encounter with him last night. And the gland beneath her ear is even pinker.

Her fingers drift to her throat in a vain attempt to soothe its itch.

When she pulls onto the parkway, Rey steers her car toward her apartment building instead of the neighborhood that houses R2's office. Better to wait in the privacy of her own living room, she thinks, for the email that bears the news of her firing.

Will he make Mitaka send it? Or will the pleasure of delivering this particular news himself lead him to finally contact her directly?

Whoever it comes from, Rey would rather be home alone when he deals the fatal blow. It will give her time to plan her conversation with Rose about how exactly she lost their biggest account.

For now, though, Rey spends the ride back to her apartment with her thoughts circling a very different question, one that's been permanently scorched into the aching mark at her throat.

Then what is it for?

Chapter 7: Distraction

Chapter Text

For a second consecutive afternoon, the highest office in Skywalker Tower sees little in the way of actual work.

The desk strains beneath an uncharacteristic backlog of tasks. Stacks of departmental requests remain unanswered. Ackbar's weekly progress report on the clinical trials, typically an item of the highest priority, languishes in an unopened folder for a second day. The unscheduled call currently occupying the desk phone's speaker is rapidly approaching the seven-minute mark—six-and-a-half minutes longer than the historical survival rate for similar interruptions within the glass-encased walls of this room.

On an ordinary day, any one of these things would be unimaginable.

But none of them stretches the limits of Ben Solo's imagination so much as the object currently absorbing all his attention.

Distraction is not a frequent visitor to this tower's executive suite. Not when the vigilance of its master fortifies the perimeter. Airtight clarity of thought becomes a necessary practice, when standing at the helm of multiple enterprises—one of which Ben is still white-knuckling out of a flaming tailspin, trailing the red-hot smoke of his uncle's balance sheets in a stubborn, decade-long streak.

To this end, Ben wields his focus like a weapon, zeroing in on its adversaries for their swift annihilation.

And just as most other things capable of his conquest, Ben prefers to do the annihilating himself.

Each morning, he chisels the contents of his calendar with ruthless precision, shaping every minute in service to his goals. It is a practice he's maintained since his days as a young founder, when his near-obsessive involvement in Empire's most important projects directly precipitated their success. During one particularly grueling period of crunch, Ben famously checked out an entire codebase and spent three feverish weeks single-handedly refactoring computational matrices until they ran with flawless efficiency. The revolutionary nano-chip technology that emerged from this effort now powers not only all of Skywalker's products, but much of modern society.

Such commitment to his work leaves little room for distraction. Until very recently, Ben would have been hard-pressed to name an indulgence capable of enticing him away from it at all.

For a second afternoon, however, he finds himself facing down such an indulgence.

And Ben is undeniably, irresistibly enticed.

Amidst the unfinished work on his desk sits a pair of delicate black heels. The right's outer sole carries a scuff from scraping concrete; the strap of the left dangles from a buckle, ripped clean from a feminine ankle. Ben has touched that ankle. Just last night, the little foot it's attached to peeked out from the circle of his hand, while he arranged its owner's restless body to suit his preferred method of consumption: Peeled open. Exposed. Restrained, and ripe for pleasuring.

With great care, Ben hooks a single finger in the left shoe's back. Lifts it, gently, off the desktop.

"My only point, Mr. Solo, is that it's... highly unusual for us to advance an applicant to the next phase of clinical trials so rapidly—even when the initial data is submitted so far ahead of schedule—"

When permitted to prattle on for any length of time, Chairman Canady has a tendency to prepare the very pot where Ben intends to boil him. Already, the man's voice is gaining the fluttering tremor so particular to cornered prey.

Bringing his prize to eye-level, Ben leans back in his chair and listens to the chairman stew.

"—and given the rather aggressive nature of the statements you've been making—right before Congress's budget negotiations, no less—"

It's such a small thing, dangling from his fingertip. The foot it contained is even smaller. Here is the indentation of a firm, rounded heel; here is where a tender-soft stretch of flesh bridges up to the pad of a metatarsal. And here—just here—tucked right underneath is a dark secret space for little toes to curl, exactly as they curled last night, every single time that he spoke to her.

His mouth turns downward. The heel's bottom cap is showing signs of wear. For a creature so accustomed to sprinting out doors, she ought to have better footwear.

"—the pressure you're putting on us, you see—it's making the entire board question if you're really considering the potential fallout here."

The line falls silent. Ben tilts his head. On the tip of his finger, the heel sways, back and forth, in tiny, metronomic movements.

He allows the silence to hang in a similarly precarious fashion before he speaks.

"Tell me, Chairman Canady. What exactly does pressure feel like to you?"

Spluttering. "Well, I—I'm not sure what you mean."

"Give it your best shot."

"Mr. Solo, if you're attempting to—intimidate me, you should know, I saw the interview myself, and it was... it was rather rude—"

"Rude," Ben repeats, drawing the word out. As though it's the first time he's ever heard it used this way. "So that's your idea of pressure? When you decide someone is being rude?"

"Well, it was a very public setting, wasn't it?"

Ben rotates his wrist. The heel's arcing sway nudges wider, so very reactive to the slightest twitch of his fingertip.

"I think we can do better than rude, Chairman."

"Mr... M-Mr. Solo—"

"Now, now. You had your chance. Let me show you how I would define it." Ben leans back in his chair, listening to the chairman sweat in the silence over the phone line. "You see, Canady, rude is a bit arbitrary, for my tastes. I prefer to deal more in the realm of the concrete. For example..." He lifts the dangling shoe up to the window, considering. "Imagine the potential fallout, should the board discover the terms of your early access agreement with Skywalker. You'll remember. The unofficial ones."

"But..." Canady's voice cracks over the speaker. "But we've had this arrangement with Skywalker for nearly a decade."

"With Skywalker's former leadership," Ben corrects him. "What will your fellow board members say, when they learn exactly what you offered Mr. Skywalker in exchange for early access to our technology?"

A note of panic enters the poor chairman's voice. "How do you even—did Luke tell you this? Whatever he said, an agreement's an agreement—you must understand—"

"Then I'm sure the rest of your board will understand, too. Perhaps they'll only strip you of your chairmanship, instead of evicting you from your seat completely."

By the time Ben ends the call, he's extracted both Canady's blubbering apologies and the chairman's repeated assurances that Skywalker's third phase start date will remain firmly in tact.

It is, in other words, a clear victory. But only in its lowest form. For Ben has now been forced to trade a valuable piece of leverage, while gaining almost nothing in return. Defending his ground, instead of adding to it. And for what? His remarks about Canady's son this morning were careless. Unnecessary. Ben cannot even be sure he would have made them, had he not spent the night in such a state of restless, bitter agony.

Had he not been so goddamn distracted.

Idly, he flicks his thumb back and forth across the heel's broken strap, still hanging from its buckle.

While he would like to believe this to be a temporary predicament—one born of the past few days, and just as easily eliminated—he knows its roots run much deeper than that.

Distraction may not be a frequent visitor to this office, but it began probing at the edges of his walls long before Primal's representative arrived with that cursed sample Monday night.

It's been knocking at his door for the past ten weeks.

As a general rule, Ben prefers to avoid working with Omegas. Their frailty, their repulsive lack of willpower, their exasperating, perpetual hesitation—he's never had patience for any of it. Dopheld Mitaka's competence as an executive assistant has earned him a rare exception to this rule; up until very recently, he was the only Omega that Ben had any regular interaction with at all.

Or so he thought.

Indeed, the maddening little she-demon down in Sub-Level 2 has no such shortage of willpower. She may very well be the most willful individual Ben has ever met. Nor does she display a shred of hesitation in bombarding him with every manner of disruption: text messages filled with cryptic, multi-layered emojis that he has neither the pop culture familiarity nor the desire to interpret; emails that arrive like knives in his inbox, sharpened by excess of color and capital letters, specifically designed to provoke a migraine in their recipient; three-and-a-half voicemail-boxes worth of her posh little accent, bright with f*ck-you cheer, gleefully recounting his every failure in painstaking, microscopic detail.

Really, can Ben be blamed for failing to recognize her as an Omega, when she is so fundamentally opposite to one in every conceivable way?

Well. His jaw rolls.

Perhaps not every way...

Ben returns the shoe to its place beside its partner. Straightens it, so that they sit in perfect parallel.

Fortunately, Ben Solo has never encountered a puzzle he could not solve. And after today, he intends to tackle the puzzle of Rey Niima with unprecedented vigor. Until he understands how to keep her from distracting him ever again.

His Alpha, of course, is not even slightly mollified by this logic. From the moment he turned around to find that empty concrete wall, everything has been cast in the shadow of his Alpha's formidable discontent; he paces, seething, behind Ben's eyes, teeming with restless urgency. There is no puzzle about the things she requires from him. Omega is in need. Immediate need—and she needs things only he can provide. She needs his soothing (how distressed she was at his displeasure, so deliciously desperate to please him). She needs to be kissed, thoroughly, until her defiance melts and (good girl) softens—until his tongue drips with her honey-sweet whimpers, the exquisite sounds of an Omega's body yielding to its Alpha's control.

Perhaps most of all, she needs his discipline.

Ben and his Alpha may not agree on much, when it comes to Miss Niima. But upon this matter, they share a mutual, deep-seated enthusiasm.

Leaning back in his chair, he raises his voice so that it can be heard out in the hallway.

"Do you plan to come inside? Or has our consultant robbed you of your ability to use a door handle as well?"

The familiar, stomach-churning spike of Omega-fear drifts in from the corridor before the door whispers open.

Dopheld Mitaka eases himself into the room slowly, as though bracing for the impact of a hurled projectile. When none arrives, he extends a black plastic bag in one hand.

"Pardon the interruption, Mr. Solo, but—did you still want this? From your car?"

The sight of it scatters all of Ben's focus anew.

He must wait until his voice is level before he can speak. "It's been more than ten minutes, Mr. Mitaka."

All the color drains from his assistant's face. "Well, there was a—a bit of a distraction—"

"And whose job is it to prevent distractions from entering this suite?"

"With all due respect, sir—I can't be preventing distractions while running to your car."

He's right, of course. If Ben hadn’t left the damn bag there, none of this would have happened in the first place. The request feels so distant now, plucked from an entirely different morning—one where the horror of his Omega's rejection was still a constant torment—where Ben still agonized over the evening's every detail, dissecting each one for the smallest whiff of her unhappiness. (Had he so grossly misinterpreted her reactions? How could he, when her scent, her body met his every escalation with such open desire—when she was so obviously his? ) A different morning: one where, after so many years of waiting, he had finally found his Omega—only for her to flee after an hour in his presence. Only to be forced to let her go.

He was going to let her go.

Of course, that was before he learned she was Rey f*cking Niima.

"Perhaps if we weren't so familiar with the distraction to begin with," Ben seethes, "it wouldn't have such an easy time weaseling its way into our workspace. Bring it here."

One of the first things he did upon commandeering this space from his uncle—right after purging the walls of his hideous CEO portraits, of course—was relocate the desk to the far end of the room. Ben finds that the long, perilous distance between door and desk allows a visitor enough time and mental space to reconsider the importance of their disruption.

Mitaka, predictably, never meets his eye as he makes this journey.

The bag drops onto the corner of his desk. Ben's hand tightens into a fist, to keep his greedy fingers from reaching out and grabbing it. When nothing else is forthcoming, he levels his assistant with a severe glance.

"Are we forgetting something?"

A visible cringe. "Right." From behind his back, Mitaka produces a folder. "Here you are, sir." But instead of placing it on the desk, Mitaka shuffles on his feet, leafing through the papers inside. "Just in case it's relevant, though... She's already left the building for the day."

"I'm aware." Ben, of course, upon her escape, flew down to the basem*nt like a man possessed, ripping open every goddamn door in Sub-Level 2's eastern wing until he finally found the conference room he was looking for: littered with her scribbled notes, absolutely vulgar with her scent, and (his blood f*cking boils at the memory) empty.

Still, Mitaka continues to nervously flit through the pages. "If I may, sir—"

"You may not."

"But—please, Mr. Solo, you ought to know—Rey—she really admires your work." Ben's scathing expression is clearly enough to communicate his incredulity toward this idea, because Mitaka stumbles over his next words. "Really, she does. When we interviewed her, she knew even more about your career than I did. And she's good at her job. Really good at it—"

"Except," Ben says, "for when it comes to following directions." An affliction that is particularly virulent today, it seems, since Mitaka continues boldly pressing forward.

"Yes, yes, she has a bit of a... strong personality, maybe—but she's passionate about the work we're doing here. It—it really means something to her. Please, sir. If you just give her one more chance, I'll make sure she doesn't disturb you again." His face turns stricken. "If I hadn't been so careless with my keycard, she would have never even made it up here in the first place. I'm sure of it."

Ben fixes Mitaka with a long, hard stare.

"Are you offering to bear Miss Niima's punishment in her place, Mr. Mitaka?"

Dopheld's mouth opens. Then it settles into a thin line. "No, sir."

Slowly, Ben leans forward in his chair. "Then I will be the one who decides how to reprimand my employee." My Omega, his Alpha corrects him, with an unwelcome surge of sharp-toothed hunger. He tightens his jaw. "Now give me her contract."

After one final moment of reluctance, his assistant relinquishes the folder. Ben places it beside the heels, which, to Mitaka's credit, only catch his widening eyes for half a moment before he wisely averts them again.

"One last thing," Ben says, when it's clear his assistant is already preparing to flee. "Get me an address for Mr. Canady's son."

A frown of confusion. "His son?"

"We're going to send a note of congratulations. For his recent nuptials."

"But—wasn't the mating ceremony last year?" Ben only stares at him. Mitaka glances uncertainly at the phone, then back at his employer. "Are you sure that's such a good idea...?"

"Feeling rather generous with your opinions today, aren't you, Mr. Mitaka?"

Casting his gaze downward, Dopheld takes several backward steps. "Note of congratulations. I'm on it, sir."

Then Mitaka is gone, and he is once again alone.

Alone with her shoes, and the bag, and all her f*cking distraction.

The moment the door shuts behind him, Ben simply cannot restrain his Alpha any longer. His self-control has been all used up—first in that stairwell, where he battled the rabid urge to throw Miss Niima over his shoulder, haul her back to this office and keep her little body bent over her Alpha's desk until he was satisfied, both with the color of her backside and the pitch of her breathless begging—and then on the temptation of her heels, Rey Niima's heels, pretty and fragile and absolutely forbidden from getting anywhere near his face. The well of his willpower has been drained, dry as a bone. And this latest addition to the collection of Niima-related items on his desk simply proves too much for him to bear.

With a furious snarl, Ben lunges across the desk, snatches up the bag, and fists it against his face.

He doesn't dare reach inside. Not here in his office. It's clear his Alpha has sunk his teeth too deeply into this situation, and Ben isn't sure he'll be able to force his jaw to unclench once he gets a taste of that particular morsel.

But Ben doesn't need to remove anything from the bag to breathe its air. To trail his nose along its lip, imagining, dangerously, that it were her collarbone instead.

The sweet Omega-scent inside whispers back to him, with all the eager adoration of the night before: It's all for you, Alpha. Every part of me, however you want to use it. I'm already yours.

He half-collapses back into his chair, shuddering.

And this is why, as a general rule, Ben prefers not to f*ck with Omegas, either. Not at Primal, nor anywhere else. When he elected to make yesterday's exception, it was only with the firm resolve to approach it like every other session he's participated in. Her profile indicated she would thoroughly enjoy his usual scenario, after all—and enjoy it she did, right down to her delightful, blushing resistance. If her scent was any indication, she might have enjoyed that part even more than Ben did.

It should have been simple, then, to follow his standard script. Especially with an Omega so amenable to his preferences.

Instead, he kissed her. Not just once, but several times. (He might have spent the entire evening lost in the heady sensation of her soft little mouth, yielding beneath his, if the prospect of pleasuring her hadn't enticed him even more.) Instead, he summoned an honest-to-god bed, right there in the middle of the immersion room, to cradle her trembling body. Instead, he marched down to Primal's kitchen the moment she requested food, his fool of an Alpha twirled in helpless knots around her pinky finger—only to discover upon his return that the plucky little thing had fled, right out from under his nose.

Ben's eyes fall shut as he indulges in another breath against the bag. Of course she ran, his Alpha reasons. She told him herself, just before in the stairwell—it had all been so new to her. Not just the things they did together at Primal, but also the experience of an Alpha's control. Her Alpha's control. His fist tightens around the bag. He assumed, from the commonalities in their profiles, that his little deviant would already be familiar with her own desires—but it's no matter. Ben will delight in introducing her to all the things an Omega's body can feel. They can explore her limits together; indeed, Ben intends to become intimately acquainted with the furthest edges of each one.

Rey Niima will have no secrets left, by the time he's through with her.

Rolling backward, he opens his desk's deep bottom drawer. Before yesterday, this space was packed with tightly coiled, neatly labeled cables, sorted by connector, then by purpose. Today, it contains only a single item: the little velvet box that set this disastrous series of events into motion.

With effort, Ben drops the plastic bag inside, Primal's logo facing upward. Her black heels follow—first one, then the other, each landing with a hollow clunk on the wood.

For a long moment, Ben simply glares down at it: his drawer full of Omega. Precious. Impossible. Mouthwatering in all its temptation.

A firm nudge of his foot, and the drawer slides shut.

The work on his desk may linger another day. But the problem of Miss Niima won't be lingering much longer beyond that.

If Ben's learned anything about his little troublemaker—and he's learned quite a bit, over these past ten weeks—then he knows all that's left to do now is wait.

The idea comes to her just before the end of the workday.

At this point, Rey has claimed most of the living room floor for her end-of-career watch party. Among today's special guests: An entire sleeve of NutriCycle Sweet-Heat cakes, demolished in a stress-eating frenzy within the first hour; every single soft item in her apartment, amassed in a makeshift fortress with walls tall enough to ward off uninvited worries over future job prospects; her laptop, where she alternates between refreshing her email and logging in and out of Skywalker's cloud server (the sudden lack of access to which is often the only way many Skywalker employees have learned about a similarly sudden lack of employment); and her original copy of December 2022's edition of TIME magazine, bearing a crisp, high-contrast portrait of Ben Solo himself.

This final guest remains outside the barrier of her fabric stronghold for most of the afternoon, summoned only for her to practice the phrases she should have said to him in the stairwell that morning. Things like, of course I don't want to kiss you, and my glands are always swollen this time of year, and I'm not your damn Omega. Rey has never been much good at lying, especially when she's nervous—and though she doesn't consider any of these statements to be untruthful, they provoke the same uneasy twisting in her belly that typically accompanies her attempts to convince Rose that she won't be lonely over the holidays, or that she can make her own chicken soup when she's sick. Things that need practicing.

Not that she'll have an opportunity to say any of them to his face.

This thought, however, twists her stomach in a different way—one that's hot and tight and throbs with agitation. It only gets worse as the day stretches on, and Rey's inbox remains, as usual, empty of any sign of him. Between email refreshes, she attempts to distract herself with actual work, too—helping Rose modify the scale of Friday's investor powerpoint to fit the smaller television at Scentsation; drafting a short-list of other PR firms to suggest to Mitaka after Solo finally gives her the boot.

But as the afternoon wears on, and no emails from Ben Solo are forthcoming, boot-shaped or otherwise—Rey struggles more and more to keep her focus.

Just who does he think he is? Aside from one of the most powerful men on the planet, of course. And the uncontested ruler of People's Sexiest Alpha Alive list for the past four years running. And a real-life genius who has an entire collection of quantum computing algorithms named after him. Aside from all that. Where does he get off, dragging out the inevitable like this? It's what he's always wanted, isn't it? The chance to get rid of her. Rey isn't even sure why he hired R2 in the first place, outside of some obvious arm-twisting by the mother he never even has the courtesy to speak to.

What gives him the right to twist her into such tangled knots? To chase her through his office like a villain from a slasher movie, corner her in a dark stairwell—and then infect her with all these thoughts about kissing him again?

Rey scowls at the magazine cover propped against her coffee table. Stupid Ben Solo, with his stupid giant nose, and his stupid luscious hair, and his stupid soft, pillowy lips. She hates him. Hates him for how he runs his businesses, hates him for how he treats his employees. She especially hates him for his Alpha. Her perfect match. Rey's eyes sting. The only time she's ever fit perfectly with anything, and it had to be a man who parades around the world stage like he's auditioning for the Antichrist.

Furiously, Rey refreshes her inbox for the millionth time. Sure, she supposes she could always resign on her own—but then Solo is bound to sue her for breaking his damn contract. And Rey has absolutely zero desire to relive the details of their encounter in a courtroom. Knowing Solo, he would probably even cross-examine her himself.

How many times, Miss Niima, did you beg your Alpha to let you come? Whose face were you imagining when you were wet and whining on his fingers?

Perhaps Rose would swap her for the account instead. It would be a hassle, of course—Rey would need to be brought up to speed on a dozen smaller clients, and Rose would need a crash course on all things Skywalker. But she knows her friend would make the effort if she asked.

Especially if Rey explains the reasoning behind the swap.

No matter which option she chooses, though, there's one thing that Rey knows with absolute certainty.

She isn't going to deliver this news over another unanswered email. No, sir. She'll tell him to his face. In person. Where she can repeat all the things she's been telling his brooding magazine cover all afternoon, to ensure there's no room for any more misunderstandings between them.

The only problem, of course, is that Rey has been trying to see Ben Solo in person for the past ten weeks, with a practically 0% success rate. The only time she succeeded, she had to literally break onto his floor. The floor she is still banned from. A floor from which she has little desire to stage another mad escape. Her ankle probably can't handle another fall—nor her cardiovascular health another Solo slasher-film pursuit.

But that's not right, is it?

From that twisting place inside her stomach, her Omega stirs to life.

Because there was another time she succeeded in seeing him. Even if she didn't know it at the time.

Rey frowns. Her eyes drift from her inbox, to her phone... to the collection of Primal pamphlets, still scattered across her kitchen table.

No. Absolutely not. It’s a terrible idea. Solo wouldn’t even accept the invitation. Not to mention it's likely an abuse of the service—a client's service. Primal might be a venue for many things, but it's not one for telling off your boss. Unless your boss is naked, perhaps.

Rey's frown deepens. Would it still be an abuse of the service if Solo was naked?

Violently, she shakes her head. No. It doesn't matter. No one is getting naked. Not Solo, who didn't even remove his jacket last time, the bastard—and definitely not Rey.

But... maybe they wouldn't need to get naked. Her Omega twirls around this idea, sprinkling it with glistening possibility. Primal is open to a wide variety of pleasures, aren't they? Who's to say Rey wouldn't find pleasure in telling off a fully clothed Ben Solo?

She could set the terms herself this time. No immersion room. Only the suite—and only for a conversation. A business conversation. Yes. That could even be the scenario: a very professional, very business-like conversation between boss and employee. A meeting, even. Rey would ask Kaydel to communicate this in advance, so that it's abundantly clear to Solo exactly what her intentions are. And Primal would be safer than his office, wouldn't it? If Solo goes all Freddy Krueger on her again, Rey can simply use her safe word and nope herself right out of there. No sprained ankles. No heart attacks. Definitely, positively no almost-kisses in any dark stairwells.

Maybe it isn’t such a bad idea after all. If Solo can't have the courtesy to fire her properly, then Rey can do it herself. She'll bring her contract, and her options, and her list of alternative firms. And then she'll tell him all the things she should have said in the stairwell. It will help her sleep easy that night, safe in the knowledge that Ben Solo knows exactly how she feels about him. Especially since, after she leaves Skywalker, they'll see even less of each other than they do now.

Which is to say, not at all.

Rey refreshes her inbox one last time. Then she stands up from her pile of blankets, crosses to her kitchen table, and dials the number on the pamphlet.

"Kaydel! So glad I caught you. Yes—it's Rey Niima." Tracing the Primal logo with her finger, she takes a deep breath. "I'd like to book a second session with my Alpha."

Chapter 8: Gift Horses

Chapter Text

Booking a second session with her Alpha turns out to be surprisingly simple.

It is, in fact, almost too simple. Suspiciously simple. Sound-the-alarm-bells, iceberg-ahead, get-your-ass-to-a-lifeboat-and-start-paddling simple.

For starters, it turns out that Ben Solo has already reserved a suite. The very same suite as yesterday—and for tonight. "Many of our Alphas book two nights right away when scheduling with a new Omega," Kaydel explains in a rush, after this excellent news is greeted with a solid fifteen seconds of stunned silence on Rey's end of the call.

Has her Alpha ever booked two nights in a row before?

"Your Alpha has never booked a second session, period," Kaydel informs her, sounding sly. "But then again, he's also never fallen for an Omega, has he?"

This is followed up by several other fun facts in the category of things her Alpha's never done before: his draconian supervision of Primal's kitchen staff last night while they prepared his requested meals (during which he rejected three plates of wagyu filet mignon before the chef finally produced one with a center cool enough to meet his satisfaction); his insistence on ripping apart every single Primal public space shortly thereafter in search of his runaway partner; and, finally, the night-long litany of escalating threats against Primal's senior leadership team, accompanied by repeated demands for the full name, phone number, and home address of his Omega's employer.

Kaydel Connix delivers this information in the same tranquil, unperturbed tone she used while describing the fair-trade origins of Primal's pomegranate-infused water bottles during Rey's tour.

"Typical Alpha behavior," Kaydel assures her, when Rey once again fails to conjure the appropriate swooning response to what might have otherwise been the opening sentences of a felony arrest report. "Especially for a Unicorn match. Our Alphas can get pretty feral about their mates, when they're as compatible as you two."

Mates—?! Rey's grip on her phone turns slippery as her palms begin to sweat. "Oh, I'm not—we're not—"

"Oh, yes, of course not. I won't spoil your game, Miss Niima, don't worry."

At this point, Rey begins having second thoughts. A few hours isn't enough notice. Her Alpha seems like a fairly busy man, after all—perhaps Kaydel could check if there's something available next week? A half-hour slot, maybe? In a room somewhere closer to the exit?

Rey is halfway through asking if they can simply reserve a lobby couch when Kaydel stumbles upon her second piece of excellent news for this too-simple booking process: Her Alpha has already accepted the session request—and less than a minute after Kaydel sent it.

"You... already sent it," Rey repeats. And he's already accepted. Her knees feel weak. She sits down abruptly at her kitchen table's sole chair.

"I sure did," Kaydel replies gleefully, "and with all your specifications, too. No immersion room. Professional attire. One hour only. Congratulations, Miss Niima—your Alpha will be waiting in the suite lounge for your business meeting at eight p.m. sharp."

And that's that. From insane idea to execution, in ten minutes flat: she's somehow clinched an appointment with the man who's avoided her near-daily attempts to meet with him over the past ten weeks.

It's too smooth. Too painless. Far too simple.

All adjectives that everything else with Ben Solo is decidedly not.

But it is with your Alpha, insists her Omega, who is already fast approaching a state of nearly feverish anticipation. Everything is simple when Alpha's there to show you.

Rey doesn't bother rehashing this argument. She is too busy applying a fresh layer of war paint in her bathroom mirror, and she can't afford the distraction. Even if she could, she wouldn't get very far. Trying to convince her Omega of anything today has been a losing game—especially when it comes to him. Her Omega's collection of Solo-related supporting evidence has simply ballooned too quickly for Rey to prepare a proper defense against all the new memories it contains. Just when she was finally getting a handle on last night's additions to this rapidly expanding dossier, Solo had to pin her against a wall and fill her Omega-brain with nonsense about obsession and torture and (worst of all) the possibility of his mouth on hers again—except this time, with no question of exactly whose deliciously plush lips would be kissing her.

Clearly, she'll need many long evenings of hot-faced remembering to build an effective counterargument against any one of these things. There's certainly no time to tackle them all right now, when she's seeing him in just a few hours.

So Rey doesn't argue with her Omega while she fortifies her lashes. She doesn't even scold her for the obscene state of her throat-glands while arranging her hair to cover them.

Stick to the plan. That's all she needs to do. Recite her practiced phrases, don't give her Omega the opportunity to rummage through her collection of Solo-related memories—and, most importantly, don't give her Alpha the chance to create any new ones.

Before exiting the bathroom, Rey adds a smack of red lipstick to tonight's battle arsenal. The color, she thinks proudly, will help sharpen the downward turn of her scowl.

As long as she sticks to her plan, this first and final meeting with Ben Solo will be as smooth, simple and painless as it was for her to arrange it.

Her plan, of course, begins unraveling the moment she walks through Primal's door.

"All ready to go with your outfit, I see!" Kaydel Connix looks her up and down with an admiring grin. "And what an outfit. Your Alpha won't be able to resist."

Rey, who hasn't changed since her shower that morning, blanches. "Actually, I—um—I came straight from work."

"Right, right, of course you did," Kaydel says, as she ushers Rey through Primal's lobby. "The pencil skirt is a great touch, by the way. Your Alpha will be delighted to see he has such a lovely... what was it? Assistant?"

"Consultant." And not for much longer, she thinks, with great confidence. Not after tonight.

If Kaydel Connix makes any connection between this scenario and Rey's actual profession, she thankfully does not mention it.

"Your Alpha arrived in character as well. You'll be thrilled to hear he makes an intimidating boss. Very intimidating. Your pleasure profile indicates you've got an unusually high preference match for this particular archetype."

Primal knows that? Oh, god—does this mean Solo knows that? "Wow. That's... rather specific."

"Nothing gets past our algorithm. And let me tell you, your Alpha plays the part perfectly." To demonstrate, Kaydel attempts a comically stern imitation of the Alpha in question, although her expression fails to capture the precise angle of the inward curl that tightens Ben Solo's upper lip whenever he scowls. Rey bites her tongue to keep from correcting her. "So tough and serious, that Alpha of yours. Especially after what his naughty little consultant pulled last night." A wink. "Though... not too tough to arrive without a gift for his Omega."

Any irritation from this rather unflattering characterization of their previous evening together drops off a cliff of uncertainty. "A gift?" There were no gifts in Rey's carefully constructed plan for tonight. But before she can politely decline this offer, Kaydel reaches behind the marble reception desk and produces a box.

"Here," she says. "He said they'd mean something special to you."

Rey opens the lid.

Prickling goosebumps break out across her back, cascading from her shoulders all the way to her tailbone. Primal's lobby suddenly feels much smaller. Darker. More reminiscent of the vertical concrete tomb that's been chasing her thoughts down its spiraling staircase all day.

"No thanks." Rey attempts to thrust the box back toward Kaydel, but the other woman won't allow it.

"Oh, don't be bashful. It's a gift!"

If this is a gift, then it's of the fresh carcass variety—the kind a feline delivers to a doorstep following a successful hunt. But Solo is no domesticated animal. This would be more aptly described as a threat. The kind a crime boss might sever from the extremities of an unfortunate rival before mailing off to various family members.

Well, if Ben Solo thinks he can intimidate her tonight, he'll need to try harder than that.

Fuming, Rey snatches up the same pair of pumps she tore off her feet this morning and shoves them into her tote bag. The heel caps peek out the top. They seem to have been recently replaced.

How considerate. Maybe the extra heft will improve their momentum when Rey next hurls them at Mr. Egomaniac's over-inflated head.

"Your Alpha specifically requested you wear them," Kaydel says, with a teasing grin, "but I suppose you can always let him put them on you himself."

Rey's returning smile is probably closer to an animal's flash of bared teeth. "We'll see."

Kaydel allows her to make the journey through the VIP wing on her own tonight. The smoky, glass-paneled walls of this hallway are set wider apart than those in the rest of the building, built for wide, VIP Alphas like the one Rey's on her way to meet. Just yesterday, these same walls brimmed with such swirling possibility. Her Alpha might have been waiting behind any one of them—not yet fully formed, nearly kaleidoscopic in all his potential.

Tonight, the glass reminds her more of murky water: motionless, and ominously opaque. Unlike yesterday, Rey knows exactly which door she's headed toward... along with who awaits her on the other side.

And it isn't the Alpha she naively hoped to find here last night. Hell, it isn't even the one she ended up spending the evening with. It certainly isn't the fantasy who lived between the folds of that cotton cloth, seducing her with promises of adoration and safety.

Rey is beginning to question if that Alpha even existed at all.

Each room she passes is framed in soft green light, awaiting the arrival of its occupants. But as Rey approaches her own destination, she finds that, unlike yesterday, it's already wreathed in red. Her insides twist at the waiting sight of it: the color of a blaring siren. Her final chance to turn around.

Like hell is she going to turn around.

Clinging to her bag, Rey presses the panel to open the door.

The scent that greets her briefly sweeps away her questioning like fine white ash, tenuous ligaments collapsing inward at the first touch of his air.

Alpha.

Of course he exists. Of course he adores her.

For a single, breath-hitched moment, his existence is the only thing Rey truly knows.

The suite's lounge is transformed from yesterday, though not in the way that she expects.

When Rey requested Kaydel schedule the session as a business meeting, she assumed Primal might provide a desk. A conference table, even—though in retrospect, Rey finds herself slightly less keen on this latter idea, after Solo stalked her around his own conference table this morning with all the footwork of a master duelist.

The lounge beyond the doorway, however, does not resemble any corporate office Rey's ever seen before.

Most of yesterday's furniture has been removed. While the double-wide chaise remains tucked beside the fire, the couch and armchair that accompanied it have both disappeared. The doors leading to the immersion room now melt into the same wood paneling that covers the rest of the walls, their thin outer frame the only indication of its continued existence. Everything is cast in a warm, intimate glow; the hearth's hypnotic flicker softens the shadows at the edges of the room, the lighting far more muted than the night before.

And while there is, in fact, a table, it's much, much smaller than the one Solo chased her around a few hours ago. Even if they found themselves opposite its widest point, he still wouldn't need to take a single step to reach straight across and haul her right over it.

Though that might disturb the white linen tablecloth draped across its top.

Rey is struck once again with the disorienting sensation of having stumbled into the wrong room, carefully assembled for another couple's session.

Except tonight, her Alpha is already here waiting for her.

His back is turned, when she first opens the door. He's standing in front of a minibar (another recent addition), one hand pressing a phone to his ear, the other pouring something into a glass. Rey hasn't seen much of him from this angle. Not without a blindfold, anyway. Their only other in-person encounter so far has consisted of his body in near-constant forward motion to pursue her, stopping only so he could use its breadth to cage her against a stairwell wall. The entire time she was in his presence, he tore his eyes from her for perhaps a collective total of four and a half seconds—every single one of which Rey spent running hard in the opposite direction.

So she hasn't had much chance yet to observe him from this perspective. A bit difficult to get an eyeful of someone's back, when they're stalking after you like a human homing missile.

She sees now, however, that even several eyefuls wouldn't have been enough to do this half of him justice.

There's simply too much for her to look at.

Ben Solo is as broad back here as he is everywhere else. He's shed his suit jacket between now and this morning, leaving him in one of the crisp black dress shirts that often peek out from beneath his lapel during a television appearance. Rey's never been treated to this particular look sans jacket before, not even on a screen—and she has made a meticulous study out of just about every photograph ever captured of this man. A photo like this, she knows, would have earned her especially careful attention.

Tailored as that poor shirt must be, it's still fighting a losing battle with the body it's been charged with concealing. The wide slope of his shoulders stretches the fabric taut across the mighty landscape of this Alpha's upper back; despite a valiant effort, it clings for dear life to all the muscle underneath. Her Omega, of course, latches onto this new information with equal tenacity. How easy it would be for him to lift her, spread her, pin her open, good and wide, until she's ripe for what her Alpha has to deliver. And how those muscles would flex and ripple as he delivers it: huge hands engulfing the backs of her thighs, pressing her kneecaps all the way to her ears, teaching his little mate how to take and take and take all the things an Alpha has to give an Omega. His Omega.

The pouring gurgle of the wine halts mid-stream.

Rey notices, all at once, the sudden stillness in his body. The slow, expectant lengthening of his spine.

"We'll continue this tomorrow."

His deep voice is soft and final, speaking into his phone. Still facing the bar, he taps the screen to end the call and slips it into his pocket.

His next words are pitched in a low, intimate tone that is all for Rey.

"When you're finished eavesdropping, come inside and close the door."

Mortification heats her face. "I wasn't eavesdropping. I was just—"

He turns around, and her lungs, as if by his command, stop functioning the instant that dark gaze collides with her own.

"You were just...?"

Ben Solo looks—disarmingly comfortable, in this space. Leaning back against the minibar like that. Holding two wine glasses in one giant hand, fingers spread across both bottom curves like he's plucked them up from a set of children's kitchen toys. From the ease in his posture, Rey might have just walked into his apartment after he's finished setting the mood for a guest. This image quickly snowballs into an avalanche of new questions: Does Solo have guests often at his apartment? What about here at Primal? Is this simply a side effect of this man's uniquely deep-rooted sense of entitlement, staking its claim over every space he occupies—or is his effortless relaxation a sign of his familiarity with Primal's suites?

His eyes, though, don't allow her to dwell long on these insecurities. Because the way he's staring at her is anything but relaxed.

Locked onto her from across the lounge, Ben Solo's gaze incinerates all the space between them, igniting every gland on her body. Touching each one with the promise of hungry teeth.

Rey's not proud of how she splutters, when she finally remembers he's expecting her answer. "I was just... wondering what the hell all this is supposed to be."

He tilts his head, regarding her. "Thought that was for you to tell me."

"Me?" Rey attempts a scoff, but it comes out sounding choked. "How should I know?"

"How indeed. Is there another blushing Omega in here who requested this session with her Alpha?"

"I... that's not..." There are so many inaccuracies in that statement, Rey doesn't even know where to begin. "I requested a meeting." Really? That's what she lands on? "A business meeting," she adds, because that's so much better.

"Ah, yes. That's right. At Primal." Dark amusem*nt glints in his eye. "The door, Miss Niima. Don't make me ask again."

As if Ben Solo asks for anything from anyone, least of all her. Even when he's asking, it's clearly a demand. Everything about this man grips her like a compulsion; the temptation to toss that wine glass in his face is just as potent as her desire to march across the room, wrap her fist around his tie and crush that smug, pretty mouth against her own until it's red and swollen and growling for his Omega.

The willpower required to stifle this final image must consume too much mental bandwidth, because Rey is unaware she's allowed her feet to move past the threshold until she hears the click of the door sliding shut at her back.

Still watching her from across the lounge, Solo reveals no outward change in his expression. But his scent... God. It thickens the air with satisfaction, coiling up her legs, whispering along her spine. Beckoning. Rey's lungs tremble around her next breath; her body nearly spills forward over her ankles, the compulsion to please him is so powerful.

Okay. So it's... not exactly the unflappable power-pose entrance that was central to Step One of her plan. But to be fair, her Step One entrance also didn't account for the indecency of Ben Solo's gigantic shoulders, or his thick, capable fingers cupping the curves of those wine glasses.

It most certainly did not account for a table draped in white linen, bracketed by two high-backed chairs, arranged an awful lot to look like...

"This isn't what I came here for," Rey blurts out.

Solo, who is already moving toward the table, casts her a heavy glance. "You don't even know what I intend to do with you yet."

A flush crawls rapidly up her neck. "Nothing, is the answer to that question. Because you will be doing nothing. With me, that is. Tonight. Or any other night, for that matter."

Solo doesn't even acknowledge she's spoken. He stops beside a chair. "Come here."

"I mean it, Solo. This isn't a date."

The look he gives her is withering. "I have no desire to date you, Rey Niima."

"Great," Rey says, even though the chest-pang that follows this declaration doesn't feel great at all. "As long as that's out of the way." Her legs truly have a mind of their own tonight; they've carried her halfway to the table by the time she remembers she still has a question for him. "Wait—no, wait. Not great." With effort, she roots her disobedient feet back to the floor. "Where exactly does wining and dining fit into a business meeting?"

Rey's eyes haven't had much of a chance yet to linger in the middle of the lounge, her prey-instinct too busy tracking the large, dangerous predator on its opposite side. But now that Solo is placing the wine glasses on the table, she can keep him safely in her line of vision while absorbing the pair of candles flickering at its center, the formal place settings carefully arranged across its top.

Somehow, the sight of a table set for two is even more alarming than her first glimpse of that exam chair yesterday—mostly because Benjamin Eats-Consultants-For-Breakfast Solo stands right next to it, eyeing her up like she is a particularly delectable serving of his favorite dish.

Large fingers drum, once, on the chair's back. "I owe my Omega a dinner," Solo says, very simply. "We'll have our meeting while I feed you."

Despite everything, her stomach swarms with butterflies. "That wasn't part of the deal."

"You requested a meeting. A dinner meeting is still a meeting."

The fluttering intensifies. He can't be serious. Why on earth would Ben Solo want to have a dinner meeting with her? "Well, today's your lucky day, Solo. I'm letting you off the hook. You don't owe me anything."

His eyes glitter. "I'm afraid you don't get to dictate your own dues in here, Niima. If you're serious about using our time tonight for a meeting, then I suggest you sit down. Dinner is the least of the things I still owe you."

Only Ben Solo could talk about owing something and make it sound like a threat. At least, she thinks it's a threat; her Omega is rather insistent on a very different interpretation.

"I came here to negotiate," she says, feeling flustered. "Not so that you could try to—to charm me."

Solo's mouth curls. "Why, Miss Niima. Are you feeling charmed?"

"Charmed? By you?" Rey shifts on her feet; her cheeks are about as hot as that fireplace. "Absolutely not."

The smirk this leads to should be outlawed on that particular face, for its devastating effects on an unsuspecting Omega's heart-rate. "Then it shouldn't be a problem, should it?"

Well. She supposes Step One is officially a bust.

She might as well make the most of the others.

This is how she ends up sitting across a dinner table from Ben Solo, digging through her bag and striving to ignore the unnerving way his eyes bore straight into her.

Just as she feared, he's close enough to reach out and touch, if he were feeling so inspired. Not that he's got any inspiration left for such things, now that he's discovered who his Omega is—and even if he did (which he doesn't), Rey wouldn't allow it. She can't. No matter how much interest his gaze holds as he studies her, or how striking his features appear in the soft glow of the candles, or how staggeringly good his Alpha smells.

From the depths of her tote, her heels stare back up at her. They are a glaring reminder that this man is Bad News with a capital B. She's here tonight for one thing and one thing only.

Reaching past her pumps, Rey extracts the folder she arranged on her living room floor a few hours ago and launches into the first of her practiced phrases.

"It's clear that our working relationship so far has been... unsatisfactory, to put it mildly. For all parties involved."

There. A good start. Nice and firm. Something they both can agree on. Not even a hint of the breathless anticipation that accompanies her extreme awareness of her Alpha (her Alpha!), sitting a single arm's length away, smelling for all the world like he wants to ravage her again.

"So, in light of recent events, I thought now might be the perfect time to—"

Before she can finish, the door to the lounge slides open.

A young man wearing Primal's midnight blue uniform steps inside. He pushes in a packed-out dining cart—the kind they use at catered weddings and upscale corporate events, with fancy stasis plates to maintain each dish at optimal temperature and freshness—and the rich, steaming flavors of a feast roll in right after it. Reeling, Rey's eyes leap over the mouthwatering assortment of delicacies it contains: shining, butter-poached lobster; long skewers of perfectly seared meat; the crisp green tips of asparagus, poking out from a bed of char-grilled vegetables; golden-crusted, freshly baked bread, just waiting to be torn apart...

Up to this point, she did not plan on eating anything here tonight. Partly out of spite, and partly because the thought of eating in front of Ben Solo—an actual celebrity who might see her chew with her mouth open, or choose the wrong utensil, or spill crumbs all over her blouse—has replaced her typically voracious appetite with churning nerves.

Of course, that was before Solo ambushed her with a Michelin-star restaurant on wheels.

"Excuse me," she says, before she can stop herself. "There must be some mistake. This is too much food for two people."

The server's posture goes rigid at the mention of the word mistake. His eyes, which have been cast studiously low since he entered the room, flit nervously toward Solo's side of the table. "Your Alpha requested our chef prepare you a sampling of the entire menu. But if something is not to your liking..."

Reclining in his chair, Solo toys with his wine glass, watching her intently. He doesn't remove his eyes from her, not even to give the server the courtesy of a glance. "I trust Chef Tuggs has done everything in his power to ensure our satisfaction tonight."

The server does not take this as a reassurance; if anything, he looks even paler than before. Rey wonders if this poor Beta was among the kitchen staff working last night, when Solo was apparently threatening the firstborn children of all the line cooks.

"May I have the honor, then, of preparing a plate for your Omega?"

Rey flashes the server a bright smile. "Nothing for me right now, thanks."

For some reason, Solo doesn't like this. Dark, weighty displeasure pools at the bottom of his scent, its bleeding creep emerging like a water stain across its upper notes. When Rey whips her glare back across the table, his features have grown similarly stormy with his disapproval.

Even their scent-blind server seems to detect the abrupt descent of his client's mood. Abandoning the cart, the Beta hastily bows out of the room without asking if Solo would like a dish prepared for himself. Or perhaps he assumes this Alpha would simply command him to do so, if that were his wish. Rey hasn't hung around enough Alphas to understand the unspoken etiquette guiding their interactions; her experience is mostly limited to the one sitting directly across the table, and the terror this man evokes in everyone around him seems as much a product of his sparkling personality as his designation.

Well, Rey isn't going to be cowering in fear today.

The moment the door slides shut, she leans forward to fix him with the full fury of her glare.

"The entire menu? Seriously? Were you expecting to host a banquet?"

"I didn't know your tastes," he says, with a deep frown. "This was the simplest way to ensure there was something you liked."

"There's easily hundreds of dollars worth of food here."

"Then you shouldn't have trouble finding something that appeals to you."

"None of it appeals to me right now, but thanks for asking."

His scent, already so dark and heavy, grows impossibly denser. "Miss Niima."

"Mr. Solo."

"This hardly qualifies as a dinner meeting if my Omega refuses to eat."

My Omega. Her heart skips. Why on earth does he keep calling her that? "Well, that's too bad," she says tightly. "I'm not hungry." Even though she's barely had anything to eat all day besides a sleeve of stress-eaten NutriCycle cakes. Even though she is always hungry. Something to do with childhood trauma, according to a bespectacled social worker who threw around heavy phrases like "food insecurity" and "emotional neglect" and "chronic malnutrition" before Rey determined she is more than well-equipped to pick at these scabs on her own time, thank you very much, graduating herself from therapy after just three highly uncomfortable sessions.

To her surprise, Solo does not continue arguing with her. Instead, he plucks up a platter from the dining cart and begins to fill his plate.

All right then. That was... far too simple. Just like so many other things tonight. But Rey's not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Especially when her Alpha might be lurking behind its teeth, hungry to trap her between eager jaws.

"As I was saying..." Rey clears her throat. "I thought this might be a good moment to revisit our employment agreement. You know. In light of recent events."

Rey is rather proud of the steady, clear cadence of her delivery. Unfortunately, Solo does not seem to share her appreciation for this accomplishment, if his scent is any indication.

"Recent events." He utters the t in each word with crisp precision, as though mulling their flavor over on his tongue. With the tip of a knife, Solo lifts a thin slice of meat and transfers it to his plate. "That's the second time you've said that. Remind me. Which events are we discussing here?"

And just like that, he manages to throw her off course again. "Like you don't know."

"It would seem that I don't."

"Then pick one and run with it."

"Oh, but when it comes to you, Rey Niima, there are so very many of them." His fiery gaze snaps up to burn into her. "Where to begin? There's your unauthorized use of my personal cell number... Your utter contempt for workplace hierarchy... Your almost compulsive habit of barefaced, shameless insubordination—"

"I'm talking about this morning," Rey says furiously, cutting him off.

"Very well. Let's narrow it to this morning, then." He leans closer, eyes flashing in the candlelight. "Are you referring to your interruption of a high-stakes client negotiation at 11? Or the physical assault of my executive assistant just before?"

"Excuse me?" Indignation flares in her chest. "I didn't assault anyone—"

"You forcefully removed company property from his person."

"—and I happen to know for a fact that MateSync has no one else to manufacture its bio-sensors. I would hardly call that high stakes."

"So now you're an expert negotiator, as well as this city's most insolent public relations consultant."

"Did Dopheld really say I assaulted him?"

Solo's nostrils flare. "My point, Miss Niima, is that there are a great many recent events you've made me an unwilling party to. Especially ones that might make me reconsider your contract. So I'll ask you again: exactly which events are we discussing here tonight?"

Rey grinds her teeth. He wants her to say it? Fine. She'll say it.

"I'm talking about the part where you chased me down a stairwell and threatened to kiss me."

The air snaps taut with how abruptly his demeanor shifts.

His Alpha-scent settles into a very different sort of tension. One that reaches straight into Rey's stomach and roots there, hot and waiting. This is accompanied by the sharpening of his gaze, until she feels, rather unsettlingly, like a rabbit caught in the inescapable shadow of a hawk, sharp talons a breath away from scraping her back.

"That had nothing to do with your contract, Omega."

Her body tingles at the low promise in his voice (her Alpha's voice), calling her that particular name, in this particular room.

"Exactly," she says, a little breathlessly. "Which is why this is the perfect time to revisit it."

It takes her a long, heart-pounding moment, however, to remember exactly what it was she wanted to revisit. Especially when her Omega is only interested in revisiting the way he loomed over her in that stairwell, knuckles stroking the soft, vulnerable crook beneath her chin, coaxing her parted lips upward.

Thankfully, the folder in her hand serves as a stark reminder.

"You should know," Rey says, with remarkable steadiness, "that Skywalker has only agreed to retain us on a short-term basis."

The word only, of course, is doing quite a bit of heavy lifting in this statement, considering there are still another fifteen long weeks remaining between now and the end of her contract. This detail has never occupied as much of Rey's mental space as it has today, when it was upgraded from the sort of back-of-mind resignation a detainee might regard the far-off end of a prison sentence—to the premise of a three-month-long panic attack.

"As it stands right now, Mr. Solo, you're only obligated to engage our services for a total of—"

"Six months."

"—six—um... yes. Exactly right." Rey wasn't expecting him to know the actual details of their agreement. Or that he would smell so damn unhappy about it.

"There's something you should know, too." Solo sets down his plate. "You may be my Omega, Rey Niima. But that doesn't mean you can get away with blackmailing me."

A great deal of wrangling is required in order to drag her reeling mind past the first half of his statement (particularly the part where the words "Rey Niima" and "my Omega" appear directly next to each other in Ben Solo's mouth)—so that she can process the rest of this unexpected allegation. "Hold on. Did you just accuse me of blackmailing you?"

"The terms of our agreement are quite clear. There will be no renegotiation. Or need I remind you that Skywalker is permitted to terminate R2's services at will—for any reason—at any time?"

A cold pit hardens in her stomach.

So he's been planning to fire her this entire time.

Rey didn't expect anything less from him when she came here tonight. For some reason, though, this discovery feels far more harrowing when delivered over a white tablecloth, bathed in flickering firelight, drenched in the calm of her Alpha's scent. Especially after all that troublesome talk of my Omega this and my Omega that. Why go through all this hassle? Was it just another way to humiliate her?

"You haven't even heard what I've got to say," she says, sounding small.

"Because I already know." His eyes spark. "Don't mistake my attraction to you for weakness. I will not allow you to strong-arm me into extending your contract."

Rey's mouth drops open. This time, her foolish Omega-brain gets stuck on the word attraction—at least, until the rest of his meaning catches up to her.

A short burst of laughter escapes her open mouth before she can clap a hand over it. "Extend my contract?" The absurdity of it pulls another half-mad laugh between her fingers. "Mr. Solo, I can say with complete confidence I have no interest in working with you any longer than absolutely necessary."

Solo's attention drops to her lips. For a moment, he looks fairly stupefied, which is... not a look Rey can remember seeing him wear before, photographed or otherwise. Gradually, her humor trickles away. Has anyone ever been deranged enough to laugh directly into this man's face? How many shoe buckles did Solo break, by the time he was through with them?

As her amusem*nt vanishes, so too does his expression descend back toward the far more familiar territory of his contempt.

"Do you truly believe your little two-person circus to be so special, Miss Niima? I can name at least a dozen agencies that would kill for the privilege of representing this company."

"Yeah? Well, so can I." With a straight spine, she opens her folder, rifling through the top few sheets. "Of course, my first suggestion would be to allow my partner, Rose Tico, to take over the account—as reluctant as I am to subject her to your employment. But in case she doesn't meet your astronomical expectations, I've compiled a list of other local firms you might try." She offers him the page in question. "These first five all have a strong background in crisis management. Since you've practically turned Skywalker into a crisis production line, I'd recommend you start with them."

An agonizing silence follows, during which Rey's heart pounds like a drum in her chest. Across the table, Solo's dark eyes dart down the list, scanning it from top to bottom.

Then he hands it back to her.

"I've changed my mind."

Confusion washes over her. "What?"

"It looks like we're going to renegotiate your agreement after all."

"Renegotiate? But... didn't you just say...?"

Solo ignores her. He slides his plate across the white tablecloth, now overflowing with a robust sampling from the dining cart. The expectation in his face leaves her momentarily baffled. Is he showing her what he intends to eat? Does he want her to compliment it? Is this some kind of self-congratulatory, boastful Alpha behavior she never learned about, in all her time spent avoiding them?

What could he possibly want to renegotiate?

When her brain fails to produce a dinner-related compliment in time, he nudges the dish even further across the table, until it's right in front of her.

"It's for you," he says, tightly. "Now eat."

He made her a plate? "Not before you explain what you meant about the contract."

"You can eat while I explain."

"I'm perfectly capable of deciding when I want to eat, thank you very much."

"If that were true, then you'd already have a plate in front of you."

"Or perhaps I'm choosing not to have any."

Solo rolls his jaw. He glances away; his fist clenches and unclenches on the table. "You're forgetting I can smell how hungry you are." He sounds almost annoyed by this fact. But when his eyes inevitably draw back to her face, they arrest her with a look of unexpected, breathtaking sincerity. "Allow me to feed you, Omega. Please."

Please.

Rey's throat tightens. She snatches up the plate, if only so that he might stop melting her refrigerated store of power poses with that odd look on his face. "Fine." If Solo wants her to eat badly enough for him to actually unearth some manners, then she will eat. Wrong utensil, open-mouth-chewing-risk and all.

Furiously, she pops a scallop into her mouth—and immediately resents him for the explosion of smooth, buttery flavor that follows. The lobster is equally tender, its meat nearly falling apart the moment it hits her tongue.

Almost half her plate is empty when she realizes her dinner meeting partner is not eating anything himself.

Rey looks up to find Solo watching her with such shameless curiosity, her next piece of asparagus rolls right off her fork. She levels him with a hot-faced glare.

"Could you maybe stop looking at me like that? At least until I'm finished eating?"

"I imagine I'll be looking at you like that no matter what you're doing, Miss Niima."

The earlier swarm of butterflies swoops back to her stomach in full force. "I thought you were supposed to be explaining."

"You'll have a new draft to sign in the morning."

"If I agree." Any sharpness in this rebuke is lost to the creaminess of the ravioli in the corner of her plate. Rey would ask him what's inside it, if the question wouldn't expose her for how much she's enjoying his infuriatingly delicious dinner. "And what is this new draft going to contain?"

"A personnel exclusivity clause."

"In English, please?"

His mouth twitches. "You will be the only partner from R2 Strategies permitted on this account."

Rey forces herself to swallow the hefty helping of pasta in her mouth before she responds. "Me?"

"Yes, Niima. You."

Her hands fall into the cloth napkin spread across her lap. "But... wouldn't Rose be a better fit?"

"No. I don't believe she would be."

"You can't expect me to believe..." Her head spins. "After everything you said this morning—you want to continue working with me?"

"For an expert negotiator, Miss Niima, you're a rather ineffective champion of your own interests."

"If I knew anything about my own interests, Mr. Solo, I'd be staying the hell away from you."

Rey prays the acerbity of her reply will be enough to steer him back toward his earlier frustration—and, more importantly, extinguish some of the heat still smoldering behind his eyes. After all, her interests seem to reshape themselves around this Alpha the moment she catches even the slightest whiff of him.

But Solo's scrutiny only deepens further. "Indeed you would." He rolls the stem of his wine glass between his knuckles, back and forth. "So, why are you here?"

Rey knows this one like the back of her hand. In a single, headlong breath, she launches into her prepared explanation: "I requested a business meeting so that we could discuss the events of the past few days, in a neutral space, away from—"

"You know that's not what I meant, Omega."

Solo's gaze trails down her neck like the stroke of a fingertip. Beneath her hair, the throat-gland he tasted yesterday quivers for his attention.

"Have you given any additional thought to my question this morning?"

Only every single moment that's followed it. But this admission isn't part of her rehearsed response. And she has rehearsed it more than enough times to know. Of all her lengthy preparations for this conversation today, Rey has practiced for this part more than any of the others, in hopes that the extra attention will ensure a smooth, confident delivery.

The most dangerous question, after all, deserves the most practiced answer.

Rey indulges in one final bite of ravioli to bolster her confidence. "I have, actually."

Across the table, Solo remains nearly motionless. The only indication of his interest is the way his focus intensifies, dark and probing. "And?"

"And... you'll be relieved to hear that it was all a big misunderstanding."

Rey does an excellent job framing this statement in the tone she practiced on her drive here, the one that makes it sound like they're sharing a wonderful joke together.

Solo, however, must find the concept of them sharing a joke as unnatural as she does. He could not possibly look any less amused.

"A misunderstanding," he repeats, in a cold, flat voice.

"A big misunderstanding," she corrects him. "It's your own fault, if you think about it." Another crowd-pleaser, at least according to the attendees of her end-of-career watch party earlier that day—but Solo's mouth doesn't so much as twitch. "Because you made me wear that blindfold," she adds, with no further success.

"Primal's pleasure assessment suggested you would enjoy sensory deprivation."

Rey endures a fresh wave of mortification at this reminder that Lord Lucifer and his photographic memory have seen her pleasure assessment. She needs to ask Kaydel for a copy of her profile, pronto, so she can find out what other new ammunition her eternal tormenter has accumulated against her. "Well, um, that makes sense," she hears herself stammer. "Since... I did. Enjoy it, that is. Very much." Seriously, Niima? Is it really so important to reassure him of this?

His eyes darken considerably. "I remember."

"Right. Of course you do." Photographic memory, and all that. Rey is shocked her cheeks haven't yet caught fire, from how hot his gaze feels upon her face. "Funny thing about blindfolds, though—they keep you from seeing exactly who it is that's making you enjoy it."

"I believe that is rather the point."

"Well, yes. But if I had known it was you, then we would have stopped before getting around to the rest of it. Obviously."

Here, Rey pauses, the way she practiced, giving her audience-of-one a chance to express his agreement. But Solo only meets this declaration with the inscrutability of that cold, hard stare. She must resist the urge to squirm in her seat.

"So, as you can see, the entire thing has left my Omega a bit... confused."

"Perhaps you are the one who is confused," he says, tensely. "It seems to me your Omega knows exactly what she wants."

Her Omega, the little traitor, skips across all her glands, preening for her mate: You, Alpha. You, you, and only you. Rey huffs a humorless laugh. "Of course she does. She wants her Alpha. Well, not that it was her Alpha, obviously—"

Solo's nostrils flare on a furious exhale, not unlike an angry bull.

"—but, you know. The Alpha from last night."

Another long, hard stare. "I see."

Rey waits for him to elaborate, but nothing else is forthcoming. Just more silence, heavy and uncomfortable, interrupted only by the occasional popping crackle of burning firewood.

"And there you have it," she says, when she can no longer stand his lack of response. "A biological misunderstanding." Her voice is falsely light, fluttering with nervous energy. "So if it smells like I want you to—um—to kiss me"—humiliation burns in her earlobes as she remembers his earlier question—"it's only because of my Omega. It'll take her a while to catch up, I suppose." Rey raises both hands in a ridiculous, helpless little half-shrug—as though she's educating a client on the unpredictable ways of the social media algorithm, rather than explaining her recent, insatiable desire for Ben Solo to strip her naked and scrape every inch of her body with his canines. "But you don't need to worry. Now that I know it was you, of all people, I'll find it much easier to move past it."

This is, of course, a laughable concept. Her lungs burn with her Omega's resistance to the idea, her throbbing, defiant refusal to accept that this Alpha does not belong to her.

But Solo doesn't need to know that part. The rest of it is as close to the truth as she's going to give him.

"And are you?" he asks, with soft, sudden urgency.

Rey blinks, startled from her thoughts. "Am I... what?"

"Finding it easier." A growl creeps between his words. "Because I'm not."

Abruptly, he straightens, bringing his face more clearly into the candlelight. The snapping hunger it reveals sends her heart tumbling into rapid, rolling somersaults.

"Time is a precious resource for me, Miss Niima. Do you expect me to suffer like this indefinitely? Pacing my office, unable to work—my apartment, unable to sleep—a single breath away from sliding into a goddamn rut? My Alpha has no patience for waiting, when his Omega is in such desperate need of attention. The mere knowledge of your existence—knowing that you are out there, wanting, mine—it's nothing short of agony. What you're asking of me is intolerable."

Rey feels like she's been slapped broadside with shock. Could Primal be sneaking their Kool-Aid into the food here as well? Or perhaps Solo's sprinkled rat poison over her plate while she wasn't looking. That would explain why he hasn't eaten any himself. She wets her lips, searching for a trace of bitterness; across the table, dark eyes fix on the movement the way a shark might follow the crimson unfurling of blood in nearby water.

"Fortunately," he says, "I have a quicker solution."

A distinctly calculating glint enters his eye. Rey knows that look. She's spent the past ten weeks training herself to recognize it. Its arrival mid-interview is a last-minute warning that everyone in the vicinity—including and especially Rey—should be bracing for impact. It's a look that almost always leads to several days worth of clarifying press statements, clean-up memos and vicious hashtags from the social media ecosystem built entirely around ripping apart Ben Solo's latest outrage. It's the very same look that goes hand-in-hand with the fast-paced, mechanical whirring of this man's famously brilliant mind, manifesting mere moments before he unleashes something truly diabolical upon the current focus of his ire.

And from the moment she walked through that door, the only thing that's been capable of holding Ben Solo's focus has been Rey.

Without removing his eyes from her, Solo places his wine glass on the dining cart.

"I simply need to kiss you again," he says. "Without the blindfold."

The suggestion is so shocking, Rey can only gape at him in disbelief. Her Omega, of course, exploits this regrettable lapse in her defenses to light up her entire body with resounding approval. Yes, Alpha, yes, yes, please, yes—

"You... you want to kiss me?" Her voice leaves her as a squeak. "What kind of solution is that?"

"The kind with no losers. Your Omega gets a lesson in exactly who she gave herself to last night. And my Alpha gets another turn with Rey Niima's pretty mouth."

And that's supposed to be a win for him? "Wait. Let me get this straight. The way to stop my Omega from wanting to kiss you is... more kissing?"

"Do you have any other ideas?"

"Um, yes. Several pages of them, actually—I've just handed them to you, in case you've forgotten."

Solo, as usual, doesn't spare a second glance for her painstakingly prepared list. "This will be far more efficient."

Rey's not so sure about that. This was definitely not in her plan. In fact, it was explicitly included in her anti-plan—all the things she forbid herself from allowing to transpire this evening. To her dismay, however, Solo seems to be taking her spluttered questions for agreement. With a pinch of his fingers, he snuffs out each of the table's candles; one by one, he plucks up the dishes and stacks them on the dining cart with methodical care.

Anxiously, Rey fists her hands in her napkin. "Look, I realize that I'm a bit—inexperienced, with all this Alpha business, but I know my Omega pretty well by now. And the way she feels about kissing you, Mr. Solo... you ought to know that it—it's a rather extreme reaction, considering how much we dislike each other—"

"Omega." In a single motion, Solo pushes his chair back from the table. "Come here."

It's not an Alpha command. But her body responds like it is.

Completely independent of her higher faculties, Rey's legs compel her to rise. Her napkin drifts to the floor. Slowly, she rounds the table, the wild racing of her heart providing a double-time contrast to the wariness in her step.

Lounging back in his chair, Ben Solo tracks her approach with all the casual expectation of an emperor, awaiting her offering.

It turns out he didn't need to launch himself over the table to reach her after all.

He only needed to bid her come.

When she finally arrives, the rushing swell of his satisfaction nearly steals her balance from underneath her.

"On my knee, little one."

Solo's use of this particular title is somehow just as alarming as the instruction preceding it. "You... you can't just—do it like this?"

Amusem*nt laces his scent. "I'm afraid we'll need to be quite thorough, when we do it, if we want it to stick. And we can't have your legs giving out prematurely." Dark eyes flick down her body with clear disapproval. "Wouldn't want you to injure that precious ankle again."

And there it is. The reason she needs to quash this little infatuation in the first place.

With an unsteady breath, Rey lowers herself onto one thick, trouser-clad thigh, perching herself as far away from his body as possible.

A low, satisfied noise rolls out of him. "That's it." His palm settles upon her hip like it belongs there, wide and solid. With a single tug, he slides her up his leg until she's practically tucked against his chest. "Look how good you can be."

Good. Her Omega basks in the sound of this word on her Alpha's lips. She longs to roll around in it, to see how it feels when poured over all the different parts of her body.

Back in reality, however, Rey processes this development with horrified shock.

They're really doing this, then.

She's really going to sit in Ben Solo's lap and let him kiss her stupid.

From a purely logical standpoint, Rey is well aware this is the very same man who held her in his giant arms just twenty-four hours ago, a single room over from this one. And he held her, at the time, in a far more vulnerable state—freshly shattered from an earth-shaking org*sm, naked but for a flimsy robe, clinging to her Alpha for his comfort. But that was before she knew he was Ben Solo. This same man's scowling face fills the cover of the magazine currently sitting on her coffee table. He's spoken before Congress—twice. He's featured in multiple thirst memes most commonly used to communicate the concept of peak Alpha masculinity.

And somehow, this man is also her Alpha. Her perfect match.

His size is far more imposing this close. Even sitting down, this Alpha's body dwarfs hers, twice as wide and a full head taller than her own. It's the closest they've been to each other all evening, and without the extra space separating them, the little air remaining between their bodies acquires a charged, frenetic quality. Attraction races between them like a live current, buzzing and insistent.

"The dinner meeting portion of this session is now over." Solo issues this declaration with the same calm authority he wielded over her last night. "What happens next, little Omega, is up to you. Either walk out that door and bring your new terms to the office tomorrow. Or stay," he says, stroking her hip, "and let your Alpha have his dessert."

It's not too late. She can still salvage this. Snatch his half-full wine glass from the cart and pour it over his head, the way she was imagining before. Or she can simply walk out, the way he's suggesting. The way she planned.

Or...

Her eyes drop to his mouth. To the fullness of his pink bottom lip, perfectly plump for an Omega's teeth; the slight, pillowy curve of its partner just above. What horrors this mouth has unleashed, with just a few reckless words—yet all she can think about, when faced with its terrible power, is the devastation it would wreak over her. And not just upon her lips, but the rest of her body, too—her skin flushed and mottled in the wake of its hungry explorations.

Perhaps this is exactly why she should kiss him. Without his stupid blindfold in the way. It will release her Omega from this ridiculous obsession, once she irrefutably connects the temptation of her Alpha's lips with Ben Solo's most effective weapon of mass destruction.

Once she can finally see with her own eyes how red and lush it gets after it's been tending to its Omega.

Would she ever forgive herself, if she didn't taste this Alpha—her Alpha—one final time? Would she forgive herself for the desire that would haunt her for the rest of her days, if she didn't take this small, necessary step to extinguish it, right here and now?

What a small price to pay, to stop all these unwelcome thoughts about Ben Solo. It's hardly any sacrifice at all.

"It would only be a kiss?" Rey asks, with too much breath. She shifts on his thigh, unable to keep still. "Just one?"

His eyes glitter. "One or two, perhaps, should do the trick."

The nearness of his gaze is unbearable. Rey can hardly breathe beneath its intensity.

Before she loses her courage, she shuts her eyes, leans forward and kisses him.

It can hardly be described as a kiss. At least, not at first. While Rey's humble collection of kisses can be tallied on all of two hands (and that includes the three her Alpha delivered in the adjacent room yesterday), even she knows kissing typically involves a little more in the way of friction than the slow, nervous touches she presently imparts upon his lips.

But it seems to take him by surprise all the same.

Solo's large body goes utterly motionless beneath her. His muscles tense; his lungs cease to draw breath; even his hand, flexing at her hip, tightens into stillness. The only soft part of him is his mouth (she swears she has never known anything so soft as her Alpha's mouth), parting beneath her tentative explorations.

Her entire world narrows to her awareness of that mouth: All the tingling nerve endings in her lips, learning all the ones in his.

No one has ever accused Rey of being shy. But she feels quite shy in this Alpha's lap, brushing her lips across his own, back and forth. The sensation is unspeakably intimate. It is the way she imagines lovers might kiss, if she'd ever had anyone around to love her.

An uneven exhalation shivers out of him. As it mingles with her air, it carries the heady taste of her Alpha's tongue, a sweet, musky flavor she learned so well the previous night—right before it hits her lungs, delivering an undiluted dose of Alpha directly to her bloodstream.

The resulting shock of heat to her system ignites her so quickly, Rey nearly surges right off his lap.

Desire crashes over her like a wall of molten lava. The blurred barrier between yesterday and tonight, already so flimsy for their proximity to his immersion room, melts completely out of existence, transporting her straight back into her Alpha's attentive care. He's here, right here, the very same man who saw so diligently to her pleasure last night—who teased and tormented her, who guided her body through entire new realms of sensation. The hand that pleasured her now lashes her to his lap; the lips that taunted her now groan his desire directly into her mouth.

Alpha, her Omega whines, Need you, need you, need you, please—

Before she knows what she's doing, Rey is chasing that taste with her tongue.

Her hands, which have been fluttering uncertainly above his chest, find clinging purchase in his button-down shirt. She turns bodily in his lap, desperate to immerse herself in his intoxication—(Alpha)—pulling his plump bottom lip between her own—(need you)—devouring the low, furious growl that rumbles deep in his chest—please, please, please Alpha please—

With a rush of pure horror, Rey realizes this is fast plunging past the constraints of a single kiss.

Worse still, the manic pleas of her Omega might even (oh god) be leaking out between kisses (kisses, plural, how did she get so carried away?!)—voicing at least a few of the highly forbidden thoughts bouncing around in her head. Out loud.

Panicking, Rey attempts to pull back. In her desperation, she scrambles for a quip, a joke, an insult—hell, even an interesting fact prepared for Poe's trivia night will do, so long as it's ready at her lips when he finally shoves her off his lap—

—but a strong hand seizes her chin, holding her fast.

This time, Solo's the one who does the kissing.

And Ben Solo kisses the way he does everything else: with absolute entitlement, like he knows he already owns her.

It comes as a relief, the way he takes control. Solo kisses her like he's taming her, firm and indulgent—as though it's simply a matter of waiting for the arrival of her inevitable surrender. As though the combined application of his patience and that lush, capable mouth will be enough to melt her resistance, drip by drip—until he can reshape her malleable pieces for his amusem*nt.

"Shhh." The cooing admonition arrives as a stream of cool breath against her lips. Releasing her chin, his large hand slips down, loosely collaring her neck. "Just a few more, Omega. That's all you need."

The gentle pressure of his palm cups her throat, holding her in perfect stillness. Keeping her available for his pleasure.

With dark eyes, Solo leans in and takes it.

Time seems to acquire an intensely liminal quality as she sits there in his lap, shivering beneath her Alpha's kisses. Her body teeters on the edge of something vast and bottomless, her stomach swooping in preparation for a fall that never comes. Tiny, high-pitched noises bracket her sips of breath, which he feeds to her only in gradual increments, and only with agitation spiking his scent when he's forced to part from her at all. Unlike Rey's clumsy, earlier attempts at deepening their kiss, her Alpha shows not even the slightest hesitation in tasting her mouth. He licks her tongue with stroking laps, a slow, filthy claiming that urges her hips to rock and grind against his thigh.

"Solo," she whines, when he next allows her some air. "I don't think this is—that this is helping—"

The loss of his lips is like an abrupt cessation of oxygen, an absence that aches in every red blood cell churning in her veins. Or perhaps that's simply because Rey's breath catches on its own, when he fully pulls back to look at her.

Ben Solo's cheekbones are high with color. His mouth, too, is rosy and plump. With their faces so close, the firelight casts his eyes in the color of rich, dark honey. This comes as a surprise to Rey, who has always assumed the darkness of this man's gaze is simply a reflection of the black, treacherous void where his soul should reside—but at this proximity, in this lighting, she finds his eyes are shockingly warm. She can even discern the sharp contrast of caramelized amber with the darkness of his pupils, which grow fatter and heavier the longer she stares into them.

Most surprising of all, though, is the plain wonder in his expression as he takes her in. Like he's discovered something sacred, and he's trying to figure out how to worship it.

God. Is this the way he looked last night?

Would Rey still have been able to leave, if she had removed his blindfold and found this face staring back at her?

A frown, thank god, interrupts that intense expression he's wearing. Still holding her throat, Solo tilts her head from side to side, examining her.

"No," he says, sounding disappointed. "My Omega is quite stubborn, isn't she? We'll need a more direct approach."

Rey quakes. "You know, we could always revisit this at a later date—after we've had some time to... to—oh god—"

The rest of this half-formed protest fizzles into a gasp when he turns her head and lowers his breath to her neck instead.

Vulnerability wracks her. Rey doesn't dare move a muscle, with this man's teeth hovering so close to her jugular. Firmly, his nose drags a long line of flame up the column of her throat, tracing the inside of his pointer finger, the tip of which currently digs right beneath her gland. A deep, shuddering inhalation accompanies this journey. By the time he arrives at her ear, his scent is rich with anticipation.

"We went over this already, Miss Niima." A rough edge frays his voice; all the fine, delicate hairs on her neck stir at its tingling nearness. "This will be far more efficient."

That's all the warning he gives her before he lowers his mouth.

Electricity lances through her body, arcing from the top of her scalp to the tips of her curling toes. Her spine bows; his steady grip on her hip, her throat, keeps her anchored with little effort. There is no escape. She can only writhe atop his thigh and endure it, this slow, excruciating introduction of wet-hot mouth to throbbing gland—her Alpha, discovering her taste.

A desperate, hungry noise rips through him. Clutching her close, Solo laps and laps like he is parched for her, a lion who has spent weeks hunting for a pool of cool, delicious water. Her heartbeat condenses in each of her glands, pulsing between her thighs; the network of her veins is transformed into a single spooling wire, connecting the most obscene parts of her body directly to that stroking, sinful tongue.

To her dismay, a reedy whine spins out into the air, horrifically loud, with nothing to muffle it.

Solo f*cking groans.

"Almost there, Omega. This should do it... Just a little more..."

It's not just a little more.

His attention descends upon her opposite gland with twice as much vigor, this time lined with the pleasure-edged scrape of his teeth. Rey claws at his shoulders, holding on for dear life while her Omega attempts to leave her body and take up permanent residence inside his. That first terrible whimper, it seems, was only the beginning; desperate noises now pour from her mouth in a steady, high-pitched stream—and rather than revolt him, they only seem to inflame him further. His hand abandons her throat, skimming from sternum to ribs to quivering abdomen, which jumps and trembles beneath her shirt.

Then to her skirt-covered thigh.

The sudden departure of his mouth fills her ears with swirling white static, so that she only catches the very last bit of his next statement.

"—to find another way," he's saying, hoisting her up his lap.

Rey's racing pulse descends to the apex of her thighs the moment she realizes his intentions. "But—don't you think—oh, god, Solo—we—we really shouldn't—"

"We shouldn't," he agrees, very seriously. His eyes are bright with lust as he pulls back. "We'll only kiss here a little, yes? Only for a minute. Just until my Omega knows."

"K-kiss—?!"

Before she knows what's happening, the room swivels, her bottom coming abruptly to a rest on the edge of the cloth-lined table.

"Well, of course." Sitting right in front of her, Solo keeps his tone gentle, as though speaking to a small child. Large hands carefully untuck her blouse from her skirt. "Our sweet Omega needs to learn, doesn't she? But don't worry, Miss Niima." A sinister glint enters his eye. "I'm sure it'll get easier, once you realize it's me."

By the time he reaches the end of this rather ominous explanation, he's already undone the zipper on her skirt and peeled it nearly all the way down her body.

Then his eyes land between her thighs, and all of her very logical reasons to protest this unsettling turn of events go soaring clean out of her head.

"Omega..."

The word is shredded with her Alpha's hunger. It's a tone she's only heard in his voice a handful of times, and always one he muzzles in the next breath, so iron-clad is the control with which this man typically carries himself.

Tonight, though, Ben Solo's self-control appears to have followed Rey's common sense on its swift journey out the building.

The only discernible emotion in her Alpha's face, as he drinks in the waiting sight of her, is pure, unadulterated need.

The state of Rey's underwear has likely been worthy of a weather service alert long before Solo declared he would kiss just a little between her legs. She can't bear to imagine the mess he finds, looking at her there now. The handful of Betas she's been with have all treated her Omega's generosity in this department as a nuisance, at best—or, in the case of Rey's single attempt at a dating app, a complete show-stopper that ended their evening before she'd even been able to add any new entries to her kissing collection. To be certain, no one has ever looked upon the mortifying evidence of her Omega's desperation as something to be desired.

Then again, no one has ever looked at her the way Ben Solo does.

Her Alpha's gaze settles heavily, palpably, between her legs. It is as weighty as the solid warmth of his palms, which gently grasp her knees, prying them further apart for his inspection. The hunger in his pupils nearly swallows everything else around them; the hint of color she noticed in the firelight contracts to a thin ring, crowded out by his desire.

Rey has exactly the space of one breath—his breath, long and lung-deep and widening his nostrils—

With no other warning, Ben Solo lunges forward in his chair and buries his face between her legs.

A cry is startled from Rey's throat. Her hips jerk in her surprise—but Solo snarls against her underwear, the furious sound reverberating against her most sensitive parts; to her utter shock, his palm delivers a swift, stinging slap to her vulnerable inner thigh, instantly stilling her. The bright burn that follows this rebuke puts an immediate end to both her squirming and her stuttering breath—especially when Solo grips the lip of the table and jerks it roughly toward him. The remaining utensils on Rey's side of the table clatter violently behind her as they tumble to the floor.

His nose roots even deeper into the fabric, inhaling.

"S-Solo, you... you don't have to—"

The beginnings of another snarl end her protest before she can even finish it. He only comes up for air to pry at the waistband of her underwear, peeling them downward.

"If you didn't want me to taste, Omega, then you shouldn't have made all this slick for me."

A yank, and the scrap of drenched fabric slides down her legs. It makes a distressing squelching noise as he tugs it free from her ankles.

Then his hands are back around her hips, hauling her closer.

"f*ck. And you're not even finished." A note of awe touches the agitation in his voice. The blunt tip of his thumb drags up her seam, smearing her wetness all around. "All f*cking day, I've been thinking about this. The smell of it might drive me out of my goddamn mind."

Rey's lungs can't draw enough air. "I—I thought... Didn't you say... just a little?"

"Of course." Between her open thighs, Ben Solo treats her to a wolfish grin. He kisses the inside of her left knee, then lifts it, pressing her up and open; her feet now dangle clean off the floor. "Eyes on me, Miss Niima. We don't want to leave any room for confusion."

Large fingers flex upon her hips in a single, rolling, anticipatory movement.

And then his mouth is upon her.

Her pleasure, at first, seems almost secondary to his interest. He presses hot, soft-lipped kisses to each part of her mound, adorning it with the same aching reverence he bestowed upon her mouth before. When he finds her slick-soaked entrance, the vibration of his helpless, deep-throated groan joins this chorus of new and overwhelming sensations. Solo devotes particular attention to this most private place, each kiss firmer than the last, each with a hint more sliding tongue. Eventually, he abandons pretense and begins to simply lap at her, licking up her wetness with broad, hungry strokes; Rey's spread thighs tremble beneath his palms in her efforts to remain open for him.

From his station between her legs, he slides her a look from beneath heavy-lidded eyes.

"Just a little," he murmurs, right against her heat.

And then he begins to eat in earnest.

Ben Solo's feast upon her body is a full-mouth affair, involving every aspect of his lips and tongue. He applies both to devastating effect: his lips are both a pillowy cushion, bracketing the devious machinations of the tongue that teases between them, as well as a force for their own evil when they're wrapped around her cl*t in rhythmic, suckling pulls. In the same way, he introduces her to that clever tongue from a dozen different angles—flat and firm, best to drink up his Omega's slick; pointed and precise, to drive her halfway out of her mind with its steady, flicking lashes; and then the loose, wet heat he applies when he covers her entire slit with his mouth, as though he longs to devour as much of her at once as possible. Even his nose becomes intimately familiar with her pleasure, nudging her cl*t back and forth whenever he laps up the slick that pours from her below.

When skillful fingers join the fray, however, Rey has an exponentially harder time keeping her gaze on him, the way he instructed.

The very first plunge into her body is nearly enough to send her straight over the edge. The sensation of her Alpha filling her, working her with such delicious, thick-fingered friction—Rey can no longer keep her trembling torso upright as she hurtles toward her org*sm.

For the first time since Solo began that wicked sorcery with his tongue, her head falls back against the table, eyes squeezing shut.

All at once, his mouth vanishes. A hand wraps around her jaw, yanking her attention straight upward.

In the split second of her disobedience, Ben Solo has somehow surged up her body. He looms over her, expression snapping with the same fierce hunger she saw in his blindfold last night.

"Eyes. On. Me. Omega."

Nailing her to the table with his glare, Solo sets a vicious pace down below. Rey can no longer find enough air to breathe; her flailing arm knocks over an empty water glass, a dessert plate. Desperately, she holds tight to his gaze, even as his fingers drive her ever-closer to that spiraling peak.

"You see, Miss Niima, my Alpha has no issue with the fact that you are his Omega. In fact, it makes your submission even sweeter." He leans right into her face. "So if this pretty c*nt needs to be licked three times a day to remind you who it belongs to, I'll bend you over my table after every goddamn meal."

And Rey is simply unable to cage her Omega any longer.

"Yes, Alpha," she says, between great, wet, gasping breaths, "it's yours, I'm yours, please, just let me—"

In an instant, the room erupts with warm, radiant light.

But not from the arrival of her climax.

Before she knows what's happening, Solo rips his hand from her body and steps away.

Confusion overwhelms her. A pained whimper emerges from her throat, far worse than any other sound she's given him tonight. But she simply cannot contain her distress. She has never felt so terribly bereft. Where is he going? Why did he stop?

She was so damn close!

Panting, Rey attempts to push herself up onto her quaking elbows.

Ben Solo leans back in his chair, dabbing his lips with a cloth napkin. He is the perfect picture of composure. Except, perhaps, for his mouth, which is the exact shade and plumpness of a raspberry. And the tip of his prominent nose, which is still shiny with (her stomach flips) Omega-slick. And the gland below his ear, the red swell of which looks nearly as painful as all Rey's own glands feel right now, drowning in her denial.

Now that she has relocated her Alpha, Rey's Omega allows her to seek the source of their unwelcome disruption. She finds it radiating from the lounge's wood-paneled walls, a soft, white light that illuminates the room.

"What... Why—?"

Solo assesses her half-dressed state with cool dispassion. Rey's sex throbs pathetically between her legs. "Time's up."

"Time?" She sounds like she just finished running a marathon. "How do you mean?"

"You limited our session to an hour. It's been an hour."

"But—I was almost..." Her face flames. "Can't you just...?"

A wicked glimmer flashes across his eyes. "I'm afraid not. Those are the rules for this session, Miss Niima. We can always book another, if you're so inclined."

Is he serious? Breath still coming fast, Rey sits up and folds her arms across her chest. "That won't be necessary."

Solo looks far more pleased about this than she was expecting. "Then it worked, I presume."

"Worked...?" Her mind is having a great deal of difficulty following this conversation when she's still sitting half-naked on a table, all her muscles strung tight with her almost-org*sm, while Ben Solo politely dabs her slick from his mouth.

Slowly, he unfolds to his full height. The reminder of this Alpha's size has her ambitious heart attempting brand new acrobatic routines. A single step, and then he is leaning over her again, palms flat on the table, bracketing her hips.

"Will my Omega remember who her Alpha is now?"

The blistering glare Rey gives him could rival every single one of the scowls this man wears in the Ice Queen special edition of her week-six Media Mentions newsletter. "I certainly won't forget it was you."

A dark, satisfied smirk curls that sinful mouth. "Good."

Then he drops to his knees.

All her muscles clench with the sudden, delirious hope that he is going to finish what he started. But he's only collecting her clothes—first, her skirt, which he smooths out and hangs over the arm of the chair beside him—and then, to her horror, the puddle of her underwear. Pinching the fabric between two fingers, Solo lifts it in front of his face and appraises its condition with a mortifying level of scrutiny.

For the first time tonight, Rey wishes they were back in the immersion room. Perhaps the magical technology in there might be capable of detecting her desire for its floor to split open and swallow her whole.

"Um, we can probably just—throw those in the..."

The scorching heat in Ben Solo's glare disintegrates the rest of this objection into a choked splutter.

And then he pockets them.

Before Rey can protest further, he reaches for her skirt.

Even more surprising than his appropriation of her undergarments is the fact that he decides to dress her again himself. With unexpected tenderness, Solo slides the skirt back up her legs. He even takes extra care with her right ankle, which may not have any visible swelling but still aches from the mild sprain she acquired on the stairs that morning.

His behavior is so astonishing, Rey finds herself frozen in a state of shock until he reaches her knees—at which point she snatches the waistband from his grasp, hops down from the table, and shimmies it up her hips on her own.

She's not sure if she's relieved or disappointed to glance up and find that he's already headed toward the door.

Relieved, she thinks firmly. Definitely relieved. This is how she would expect Ben Solo to act. Cold. Distant. Aloof.

True relief, though, is what arrives when he pauses at the threshold.

"Oh, and Miss Niima." He slides a stern look over his shoulder. "You'll wear those shoes next time we meet here."

Rey's heart gallops. She doesn't need to ask which shoes he's referring to. "And why on earth would I do that?"

"Well, as a reminder, of course." His dark, heady scent carries his promise across the room, twining around her ankles. "When you try to run, I will always catch you."

Her mouth dries up. Floundering, she grasps for one of her practiced phrases—perhaps that she is still perfectly capable of running, with or without heels. Or to remind him that they won't be meeting here again for her to wear them.

Before she can settle on her response, though, the door slides shut behind him.

Groaning, Rey collapses into his chair. The seat is still warm from his body. Between her thighs, her ruined arousal throbs with her Alpha's loss; sinking into the space he was so recently occupying, oddly enough, serves to soothe it.

Smooth, painless and simple, indeed. She covers her burning face with her hands.

She's going to need a better plan, if she hopes to survive the rest of her sentence as this man's consultant.

Chapter 9: A Deal With The Devil

Chapter Text

From: Dopheld Mitaka <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Rey,

Mr. Solo requests your presence for a meeting in his office at 10:30.

D

From: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>
To: Dopheld Mitaka <[emailprotected]>

Hi Dopheld,

Terribly sorry, but I'm all booked up this a.m. Please pass along my warmest regards from the coldest floor in Skywalker Tower.

Cheers,
Rey Niima

From: Dopheld Mitaka <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Rey,

Not sure if you read this correctly, so I thought I'd add some helpful context.

Mr. Solo (our boss) is requesting your presence (in the flesh) for a meeting (which you've spent a small fortune in eclairs to arrange) at 10:30. Which is in 12 minutes from now.

Are you seriously not on your way up here?

D

From: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>
To: Dopheld Mitaka <[emailprotected]>

Dopheld,

Sadly, I am but a basem*nt-dwelling peon without the necessary elevator clearance to climb that far up the corporate ladder.

And I truly am booked up all day today. Please tell Mr. Solo I'll queue him for the next opportunity that opens up in my calendar.

Cheers,
Rey Niima

From: Dopheld Mitaka <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Rey,

Mr. Solo wants to inform you he has reinstated your executive elevator privileges, effective immediately.

He would also like to remind you that your meeting with him is in four minutes, and that he finds tardiness to be a sign of disrespect.

D

p.s. The river of woe is uncharacteristically calm today. Some might even call it pleasant. Proceed with caution.

"Everything all right?"

The poorly disguised concern in Dr. Ackbar's voice informs Rey of the ferocity with which she's currently scowling at her phone. At least, she thinks she's scowling. Her cheeks aren't usually quite so warm while she's volleying with the executive suite over meeting times.

Then again, the executive suite isn't usually the party summoning her for a meeting. Or bothering to respond to her repeated requests for one. Or even acknowledging her subterranean existence in the first place.

From the corner of the lab bench, Ackbar peers over his microscope at her with a look of apprehension to match his tone.

"Just a client." Rey tightens her expression into a clenched-tooth smile. "Quite high maintenance, this one. You should see the state he works himself into if I don't answer him right away. A bit of a diva, really."

Ackbar chortles. "Oh, we know all about those around here." His round eyes roll upward in a pointed glance toward the fluorescent light panels on the lab's high ceiling.

There is some grim satisfaction, she thinks, in the fact that they're discussing the very same, very high-maintenance Alpha—but Rey finds she simply can't savor it properly today.

Indeed, after last night, her stubborn Omega has refused her even a hint of satisfaction from any of its usual sources.

Or, more specifically, from anything that isn't him.

It certainly hasn't been for lack of trying. After returning home last night, Rey spent countless hours making increasingly desperate attempts toward the satisfaction her Alpha so cruelly denied her, each with less success than the last. Even her bedtime hate scroll, a ritual Rey depends upon for relaxation the way another Omega might burrow into a warm nest, failed to induce its otherwise reliable afterglow of smug, self-satisfied bliss.

Not when her Alpha left her so intentionally un-satisfied, breathlessly unraveled and utterly unfulfilled atop his white tablecloth.

We can always book another session, if you're so inclined.

While Dr. Ackbar finishes adjusting the microscope, Rey quickly taps out a reply.

From: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>
To: Dopheld Mitaka <[emailprotected]>

Dopheld,

He can find it however he wants. I've already got a prior commitment. And unlike some people, I prefer to actually show up for my appointments.

Please tell Mr. Solo he should have his people call my people to reschedule.

Rey

She conveniently leaves out the fact that her prior commitment was acquiring images for a campaign that is now dead in the water, thanks to Mr. Egomaniac's inability to care about anything beyond the tip of his gigantic nose—an appendage which (another convenient omission) Rey grew intimately acquainted with the night before. And not only with its size, which appears to have been designed to fit with tip-to-bridge precision within the slippery folds hemming the subject of its indecent acquaintance—but also with its shape, the bold contours of which have now been permanently etched into her memory, along with several other still-recovering parts of her body further below.

Rey wrenches her focus back to Dr. Ackbar, lest the renewed warmth in her face jeopardize any future blush-free scowls that the morning might still demand of her. If the email thread in her pocket is any indication, she'll be needing them today in abundant supply.

"Aha! There he is." Hunched over his lab bench, Dr. Ackbar tweaks another dial. "Skywalker's microscopic medic."

On the holo-projector beside him, a perfect replica of a nanobot leaps into three-dimensional focus, enlarged to a scale just exceeding Dr. Ackbar's hairless head.

Rey circles the bench with her camera, snapping several photos. "And this is what delivers the suppressants?"

"Not just suppressants, Miss Niima." With great care, Ackbar deposits a minuscule bead into the petri dish; floating above the bench, the holographic nanobot scurries rapidly in place, dives into the sample, and promptly begins to siphon it from the solution. "As you can see, this little critter actively identifies and interrupts the release of Omega hormones before they can reach the bloodstream."

"The same as the performance pills, then."

"Yes, that's exactly right." Ackbar sounds pleasantly surprised. "Someone's done her homework."

Rey, in fact, spent most of last July's heat wave poring over niche science podcasts, TED talks, grainy recordings of college lectures—anything she could find related to the world of nanomedicine, so that she might navigate the subject with familiarity when she finally got the opportunity to pitch R2's services to Skywalker's brilliant new CEO. Unfortunately, this would prove to be her first of many Solo-related disappointments; on the day of their appointment, he held her in 29th-floor purgatory for four-and-a-half hours before Mitaka finally informed her he would be conducting the interview in Satan's stead.

As if on cue, her phone buzzes in her pocket.

From: Dopheld Mitaka <[emailprotected]>
To: Rey Niima <[emailprotected]>

Rey,

I literally am his people.

Also: NO.

D

Breathing out through her nostrils, Rey swipes through her recent photos to the eclair glam-shots she staged of this morning's pick-up order from Poe's. Today's contribution should serve two purposes: first, as an apology for maybe-sort-of-probably bullying her only Skywalker ally out of his key card yesterday—and second, as an assurance that Rey will not be entertaining any follow-up meetings with Mr. Solo. At least, not until she's had time to regroup after the last one.

One more morning. That's all she needs to endure. Today is Thursday, which means she's only contractually obligated to spend half her workday here—and then she'll have four entire Solo-free days to figure out how the hell she's going to meet his gaze again. Preferably without remembering its weight between slick-damp thighs.

Three attachments later, Rey hits reply with no other text in the message body.

When she glances up again, the nanobot hologram has been replaced by a rather grotesque, rotating illustration of a gland.

An Alpha's gland.

Her neck suddenly feels very warm.

"The performance drug isn't quite the same, of course," Ackbar says, gesturing at the illustration. "Unlike our previous generation of treatments, this latest technology doesn't target Alpha hormones indiscriminately. Thanks to our little nano-workers over here, we can stimulate production of compounds linked only to the most desirable Alpha traits. Resilience. Physical strength. Stamina. And all without the risk of triggering a rut or a rage. Soon enough, an Alpha will be able to harness the full range of his natural abilities without the need for an Omega mate at all."

"A modern miracle," Rey says, rather dryly.

It's a far greater challenge to keep the scowl from her face this time.

Leave it to Lord Lucifer to take something so special as mating and turn it into a marketable commodity.

The intensity of her agitation surprises her. After all, Rey understands better than most the appeal of skipping out on all the messiness of taking a mate. She accepted long ago that no one would ever desire Rey Niima for something so inescapable as a lifelong mate-bond. For much of her childhood, she could hardly convince any one foster family to keep her around for longer than a year at a stretch—and that was with government stipends to lighten the burden of her care.

Such lasting attachments have simply never been in the cards for her.

The mission driving Skywalker's latest drug, therefore, has never given her particular reason for pause. Why should an Omega—or an Alpha, for that matter—require another person just to manage the inconveniences of their own biology?

Of course, that was before Rey knew her Alpha.

In her blazer, the pulse of an incoming call interrupts these unwelcome musings. Scowl resurfacing, she shoves her hand into her pocket to silence it.

As though Dr. Ackbar can sense the shifting direction of her thoughts, his face clouds over with sudden uncertainty. "But I'm afraid that's all we can discuss without Mr. Solo's clearance. Last we spoke, he was rather adamant that all future press statements go directly through his office."

Rey clenches her jaw. Of course he was. That's exactly why he filled most of her Tuesday night with his ridiculous media audit for this very department—though he might be forgiven, her Omega whispers, considering the way he filled the hour preceding it.

No, she thinks vehemently. He most certainly will not be forgiven. No matter how spectacular an org*sm he gifted her that night, he definitively canceled it out with the one he denied her yesterday.

"Oh, but I'm not press, doctor." Rey summons her most trustworthy grin to mask her irritation. "In fact, Mr. Solo asked me personally to gather as much information about this project as you can give me."

"Did he now?"

"He sure did," she says, even though he sure as hell did not. But there's no telling how many bribery pastries it would take for Ben Solo to approve an interview that would actually be so useful to her work—enough to send Mitaka into a sugar coma, probably. And then she'd have no one left to liaise on her behalf with the 29th floor. "I'm the one who speaks with the press, after all. He wants me to have as complete a picture as possible."

"I don't know, Miss Niima... He seems rather concerned with controlling the narrative."

Rey waves a hand. "Well, of course he seems that way. From all the negative headlines, you might even think he's deliberately making a spectacle of himself. To tell you the truth, though..." Glancing around the lab, she approaches Ackbar's bench. "It's all part of a coordinated public relations strategy."

His brow rises. "A strategy?"

"Sure." Rey drenches her tone in pity. "It fuels his sense of self-importance, doesn't it? Casting himself in the role of universally despised mega-villain. Poor man doesn't have many friends—he's fairly unlikeable, not sure if you've noticed—and he rather needs the confidence boost."

This isn't even close to the most outlandish Solo sh*t-talking story she's invented over the past ten weeks. But all her recent angsting over the implications of Skywalker's performance drug must be ruining her delivery, because Dr. Ackbar looks rather unconvinced. "Well, I don't know about all that," he begins, "but if Mr. Solo gave you permission—"

"Great, so it's settled!" Grinning widely, Rey raises her camera. "Could you start by explaining how the selection process differs between the two drugs?"

The redirection works like a charm. As Dr. Ackbar sets up his station, Rey glances at her wristwatch with a burst of pride. This will be the perfect diversion. Their demonstration with the suppressants had almost been wrapping up—but this new topic should occupy them for at least another hour, maybe even longer. With any luck, she'll put a bow on their interview just before noon, drop off Mitaka's eclairs at the front desk, and then catch the express downtown to help Rose stuff a few dozen gift bags for her NutriCycle investors—all before lunchtime.

Luck, however, does not appear to be shining on Skywalker Tower today.

Dr. Ackbar hasn't even finished gathering his supplies when her blazer pocket begins to vibrate again. And again, after Rey silences it. And twice more after that.

On the next call, she finally whips the phone from her pocket. "If you'll excuse me just a moment."

Her polite smile fades the instant she whirls around, stomping toward an empty workstation to hide the venom in her expression.

"Is this really necessary, Dopheld? I'm in the middle of a tour."

"Rey—oh, thank god. I thought it was too late."

Mitaka sounds almost as jittery as he did yesterday, when Solo was offering him a personal demonstration of his vehicle's interior soundproofing. For some reason, this only worsens Rey's mood. "It's about to be too late for your eclairs, if you don't pass along my message."

"Jesus, Rey, you can relax with the ransom demands, all right? I gave him your damn message. Are those fresh raspberries, by the way?"

"Of course they're fresh. They're from Poe's." Heart quickening, she clutches the phone closer to her cheek. "So, what did he say?"

Dopheld's voice drops to a hush. "That's the scary part. He didn't say anything. Just gathered up his things and left."

"Left?" Rey must repeat this a bit too loudly; Ackbar sends her an upgraded look of concern around an open cabinet. She flashes him what must be a truly manic smile and lowers her tone. "Couldn't he have been... I don't know. Running off to the loo?"

"Unless he needs his coat for the loo, I'm going to say probably not."

"You never know, Dopheld. I'm no expert in the mysteries of cold-blooded anatomy—it might expend precious body heat for him to—"

"I haven't been blowing up your phone to tell you Mr. Solo went to the toilet, Rey."

She chews the inside of her cheek. "Then where did he go?"

"You think he told me? He might have been leaving early for his afternoon appointment. Or..." An uneasy pause.

"Or...?"

"Or he might have been going downstairs to get you."

Rey's lungs suddenly can't draw enough air. "But... I'm in the middle of a lab tour. Didn't you tell him I'm in a lab tour?"

"I told him to have his people call your people."

"Seriously—?! sh*t, Dopheld, it's an expression, not a goddamn invitation!" The frown on Ackbar's chinless face is decidedly more pronounced this time, but Rey no longer has any control over her volume. "You couldn't have given me a bit more warning? What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe practice picking up your phone when I call five times in a row?"

"Gee, if your advice is always so helpful, I've no idea why I didn't think of that sooner!"

Mitaka meets her escalating panic with a long-suffering sigh. "Look. Mr. Solo has better things to do than chase after a consultant all day long. At this point, I'm sure you're in the clear. It's been at least ten minutes since he left—if he's not there already, it's probably safe to assume he's just decided to—"

A violent clatter of glass interrupts whatever it is that Rey should be assuming.

Across the lab, Ackbar has frozen, heavy frame half-bent over an open drawer. His hands quake visibly as they attempt to regain their grip on a sample tray, sending another tinkling shudder through all the vials in their casings—but Skywalker's top scientist doesn't appear too concerned with any potential damage. Instead, his rapidly paling face is directed somewhere above and behind Rey's shoulder. Over by the door.

She doesn't need to turn around to know who he's looking at.

Her Alpha's scent carves a clean path across the lab's white tile, winding up her body, taking stock of each part, as though checking to make sure she's precisely as he left her. The longer it lingers, the more tangibly its whisper-light touch teems with sweet, sighing relief—like his Alpha has suffered just as much in her absence as she has in his. And in every place he searches, her Omega surges to the surface, thrumming its eager response: Still here, Alpha. Still yours. Always, always yours.

Rey clenches her phone in her fist so tightly, she's surprised the screen doesn't crack.

"Sir." Dr. Ackbar's gaze darts nervously around the lab, as though checking for anything out of place. It hovers, a heartbeat too long, on Rey. "Forgive me. I didn't realize there was a visit in the calendar this morning."

"Rey? Hello...? What's happening? Is he... is he there?"

"There wasn't," comes his voice, from somewhere at her back. Its richness pours right down her spine, stirring all its branching nerves into buzzing awareness. "But Miss Niima was in mine."

Ackbar shoots her a bulging-eyed look of disbelief, as though she's lured a blood-hungry wolf straight to his den.

In a way, she supposes she has.

Rather than endure the intense shame of receiving such an expression, Rey angles herself more fully toward the lab's back corner, heart thumping wildly in her chest. "Be with you in a minute," she calls out, to no one in particular, with nauseating cheer. "Just finishing up a call."

"Oh. Oh, god. I'll take that as a yes."

Gradually, his scent approaches, gliding nearer, nearer still. When it finally settles, she can physically feel the force of his presence, solid and compelling, right at her back.

"All right. You actually want my advice? Avoid the stairs this time. The elevator's close-door button is just for show, so don't go jumping into an empty car—but if you can catch one that's almost full, that's probably your best bet, so long as you get enough of a head start to—"

Mitaka's panicked rambling abruptly cuts off when (a lung-tingling cloud of Alpha invades the space beside her ear) someone simply plucks the phone right out of her grasp, traitorous fingers surrendering their charge as easily as a vine might release a ripened, sun-plump berry.

In its wake, his scent smooths across her empty palm, filling it with her Alpha's longing. Coaxing her to turn around.

And, just as yesterday, Rey is entirely incapable of denying him.

Even though she knows he's waiting, his nearness steals her breath all the same. It's not just that he's the approximate size and density of the lab's industrial cryogenic freezer. The man simply has no sense of personal space. At least, not when it comes to Rey. Ben Solo stands a single step away, holding her phone aloft so she can clearly see the ongoing call with Captain Charon still lighting up its screen.

He gives it a taunting little shake.

"No voicemail today, Miss Niima?"

For all her earlier efforts, her scowl, when she finally turns it upon him, is definitely not blush-free.

"I've been a bit busy," Rey snaps, and snatches back her phone to end the call.

He is, indeed, wearing a coat. A peacoat, to be precise. This detail somehow aggravates her even more than his casual theft of her phone. How is it that he looks just as sophisticated in a thick winter coat as he does in a tailored suit? Then again, Rey imagines her Omega would find this man to be the pinnacle of sophistication even if she stripped him down to his underwear—or (her Omega insists) perhaps even further than that. Yes. Nude and kneeling, inky gaze holding her captive, kiss-swollen lips a breath away from equally kiss-swollen folds: Just a few more, Miss Niima. We're nearly there. Be a good girl and hold still for your Alpha.

Luck must be shining on Skywalker Tower today after all, because Solo remains miraculously ignorant to her increasing distraction. His gaze drifts over Rey's shoulder, to where Dr. Ackbar is suddenly quite busy rearranging his tray of identical vials.

"So you have." His mouth turns downward. "With an unauthorized tour of new research, it would seem."

At this, Ackbar looks up so sharply he nearly drops his tray again. "Miss Niima claimed she had authorization, sir. I asked."

"I shouldn't need authorization," Rey rushes to clarify, which immediately regains Solo's attention. Her heart stutters. "At least, not according to my new contract."

For a long moment, he only looks down his nose at her. Rey does her level best not to wither under the scrutiny of that piercing stare—or to melt beneath the tender caresses of his Alpha-scent. Unfortunately, both these trials are complicated by the pinkness of his mouth, which repeatedly tempts her rebellious gaze away from his own. Either task, of course, would be a challenge in its own right—but when combined with this final obstacle, they threaten to outstrip even Rey's otherwise inexhaustible supply of Solo-fueled defiance.

"Doctor." The title comes out as a rumble. Though he's addressing Ackbar, every ounce of his focus remains fixed upon her face. "Miss Niima's people will be in touch to reschedule today's appointment."

Rey's mouth drops open. "But—"

"You," he continues, cleaving straight through her protest, "are coming with me."

A firm hand presses against her lower back. She hardly has time to fling Dr. Ackbar a desperate look of apology before her Alpha is steering her across the lab's shiny white floor and out into the hall.

"Now wait just a minute. Where exactly do you think you're—hold on, could we maybe just— slow down, will you?!"

He does not slow down. His pace is as demanding as every other stupidly excessive thing about him. Gaze fixed firmly forward, Solo sweeps them through the corridors, palm steady at her back, so that Rey must nearly jog to match his lengthy strides. The research wing rushes past in a blur of white walls and heavy doors, all conversation swiftly snuffed into silence upon their approach. One lab-coated woman actually dives through a door to avoid them.

"I mean it, Solo." Rey twists her upper body in a futile attempt to escape his grasp. "You're going to mow someone over."

"Perhaps you should have thought about that before making us late."

"Late?" She nearly trips around the next turn; without missing a step, his hand at her hip steadies her. "Late for what?"

He doesn't answer. Of course he doesn't. Why bother explaining when he can simply descend upon her mid-interview, pluck her up from her work and drag her off to wherever he damn well pleases?

They arrive at a line of elevators. A pair of waiting research assistants gapes openly as Solo ushers her into an empty lift. Wisely, neither chooses to follow.

Wriggling herself free, Rey retreats to the car's furthest corner and plasters herself there. "You can't simply—burst into an interview and whisk me away," she seethes, as he punches the button for the lobby.

At long last, that dark gaze finds her again. The return of his attention sets her Omega at instant ease, though the smolder in his eye warrants a rather opposite reaction. He settles back against the mirrored wall. "Oh, can't I?"

"No. You can't." The doors begin their slow slide shut. "I scheduled this tour with Dr. Ackbar last week—for a campaign that you approved, by the way—and while you clearly couldn't care less about your own reputation, some of us, believe it or not, must actually work to build our professional relationships. A shocking concept, I know. But down here below the 29th floor—also known as reality—it's considered extremely unprofessional to schedule an appointment, weeks in advance, only to decide that instead of attending, you'd simply rather—"

The inner edges of the closing doors have barely brushed together before Solo is upon her.

She doesn't even reach her next word's first syllable. He crosses the elevator with preternatural speed, the kind only an Alpha can harness: leaning against the opposite wall one moment, trapping her with his body the next. Large hands fist the lapel of her blazer; Rey's heels lift clean off the floor as he yanks her to her scraping toes, hauling her up to meet him.

His kiss steals her second syllable straight from her mouth.

The rest of her voicemail speech is quick to follow, fragments scattered to the winds of this Alpha's will. For a long, staggering moment, there is only him: her Alpha, subduing her—and Rey, blissfully subdued. The pleasure of his lips obliterates all else. Her desperate grip on her control, her denial, her stubborn pride—all of it fades away, until there is nothing left for her to do but receive.

When Solo finally releases her, his departure allows only enough space for the harsh breaths between their mouths. He presses his forehead solidly to her own.

"It would be best," he says, "if you don't try to tell me what I can and cannot do. Especially when it comes to you." His voice is ragged, like he's yet to mend its fraying edges from the night before. "My Alpha seems to take it as a challenge."

"So that's why you're here?" Rey is dismayed to find herself equally breathless. "Your Alpha is feeling challenged?"

"I'm here, Miss Niima, because I couldn't wait a moment longer to see you again."

This answer sounds like it's been extracted unwillingly, raked from the gritty bedrock-bottom of his chest. Rey has exactly one hitched breath to absorb the raw emotion in his expression—and then the elevator glides to a stop.

Cold professionalism returns like the slam of a lowered gate. Stepping away, Solo straightens her blazer with a single, purposeful tug.

Then, without another word, he strides out the opening doors.

Seriously?

Rey's irritation, thank god, makes a similarly swift return. Balling her fists, she stalks right after him.

Skywalker Tower's lobby bustles with the typical mid-morning intersection of late arrivals, early lunch-goers and postal deliveries. Marble squeaks beneath rain-slick shoes, punctuated by the occasional rustle of umbrellas being loosed from or tucked into their fastenings, depending on the trajectory of their owners. Ben Solo does not alter his course for any of them. He heads straight across the lobby with laser-like focus, so that Rey must once again scramble to keep up.

"Excuse me," she says, in a furious hiss. "I wasn't finished."

His scorching, sidelong glance threatens the blush-free integrity of her current scowl. "Neither was I."

"Actually, you were," she says, with far more confidence than this statement deserves. "And since you interrupted me first, it's only fair that I'll also be the first to—hold on. Is that my bag?"

Solo has led them to the building's main entrance, the sprawling glass exterior of which is streaked with sheets of pouring rain. A security guard awaits their arrival beside the revolving doors, bearing a thick leather briefcase, a black umbrella—and the unmistakable bright colors of Rey's tote and jacket.

"We were going to be late," Solo says matter-of-factly, as he accepts their things from the guard. "You weren't in your workspace, so I collected your belongings for you."

"Solo, you—you can't simply—"

"What did I just finish telling you, Niima?" He slides both bags onto one wide peacoat-clad shoulder, the multi-colored strap of her tote peeking out beneath black leather. "Now I'll need to do it again."

Do what again? Sneak into her conference room? Steal her things? Kiss her breathless in an elevator car? And, even more unsettling than any of these possibilities—is Ben Solo attempting to tease her?

Before she can request further clarification, he extends her coat by both shoulders, front hanging open, like he plans to put it on her himself.

Flustered, Rey snatches it from his grasp. "As much as I appreciate your generous invasion of my privacy, Mr. Solo, I'm not planning on going anywhere until noon."

"Your plans have changed."

"They most certainly have not."

"Now isn't the time for this, Niima. We'll discuss on the drive."

He hardly gives her enough time to shrug into her jacket. Hand returning to her back, he leads her to the revolving door (where he squeezes in right beside her, instead of waiting for his own compartment like a normal person)—and then they are out in the biting wet air, protected only by his oversized umbrella.

Or at least, Rey is.

Solo seems perfectly content to walk with half his wide body exposed to the freezing downpour, angling the umbrella so that it shields his companion instead.

The gesture would almost be considerate, if he weren't smack in the middle of a workplace abduction.

At least he doesn't toss her in the trunk, the way he was threatening Dopheld yesterday. Instead, the shelter of his umbrella shepherds her to the passenger side of an idling SUV, where a large, burly driver stands ready to open the rear door.

When he does, it becomes immediately apparent that both she and Mitaka had little to worry about.

Even a ride in Ben Solo's trunk would out-luxury the rest of Rey's car-related experiences by a significant margin.

Her closest point of comparison might be the limousine Rose rented last summer to celebrate her sister's bachelorette. Except this SUV is no limousine—and it certainly isn't a rental. Indeed, every last interior detail appears to have been custom-designed to suit the highly exacting preferences of its owner. Two pairs of Alpha-sized seats face each other across the car's roomy back. A wood-paneled partition separates the driver from the rest of the car, while pitch-black windows block out nearly any perception of the outside world. The space feels luxurious. Exclusive. Intensely private. Rey can just imagine Ben Solo sipping a glass of whiskey in soundproofed silence, oblivious to the protesters she knows are often raging on the opposite side of this vehicle's tech-tinted glass.

And then, of course, there's his scent.

If there remained any doubt in Rey's mind about this vehicle's most frequent passenger, the deeply potent musk of her Alpha clinging to all its leather would banish it immediately.

Rey pokes her head through the door for a single, shivery breath. Just to confirm. But by the time she exhales, she's horrified to discover that, instead of alerting Solo's driver to his emerging role in an attempted kidnapping, her double-crossing Omega has already parked herself obediently in a buttery-leather seat.

Even worse, Ben Solo is making himself at home directly across from her.

The door slams shut. Swallowing them both in silence.

After the clamor of morning street traffic, the sudden lack of noise is deafening. The only sounds stubborn enough to persist are the muffled drumming of rain against the roof of his car, the rhythm of her runaway pulse in her eardrums—and the giddy chatter of her Omega, who offers a nonstop stream of creative configurations Rey might leverage to climb atop her Alpha in such limited space.

(Perched upon his knee, the way he held her last night; or nestled back-to-chest between his legs, so very vulnerable to the whims of those wicked hands; or—perhaps best of all—straddling a hard meaty thigh, where Rey might finally rub and rock and grind her way to the aching completion that still throbs—how it throbs—right there, a constant torture, just out of reach—)

To her Omega's immense disappointment, Rey remains firmly anchored in her seat as the car pulls away from the curb.

"You've got thirty seconds to tell me where we're going, or I'm jumping out at the first stoplight."

Solo actually seems to consider the likelihood of this scenario, as he undoes the top few buttons of his coat. This quickly turns out to be a problem, because he is still damp in a way that gravely threatens Rey's ability to count to thirty. The ends of his hair glisten with rain; from the tip of one dark strand, a heavy droplet relinquishes its cling and then rolls, with excruciating languor, down the long side of his nose.

Just as her count is approaching the newly treacherous territory of double-digits, Solo seems to conclude that his companion indeed looks feral enough to fling herself from a moving vehicle. "Skywalker is considering the purchase of a manufacturing facility in the hills," he says, after a heavy moment. "We're meeting my realtor there at two."

Rey's mouth drops open. He's dragging her all the way to Chandrila Hills? Today? "What on earth do you need me there for?"

"I don't." His tone is cold, like this should be obvious. "We have much to discuss, and this was the simplest way to find time for it."

"By taking up all of my time." Perhaps this is an extension of last night's torture. Trap his nemesis in a tiny space, then steep her in her Alpha's pheromones, until she's half-crazed with thoughts of all the pleasure she still so shamefully requires from him. "Solo, Chandrila is over an hour's drive."

"Eighty-three minutes. But we'll stop for lunch halfway," he adds, as though a missed opportunity to feed her were somehow the most concerning aspect of this plan. "At Locale."

Locale—?! If her mind wasn't spinning before, it certainly is now. The bookings at that place stretch well into next spring. Rey knows this, because Rose recently pulled all kinds of strings with a former classmate to snag an earlier spot there for a brunch date with Armitage.

And Ben Solo wants to go there with her?

"No."

Rain pelts the roof overhead. Across the car, dark eyes narrow. "No?"

"No. As in—no." Rey shakes her head. "No, I'm not going with you to Chandrila. No, we're not getting lunch together at—seriously? Locale?"

"Do you have another preference?"

"How noble of you to ask. Yes, actually. I would prefer you drop me off at the next corner. I've got somewhere to be at 12:30. Somewhere important," she adds, when he opens his mouth to argue. "I'm helping Rose set up for a client's investor dinner tomorrow night."

A tense pause. "You said Skywalker was your only client."

"It is. Technically. But I'm only here half a day Thursdays, and I still play a supporting role on my partner's accounts."

He frowns, like it's truly never occurred to him that Rey might have obligations outside of cleaning up Ben Solo's sh*tstorm du jour. "Well, perhaps, for your lunch tomorrow—"

"I don't come in on Fridays," she says, quickly.

"Then tell me where you'll be tomorrow at noon. I’ll pick you up."

Rey's jaw slackens. She stares at him. "You?"

"That's what I said."

"You—Ben Solo—will pick me up for lunch. In the middle of a workday."

"I intend to pick you up for lunch every day, Miss Niima, when my schedule allows it."

Anxious flutters swarm her stomach. Is he mocking her? But no—his expression remains perfectly serious, which is somehow even worse.

Fancy lunch reservations, heart-stopping kisses in the elevator, random acts of umbrella Alpha-chivalry... and now this?

It's clear Rey has vastly underestimated the depth of this man's animosity toward her.

While her past two months at Skywalker have already done plenty to communicate his contempt, these past two days are now revealing just how far Ben Solo would go to enjoy her suffering. Worst of all, he's not above using his Alpha to obtain it.

But Solo can't enjoy what Rey refuses to give him.

"You mean, when I allow it," she tells him, very sternly. "We'll go to lunch when I allow it."

As far as she can tell, this correction comes out exactly as she intended it: clear and uncompromising. But from the slow-ripening satisfaction in his scent, she may as well have rolled over to show him her belly. Or perhaps—from the glint in his eye—her throat. His pleasure saturates her breath, crowding out its oxygen. Rey finds she must physically swallow down a third repetition of the phrase (when I allow it, Alpha, yes, I will) before it can claw its way up from the innermost core of her being, aching for a fresh opportunity to please him.

His mouth slants slowly upward.

"Cancel the reservation," he says, and it takes her a moment to notice he's pressing the button for the driver's intercom, so distracting is the weight of his stare. "We're adding a new stop before we leave the city." His gaze hangs on hers, and Rey realizes he's expecting her to speak.

"The next corner should be fine."

"I am not leaving you on a street corner, Niima. Your destination."

Her teeth grind. She considers arguing, or perhaps making good on her earlier threat to risk a pedestrian traffic injury at the next intersection. But she decided against driving her car to work this morning, as she often does when her evening plans will bring her to the parking-challenged village—and in her haste to make the train, she neglected to grab her umbrella.

It takes her all of three seconds to decide whether she prefers the freezing October rainstorm to the luxury of this cushy SUV. Even if the SUV comes with the steadily increasing hazard of Ben Solo's presence.

"Scentsation," Rey says, with begrudging reluctance. "It's in the village."

The driver thanks her, and the intercom clicks off.

Though the windows are too dark for her to see the street outside, she knows the vehicle is turning from the motion of the cabin.

She should be relieved. Already, she can hardly tolerate the distance separating them. They wouldn't even make it halfway to the hills before Rey would be reenacting a few of her Omega's lurid suggestions right there in her Alpha's lap.

Unfortunately, any respite she might find in this small victory shrivels up when Solo produces a tablet from the center console.

"Am I correct to assume R2 Strategies does not have a lawyer on retainer?"

The abrupt change in topic disarms her. "A lawyer?" she repeats, blinking. "Why should you care if we've got—" The sudden grip of yesterday's fear chokes off her question by the tail. "Are you... are you planning to sue me?"

He slides a disparaging glance over the top of his tablet. "Your assets would hardly even cover my legal fees."

Right. Mortification flames across her face. She briefly reconsiders the discomfort of a rainstorm to this man's company. "As if money would stop you from ruining someone's life."

"I can think of far more enticing ways to ruin you than with a lawsuit, Miss Niima."

The only thing more distressing than this reply is the fact that her imagination proves equally adept in the navigation of such fertile depths. Flush deepening, Rey pivots back to his original question. "I... that is to say, R2... We've got someone to call, if we need to."

To her extreme relief, Solo drops his attention back down to his screen. "An attorney can provide valuable guidance during a contract negotiation. Especially for someone with so little experience." He's talking about her terms, she realizes—the email she fired off at three in the morning, vibrating with full-body frustration, both livid with her Alpha and helpless to keep her thoughts away from him. "You should consider working for a larger agency," he continues, oblivious to her mounting indignation. "Somewhere more established. A reputable firm would offer you access to counsel on these matters."

"Thanks for the tip," she says hotly, before he can further insult the most meaningful accomplishment of her working life. "But I'm not really looking for career counseling at the moment. Especially from someone who rage-quit Harvard to go chasing after a startup."

A flicker of surprise crosses his face, as though this information weren't readily available in paragraph seven, sentence two of his Wikipedia page. "Then perhaps you'll take it from the chief executive of several billion-dollar companies." Rey, of course, would sooner take career advice from one of Dr. Ackbar's petri dishes than from Benjamin Death-Destroyer-Of-Livelihoods Solo. But he's clearly determined to share his wisdom anyway. "An attorney would have informed you that these... requests of yours..." His scowl sharpens the longer he scrolls down the screen. "They are wildly ambitious, for a consultant employment agreement."

"You told me to send my terms."

"There are no terms here, Niima. Only a litany of delusions, most outside the realm of practicality—and certainly outside that of a consulting contract."

It's a rather surreal experience, watching Ben Solo actually read something she's prepared for him—instead of simply chucking it straight to spam, or the trash, or whatever digital mass grave has swallowed up the hundreds of other emails she's sacrificed to his inbox.

Although that might have been a kinder fate, now that she sees the way he plans to butcher her latest offering.

Such hard-nosed pressure tactics might help Solo bully his way through his business deals. But Rey has now spent two long months enduring this man's disdain at full intensity. She's grown quite familiar with the sharpness of the barbs he uses to shred an opponent's resolve; at this point, he's practically given her an Ivy League education in the subject. So it will take far more than a few harsh words for Rey to abandon her hard-won demands.

Especially when he's the one who initiated their little renegotiation in the first place.

The reminder inflates her with a dizzying rush of confidence. After all, Solo is the one who requested to change the terms of their agreement. Not Rey. He's the one who arranged their meeting this morning; he even deviated from his precious calendar to fetch her from Ackbar's lab. All the Alpha-bravado in the world won't make her forget this one very important fact.

Ben Solo wants something from her.

And he wants it badly enough to open himself up to compromise.

"Then I suppose we'll just have to leave my contract the way it is," she says, primly. "Without your exclusivity clause." With deliberate nonchalance, she uncrosses her legs and leans forward. "Thanks for the ride, Mr. Solo, but I think I'll walk the rest of the way. You can expect my partner Rose at your offices next week."

As she speaks, Rey reaches for the intercom button to connect her with the driver, ready to repeat her instructions. Of course, she has yet to actually discuss any of this with Rose—but if Solo truly calls her bluff, she is certain her friend would understand, once she has the whole story—

—and then a hand lashes out and snaps tight around her wrist. Immobilizing her.

Eyes hot as coal bore into her own.

"I'm not finished with you just yet, Omega."

Triumph pulses through her, savage and exhilarating. As though chasing its current, her gaze drops down to the place where his grip now engulfs her galloping pulse—and then, just beyond it. To the sight of her own fingers flexing, helplessly, at the hem of his coat-sleeve.

From deep in her core, the first spark of possibility stirs.

All week long, Rey has been quick to smother such unwelcome embers, grinding them down into colorless ash. Today, though, she finds herself cradling it in her palms. Examining its glow. She allows herself to measure the length of its flickering shadow, the quality and strength of its light; to imagine the flames she might conjure, should she feed it just a few small sips of her oxygen. A shiny new addition to her war chest. Limitless power, whenever she needs it—right here at the tips of her fingers.

Would it really be so wrong to use her Omega this way? Solo certainly has no qualms weaponizing his Alpha to such nefarious ends. She only needs to remember the dark satisfaction he took while drinking in her denial last night. In the light of day, it's become quite clear that he never had any intention of helping her forget their evening together at all. Not only does he delight in stoking the fires of her Omega's torment—but after the events of this morning, it would seem he intends to skewer her over its flames for every last legally obligated moment they're required to spend together.

Why, then, should he be the only one to benefit from his designation?

How bright would Ben Solo burn for her, if she were bold enough to strike his match?

Ever so slowly, she slips her thumb beneath his coat-sleeve.

"Then I suppose you'd better give me a reason to stay." Wetting her lips, Rey finds his name is already waiting there for him, in the same place it's been waiting all week. "Alpha."

He doesn't disappoint.

Desire erupts in his scent like a cracking dam, demanding to be set loose upon its mate. His grip tightens around her arm. Dark eyes descend to her new point of contact; when it returns to her face, the heat in his gaze fills all her veins with reckless, tingling anticipation.

"We're still discussing your terms, Niima."

Her breath hitches at the warning in his tone. "My litany of delusions, you mean?"

"Call them what you want. Their discussion should be reason enough." Tension thrums in all the hard lines of his body, as though he must employ every ounce of his not-inconsiderable muscle in the task of restraining himself. As though even the slightest interruption to his efforts might send his Alpha lunging across the car to meet her dare.

It's all the invitation she needs.

Beneath his sleeve, her thumb ventures first past the crisp cuff of his shirt. Then a few inches more. Past wrist bones lined with tendons, strung tight as steel cord, straining against his Alpha's leash—until, at last, she finds it.

The hot, raised perimeter of something swollen. Something obscene.

Everything inside her awakens at its proximity.

"The thing is, Mr. Solo, I didn't really want to discuss my terms today." Rey sounds remarkably mild for the danger she's courting. For the question that burns at the tip of her thumb.

Heart racing, she follows her instinct boldly forward.

"I wanted you to agree to them."

In the days since Primal's pedestal first presented her with that little velvet box, Rey has imagined this moment with shameful frequency. Even after she discovered the villain behind her perfect match, her preoccupation with this tiny patch of skin has continued to plague her. By now, she's imagined every gland on this Alpha's body in scandalous detail: the pair on his throat, which flushed so perfectly pink the longer he licked her on last night's table; the forbidden place at his nape, always hidden beneath his collar, even in photographs—but whose existence throbs, constantly, in the roots of her teeth; and this one. Right here. Just inside his wrist. So very accessible that, even before Rey knew he was her Alpha, she spent many long hours wondering (should Solo ever deign to meet her, and should she choose to shake his hand)—if she might brush against it accidentally.

There is nothing accidental about how she touches him here now.

Her thumb orbits its border in breathless circles, charting its shape. Hardly bigger than her thumbnail—yet it burns, fever-hot, at her arrival. All of Rey's focus condenses to this one, private place. Here is where her Alpha waits for her, the way she waits for him. Here, in its warmth, is where he belongs to her.

Gone is the man so casually willing to dismiss her requests mere moments ago. Mouth parted in surprise, Solo sits stock-still in his seat, as if the smallest movement might shatter the sacred space her touch has split open between them. She feels fairly drunk on the power of it. Just a few fluttering touches, and Ben Solo is utterly incapacitated. He can't seem to decide if he'd rather look at her face, where he tracks every small shift in her expression—or the place where her hand vanishes beneath the hem of his peacoat, touching and touching and touching. Her insides tremble with desire to know him here. To know him everywhere.

"Omega." Only the steadily quickening rise and fall of his chest betrays the strain on his control. "That isn't how a negotiation works."

Rey's thumbnail flirts with a sensitive rim, extracting a furious hiss from between clenched teeth. "Or perhaps you've simply never done it with an expert negotiator before."

"Is this your idea of an expert's strategy? Make your little demands and expect me to capitulate?"

She treats her Alpha to a breathless grin. "Only if you're expecting to keep me."

In the blink of an eye, her elbow bends ninety degrees upward. His gland rips away from her thumb. Cool air spills across her fingers, abruptly deprived of his sleeve's woolen warmth (a whining, desperate noise escapes her at its departure)—before her Alpha yanks them directly in front of his nose for his inspection.

Any additional sounds of Omega-protest die instantly on her tongue.

Inches away, Ben Solo studies her hand as one might examine an astonishingly misbehaved pet: at once stunned and fascinated by its insolence.

"A negotiation," he says, with a stern glare, "should be transactional." In a smooth, careful motion, Solo rotates her wrist so that her fingertips point toward the car ceiling—and so that the loose sleeve of her jacket slips down her wrist. Revealing a sliver of its pale underbelly. His scrutiny turns molten. "I give you something you want," he murmurs, to her newly exposed skin. "So that I can get what I want."

"And what you want is an exclusivity clause?"

"What I want, Rey Niima, is you." His Alpha's hunger flares in his pupils, rapidly expanding them—until Solo manages to snap it back under his control. "But yes," he says, on the edge of a growl. "We will start with the goddamn clause."

Rey's pulse is racing so quickly, she's certain he must be able to feel it in his grip.

Ben Solo wants her.

She already knows this, of course. It's the basis of this entire insane idea in this first place. But the sheer impossibility of Ben Solo's voice, wrapped around those words, delivered with such fierce conviction—it almost makes her forget the many ways this man would use his Alpha's desire against her.

It also reminds her of the leverage her own Omega offers in this situation.

Once again, Rey glimpses that same spark of possibility she discovered beneath his coat. But this time, she doesn't even need to touch him to ignite its full potential. The power she laid bare with those few, fleeting strokes now swirls, incandescent, all around them. Simply waiting for her breath to give it life.

The question slips free before she can think better of it.

"What if I offered you both?"

For a long, heavy moment, there is no sound other than the rain on the roof of his car. "Both?"

"Both," she repeats, willing her voice to remain steady. "Your exclusivity clause, and also"—her pulse skips—"me."

Solo's stare grows so intense, her skin starts to prickle. "I don't deal in ambiguities, Niima. What exactly are you offering here?"

Everything, Alpha. Whatever you'll have of me. Every pleasure, every breath, every thought, every gland—

"My Omega." Rey flings out her response before any of these other nonsensical answers can outpace her own reply. "You could have my Omega. For another session at Primal."

It's a ludicrous proposition, now that it's out in the open. As if Primal is the only place Ben Solo could have her. Indeed, Rey can't imagine there exists a place in the world where her foolish Omega wouldn't jump at the chance to bare her throat for this man.

Yet Solo seems to be considering it anyway.

His expression is darkly thoughtful as he appraises her. Like he can see into every depraved corner of her being. His scent, too, acquires an ominously familiar undercurrent—the one her Alpha wears when he's finally trapped her somewhere that provides no easy option for an Omega's escape. And all the while, the featherlight tip of his thumb swipes, back and forth, along the sensitive underside of her wrist, in a lazy imitation of Rey's previous caresses.

Right above where she wants him.

This goes on for the length of one block. Then another. Until Rey begins to wonder if she's overplayed her hand and botched her opportunity for an actual negotiation. Perhaps she misheard him, when he said that he wanted her. Perhaps she went too far with her demands. Perhaps he will simply toy with her scent gland like this until they finally arrive—then laugh in her face for her audacity as he tosses her out into the gutter.

Rey is already drafting an emergency response plan for her Omega's reaction to such a rejection when Solo arrives at his decision.

"I accept your terms."

It's so far from what she's expecting, words nearly fail her. "All of them?"

"Yes. All of them." Dark eyes glitter. "On one condition."

His thumb now rests directly on top of her scent gland, firm and possessive. At this point, Rey's jacket has slipped all the way past her wrist, so there's no denying the response he elicits with this tiny fragment of his attention. Her Omega pulses below his fingertip, pouring heat into her gland. Drenching his thumb in the unmistakable scent of her anticipation.

"Twice a week," he says, slowly, "you will meet me at Primal for our session. And for the duration of that session, you're going to be mine. I'm going to do whatever I want with you. And you, little Omega, are going to let me."

Her breath stops. He can't possibly mean... "As in—we'll meet twice in a single week, and be done with it? Or..."

"Every week, Niima. Twice a week. Until the end of your contract."

Math was never Rey's strongest subject; there's a good reason she ended up with a degree in communications, after all. Still, her reeling mind attempts to tally all the opportunities this would give Ben Solo to unravel her over the three-and-a-half months stretching between now and the end of their agreement. All the opportunities she'd have to unravel him, too.

"That's... a lot of weeks, Solo."

"And you have a lot of terms. This one is mine."

"Really? Are you sure you don't want"—the question hitches as he strokes her gland in tiny, hypnotic circles—"something else?"

His mouth quirks. "I'm sure."

"But... you could ban all the trash fire gifs from my newsletters." Rey's voice grows more breathless the longer he touches her. "Or the Disney villain references from your interview prep sheets."

"I could. But this will give us plenty of opportunity to correct your behavior on its own, don't you think?"

Heat floods her limbs at this suggestion—though not from the indignation she might expect. Because her Alpha only wants to help her, doesn't he? And how thoroughly he would help her, this man who devotes the totality of his attention to his every task. He'd leave no method untested, no route unexplored, when teaching his Omega all the ways to please her mate. Giddy excitement courses through her at the mere possibility of such an outcome. Why even call it a concession, when there's nothing in the world she wants more—not her terms, not her success, not even Ben Solo's capitulation—nothing that can compare to the bliss of this Alpha's approval?

"But—but Primal has rules," Rey says, in a desperate scramble for some remaining protest to temper her Omega's enthusiasm. "Safe words. If—if you don't follow them—"

"Shhh." Warm palms slide up her jaw, cradling her face. Solo leans more fully across the car, until the honey-soft gaze of her Alpha fills her vision. Distantly, Rey marvels at how quickly this man's touch can calm her spiraling nerves, even when he is so clearly the source of their agitation. "I have no interest in forcing you, Omega. It's as I said before." A wicked glint returns to his eyes. "You're going to let me."

It's a struggle for her to think clearly, with her Alpha holding her face in his hands. Staring into it like she's the center of his entire world. Even so, Rey makes a valiant effort to dredge up some boundaries that might help contain a few of the dangers in this decidedly danger-filled plan. Perhaps she'll insist on another time limit. Or remind him that her offer was only for a single night.

Instead, when she opens her mouth, what comes leaping out is:

"Once a week."

A slow, shark-like smile spreads across Ben Solo's face. "Sure, Omega. Once a week."

"On Fridays," she adds, quickly. She's already told him about her investor dinner tomorrow night, so Friday would punt their meeting as far into next week as possible.

For once, Solo offers her no argument. Withdrawing his touch, he leans back in his seat, lifts the tablet from his lap and plucks up its stylus to seal her fate.

He makes his signature look maddeningly effortless. Rey should pay better attention to how the hell he manages all those loops without breaking the line of his pen. It will come in handy for the next batch of thank-you-apology letters she sends on his behalf; if she's subjecting Primal's staff to weekly visits from this man, she imagines she'll soon be mailing them out on a fairly regular basis.

She wonders who will write Solo's own apology letter for what she plans to subject him to in return.

It's this thought that steels her resolve when he hands over the tablet. His exclusivity clause is at the bottom, along with the terms from her email—but there's no mention of his final condition. Solo must know there are other ways to ensure her compliance, when it comes to that.

Well, Rey knows a few ways to ensure his, too. And thanks to their agreement, she intends to discover quite a few more before her time at Skywalker Biotech is finished.

With a flourish of the pen, Rey scribbles her name on the line next to his. Signing away her soul.

Except she's pretty sure that—just like the rest of her—it already belongs to him.