“Are you really sure about that omega?” I asked, rolling away from Edison with a gasp and pushing his seeking mouth away. My skin was covered in a thin layer of sweat as I sat up in his massive four poster bed and reached for my shirt.
“Come back here.” Edison’s arm locked around my waist and he dragged me back across the black bedspread and against his naked body again.
His lips were distracting—just like they always were—and I let myself melt into him briefly as his vanilla scent invaded my senses.
Putting a label on whatever we were doing wasn’t easy. It had started a few years ago after one of the women that Edison favored tried to kill him.
Two bullets in his chest later and Edison swore women off completely… but he still needed to let off steam and we’d been best friends since he and his father pulled me out of squalor when I was nine years old.
It made sense at the time and neither of us spoke much about it. I was his second-in-command and would do anything for him, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to enjoy every second.
“Edi, stop trying to change the subject,” I growled, giving his chin a gentle shove and ignoring the plaintive look in his gold eyes.
Most of the time Edison Keane was a stone cold criminal. He rarely smiled and rarely showed his true self to anyone outside of this house. It made me feel damn special when he acted like this, but at the same time I knew it made me one of his weaknesses. With the other families closing increasingly in on us and the older generation pushing Edison’s boundaries daily, I should have put a stop to this whole affair much earlier.
But instead, I just rolled my eyes and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth, the stubble of his slow-growing beard scratching my lips as I spoke again. “Those eyes will get you nowhere.”
“These eyes get me everywhere,” Edison huffed as he finally surrendered and sat up to put his clothes on. “I couldn’t do what I do without them.”
Gold eyes were the quintessential trait of the Keane family and marked Edison as the last of his kind and as the leader of our little criminal sect. Even his cousin, the next in line if something happened to Edison, didn’t have them.
When I met him there had been more. A father, two uncles, and a great aunt that all had the trait.
They were all gone now, though, and Edison was alone. The last golden eyed Keane. A fucking unicorn in his own right.
“Focus, Edi, what are you going to do about the omega now living in the east wing.”
I was surprised when he put her there. Hardly anyone ever went into that section of the house because it had belonged to Aine Keane and it had been closed up after her death. Then, six months ago, Edison ordered it cleaned out and all of the furniture replaced.
Edison was the only person who went there now to take care of the plethora of houseplants his mother had been obsessed with when she was alive.
Putting Peregrine Chandler in the east wing held a weight that wasn’t lost on me or any of the other household staff who’d watched us walk her through the house in that damn wedding dress of hers.
Edison scrubbed a tired hand over his face and turned to look over his shoulder at me. “I bought her, didn’t I? Why wouldn’t I be serious? I told you I was going to find an omega for us last year.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you were serious.” He’d mentioned it in passing and I just figured he was going through a midlife crisis or something. “Besides, why would she be for us?”
Edison frowned. “Because we’re a pack.”
A snort rippled out of me.
“You’re my boss.” I pointed at him before turning the finger on myself. “And I am your second-in-command. Not a pack.”
The head of the Keane family didn’t do packs. I’d never fully understood why—whenever I used to ask about it the adults would hush me and mutter something about past mistakes never happening again—but it was one of the hard and fast rules all of the older members believed in. An unshakeable tradition.
As if reading my mind, Edison scoffed and stood, straightening his clothing and pulling me up onto my feet as well. “It’s long past time for that traditionalist bullshit to die off.”
“You’re the boss—shouldn’t that ‘traditionalist bullshit’ be what you fight to uphold?” I asked, dodging his mouth while I waited for him to answer.
This game we’d been playing for the last couple of years was dangerous. Edison hadn’t been the head of the family for long, but even now he butted heads with the branch family heads like he didn’t have a care in the world.
His position was his birthright. He was Keane through-and-through and his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had led the family long before him. By all rights he should have been able to do whatever the fuck he wanted.
But they’d never even dared to utter the word pack, taking their omega wives and siring the next generation without any fuss.
“And you’re my employee, so shouldn’t you not be letting me fuck you senseless most nights?” Edison countered, a dark brow lifting as his golden eyes danced with laughter.
“All a part of my workplace duties.” I shot him a snappy salute and finally let him kiss me, his lips tasting like the finger of whiskey he’d drunk upon entering his room earlier. “But don’t think I’m going to forget the omega that is about to have the Italians raining hellfire down on us for the foreseeable future. Couldn’t you have picked any other one? Hell, I’m sure you could probably stroll up to the omega center and have them slick for you on sight.”
Edison’s chuckle was low and rumbling as he stepped away and got to work putting his tie back on. It may have been just after ten in the evening, but we both still had a long night of work ahead of us.
“I don’t want another one. As soon as Ethan Chandler gave me her scent card I was hooked—and I know you were too.”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” I muttered, turning away from him and fiddling with the silky edges of his sheets, my face warming like I was a twelve-year-old schoolboy and not a grown ass man.
There was a beat before Edison cupped the back of my neck and forced me to face him fully. “You aren’t usually so keen to tear my clothes off, Rhodes, and that hard-on of yours started long before we came up here.”
I would never admit it out loud, but as soon as we were enclosed in the car and the omega was glaring at me with those pretty gray eyes of hers that were full of anger, I’d gotten one whiff of her scent and the lust had been instantaneous.
She smelled like fresh strawberries—the kind you can only get at the height of their season—and the scent had filled the back of the car with a cloying intensity.
It made me feel… out of control.
Something that had never happened to me before and made me feel uncomfortable even now as Edison’s vanilla scent filled my nose.
“I’m always ready to tear your clothes off, boss,” I said, putting some space between the two of us with the word ‘boss.’
