Lola & the Millionaires: Part One (Sweet Omegaverse #2)(108)

“I’m here, sweetheart. Ready for the buzzer?”

I scrambled to my feet, wavering slightly. “Ready.”

I still jumped at the roaring blare of the buzzer, immediately hitting the button to let him in and fumbling with the locks. His steps thundered up to my door and I hung up as soon as his scent reached my nose, that candied sex smell oddly comforting in the moment. Even more comforting was the enormous figure of Wes running up my steps to my open door.

“I’m already to her place. I gotta call the police, okay? Oof,” Wes puffed as I ran into his chest, the baseball bat clattering to the floor and propping my door open. His arm wrapped around me, holding me tight, and I cleared the last remnants of Indy out of my lungs with every breath I took while my nose pressed to his chest. “That’s fine. See you soon. Hey, I got you, sweetheart.”

I wasn’t crying, just shaking a little.

“Look at me.” I tilted my head back, and Wes brushed his hand over my hair, his eyes searching my face. “You wanna wait out here for the others, or go back inside with me?”

I wanted Wes to pick me up off my feet, take me out to his car, and then burn my apartment down to the ground behind us both.

“With you,” I said, settling on the simplest compromise between the two.

Wes frowned and nodded, guiding me back into the apartment as he called in the break-in to 911. “They’re gonna be forever,” Wes said with a sigh as he hung up. “It’ll move things along a bit if we can figure out if he took anything. You’ve got the voicemail to prove he broke the restraining order request at least. Want me to go look?” Wes asked, glaring at the trail of feathers down the hall.

“Can we just…just stand here for a minute?” I asked.

“Of course we can,” Wes murmured, arms open as I turned into his chest again, folding them over my back.

He was warm and solid and purely alpha, and if I’d made one real advancement over the past two months, it was getting over my aversion to alphas. Or at least Rake’s. Wes vibrated with a silent purr, my eyes falling shut and the apartment going distant in my head.

“I think Matthieu and the others caught Leo on their way out,” Wes said.

“Others?”

“Sounded like a full car,” Wes said. “You’re gonna take tomorrow off, okay? And you’re going to stay at the house for a while.”

I slid my hands under Wes’ denim jacket and clutched at his back, planes of muscle thick under my fingers. I could fall asleep like this. I was definitely on some weird kind of high, floating in a hazy middle ground of panic and exhaustion.

“You’re all right, sweetheart,” Wes said, stroking my back. I was trembling, and I nodded against his chest. “Okay, you wait right here. Matt and the others will buzz any second.”

Wes peeled me off his chest, propping me up by the buzzer and bending to kiss my forehead briefly before heading down the hall. I watched his steps as he carefully avoided stirring the feathers, although they skirted away from his boots like they were alive. He stopped in the door of my bedroom, his broad back blocking the view as he flipped the light on.

“Fuck.”

Queasy churning returned to my stomach as I watched Wes’ shoulders rise toward his ears, hackles up and anger making the citrus in his scent sharper.

The buzzer screamed at my ear and I flinched, turning and smacking it hard in answer. My door was still hanging open, and I heard their voices immediately. Matthieu’s dulcet tones, and Leo’s gravel. Rake’s rapid whispering, and Caleb and Cyrus with smooth, low answers.

“Lola,” Leo called.

But I was watching Wes as he stepped aside, leaning against the door.

Fabric was everywhere in the room, like a bomb had gone off in my closet. I stared at the innocent carnage, my feet carrying me mindlessly down the hall. Wes stepped into the room and bent, picking up the closest piece, my bright purple dress from the night of the fashion week party, torn down the middle. I made it to the door, a chaos of voices at my back, and the puzzle of the scene fit together as I saw another old dress of mine, sweet and white with eyelet flowers over a pale blue slip, now shredded down the center.

And her dress cut down to there…

“That’s not what the song meant,” I breathed out, a little stupidly.

Wes looked up at me as a storm of men calling my name burst into the apartment. Arms grabbed me from behind, and even though I knew it was one of my guys, I jumped and tried to spin away. But Leo’s grip was firm and the second I faced him, my flight response vanished.

“God, Lola,” he gasped, pressing me to his chest.

Just as quickly, warmth and velvet enveloped us both, Matthieu pressing to my back, his hands on my shoulders and his lips on the crown of my head.

“All right, back up,” Wes said gently. “We’re gonna leave this area for the police to go through first.”

“Let me through,” Rake snapped, squeezing under Matthieu’s arm against my side, nuzzling my cheek and neck.

Tension unwound in me, and I drooped into their embrace.

“Give us a minute, Wes,” Matthieu said, words thick with a low combination of a purr and growl.

“I’m okay,” I offered in a mumble.

Physically I was fine, give or take the desire to pass out or be sick or just curl into a ball wherever was most conveniently available. Rake pulled me loose from between Leo and Matthieu, and then Caleb was there, all but knocking me out with his heady sweetness. His hands cupped my jaw, lifting my face, and I realized everything was blurry, eyes spilling over with steady tears. His thumbs wiped them away before I could and he leaned in, blocking the hallway out as he pressed a kiss to my forehead.