Rather, he was being whirled in a spectacular arc, having been grabbed by the waist before he could reach the door handle.

The last person to scoop him up like that had been the quintessential Alpha who'd assumed he was a helpless little weakling unable to stand up to his pheromones. The hapless man had been found under a bridge nearly two days later, beaten beyond recognition.

But right now Evinori's chest hurt too much for him to put up a fight. He hung limp as a ragdoll as Mircea stuffed him into the farthest stall and locked the door behind them both. What was the point? All good things must end, and he just had to suck it up.

"Let me go," he begged as Mircea planted himself between him and the door.

"No. I just saw you jump through a hundred mental hoops. I'm not going to marry her, so take the damn pin back."

"Don't be stupid. Mr. Brixton won't invest if you don't agree."

"Evinori, if I had to submit to every such offer I'd have a whole harem by now. Caroline isn't interested in me either, so I'm sure she's not going to let her father get away with this."

"Hmph. Who you marry is none of my business anyway." Evinori raised a fastidious nose into the air. Snatching the pin from Mircea's outstretched hand, he put his hair up again. "Sorry for overreacting. Now let me go before people get suspicious."

"Wait!" Mircea grabbed his wrist as he reached around him to unlock the door. "I need to ask you something-"

"-in a toilet stall, Mircea?" Evinori snapped, ripping his hand away. "Fine, I won't run away so just ask me when you swing by next." With no small amount of force, he pushed Mircea aside and let himself out.

Mircea captured his hand again and pulled, hard. Evinori, who'd grossly underestimated the Alpha's strength, nearly lost his footing as Mircea twirled him - nearly tripping him up in the process - and pulled him into his chest. "No, you'll avoid me instead and kick my ass if I try to get a hold of you," said Mircea, trapping his hands against his torso from behind.

Evinori clenched his jaw, infuriated at being called out. One quick elbow jab and he was free. The next second he had slammed Mircea against the stall partition, one hand clenched around a fistful of his hair pressing his head against the wall and the the other twisting his arm behind his back. "Tell me why I shouldn't kick your ass right now," he hissed.

Mircea's knees buckled at the arrogance and fury in that whisper. Evinori was so close his lips brushed against his ear, his scent washing over him in a potent cloud and rocking his body with shiver after delicious shiver. Heart thundering, skin tingling, every sense in overdrive from the adrenaline coursing through his veins, he could barely think through the heady mix of pheromones they'd pumped into the air because of thier mutual aggression. Even as he strained against Evinori's hold, he inclined his head, baring his neck to Evinori's teeth.

The omega smirked. Even if he couldn't have Mircea, the fact that Mircea didn't want Caroline filled him with exhilerating satisfaction. High off the maelstrom of emotions within him, he grazed his nose once along the Alpha's smooth, tan skin before licking it.

Ah, the taste of Mircea's scent. He shuddered, his grip tightening painfully in his excitement. Mircea groaned at the pain, but it came out hungry instead of pissed off. A carnivorous grin spread across Evinori's face and he smacked his lips. Releasing Mircea's arm - the Alpha made no move to take advantage of his freedom - he tugged his collar away before sinking his teeth into the curve between his neck and shoulder.

"Oh, fuck," Mircea gasped as Evinori continued to nip and suck at his skin.

"You were saying?" Evinori taunted, soothing the stinging bites with kisses.

"I'm going to get a...ah!"

"Serves you right." Evinori grabbed Mircea's hand and guided it into his hair. It closed in the smooth bronze strands and pushed, urging him to neck Mircea some more. His own hand he snaked under Mircea's shirt and around his waist, pressing their hips together. Mircea's breathing escalated, shaking with his effort to keep all his blood from flowing south.

"Let...go!"

"Did you let me when I asked?" Now nibbling Mircea's earlobe, Evinori ran his fingertips lightly up Mircea's side. The low, rumbling growl Mircea produced, anxious, angry yet so lustful, nearly broke Evinori's own self-control.

"I'm sorry. Sorry!" Mircea yelped, feeling Evinori's fingers wander dangerously close to his pectorals. "Really!"

Just like that, the pressure was gone. Disoriented, panting heavily, he turned around. Evinori was leaning against the marble countertop, arms crossed, hair sinfully tousled, desire and resentment warring on his face as his eyes blazed and a self-satisfied smirk played on his lips. It was the most enticing cocktail of expressions Mircea had seen on that breathtaking face. How was one supposed to breathe again?

"Mmm. You were right about my plans to avoid you, I'll give you that much," Evinori admitted with a shrug. That intense blue glare, swirling with disbelief and anger and most of all, attraction, sent white-hot sparks of delight through his body. "So I'll play ball. What was it you wanted to say?"

Mircea, still reeling from the shock of what had just happened to him, couldn't help but answer. "The yacht trip," he said dazedly. "Come with me."

Evinori only raised his eyebrows in a you-can't-possibly-be-serious expression, but Mircea didn't backtrack. The omega laughed. "No," he said simply.

"Why not?"

"Use your head. I'm flattered you think I'm good enough to stand by you for something this important, but the other party might not think that way."

"It would mean a lot to me if you came, Evinori. If it weren't for you, I'd never be in a pace to make deals with Brixton in the first place. Still, I know you have your own reservations so I won't push you any more than this. All I'm asking is for you to give it some thought."

Evinori shot him an exasperated look.

"I'll make sure to arrange for total privacy," Mircea urged. "Please? Just think about it. We'll be taking a private jet to the south coast, and Mr. Brixton's yacht is gorgeous. The water'll be beautiful, the weather'll be splendid, and-" Mircea grinned cockily - "I'll be piloting the boat, y'know."

"So let me get this straight. You're willing to risk your public image to show off your powerboating skills, and I'm supposed be tempted by yachts and jets and blue seas into risking my life being uprooted."

"Well, when you put it like that..."

"Fine, fine!" Evinori laughed. "I'll think about it. But only if you are extra careful about gossipmongers and paparazzi - don't you roll those eyes, I'm serious." The humor faded from his eyes. "I know you're not that famous, but you can never be too careful."

*

The kitchen gleamed.

Evinori leaned his chin on the mop as he inspected his handiwork. The magnificent kitchen of the Carter manor looked so incredible now that he wasn't even mad about being made to single-handedly deep-clean the entire room. How convenient of his mother to forget about the very important friends who'd be visiting the next day for a gourmet cook-out. He wondered if it was worth it to set his niece's pet mice loose when they came over and see whether screeching old bags were better than the rodents at skittering over the countertops.

His eyes roved over the antique fittings and meticulously maintained countertops. His mother may be a heartless, selfish bigot, but boy did the bitch have style. "Never mind," he mumbled to himself. "That's van gogh granite."

"Oh, you're still here?"

Evinori turned to face the heavyset woman standing at the entrance and eyed the giant bags dangling from both her arms. "Yessenia," he acknowledged. "What on earth is all that? And be careful when you walk, please. I buffed the tiles."

Yessenia, middle-aged Peruvian lady with the hybrid temperament of a grandma and a rhinoceros, was the head of housekeeping and one of the few employees who knew Evinori's true identity. "As formal as always," she remarked as she hefted the bags into the counter. "Why don't you call me Yessie like everyone else?"

"You're my boss," Evinori answered, following her into the kitchen to help.

"Bah! That's just make-believe." Yessie smiled understandingly at Evinori's responding scoff. "I get it, sweetie. I do. But you know, there comes a point in life when your struggles are no longer worth the acknowledgement they can potentially bring. It's a big world out there, and you're a good man. This isn't the only place to be."

Evinori stared at Yessie in astonishment. This was the first time anyone in the Carters' employ had addressed his family's treatment of him so directly. It was the first time any staffer had dared to address it at all. They usually treated him with awkward, distant cordiality or avoided him altogether. Evinori understood why. They couldn't be casual with him not just because he wasn't actually their coworker but also because the family didn't seem to like employees getting too close to him. On the other hand, treating him with the respect afforded to the other Carters was also tacitly forbidden. So it came as a surprise that Yessie, who worked so closely with his parents, was suddenly being so open with him about this out of all topics.

The door to the kitchen garden burst open, making Yessie and Evinori jump a foot in the air. In the doorway stood the twins, dripping wet and carrying a large cooler between them. "Hola, Yessie!" Emory called. "Working hard or hardly working?"

Yessie glanced at the tens of kilograms of ingredients she had lugged in and raised an eyebrow in irritation. "Hello, boys," she greeted, her cold voice betraying the friendly grin on her face. "What have you been up to?"

"Glad you asked," chimed Elwynn, raising a boot-clad foot to step in. "Mum has some folks-"

"Stop!" Evinori jumped forward, his arms raised in alarm. "Please, take those things off outside. The tiles are freshly wax-"

Squelch. "Mum has some very important guests tomorrow," Elwynn continued, stepping past his aghast brother. Emory followed suit. "And the weather's perfect, so Em and I thought we'd go night fishing!"

"You're getting mud," Evinori growled, "on my freshly cleaned floors."

Elwynn smirked at him, insolent challenge in his eyes. Evinori could only watch, rooted to the spot in pure rage, as the twins proceeded to deliberately stomp all over the kitchen, trailing mud everywhere as they described their adventure to Yessie in great detail. "And that's when the boat tipped over!" Emory finished, sweepinng his arm out with a flourish. Greyish-brown water splattered onto Evinori.

Yessie hurriedly inserted herself between the siblings before anyone got murdered. "S-so! What did you catch?" 

"Absolutely nothing!" Emory crowed brightly, throwing open the cooler and motioning for his brother to pick it up. "Here, take a look - whoops!"

Emory 'lost' his grip on his side of the cooler and it crashed to the floor. A mini-tsunami of stinking, greenish-brown sludge burst from the container, spreading aross the kitchen floor and flowing underneath appliances with unbelievable speed. A moment of stunned silence prevailed.

"Evinori, no!" Yessie grabbed the omega around the waist as he leapt towards the twins with a strangled cry. "Stop! It was an accident."

"No, it wasn't! Didn't you see-"

"Yes, it was." Yessie squeezed him hard, almost painfully, and fixed him with a glare heavily laden with meaning. "You need a break. Go take a nice hot bath upstairs, and I'll have coffee waiting when you come back." She shot the twins a stern glare, telling them she knew exactly what they were trying to pull. "You can sleep here after we're done cleaning."

"No, he cannot," asserted Elwynn. "He's not allowed to stay in the main house past work hours."

"That's my call," Yessie snapped. "I'm his boss. With the boat flipped, he'll have to walk all the way around the lake at God knows what hour. Show some humanity."

That was the last thing Evinori heard before being shoved out of the kitchen. Yessie's angry lecturing continued to echo in the hallways as he trudged upstairs to the staff quarters. It was a sweet gesture, but there was no point. Thirty years of reasoning, rebellion and resignation had changed nothing, so what could a speech from a mere servant do?

The bigger question, of course, he thought as he relaxed in the tub, is why I didn't stop beating my head against this wall in thirty years. Probably because he didn't belong anywhere else. It was like his parents always said: the world was not a friendly place for male omegas, and the only ones who would ever bear the expense and trouble of raising one was his own family. The outside world would not allow him to be much more than a sex toy; he needed the influence and money of his family to maintain the lifestyle he had now. And if he couldn't get his own blood to acknowledge him, what chance did he stand with total strangers?

A resounding crash from downstairs brought his brooding session to a rude stop. He didn't even have to think about it: he knew the twins were up to something. Without so much as putting on pants, he sprinted towards the kitchen in nothing but a towel.

The smell hit him before the sight did. Fish sauce. It was everywhere. Walls, counters, appliances, even the insides of the cabinets and drawers, and on the floor snaking underneath the furniture. Any surface left unassaulted by fish sauce was covered in oil. The floor was a winter wonderland of flour and sugar dotted by shards of the giant vase that used to act as the centerpiece of the breakfast island.

Evinori laughed.

There was nothing funny about the situation. He had spent hours cleaning the kitchen single-handedly after pulling a double shift at the cafe. His muscles ached with exhaustion. It was three in the fucking morning. But so overwhelmed was he by anger and hurt and disbelief that his brain had turned all his emotions into pure hysteria. "This is bullshit," he chortled. "What is their problem with me? Am I really so horrible?"

...you make everything brighter, said a small voice in his head. Not that I've had a bad life before, but I didn't know there was someone who could make it even better.

Evinori's eyes went wide. "That's right," he said, breathless from his mad cackling. "Isn't that right? That's right. Ha!" He laughed again, more sanely this time. "I don't deserve this!"

Something inside him snapped. A crazy resolve solidified in his head. He knew he'd regret making big decisions when he was so upset, but shit, he didn't have the balls to take such a bold step unless he was a little unhinged. Energy he didn't know he still had coursed through him and he leapt off the counter, chest puffed and shoulders squared. Whistling, he sauntered over to the nearest broom closet and retrieved a mop and a bucket.

"Let's do this." Brushing his hair back and stepping towards his first target - the flowers and glass. "Why do I even put up with this shit?"