Marcus stood paralyzed by the coffee station. His broad, tactical shoulders were slumped, his chest heaving as he dragged the vanilla-scented air into his lungs. The wager had been a challenge—a simple ten minutes to prove the incompatibility of two Betas—but it had mutated into an ambush that had bypassed every defensive protocol of his central nervous system.
The offer hit him with the force of a physical bludgeon.
To be told to sit upon another man's heat—to bottom, to spread his legs and take the length of the laboratory director into his body—was not just an invitation; it was a total, unmitigated evisceration of his tradition. He was the hunter, the S-tier Beta who gave out pretty compliments and managed the schedules of fragile Omegas. He had never been the one on the receiving end of a man's anatomy. The very concept felt like a permanent, irrevocable brand of shame.
