Lights, Camera, Omega (Hollywood Omegas #1)

“I told him when you would be coming, It’s not like I’m his mother or something. He should be able to manage his own time.” Julian pours me a flute of champagne and trades me the gently sparkling golden liquid for my empty limeade glass.

I’m frozen to the spot, completely out of body, as I watch the scene unfold before me.

Cosmo reappears in the living room, shrugging into a white t-shirt—a pair of ochre khakis sitting low on his hips.

I’m surprised to see he’s wearing a pair of circular gold wireframes when his head emerges from the cotton ring of the t-shirt. They make his faceted tanzanite eyes look even more violet in the light—a surprising air of shy intellectualism settling over Cosmo along with them.

The lush jasmine, hinoki woodsmoke, and sweet almond of his scent sweep over me, and I find myself eddying toward him like a leaf struggling to stay afloat in a burbling stream.

“What?” he asks flatly, returning my accidental stare with his direct gaze.

“Oh, I’m sorry I just—” I drop my eyes, immediately flustered.

I feel hot all over and I’m hoping it’s just the furious blush, not my suppressant drugs giving up the ghost in the face of Cosmo Lamont.

“What were you staring at? It’s not like you didn’t know who you were coming to meet today,” he continues, just a hair’s breadth from outright confrontation.

“Cosmo,” Sol cuts in, a warning in his tone.

I look at the pearly polish on my toenails and try to normalize my rapid heartbeat, to collect my scattering thoughts before I lose hold of them entirely.

Cosmo takes another breath, winding up for another quip when I break eye contact with my pedicure, somehow able to find my words.

“I’ve just never seen you in glasses before. Still very handsome, but with a distinct academic air about you. They suit you.”

He blinks, disarmed by my mundane response and unbalanced by my compliment.

I wait what seems an eternity before I am rewarded with a huff of breath that almost sounds like a laugh.

When Julian had come home with the new scent cards from the agency, Daphne Dale’s had been a clear winner.

All of us were hard and humping within seconds of catching a whiff of her sweet, floral, fruity perfume—but I remained the most skeptical out of our entire pack about the possible harmony of a late-blooming-omega joining our already established celebrity pack.

I hadn’t intended to ignore her arrival. Though I’m often thought of as aloof, distant, and a bit of a snob—I’m never actually trying to be any of those things.

Sol says it’s because I’m ‘Just like a cat, constantly reading the room, always stingy with my affection, only bestowing it upon those who I have deemed worthy after much time spent in observation.

When Sol had come home from the screen testing in Vancouver, he wouldn’t shut up about Daphne. Though I’d never admit it, it was nearly enough to make me jealous.

Not that you can afford to let jealousy drive a wedge between you and your pack, but there it was. Sol, running his mouth a mile a minute about the stacked little blonde he’d ridden horseback with. He hadn’t stopped thinking about her riding him since their meeting that chilly morning in the Fraser valley.

Now, after a nearly bungled introduction, she stands before me—hands on her bow curve hips, her pretty peach painted lips pressed together in a spunky smirk.

“I’ve just never seen you in glasses before. Still very handsome, but with a distinct academic air about you now. They suit you.”

At the edges of my peripheral vision, I see Magnus, Julian, and Sol all poised, waiting for me to make the next move.

Part of me wants to give them all what they want, to put on my Cosmo Lamont face—to play the handsome Hollywood star who takes all the smiling pictures for the paparazzi and charms all the attendees at the after award ceremony parties.

Another part of me wants to do it specifically for Sol, who seems to just know how much better our lives will be if Magnus and I will just get out of our own way and open up our pack, our family, to an omega. To Daphne Dale, specifically.

God she smelled so good on him.

Before that part gets carried away, I speak. “You haven’t seen me wear glasses before because I don’t wear them on camera or on set. I only wear them at home. You’ve never actually seen me before, but rather the characters in my movies,” I say, sounding more standoffish than I mean to.

She looks up at me, off balance, her surprise laced with a nearly imperceptible fear of failure.

Over Daphne’s shoulder, I can see Sol actually palm his entire face with a combination of embarrassment and hopelessness. Julian downs the rest of his champagne in a single, fluid gulp, and I can see Magnus already patting down the breast pockets of his safari suit, looking for his little silver cigarette case, no doubt.