Chapter Text
Rey looks up from the hotel registration desk and carefully scans the crowded lobby, hoping to find a friendly face.
Or a familiar face, at least.
To her disappointment, she finds neither.
She recognizes some of the people milling around, mostly from blog posts or their publications. But she hasn’t seen anyone yet who she’s actually spoken to before. So far, everyone at this conference has seemed too self-important to even give someone like her--a first-year professor at a state university; and an omega to boot-- the time of day.
Rey slides the little sleeve holding her plastic room key into her purse with a sigh, and rolls her suitcase towards the dimly-lit, swanky-looking bar at the far end of the lobby.
Going up to her room, and hiding out there all night away from all these much older, much more accomplished academics, would ordinarily be very appealing. But she’s not in the mood for that right now. She’s been travelling all day, cooped up in taxis and crowded into middle seats on airplanes. She wants to be around other people for a bit, spread out, and stretch her legs.
She also wants to see Finn and give him a great big hug the minute he finally gets here.
Rey finds a small table for two near the back of the bar, away from a large and kind of rowdy group of middle-aged, spectacle-wearing professors she thinks are from Boston. Once situated, she flags down a server.
“A gin and tonic, please?” she asks politely. Rey may have a PhD in early twentieth-century European history now, but her days of waiting tables in a dive bar aren’t so far behind her that
she’s forgotten how shitty working in food service can be.
“Sure,” her server says. She’s a young beta—she can’t possibly be older than twenty-two or twenty-three—with a nervous smile that reminds Rey so much of what she’d been like at that age it’s a little uncanny. “I’ll be right out with it.”
“Thanks,” Rey says.
The server hurries away, and Rey unzips her laptop bag. She’s far too nervous about tomorrow morning not to spend at least some of this time waiting for Finn preparing for her presentation.
She’s long since committed all of her slides, and the paper she’s here to present, to memory, but old habits die hard. Working as hard as she does got her out of London and is why she is where she is today. She sees no reason to change that now.
Two slides into her Powerpoint, Rey’s phone buzzes with a new email. She pulls it out of her bag hopefully, thinking it must be from Finn.
She scowls when she sees who actually sent it:
From : [email protected]
Subject : Your paper
Rey nearly opens the email out of force of habit. But at the last moment, she decides against it.
She’s anxious enough as it is. No need to add to it by reading whatever scathing comment that asshole just sent her.
She dashes off a quick reply:
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Your latest paper
Solo,
Whatever you have to say to me, I don’t have time for it. I’m preparing like mad for a presentation at IHPSA and can’t be bothered right now.
Save it for someone who’s actually interested in your opinion.
-RJ
Rey rereads the final line of her email, cringing a little at how dramatic it is. But Ben Solo--a recently-tenured professor at NYU, as he’s fond of reminding her-- has been dogging her steps for years now. From the moment Rey published her dissertation he’s basically been at her throat, challenging her findings as often as possible and poking holes in her research.
She has no idea why Solo’s such an asshole in general, even by alpha standards. Or why he’s especially terrible to her in particular. Either way, she will not let him get her all worked up right now.
“Jackass,” she mutters under her breath.
She hits send on the email before she can talk herself out of it, shoves the phone in her bag, and gets back to work.
The phone buzzes with another email less than a minute later, but Rey ignores it.
If someone had told Rey fifteen years ago that she’d be here right now—a weeklong conference for European historians, in an upscale Chicago hotel—she’d have laughed in their faces.
Of course, fifteen years ago, she and Finn really were about the last people you’d expect to see here. They met as teenagers, orphans together on the hard streets of London. And together, they clawed their way out of poverty, surviving bad situations and terrible foster homes side-by-side.
When Rey decided to apply to university in America on a whim one day, it only seemed natural that her best mate would do the same. To their surprise, their difficult backgrounds and hard work ethics quickly led to college admissions and scholarships, which in turn led to opened doors and opportunities they never could have dreamed of back in London
It wasn’t until much later—when they’d both been in the States for over a year—that they admitted to each other just how terrified they’d been on that first transatlantic flight, both of them clutching the armrests and halfway convinced they were making a terrible mistake.
Fifteen years later, they’re at different universities on different coasts. But they’re still the closest of friends.
Rey knows that close friendships between omegas and betas are rare. Betas tend to keep mostly to themselves, finding the invisible world of scents and pheromones that govern everyone else’s lives far too baffling to even try to understand.
But Finn’s different. True; he’s more than a little mystified those two times each year Rey has to lock herself away in her apartment to keep from clawing her skin off, or tackling the first Alpha who looks at her twice. (Or, sometimes, both.) But Finn understands what she’s going through. On an intellectual level, at least. More importantly, he never judges her for it.
That’s something she can’t say for most other betas she’s known. Especially in academia, where just about everyone is either a cocksure alpha, or a beta with a curriculum vitae a mile long and nothing to prove.
In truth, if it hadn’t been for Finn and his unwavering support all these years, Rey knows she would not be where she is today. She likes to think she’s at least partly responsible for Finn’s success here in the States, too.
He just needs to get here, right now, to save her from this debilitating case of nerves.
All things considered, this first year in her new position is going brilliantly so far. Her new colleagues have been nothing but supportive. But she knows how young she is to have a tenure-track position, and how lucky she is to have it in the first place. Now that she’s at this conference, without her colleagues from her own university and without her best friend, among all these more accomplished academics…
Well. Right now, she feels about as unsure of herself as she did on that flight to New York fifteen years ago.
Rey checks her phone again, willing a message from her best friend to magically appear.
She smiles, relieved, when she sees he sent her a text less than a minute ago:
On my way, Peanut. Just left O’Hare .
It’s like weight Rey hadn’t even known she carrying has been lifted from her shoulders.
Maybe I can do this , she muses. Now that Finn’s coming, maybe it’ll all be alright .
Finn shows up at the hotel bar less than an hour later, wearing a black turtleneck and a pair of faded old blue jeans he loves nearly as much as he loves his wife. He breaks into a broad smile the minute he sees Rey; it pulls a matching one from her immediately.
“You’re here,” Rey says, beaming at him. She stands up from her table and he wastes no time, pulling her into an enormous bear hug right away.
“It’s been way too long, Peanut,” he tells her, smiling into her hair. “It’s so good to see you.”
It has been way too long. The last time she saw Finn in person was the day he got married, eighteen months ago, to Rose, who might just be the sweetest alpha Rey’s ever met. “Not as good as it is to see you.”
He pulls back a little to look at her, giving her a quick once over.
“When did you get in?”
Rey picks up her gin and tonic--her second of the night-- and gives it a delicate sip. “About two hours ago,” she says. “My plane from Sacramento was delayed.”
“Ugh,” he says. “You must be exhausted.
Rey shrugs. “I am. A little.”
Finn pulls up a seat at the table and sits down across from her. “Have you looked at the conference schedule yet?”
Rey shakes her head. “Not really.” She sips her drink again, and sets it down. “I know I present tomorrow morning at nine. And that you present tomorrow afternoon. I haven’t looked at the rest of it yet.”
Finn nods, his expression suddenly a little grim. “Do you want me to tell you the bad news, or do you want to find out about it yourself?”
Rey blanches. “What bad news?”
Finn takes her hand, and gives it a gentle squeeze. “Solo’s presenting tomorrow, too.”
Rey’s stomach sinks. “He’s.. he’s coming here?”
She hadn’t known that.
Fuck.
Why hadn’t she thought to look at the list of presenters before now?
“Unfortunately, yes.” Finn digs through his bag for his phone so he can pull up the conference schedule. “Yeah, see--he’s right here. Looks like his presentation’s right after mine. In the same conference room and everything.” He pulls a face. “Lucky us, huh?”
Rey tries to swallow, but it’s hard to manage it around the lump that’s just formed in her throat. “I would have thought Solo’d find a conference like this… I don’t know,” she trails off, shakes her head as she searches for the right words. “Beneath him, or something. Too provincial.”
She didn’t think the man ever left the east coast.
“Yeah, me too,” Finn agrees. “Guess we thought wrong.”
Even if Rey hadn’t already been nervous about being here, she certainly would be now.
She sighs. “I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, but the first time Solo ever contacted me, it was to tell me he found my dissertation ‘ naive and unoriginal .’” Rey makes air quotes, wincing a little as she remember how badly that message had stung. “He ended it by asking if I was certain I went to Berkeley for my PhD.”
“Sorry,” Finn says. She has told Finn this story before, of course. Many times. But he puts a sympathetic hand on Rey’s shoulder all the same. Solo’s an asshole to everyone in their small academic community, but even Finn—who tends to see the best in everyone—agrees the guy seems to have a strange sort of vendetta against Rey. “I know he’s the last person you want to see here.”
“He really is,” Rey confirms. She downs the rest of her gin and tonic in one gulp. Normally, she sticks to one drink the night before a big presentation. Tonight, though, she thinks she might just go for a third.
“Wish I could make him go away for you,” Finn says. “I really, really do.”
“Is he as big an asshole in person as he is over email?” Given how much Rey despises Ben Solo she often forgets she still hasn’t officially met him. But it’s true. Aside from the images of him she’s seen on NYU’s history department web site—with his dour expression, his stuffy suits, and those ridiculous, pompous-looking glasses—she’s never actually seen Ben Solo in person.
Finn cocks his head to one side, considering her question. Being in New York himself, Finn’s met Solo a few times at local symposiums. “Sort of? I mean… he’s definitely all alpha, all the time. But it’s more than that. There’s something… just a little bit off about the guy.” He pauses, considering his next words. “I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen him crack a smile.”
She rolls her eyes. “Well, if he comes to my presentation tomorrow morning you’ll see him smile. I’m sure of it. In fact, if he comes you’ll get to see what he looks like when he’s laughing his head off.”
Finn glances down at the schedule. “Actually… it looks like Hux is giving a talk at the same time you are.” He looks at Rey. “The NYU folks will probably go to that instead.”
Armitage Hux, NYU’s newest hire, only has two years seniority on Rey. But he acts so smug you’d think he had tenure. Honestly, Rey finds him nearly as insufferable as Solo.
Right now, though... if Hux’s being here keeps Solo from attending her talk, she’ll take it.
“At least I have Hux,” Rey mutters, bitterly.
She looks around the bar for the server so she can order another drink.
Rey is so exhausted by the time Finn walks her to her room it’s all she can do not to fall into bed immediately.
But she can’t do that. Not yet. She already knows her paper’s weaknesses like the back of her hand, but she’s still too nervous about everything to leave anything to chance. She makes herself some coffee from the room’s complimentary stash and changes into her pajamas.
She’ll go to bed soon, she promises herself. It’s already 10:30; staying up much later than this would be counterproductive.
Another thirty minutes of review. Then she’ll call it a night.
Rey is woken in the middle of the night by a pair of strong arms lifting her from the bed.
Before Rey even realizes what’s happening she is shoved up against the wall of her hotel room by an alpha whose face she cannot see. His hands, she realizes, are massive . Nearly the size of dinner plates. One of them grabs both of her wrists and holds them up over her head as the rest of him pins her body in place.
“Fuck,” the alpha grunts against her throat. She can feel him trembling; he sounds at least as desperate as she feels. Rey can’t see him, but she can feel every inch of him--and oh, god, she can smell him. His rich, incredible scent is everywhere, overpowering every single one of her senses and shorting out her brain. His scent is rich leather, and musk, and everything she has ever wanted. It demands she stop thinking entirely and submit to him, to her Alpha, as his cock--hard as a lead pipe, and nearly as thick-- presses urgently against her belly.
The alpha licks a long, possessive stripe down the side of her neck with the achingly soft flat of his tongue, a moment before he scrapes his teeth lightly, but meaningfully, over her gland.
“Yes. Fuck, yes .”
Rey isn’t sure if she just said that or if he did. But it doesn’t matter, because now he’s slipping his hand inside the waistband of her drenched underwear, and parting her folds with his fingers.
“So wet for me already,” he rasps reverently against her cheek as he touches her. He rubs tight, deliberate little circles against her clit with the tips of two fingers as he begins to rut, hard, against her upper thigh...
Rey keens her pleasure--
--and abruptly shakes herself awake.
There’s a long moment of disorientation. Several long minutes when her body screams at her, demands to know where that alpha is, insists she find him again right this very second and let him fuck her.
But bit by agonizing bit, lucidity returns. Rey’s heart is pounding like she’s just run a mile and her blood is like fire in her veins, but slowly, eventually, her hotel room comes into full focus again.
When she’s finally able to see clearly, Rey realizes that, holy fuck, it was all just a dream.
it was just a dream it was just a dream
Rey runs her hand through her hair in agitation, and takes in a long, shaky breath. Too late, she realizes that although the faceless alpha was just a dream, his scent is most definitely not . It surrounds her, still, even now that she’s awake, blanketing her in a heady cocktail of delicious alpha pheromones she’s as powerless to resist now as she would have been as a newly presented omega off suppressants. She takes another deep breath before she can stop herself--because now that she’s had a taste of this, of him, she can’t not . Rey moans at the taste, at the feel, of the alpha’s scent in her lungs, her eyes rolling back in her head at what it does to her body--
--and what it makes her want to do to his.
She starts to rub her thighs together, desperate for any kind of friction. Her slit is already damp with slick as her body prepares itself to take an alpha’s knot. She closes her eyes, her body throbbing with so much unmet need it feels like she might actually die.
This…
This... isn’t normal.
This should not be happening right now.
With what little brain power Rey has left she does some quick mental calculations.
Counting backwards, she concludes that, yes-- her next heat should still be more than three months away.
She looks around the hotel room. There’s her bathrobe hanging on the back of the bathroom door. There’s her suitcase. Her laptop. The suit she’s wearing tomorrow for her presentation.
She’s all alone here. Which is a good thing (though her omega side might disagree). No alpha in full rut broke in here while she slept and rubbed his scent glands all over everything.
But none of this makes sense. There’s nobody else here, but clearly she’s picking up some alpha’s scent. She wants to tear off her skin right fucking now to get to him, and…
God, what is happening ?
The moan she hears, suddenly, coming from the other side of the wall, is loud, and deep, and hungry. It shocks her speechless, even as it sends a bolt of pure, white heat straight to her core.
On a terrified hunch, Rey glances up at the ceiling and…
Oh, shit.
Sure enough, the heating vent for this hotel room is directly above the bed. With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she wonders if she’s scenting whoever’s moaning right now in the hotel room next to hers.
Is his scent carrying over to her through the heating ducts?
“Oh, fuck ,” she hears him groan. He sounds like he’s in agony, even through the buffer provided by the hotel room’s thin wall. He sounds desperate. “Oh, fuck . Where are you, omega? Please...”
She hears him mumbling unintelligibly for a bit-- and then a moment later, there’s the telltale sound of squeaking bed springs.
Whoever is in there can smell her, too, then. And it would appear she is having a similar effect on him.
Go to him , her mind screams at her. He wants you, too. Go to his room, knock on his door, and give him what you both want.
Unbidden, an image of the alpha from her dream rises to the front of her mind. He’s fuzzy, mostly featureless, but his strong body feels known to her, somehow, as he shoves her up against the wall in her fantasy like he’d just done to her in her dream. He captures her mouth in a searing kiss she’s powerless to resist, even if she wanted to. And—
Before she even realizes it’s happening, Rey’s hand slides inside her soaked underwear of its own volition, like it’s no longer a part of her own body over which she has complete control. Her fingers spread her slick folds as she imagines this man, this alpha, her body desperate for release.
She’ll need to ask for a different room first thing in the morning. Really, she should do it right now. But she doesn’t trust her traitorous body not to knock on this perfect stranger’s door if she leaves her room. Not if he smells this good when they’re still separated by a wall. She does not fuck alphas she doesn’t even know, and she has no intention of starting tonight.
No matter how good he smells.
Tomorrow—after she’s gotten some sleep; after she’s made herself come at least a half dozen times—she’ll go to front desk and get this mess sorted.
For now, though…
For now, she needs to get this over with as quickly as possible. Her insides are a tangle of mindless need, she’s getting wetter by the second, and she won’t be able to sleep a wink until she gives in to it.
Rey tears down her underwear with one shaking hand hand and shoves the other between her thighs, groaning so loudly at the press of her fingertips against her clit the alpha on the other side of the wall will almost certainly be able to hear her. But she’s past caring about that now. Every single one of her senses is full of nothing but alpha, this alpha, and her clit, her cunt—her entire body-- is throbbing with need for him.
Before Rey can stop herself from doing it she imagines what it would be like—what it would feel like—to have this alpha’s knot inside her, hot and pulsing and filling her to bursting. She knows the fingers of her left hand are a poor substitute, but she left her dildo with the knot attachment at home and she has to have something inside of her, right now, or she will die from want, she knows she will.
She’s already so wet-- so ready for an alpha, this alpha, to take her, fuck her, have his way with her--that her four fingers slide inside with shocking ease, and when she moves them, craning her arm at an awkward angle so she can stroke her front walls, she screams as her orgasm races down her spine and knifes through her.
She has a moment’s respite as her breathing slows and her heart rate approaches something resembling a normal rate. But then the alpha in the next room moans again, his bed resumes its rhythmic squeaking--and it’s like the orgasm she just had never happened.
“Fuck,” Rey whimpers, her fingers at her clit once more.
Rey’s alarm goes off far too early the next morning, blasting her awake after what feels like only a half an hour of fitful rest.
She groans, and fumbles around on the nightstand until she manages to shut the damn thing off. To her relief, the alpha’s scent is much more muted than it was last night. Or maybe she’s just adjusted to it. Either way, Rey no longer feels like a young omega on the verge of her first hard heat. Which is a huge relief. She gets out of bed, and is able to think clearly enough to shower and dress, and then to gather up the things she’ll need for this morning’s presentation, without wanting to break down the door to the room next to hers and demand the alpha inside it fuck her up against the wall.
A small victory, really. But she’ll take it.
Rey examines herself in the full-length mirror hanging on the wall by the tv. She looks tired. But she doesn’t think anyone looking at her will automatically think she spent most of the night in agony, making herself come with her own fingers again, and again, until she finally passed out from exhaustion.
“Right,” she mutters. “Presentation first. And then, after that’s over, I’ll ask for a different room.”
She opens the door and steps into the hallway—
--and immediately runs into the scent that drove her crazy all night. It hits her as if she’d walked face first into a brick wall, and she doubles over, clutching her stomach and moaning as a fresh wave of nearly overpowering desire grips her.
She doesn’t see the alpha—she’s too busy staring down at the floral patterns on the hotel carpet in a feeble attempt to hold on to what’s left of her sanity—but she knows, feels , that he’s here, right beside her, his eyes on her as she writhes in agony.
And then, right in her ear, and in the same low voice she heard last night through the wall, she hears: “Oh, fuck .”
She turns her head so she can look up at the speaker (because she can’t not look up; she has to look up, the very sound of his voice compels her to look up).
In the span of less than one second Rey’s world comes crashing down around her.
Her eyes go wide with shock.
No.
No .
Oh, god.
“Rey Johnson,” Ben Solo says, sounding stunned.
Ben. Solo.
Ben fucking Solo is the alpha she smelled all night. The alpha she fantasized about all night. They’ve never met in person, but this is unquestionably him. She’d recognize his smug face anywhere, because it’s practically everywhere--on all the glossy promotional materials NYU uses to tout its history program; on blogs, and journal articles, and everything in between.
She takes the opportunity to look at him, now that he’s here, standing right in front of her and… smelling the way he is. She has to crane her neck a little to see all of him. Because he’s… really tall. Finn never mentioned that detail before. Neither do any of NYU’s promotional materials, come to think of it. But then again, why would they? He’s dressed in an immaculate charcoal grey suit that fits like he was born for it, impeccably tailored and likely worth more than she made her first month teaching. His dark red silk tie is just barely loosened, which gives him a slightly rumpled air--as does the way he wears his hair, artfully messy and kept a little long over his ears.
His eyes are dark, and his pupils are dilated as he stares at her the same way she knows she’s staring at him.
He looks like sex on a stick, she realizes with a sudden jolt.
She wants to slap him across the face.
Fuck.
This cannot be happening.
“Ben Solo,” she manages to croak, somehow.
“This… this isn’t possible,” Solo stammers. He sounds at least as horrified by this development as she is.
Which makes sense, given how much he hates her.
She looks away, because there’s just no way this could possibly be more awkward. In the process, she catches sight of the front of Solo’s slacks, the front of them tenting out dramatically with what looks like an enormous erection.
Her eyes widen.
He’s… huge.
Yes ! the omega part of her shouts in delight.
No! the rest of her screams.
But before Rey can say anything to him--before she can fully process anything about this insane situation--Ben awkwardly straightens first his posture, and then his tie.
He clears his throat, and then practically sprints past her down the hall to the elevator bank.
As the elevator carries him to the first floor, where the conference is set to begin in just a few minutes, Rey closes her eyes and sags against the wall.
How the hell is she going to survive this next week?