"Ryan, I need you to move to Sutton's team temporarily. Could you move there by the end of the day? Thanks."

Wait what? No. No way in hell.

"Wait a second. I'm on Mercado's team." Meredith, the general manager, was generally a nice lady unless you questioned her on anything. She stared at me as if I were wasting her time.

"Marcus has two paralegals out, both on leave. He has several divorce cases, including a high profile one. He can't manage that case load with one paralegal." She narrowed her eyes at me. "Do you have a problem with Marcus?"

Oh boy. I licked my lips, pausing. "No. No, I don't have a problem." She nodded her head, though she looked like she didn't believe me.

"Good. He asked for the best paralegals that could think outside the box and work quickly. You are the first one that came to mind. Besides, I thought you would be excited to," she paused and glanced around, "try some different scenery." She winked at me then walked out of our section.

Some of my tension melted away because Meredith knew I wasn't happy in this section. I didn't have to work up the nerve to tell her. Plus, it was quite a compliment, but it would be torture to work with Marcus and pretend I didn't dream of him. I would have to see him daily and know a perfect alpha existed, but I couldn't have him. He was way out of my league. At least he wasn't dating anyone, though. It would be worse if I saw him taking a date to lunch or dinner. I hadn't heard rumors of him being seen with anyone for several months now. If I saw him holding hands with someone, I didn't even want to think about what I would do.

I walked to Marcus's section of the firm. Each section had double doors to keep noise down. The celebrations when attorney's won a big case could get pretty raucous. That always pissed off Mercado, as there wasn't the same excitement with patent law. I didn't enjoy it much either. Patent law was boring, going to a different partner's section for a while would be nice, actually.

I walked into the paralegal section, located right in front of Marcus's office. Another paralegal stood up. "Hey, I'm Luke. I've been working with Marcus for a while now. I heard you were coming to our team." Oh. I didn't expect that. I thought I would get treated like I had in Mercado's section- like I was invisible.

"I'm Ryan Hodges. Yeah, I guess I'll be in this section until Sutton's paralegals get back." I looked at the empty desks and shrugged. "Which desk should I use?"

"Why don't you use the one in front of me?" I turned around, facing my new coworker. "I'm Amy."

I smiled then walked to the empty desk. It was the farthest one from Marcus's office. The less I had to be near him the better for my ability to think coherently and get work done.

I put out my photo of Lance and I and my red Swingline stapler. The rest of the stuff I could leave in the box until I moved back to Mercado's section. I noticed that Amy and Luke had a lot more photos and personal items on their desks than what we were allowed in Mercado's section. I was so glad to get away from him, even if it was only for a few weeks.

Marcus

I escorted my client out of the conference room to the elevators. I held my first meetings with potential clients in one of the law firm's open conference rooms. I learned that lesson the hard way after an omega took my closed office door as an invitation to seduce me. Needless to say,I didn't take that case.

Mrs. Foreman's divorce case was unique. She was always in drag, a crossdressing omega, and preferred to be called Mrs. Foreman at all times. You couldn't tell she was a man underneath the makeup and designer clothes but her omega scent gave it away.

Mrs. Foreman's case was not one of the typical underdog Omega cases I loved to take. Her alpha husband had been hiding things from her- at least that's what I thought from the quick meeting we just had. I had been in this business long enough to know not to take everything at face value and to double check everything. It's always the Alpha that seemed the most conservative that had the most to hide- which was the case with the Foreman divorce if my intuition was correct. Mr. Foreman was claiming irreconcilable differences but the divorce request caught my client by surprise. I'd have the paralegals research some ideas I had today.

I hoped Meredith had moved some paralegals to my team. I had a feeling the Foreman case would take a lot of time. High profile cases always did, but I also expected Mrs. Foreman would keep close tabs on our progress.

I got a strong vibe that I was high in the running to be the next accessory to her wardrobe. Good luck with that. I've told many men that I had actually been attracted to, unlike Mrs. Foreman, that a relationship was not for me. I had a twinge of sadnessas that thought popped up, but I shoved it down. I had a job to do, and crying over the cards life dealt me would not change anything.

There were four people in the paralegal section now, and I let out a relieved sigh. I had a full team of paralegals now that I could put to work with helping me with all the cases I currently had. My name had gotten out years ago as the best attorney for omegas in the city, and I was always busy. I was happy that I had a full team until I looked closely at one of the paralegals. Fuck.

Ryan Hodges- the only omega in the entire firm and a constant star in my fantasies- was currently part of my paralegal team. Dammit, dammit, dammit. Of all the paralegals why the hell did Meredith pick Ryan? I walked by my paralegal team, purposely not looking at them, and disappeared into my office. Shit. I had a hard enough time when I saw him in the hall a few times a week. Now he was sitting right outside my office. Fuck.

I threw the folder down on my desk. It slid all the way across, hit my geode lamp, and exploded papers onto my chair. "Fuck!" I stood looking out the window. What the hell was I going to do? Meredith couldn't know Ryan was my kryptonite. But Meredith had been sneaky before. I didn't know how she knew everything that went on in this firm. There was no way she knew about my crush on Ryan, though. There was just no way, and I knew Eric wouldn't say a word. We had been best friends and roommates while in college and law school. Hell, we had been more than friends for a while. We started out as friends and we were still friends when it was over. Sometimes though, Eric would get a look in his eye when he was looking at me. I wasn't going back to that though. I didn't want to ruin our friendship or our working relationship.

I turned around from the window and walked back to my desk. I was just going to have to deal with Ryan being in my section until my paralegals came back. I would have to find someone to relieve sexual stress with, though. I was currently between short term partners after ending my last relationship when the omega got clingy. I was always upfront that I didn't do long term relationships. If they could handle casual sex, maybe even hanging out, then great. But when it seemed like they were falling in love or had hopes for this being more than it was, I cut them loose.

But I had to find someone fast now that Ryan was nearly right outside my office. Otherwise I'd be locking my door and jacking off every hour just to get through the day.