Chapter 14 #2
I stifle a snort. “Gosh. It must have been sobering for a big, bad alpha such as yourself to have been so very wrong about something.”
“It doesn’t happen often,” he replies, biting the inside of his cheek, “but in this instance, it seems to have been the case.”
We make our way to our table and take our seats.
The meal drags on a little, but fortunately, champagne flows freely.
The entire time we dine, there are eyes on me.
Dark eyes. Jealous eyes. Eyes belonging to male and female omegas.
Eyes that desire the man at my side. Eyes that glow green when he leans in to talk to me and turn sour when I laugh.
I cup my hand over Lord Augustus’s ear. “Everyone’s looking at us.”
“I know,” he giggles. He fucking giggles. “It’s working.”
“You know what we should do,” I suggest, pausing to let a waiter top off our glasses. “We should give them a show.”
The lord’s smile is lax now, wider than I’ve seen it before. “What kind of show?”
“I don’t know. You’re the alpha. You should know these things, shouldn’t you? The way you’ve told the story, you’re some kind of big deal, aren’t you? All devastatingly sexy and whatnot.” I take a big glug of champagne, flaring my nose as the bubbles tickle my tongue.
Lord Augustus fixes me with a devastating look. A happy-sad black-eyed look. The look of a man who hasn’t had any fun in a long time but remembers what it was like and misses it.
“Go on, Casanova,” I say, to encourage him. “Do your worst.”
“My worst? I wouldn’t dream of it.” He lets out a chuckle that starts weightless but turns throaty. He raises his glass to his lips and holds it there as if clear crystal can somehow mask his words. “My worst would incite an orgy the likes of which would get everyone here thrown in prison.”
I wait for him to laugh at his joke, but he doesn’t.
It takes a beat, but it slowly dawns on me that he wasn’t joking.
“W-would it really?” I ask, incredulous.
He shrugs broadly, and if you ask me, way more nonchalantly than is warranted by his admission. “Well, it’s happened before. But not to worry, little mouse. That was a long time ago.”
“Okay, fine,” I say when I recover. “Do your least worst then. Go on. I’m waiting, alpha.”
“Hm, let’s see.” He screws one eye shut and looks into the middle distance. “Something innocuous that won’t start a riot but will give them something to talk about… Okay, got it. Give me your hand.”
Our dinner plates have been cleared, and while some people have started milling around, most are still seated, waiting for dessert.
Couples at our table are chatting among themselves, casting furtive looks in our direction when they think we aren’t looking.
It’s not just people at our table. People all around the room are obviously aware of us.
I offer Lord Augustus my left hand. He takes it in his and turns it over so my palm is facing up. He places it on the table in front of him, where his plate was moments ago. He leaves it there, resting on crisp white linen, just long enough for me to start feeling awkward.
Then he gets down to business.
He uses his right hand to spread my fingers, gliding his fingertips over my palm and pinning each finger onto the table. He presses down on the pads of my fingers one by one, just firmly enough to make it seem impossible for me to move them.
When it’s done, when my hand is flat on the table, fingers splayed open, he reaches over my hand and takes a sip of champagne.
It’s hard to say what he’s doing exactly that makes it so I can’t take my eyes off him, but whatever it is, the pull is magnetic.
He sets his glass down and turns his attention back to my hand.
His expression is pleasant. His movement is slow and considered.
At first, all it is a flick. Up, down. Left, right.
A blunt nail worrying my cufflink. Then it’s a little more.
A thumb and a pointer tugging gently at my cufflink before undoing it with the greatest precision I’ve ever seen.
He doesn’t look down when he does it. He looks at me. Into my eyes. Unsmiling.
I’m wearing a shirt with double French cuffs, and as my cufflink comes undone, the cuff falls open just enough to expose a sliver of the pale skin on my wrist.
Lord Augustus plays with the cuff for a while, tracing his finger along the seam, picking at the stitching before nudging the cuff open and exposing my wrist fully.
He traces the fine blue-green vein that runs over my pulse point and smiles at me, but not with his eyes.
He smiles like seduction. Like sex. Like bodies colliding and semen spraying.
He takes my hand in both of his and lifts it to his face. He does it as though my hand is something that’s his. Something he owns and is fond of. Something he wanted and took possession of.
I let him.
I don’t breathe as he raises it to his nose. I can’t. My heart is slamming against my rib cage, and all I can do is thank God his alpha senses are dulled because the scent of my arousal would surely be overpowering him right now.
He drags the tip of his nose from the heel of my hand to my fingertips, and then follows the same trail down again. But this time, he doesn’t stop at the heel. He travels all the way to my pulse point, where his focus remains.
“What do you smell like?” he asks, startling me.
I giggle like a fucking idiot and trill, “I don’t know. I can’t smell myself so I don’t really kno—”
“What do you think you smell like then?” he amends. “What do the people who love you say you smell like?”
“I, uh…” My throat clicks at the question.
It takes me back to my childhood. To hugs after school and stories at bedtime.
“My dad used to say I smelled like a ripe red apple when I was little, and…and when we were dating, Lucien used to say I smelled sweet, like caramelized sugar or something like that.”
“Caramelized sugar and apples?” He raises his chin thoughtfully. “Toffee apples? You smell like toffee apples? That’s what they say?” He drags his nose across my pulse point again, his lips dusting my skin, and shakes his head thoughtfully. “No, that’s not it.”
“Well,” I say helpfully, “when we were kids and we fought, my brother Branson would tell me I smelled like a carrot.”
“A carrot?” The lord laughs loudly, full-bodied and deep. The sound carries across the room, reverberating off mirrors and glass. “A carrot? How very dare he!”
The lord seems to have become attached to my hand. Either that, or he’s forgotten it’s part of me, not him. He presses his thumb into my palm, finding a pressure point and tension I wasn’t aware I was carrying and releasing it.
“I might have the sense of smell of a telephone book, little mouse, but even I know you don’t smell like a carrot.”
There’s something horrifically endearing about the way he says it. Something so endearing that I find myself thinking that this might well be the most erotic moment of my life.
It’s a worry. This man is a lord, an Englishman, and my employer. Not to mention he’s a Casanova alpha, and suppressed or not, the man is built for seduction. Also, obviously, there’s the small matter of this entire thing being for show.
I need to keep my wits about me. Yes, that’s what I need to do.
I also need to move him off the topic of how I smell, and somehow retrieve my hand from him without making a scene.
“What do you think you smell like?” I ask to take the heat off myself.
“I don’t think I smell like anything.” His voice drifts and fades, growing softer and sadder than usual. “I know what I smell like.”
“And what’s that?”
He drops his gaze and lets go of my hand at the same time. “I smell like sex, Jensen.”
Something goes down the wrong way and makes me cough. Lord Augustus offers me a glass of water, and when that doesn’t help, he gives me a hard pat on the back. That does the trick.
“More champagne,” I suggest when I catch my breath.
By the time we fall into the car to go home, inhibitions have been thoroughly lost. Not only mine, but the lord has lost his too. If anything, he might have lost his more than I’ve lost mine.
Between the two of us, we’ve had buckets of champagne. We started laughing at stupid things immediately after dessert and haven’t stopped. We started asking each other personal questions around the same time and haven’t stopped doing that either.
I click my safety belt into the buckle and turn to the lord. “Is it true you can tell what someone’s deepest, darkest desires are just by looking at them?”
Yes, yes, I have been using my proximity to Lord Augustus to perform some scholarly research on Casanovarism this evening. Why do you ask?
The lord nods sagely, if a little unsteadily. “That’s correct.”
What unnerves me more than the answer itself, which is, of course, something of grave concern to me given some of the things I’ve thought in this man’s presence, is that the way he says it is rather appealing.
Matter of fact. Calm. An objective statement rather than one carrying emotion. It’s terribly, deliciously arrogant.
“Hee-hee,” I say. It occurs to me that’s far from a scholarly response, so I quickly expand, “And how do you do that? I— Is there some sort of special sense, or…”
He offers a slightly lopsided shrug. “I don’t know how it works exactly. All I know is that when I look into people’s eyes, I see their desires written there, clear as day. Like black ink on a page.”
The car crunches to a stop near the entrance of Beaumont Craven House, and Lord Augustus gets out and walks around to open my door for me. I use the alone time to attempt to sober up.
I’m not successful.
He takes my hand and helps me out of the car, closing the door behind me.
“So, um…” Goodness. I’ve momentarily forgotten what I decided to call him.
I ruled Alfie out, didn’t I? And we agreed that Lord Augustus was too formal, so what the hell does that leave me with?
What a fucking pickle. “Lord Alpha, are deep-seated desires something you can see in everyone’s eyes?
” I raise my brows hopefully. “Or only certain people?”
“Only certain people.” My lungs sag with relief, but I keep my posture upright. “I can’t tell what alphas desire, for example, and often, I can’t get a read on mated omegas.”
“Mm…” I bob my head a few times as a fresh wave of warm dread washes over me when I realize I’m neither of those things. “How fascinating.”
The driver bids us goodnight, and the car pulls away. The lord and I stand in the driveway, near the front door, neither of us moving.
It’s well past midnight and dark. The moon is a slice of mottled blue light.
Asterisms of stars punch tiny holes in a black velvet sky.
The garden is mournfully lit by spotlights that paint naked trees into fantastical portraits.
Portraits of hands and feet. Long legs and long fingers that seem to reach to the heavens.
“But when it comes to unmated omegas”—his voice sounds different now that we’re home and alone. It’s softer, but deeper too—“I can always tell what they want.”
“Can you…? Do you mean…? Do you know what I want?” My voice lilts up unpleasantly.
Starlight drops down to Earth and lands lightly on the lord’s hair. On his forehead. On his cheekbones. On his fleshy bottom lip.
“You have big eyes, Mr. Lawlor,” he says.
I screw my eyes closed as tightly as I can and a gentle rumble travels up my spine.
He’s laughing.
He’s teasing.
He’s playing with me.
“Oh, you’re joking,” I say, relieved. “Of course you can’t see what people want by looking into their eyes. How silly of me.” I start walking toward the door, and he follows. “No one can do that… My God, what a thought.”
He stops moving, and even though I’m directly in front of him, and there’s no call for me to stop moving as well, I do.
I become aware of his proximity in rough, jagged increments. I feel his body heat first, then his mass. His physical presence, and then the air that’s thick because it’s touched him. He’s behind me. His chest is mere inches from my back. “C-can they?” I splutter.
“Do you doubt me, omega?”
His voice is lemon and honey at this time of night.
My thoughts are liquor and fizz. Tiny bubbles that pop and leave a vacant space in their wake.
“Yes, I doubt you,” I prattle. “Of course I doubt you. There’s no way you know what I—”
A warm breath on the back of my neck snuffs my words out mid-sentence, rendering me mute.
“Do you want me to prove it to you?”
His voice is lemon and honey, yes. Definitely. But it’s whiskey too. Neat whiskey. Whiskey with no ice, and nothing watering it down.
“Yes. No! I mean, don’t be ridiculous, of course you can’t do tha—”
A hand curls around my chest and pulls me backward sharply, all but lifting me onto my toes. I scramble for balance, but not for escape.
Lips move a fraction from my neck, a fraction from my earlobe. “Little mouse…” The sound enters my body through the back of my skull, leaking through tiny crevices in bone matter and seeping directly into the deepest, darkest part of my lizard brain. “Run!”