7. Bee #3
“I made you editor-in-chief.”
“Yes.”
“I removed myself from authority over your work.”
“Yes.”
“I restored your funding, built legal protections, and created a disclosure structure so I cannot repeat the exact harm you identified.”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you angry?”
“Because you are still doing the right thing in the wrong shape.”
He looks genuinely pained by that, which helps more than it should.
I push away from the desk. The bond warms as I move closer, alert and shameless. “Here is my new proposition.”
His posture changes. The strategist returns, all focus and lethal attention. “Name it.”
“If you want to make me happy, keep me safe, and keep me yours, can you learn?”
His face alters. Not dramatically. Nothing as cheap as shock. But the frustration sharpens into something rawer, younger, less certain. “Anything.”
“Don’t answer before you hear the question.”
“Anything,” he repeats, harder this time. “For you.”
I press my hand to the folder. “If I am your wife, I am not cargo. I am not a royal emergency. I am not the fragile human you carry out of a burning building before asking whether I wanted to save anything inside. Learn how to walk by my side, not use your Alpha long legs to drag me behind you.”
Silence fills the office.
His gaze drops to my hand on the folder, then rises to my face. “I can learn.”
“Skylor.”
“I swear it.”
“You will hate it.”
“Yes.”
“You will think waiting is inefficient.”
“It is.”
“You will think asking me is unnecessary because you already know the correct answer.”
“I often do.”
I glare.
His mouth almost curves. “I will learn that knowing the answer does not grant me the right to choose it for you.”
Better.
My throat tightens, which annoys me because I had hoped to stay crisp and intimidating all morning. “That is partnership.”
“That is torment.”
“That is also partnership.”
“Then I will practice partnership.”
“Not endure?”
His eyes search mine. “No. Practice. Choose. Fail badly at intervals, most likely, then return before you have to hunt me down with stationery.”
“That is probably the best anyone can ask from a man.”
“From an Alpha.”
“From a husband.”
The word leaves my mouth before I can build scaffolding around it.
Skylor goes still.
Not frozen. Not shocked. Still in the way a predator becomes still when a sound comes from the forest, except this sound is me, apparently calling him husband in my office while my inbox contains at least forty unread emails and Loora is probably pressed against the wall outside with a snack bag and zero shame.
The word should panic me.
It does, a little. But not like before. Not like a trap. More like stepping onto a bridge while still seeing the drop below. Terrifying, yes. But built. Crossable. Mine to step onto or not.
His voice drops. “Say it again.”
“Do not push your luck.”
His nostrils flare. “Noted.”
“Also, you do not get to confuse urgency with authority.”
Something in his face shifts. Locks. Not solved. Chosen. “Say that again.”
“The rule?”
“Yes.”
Heat gathers under my skin. “You do not get to confuse urgency with authority.”
He nods once, as if filing the sentence somewhere deeper than memory. “Accepted.”
The office changes.
Not the room. The room remains the same: desk, laptop, documents, glass wall, city beyond it.
But the power between us settles into a new shape, still dangerous, still charged, no longer tilted so sharply that I have to brace against sliding.
He is still Skylor. Still Alpha. Still the male who would burn a road through the world if I cried out in the dark.
But he is listening with his whole body now.
Even the restless movement of his ears quiets.
I pick up the folder and flip through the signed pages. “MacArthur?”
“She remains in Brazil. Her original release is void unless she renews it. She has agreed to a new interview under full disclosure of Layn’s medical interest in the coffee strains and the limits around transport routes, compound specifics, and vulnerable facilities.”
“The displacement reporting?”
“Yours.”
“The deforestation angle?”
“Yours.”
“The cure?”
“Protected from public detail until safety review. But you receive the evidence before any restriction request. Not afterward. Layn brings concerns to you. With you.”
“Good.”
His shoulders lower a fraction.
“Do not look relieved yet,” I say. “I still have concerns.”
“I assumed a list.”
“With me,” I correct.
His jaw works once. “With you.”
“And if I disagree?”
“Then we argue.”
“Professionally.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. “Initially.”
“Skylor.”
“I am practicing honesty.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it, and his eyes warm like I handed him something precious.
He steps closer, slowly enough that I could tell him not to. I do not. The scent of him wraps around me: coffee, clean wool, warm alien skin, and Alpha claim. My body has been polite for at least ten whole minutes and apparently expects applause.
“One thing must be clear,” he says.
The low register of his voice strokes heat down my spine. “Must it?”
“Yes.”
“Are we practicing partnership or backsliding?”
“Both, perhaps.”
“Careful.”
He stops close enough that the edge of his jacket brushes my blouse. His hands remain at his sides. That restraint makes the next words hotter, not safer.
“You are fucking mine.”
My lungs forget their one job.
His eyes burn gold now, no softness, no apology.
“For better or worse, by biology and choice, by every law of my people and every promise I will learn to keep by yours. You are mine, Beatrice Watson. Not my employee. Not my subordinate. Not a problem to manage. Mine. My mate. My equal. My obsession. My future. And I will learn to walk beside you, but I will not pretend I am indifferent to where you sleep.”
The pulse between my legs answers with humiliating speed.
“No more sneaking home as if your body is not listening for mine,” he says. “No pretending separate rooms prove independence when both of us know the knock is coming. No lying in that small bed while my bed is empty and your mattress commits structural crimes against my legs.”
“My apartment is not suffering.”
“Your bed is too small.”
“My bed is perfectly normal.”
“I am not.”
That shuts me up for half a second, mostly because it is true.
His voice drops lower. “My skull is cracking with want.”
My fingers curl against the folder. For three days, I have avoided the truth that the bond no longer screams because it knows he will come.
Avoided how my body starts listening for the knock before dinner.
Avoided how much I want his bed, his scent, his hands, his awful certainty.
Want is not surrender. Want is information.
And right now, the information says I am done pretending I do not ache for him.
“Mine too,” I admit.
His nostrils flare.
The shutters slide down over the glass wall with a soft mechanical hush.
I whip my head toward the windows. “When did you do that?”
“Last time.”
“You installed privacy shutters in my office?”
“Yes.”
“Without asking?”
He winces. “Old choice. Before the rule. I will disclose all future infrastructure improvements.”
“Infrastructure improvements?”
His eyes sweep over my desk. “This one may prove useful.”
I should scold him for longer. Truly, the feminist thing would be a lecture with citations.
Unfortunately, the shutters have turned the office dim and private, his voice has dropped into that dark register that makes my ovaries try to unionize, and the folder in my hand suddenly matters less than the way he is looking at me.
“You are impossible,” I say.
“I can make it worth it.”
“That is not how accountability works.”
“No.” He takes the folder from my hand and sets it carefully on the side table. “This is how I thank you for the opportunity to improve.”
“By having sex on my desk?”
“By making love to my wife on the desk she now controls.”
That shuts me up.
His smile is small and dangerous. “There she is.”
“Do not be smug.”
“I would never.”
I reach for his tie and pull.
He comes immediately.
The kiss hits with the force of three days of daylight restraint, three nights of unfinished surrender, and one morning of negotiated war.
His mouth opens mine, coffee-dark and aphrodisiac-sweet, and warmth spills through me in a velvet rush.
Not fever. Not desperation. Choice. My hands slide into his hair, then up to one ear because I am not a saint and never claimed to be.
The instant my thumb strokes the sensitive ridge, he growls into my mouth.
His hands clamp around my waist. He lifts me onto the desk with one powerful motion, scattering pens, sticky notes, and a very expensive paperweight that hits the carpet with a thud.
My laptop gives one offended beep before he slides it aside with more care than I expected from a male whose eyes have gone nearly black.
“You’re clearing my desk,” I breathe.
“I am worshipping your authority.”
The humor flickers and burns away.
His hands move under my skirt, hot and certain, pushing fabric up my thighs. My knees open because I choose them open. He notices. Of course he does. His hands pause on my bare skin, thumbs stroking once, reverent and possessive.
“Say it,” he says.
I still.
His eyes lift to mine. “Not mate. Not forever. Say what you want now.”
The difference knocks a breath loose from my chest.
“I want your mouth.”
Gold flares.
He drops to his knees.
The sight steals every clever word I might have used to protect myself.
Skylor Ak Layn, prince, Alpha, corporate executioner, kneeling between my thighs in the office he just gave me control over, hands firm on my knees, eyes locked on mine like surrender and dominance have finally figured out how to share a room.
He presses one kiss to the inside of my knee, then higher. His mouth meets the damp fabric of my panties, and I grip the edge of the desk hard enough to hurt.
“Skylor.”
“I know.”
His tongue drags slowly over me through the lace.
My head falls back. “Okay. You know some things.”