Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Faye
Cayson is looking at me like I’m something he wants to eat. And the thing is, he’s making me feel all kinds of things I haven’t felt before. It’s scary, and exciting. But exciting is basically just another form of scary, so I don’t know how I feel.
We sit down on a blanket spread in the pavilion and start unpacking the food. There are tiny little sandwiches cut in triangles, scones, biscuits, perfectly ripe berries with cream, and tea. Vague memories of me having tea time in town with my friends come back to me. Before The Selection, I hadn’t eaten foods this dainty in a long time. In years.
“Hungry?” he asks, and his gaze slides over me.
Licking my lips, I look away from him and just nod. I’m definitely hungry, but for something that isn’t food. Something I’ve never wanted before. I just can’t stop thinking about the way it feels to have him so close to me on the horse, how easily I can feel his attraction pressed against me. Have I ever made another man feel like that before? I’m not sure, but I know I’ve never felt this way before.
Even now, my body urges me to crawl across this blanket just to get closer to him. To feel the heat from his body against my own. To feel the strange contrast of his hard muscles against my soft body.
Cayson puts a plate out for each of us, which is strangely sweet. I wonder what the hell is wrong with him though. I’ve never known an alpha to serve someone else. I’ve never known one to be kind, or funny, or romantic. Other than Ezra.
Alphas are assholes.
“You have to try this,” Cayson says, taking a little pastry from a plate and leaning across the blanket. I meet his eyes, willing myself to fight against him, but I just open my mouth obediently, and he gives me a bite of the pastry.
“Oh,” I say, bringing a hand to my mouth as a deliciously bitter chocolate flavor bursts over my tongue. “That is good.”
Cayson continues to pick things off the plates, insisting on feeding them to me. A blush rises on my checks and I find myself leaning closer to him. Why is it so nice to be fed? What’s wrong with me?
“Have you had these pastries before?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “They don’t usually make them in my region due to the altitude.”
“Are you in the mountains, then?” And he actually looks curious.
“Yes, Pack Ivory.”
“Pack Ivory,” he murmurs, before feeding me another bite. “That explains a lot.”
“What, exactly, does that explain?”
He flashes me a smile. “All the most beautiful girls come from Pack Ivory.”
I give him an amused look. “I don’t think your pack-mates would be happy hearing you say something like that.”
“My pack-mates aren’t here right now,” Cayson says, grinning. “And besides, you can’t argue with the truth.”
I know that this is a game to him. A routine he does with every girl he’s trying to get into his bed, but I can’t help it. It’s working. I think… I think I like him despite all logic.
“What’s your pack?”
“You can’t tell?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Pack Steel.”
Pack Steel is a powerful pack with a lot of males. From what I’ve heard, the leader of their pack is a control freak who insists on perfection from his people, which stands at odds with the packs near it.
Then a thought occurs to me. “Your lands border Ezra’s, right?”
Cayson gives me a playful look. “Let’s not talk about Ezra right now, sweetheart. The guy is a total buzzkill.”
I think of Ezra’s serious, stern expressions and have to stifle a laugh. He may be a buzzkill, but he helps to balance Cayson’s endless playfulness.
“How do you like the region?”
“It’s fine,” Cayson says, before giving me a bite of one of the sandwiches. It’s delicious—with crisp greens and a dill sauce. “But do you know what’s better than the Pack Steel lands? Italy. France. Germany. If you want to have the time of your life, Faye, you have to travel.”
“Travel?” I laugh, looking at him up and down as he reclines casually, his hands planted behind him. “Must be hard to travel between all your alpha duties.”
“Yeah, well,” he says, and something darker passes over his face, for just a moment. “You find it easy to avoid responsibilities when you have a dad like mine.”
Interesting. He has issues with his dad. “Like what?”
“Do we really want to spoil this fine picnic with talks of an old asshole?”
“I would love to hear about an old asshole.”
He raises his eyebrows, like he wasn’t expecting me to repeat the vulgar language.
“Well,” he says, starting slowly, like he doesn’t quite know where to begin, “growing up, my dad, being the man that he is, always found me lacking. So I decided that if I was going to be judged poorly for trying my best, I might as well drop the effort altogether.”
I’m confused. He’s an alpha. That’s not how it works. “But doesn’t your pack need you?”
“That’s for them to figure out,” Cayson mutters. “What about you? You’re not looking for an alpha. So what, you have someone to go home to, then? Because I find it impossible to believe you’re just actively choosing loneliness.”
I swallow thickly, trying not to think about the empty cabin waiting for me in the outskirts of my pack’s territory. It’s liberating to have so much freedom, but also incredibly lonely at times. Not that I mind being lonely. Do I?
“No, no one is waiting for me,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I actually—well, I’m something of an orphan.”
“Oh, shit,” Cayson says, scrubbing a hand over his hair. “I’m sorry.”
“No need to be sorry,” I say, forcing a laugh and running my hands over my arms. “My parents and grandparents died some time ago. My brother just three years ago”
“Was he sick?”
The image of Miles’ dead body flashes into my mind again and I grimace, willing the image to leave my head. To my surprise, it does. I’ve never been able to do that before… get the images to leave me alone instead of swallowing me whole.
“No,” I say, pressing my lips together to try and keep my composure. “He—he was murdered.”
“ Murdered ?” Cayson’s eyes go wide. “By who?”
I shake my head, knowing I can’t tell Cayson the truth about this. “I don’t know,” I say, then I reach forward to tear a piece off a scone. “But you’re right, we shouldn’t be ruining such a nice picnic with talk like this.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you, Faye,” Cayson says, and when I meet his eyes, I see a rare, genuine sincerity there. He must keep it hidden, buried under his joking personality.
“Well, what do we have here?” a voice says, and I turn to see Ezra strolling up the path to the pavilion.
“Oh, no,” Cayson says, groaning and falling back on his back. “Speak of the devil.”
“Oh?” Ezra says, glancing between the two of us with a smile on his face. “You were speaking about me?”
“No,” Cayson says, sitting back up, just as I say, “Yes, Cayson has really been gushing over you.”
Cayson lifts his hands from his face and gives me a dirty look.
Ezra sits down next to us, grabs a plate, and starts eating, all while Cayson is glaring at him. And for such a serious man, Ezra is grinning like a fool as he crashes our picnic.
“Don’t you have an omega to eat with?” Cayson asks him dryly.
Ezra smiles. “We finished. I already walked her back to her room like a gentleman… and bribed the right person to learn where you two would end up.”
“Gentleman, my butt, crashing a damn picnic,” Cayson mutters.
“I do believe you crashed our boating outing, then crashed both our boats, not me. Turn around is fair play,” Ezra says, followed by a smirk.
Laughing, I dig into the food with a hunger I haven’t felt in years. There’s just something about their banter, about these two men, that just puts me at ease. I don’t know how to explain it.
When we finish all the food, Cayson puts it away while still muttering to himself about irritating wolves who don’t know when to leave, which just causes me to laugh harder. How can such a big man be so funny? So unthreatening? I’ll never know.
“Well, that was fun, but why should the fun end? Should we go for a run?” Ezra asks, jerking his head toward the nearby thicket of woods. “I’ve been dying to stretch my wolf all day.”
Both of their gazes fall to me, and for some reason, the idea of shifting in front of them sends a hot flush of lust through my body. I take a deep breath, trying to calm the feeling.
After a long moment, I get to my feet, brushing off the leather riding pants they insisted on dressing us in. I haven’t shifted since arriving here, and it would be nice to relieve some stress with a run.
“Sure,” I say, watching as joy spreads across their faces. “Why not?”