Chapter Nineteen #3
The confirmation was redundant. “I’ll test that theory later.”
His heart skipped at the promise. I felt it under my palm.
Gratified, my hands slid to his arse, cupping the cheeks to encourage his movements.
He was close again, having been teased to the cusp of completion.
I sensed it. His hips stirred feverishly—short, sharp motions, more pitching back and forth than intentional rotations.
His eyes were glazed, eyelids hooded, and his desperate little sounds broke off at the ends.
His wetness seeped through his trousers, his scent, rich and musky, ascending to a crest before sweet relief.
Almost.
“I can taste how close you are. Your pheromones are fused into every particle of air in this room. I have no choice but to drink them down. Is the heat coiling in your stomach? Your cock pulsing? It must ache with need.” He keened, the only agreement he could manage.
I leaned back, enough to observe the whole of him.
The muscles in his belly tightened. It looked agonising.
“Could you stop again if I commanded it? Could you turn away from the pleasure, show me how well-behaved you are?”
Dylan seized my tie, twisting it around his hand and yanking, bringing us nose to nose.
His answer came in the form of a determined, almost belligerent rut of his hips—the exact answer I’d hoped for.
His eyes flicked downward, landing on my mouth.
He fixed them there, barely a gap between us, the air thick and tense.
His lips parted, his breath fluttered over my tongue, and bewitched, my head drove forward . . .
As his flew back.
His spine bowed inward and he came with a choked moan.
My jaw clenched as he trembled apart in my lap, my fingers bruising his cheeks to stave off the burning compulsion in my gut to follow him.
He gasped through it, the rush surging on and on, my tie, still wrapped around his hand, preventing him from tumbling.
I wouldn’t let him fall.
The front of his trousers was soaked by the time the shocks subsided, the fabric darkened. I predicted my restraint would collapse once I finally peeled them off him.
Dylan tugged on my tie to straighten himself, his drunken gaze meeting mine. He panted, a freshly fucked glow on his cheeks, his expression lax in pleasure.
Beautiful.
I was in my office, tending to a correspondence from the Grimshaws, when the door crept open. I’d already known to expect him. My phone had pinged as he left his room.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, setting down my pen and reclining in my chair.
Dylan advanced, wearing a fresh set of lounge clothes, no longer flushed pink and drenched with sweat.
Or cum.
We’d spent his heat together, seasoning his nest and ruining its structure for an entire night.
It had only lasted until I’d knotted him, breaking before it even had the chance to deflate.
Though I hadn’t tied with him straight away.
I’d wrangled a number of orgasms out of him first—used my tongue, my fingers, and toys to turn him into a begging, writhing mess before even sheathing myself in his hot, slick hole.
He’d come on my cock twice before my knot swelled, locking inside him.
He slept a whole day afterwards.
“Good,” he answered. “My arse hurts, though.”
“Good.”
His snort was less cutting than usual, and he casually scanned my desk before moving on to my side table. His head tipped, squinting as if to study a document at an angle. He huffed a stunned laugh. “You kept Minnie’s drawing.”
I followed his line of sight to the open drawer, a corner of white paper, covered with scribbles, peeking out from the gap. I couldn’t deny it. “I did.”
“She has you wrapped around her little finger,” he teased, and I could hardly deny that astute commentary either.
She takes after her father. “She’s . . . progressing.”
His lips thinned. “And you’ve been working on your compliments. I’m impressed.”
He sashayed closer, positioning himself on the edge of my desk. I raised an eyebrow. “There is a chair,” I said. He didn’t even bother giving it his attention.
“This pisses you off more.”
“Hm.” In truth, he didn’t look out of place sitting there, perched like a pleasing ornament. I didn’t voice the observation, at risk of a stapler denting my head. Instead, I remarked, “If you knelt below it, that would piss me off even more.”
He scoffed, shaking his head in amusement. “Diabolical. Hasn’t your cock had enough? Surely you’re chafing by now.”
“You have a low opinion of my virility.”
“Dick chafe has nothing to do with your Alphaness,” he clarified, rolling his eyes. “But it has everything to do with how many times I’ve probably blown and ridden you in the last forty-eight hours. My memories are hazy after the fourth.”
“You were insatiable.”
“Hark at you,” he criticised, offended. “I wasn’t the one who dragged it out.”
Semantics. “You wouldn’t have been satisfied with just the once. I did what any responsible Alpha should, ensuring you were sated.”
“You talk shit. Anything except admitting I’m right.
” He shrugged, fiddling with the loose paperclips on my desk.
I tracked the lazy pattern of his lithe fingers, recalling the contrasting act of them tugging at my hair.
My gaze lifted. “You were just as horny as me. I have the aching hole, teeth marks, and bruises to prove it.”
I didn’t contradict him. Nor did I wish to continue the train of conversation lest he end up bent over and weeping while I added to them. “Did you come here for a reason, or was it merely to rearrange my paperclips and provoke me?”
“Bit of both.” He smirked impishly, though it tapered into a softer gesture—one he’d become more accustomed to showing around me of late. “Minnie’s asking for you. She wants her A-fa to take her to brush Car. No one else will do.”
Car was her horse. Coincidentally, her favourite word at the time of naming him. George had found it hilarious. “Wonder who she inherited her attitude from.”
“Definitely you.” His eyes drifted to the opposite side of my desk, landing on the pile of brochures I’d discarded there days ago. “What are those?”
I glanced at them, and sighed faintly. “Aaron took it upon himself to gather brochures for boarding schools. For Minseo. Said he wanted to be a helpful uncle and take interest in her development, but it was more of a hindrance. None of them are suitable.”
One of them looked more like a college than a private, long-standing institution. That wouldn’t do.
An acknowledging sound rumbled in Dylan’s throat. “He’s delusional,” he said, returning to playing with the paperclips. His statement wasn’t incorrect. “And she won’t be going to boarding school, so it was a wasted pursuit.”
My gaze panned to him. “She absolutely will be,” I insisted. “Once she turns eleven, she’ll be sent to the finest school in the country for the highest education.”
His movements stilled, and a glint of defiance flickered in his eyes. “No the fuck she won’t.” His voice had adopted a defensive edge, though it remained steady.
“It was part of our agreement. She was to have the best of everything.”
He straightened to his full height. “I didn’t agree to that. I won’t agree to that,” he argued, because of course he did. “She’ll be going to a regular school, with regular children. You promised she wouldn’t have to join in any of your mafia bullshit until she could choose for herself.”
“The leadership is unrelated,” I said dryly, restraining my impatience. “This is about education, which I highly doubt will be decent enough from a regular school.”
“Fuck you.” He lunged to his feet, his tone rising an octave. How did we end up here? “I went to a regular school and I turned out fine!”
“This isn’t up for debate.” I waved him off, shifting to sit up. “It’s decided.”
“No, it’s not. She’s not being sent away for years to learn how to be a pompous, elitist prick with no morals.”
“As opposed to being attached to your tit her entire life?” I scoffed, reflecting off his implication. “Yes, that would be so much healthier for her. Let’s deprive her of life experience and adequate learning because you can’t let her out of your sight.”
“At least I know she’s safe,” he countered, biting the words through his teeth. His hands balled into fists at his sides. I resisted the urge to massage my temples.
“You’re being unreasonable. Minseo shouldn’t have to suffer because of your insecurities.”
He flinched, eyes narrowed. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
There was no benefit to this escalation, and it had appeared out of thin air.
Dylan would fight back, no matter what I said—on principle—but it was years until a decision had to be made.
There was plenty of time for consideration, and adjustment; it was pointless to rile him up about the idea now. Or cause him distress.
A dispute, at this very moment, was unnecessary.
“This is what my family has done for generations,” I explained, schooling my tone to a marginally more placating vibrancy. “It was my expectation that—”
“Your family also has a history of violence,” he snapped, his pupils dilated with cold fury. Pitch black. “Will you be carrying on that tradition too?”
I stiffened.
His words, their meaning, their intention, lanced through me. A sensation I didn’t recognise hollowed out my chest, alarming. The only reaction I had control over was shutting down, and when my voice surfaced again, it was devoid of inflection.
Vacant.
“Have I ever raised a hand to you or my child?”
Remorse flooded his furious eyes, the resistance visibly draining from his body, but his words had hit their mark. “No, never. I didn’t—”
“Have I ever given you reason to believe I would?”
His lips parted, a weak crackle echoing in his throat.
My stomach twisted waiting for him to shake his head.
“Then your objective was purely malicious?”
His face paled. His bottom lip trembled. “Caine, please believe me, I didn’t—”