Chapter 11 – Shiloh
Chapter Eleven
Shiloh
“ I ’m here for Millie,” Zale says as he kicks at the snow starting to stick on the street. It turns out Bell was right after all as I glance around the man on my doorstep to where large snowflakes are starting to fall.
There’s something off about the alpha, his hair is damp and if he’s freshly showered but his usually golden skin is looking a little pale and sickly and there are bags under his eyes. Pulling his coat tighter around himself he avoids my confused stare.
I hadn’t even said anything to him, simply pulled open the front door when he knocked, almost shaking the damn thing off its hinges with his pounding. Did he not realize how strong he was? Or did he do it on purpose? Was it some sort of way to assert his alpha authority?
“No shit.” Scoffing, I turn to grab my backpack and my keys. I would be the one driving since we were going in my car, so I’d gone for comfort over style when I’d dressed earlier. I‘d chosen a dark green crew neck jumper, with a black checkered scarf to hide my mark which was now almost a purple red color, and a pair of dark burnt orange cotton chinos, folded up at the ankle and a pair of slip-on sneakers. “In what world would I assume you were here for me?”
Packing light always made things easier and I didn't need to take a lot with me since I had a full wardrobe at the lodge. My parents liked to keep the properties on this side of the country stocked with all our necessities. They thought it would make them feel more like ‘homes away from home’ when they dragged us around the world for their work. Even if they didn’t, there was usually a house manager or staff on hand who could make sure we had the items we needed.
Zale rubs the back of his neck, “I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
Okay. So…we weren’t going to talk about the blowjob. Fine. If that’s how he wanted to play it, then I wasn’t going to bring it up either. No wrong ideas here, so let him put up his walls and hide behind a curtain of attitude. It was going to be a long drive.
“Get over yourself, Zale.” Rolling my eyes, I lock my apartment door and lead him to my parking spot.
As we climb into my Mercedes, and he puts his bag on the back seat, I say “We’re doing one project together and you’re dating my sister. I’m not deluding myself into thinking that we’re besties.”
It’s the truth. We’re no better than strangers, forced to work together on a project and we may have shared one oddly intimate moment. That’s all. He’s friends with the people who like to make my life difficult. And he’s my sister’s boyfriend.
“I know that.” He gets in the passenger seat, and instantly I can smell hints of his musky scent. Zale remains quiet for a moment before he clears his throat and we make awkward eye contact. “We’re not exactly enemies either.”
No. We weren’t.
But maybe we should be? Those blue eyes made me weak.
“Let’s just get you all delivered to Rom. And then we’re free of each other. How about that?” Starting the engine, we pull off and I wince when the MapApp tells me the route will be more like five hours with the Friday night traffic.
Taking a deep breath, I’m glad I doubled my dose of suppressants this afternoon since I’ll be trapped in an enclosed space with Zale for longer than planned. Who cares if it makes me feel a little nauseous and numb? At least I was protecting my peace, keeping my secret hidden.
“Whatever you say.” Leaning back in his seat, he gets comfortable which isn’t an easy feat given how large and broad he is. A hint of something smokey lingers in the air and for a moment, my brain scrambles to think what it reminds me of as my heart beat picks up. But the scent is fleeting, fading before I can place it.
I can’t help my dry chuckle, “Careful, you almost sound a little submissive there.”
What would he look like on his knees for me? People made the assumption that because an omega naturally submits to an alpha during their heat, that they always needed to be in that role. People were idiots. If you asked me, some of the hottest porn I’d watched always involved an omega taking their pleasure from a beautifully compliant alpha. No one dynamic was right or wrong, no matter what society still believed.
“Agreeing with you doesn’t mean I’m submitting. I just want the next four hours to go as painlessly as possible.” With his arms crossed, body tilted so that he's partially facing me, he allows his eyes to flutter closed. Like this, he looks almost soft and approachable rather than being weighed down by his lofty titles as the Blackwood heir and one of Oakley U’s top jocks. ‘Practice’ must have been tiring if he’s comfortable enough to sleep in a car with a stranger.
“And when the designated driver is a prickly hedgehog, well, I don’t want to be stabbed.” He lets out a little huff as he wriggles again before settling down.
A hedgehog?
I know people saw me as abrupt and rude, but a hedgehog?
I pretend to mull it over for a moment or two as we drive out of Oakley leaving the university in the rear-view mirror. “I won’t stab you. Think about the mess you’d make in my beautiful car.”
Zale hums, the noise making my chest tight, eyes still closed. “It is a sweet ride, and not at all what I imagined you driving.”
As we turn onto the highway, I’m frowning—not that he can even see it. Does that mean he’d been thinking about me or was I reading too much into his words? “What did you think I’d drive?”
I’m waiting for some smart-ass answer. Maybe for him to make fun of me or compare my choice of car to my sisters, but instead he makes a small noise, as if he’s trying to consider his response.
“I dunno.” He gives a small half shrug, “But you always have this ‘fuck the status quo’ thing going on, and this is very standard rich person car.”
“I like comfort.” It’s my turn to shrug as I try to focus on the road. I’ve never really been a fan of driving in the dark, but traffic would be even worse if I left it until tomorrow to leave. The car had been an eighteenth birthday gift from my parents, and my father had been the one to choose it with me. I think he thought it would be a good first family car too, with the spacious back seat and large trunk.
Not that I’d be having a family anytime soon, especially not if I kept taking the suppressants. I’d had another call from Zion, asking me to try weaning myself off them, worried about the long-term effects on my fertility but hiding my nature is more important right now than the option of having a baby. ‘What ifs’ and ‘one day’s’ were problems for future me.
“Is that why you’ve been wearing all those turtle necks lately?”
“I…yeah.” I glance over at him, and see that he has one eye cracked open to watch me. I can feel my cheeks heat as I think about my supposedly fading bite mark. I don’t know what changed, but it seemed to be working in reverse, getting darker where it was once getting paler. When we were back from the cabin, I was making an appointment to see Zion again and I’d have to explain the whole mess to him.
Zale’s eyes are still on me, making me squirm. Was my heart racing again? Had I taken too many pills ready for this journey? Had I accidentally overdosed myself?
“Weird that you noticed.”
He’s got both eyes open now, watching me with a small frown. The line between his brow is furrowed in a way that makes me want to reach across and smooth it out with my thumb. “You know, you look at me like I’m stupid, and I’m not. I have eyes in my head, and I notice things around me.”
I knew he wasn’t stupid. The work he’d been sending across for the project wasn’t written by an idiot and it wasn’t an internet cut and paste job either. He’d spent time going over it carefully.
Still, his words make me raise a brow, because from where I’m sitting, this is a pretty shit way to spend a Friday evening – with the brother of the girl you’re banging when you could be out drinking, partying and snorting things you shouldn’t. “Then why are you stuck in a car with me for the next couple of hours, rather than with Romilly and the others on a beach in Crest Haven?”
Clearly hitting a nerve, he closes his eyes again, “I had training.”
“Rom said.” I know I sound judgy, but his alibi doesn’t add up. He says nothing, and for the next four hours we drive in a calming quiet, where his soft snores are the only thing cutting through the silence.
“ T he cashier said we should be careful, there’s a storm moving in this weekend.” I grab the bag of goodies we’d gotten at a garage forty-five minutes ago and wait for Zale to get out of the car. He’d dozed through our little pit stop, only waking to give me a list of snacks he wanted before going back to sleep.
“Shit, should we just go home?” He asks, clambering out of the car and stretching, swinging his arm across his torso in a way that has his T-shirt rising up to expose a band of tanned skin just above the waist of his jeans.
“Nah. My parents have made sure the cabin is stocked up.” They’d emailed us both ahead of this weekend, making sure to include things we both like but they’ve gone all out, ordering extra for Millie’s friends and our birthday celebrations.
Zale leans back into my car and reaches over the front seat to grab his bags, giving me a decent view of his ass. “What about Millie and the others?”
Fuck, was I just checking out my sister’s boyfriend? What the hell was wrong with me? I swallow, my skin feeling clammy. “They’re supposed to be here first thing tomorrow. It should be fine and you can all hole up and weather out the storm together.”
It wasn’t unusual for there to be a few small snowstorms at this time of year, and once everyone was here it would be fine. They could celebrate as planned, sit in the hot tub and watch the snow falling while drinking champagne to celebrate Millie’s twenty-first.
“Where will you be?”
Eating my weight in strawberry Twizzlers and fucking myself silly so I don’t have any more weird thoughts .
“In my room, enjoying my space.”
Millie already ruined my plans of staying in my apartment so I was determined to be a lazy, orgasmed out, anime nerd. I wasn’t usually so sex obsessed. The suppressants took care of that, but ever since the biting incident, my libido had taken an upturn. Maybe my heat was approaching and I needed to take a couple more pills? How many was too many?
Zale looks like he’s about to say something else, but I don’t give him the chance, locking the car and heading up the short walkway to the cabin. I can’t spend any more time with him tonight, my nerves are already more frayed than Bell’s denim booty shorts.
Cabin is also kind of a misleading word, since it’s more like a huge two-story house complete with a wrap-around balcony and patio out back with a hot tub and fire pit. One of the walls at the rear of the house is mostly glass, to give a fantastic view of the mountains and the valley below and the stonework in the living space, with the huge fireplace are nothing like what comes to mind when you say ‘cabin’. But when your family are property developers, a little shack in the middle of nowhere just doesn’t cut it.
“This is seriously impressive.” I didn’t realize Zale was so close behind me, his breath tickling over my neck as I let myself into the house with my keycard.
“Uh, yeah.” I shift away from him, trying to put some space between us. “You might want to take your shoes off here, save tracking snow in. We’d have to mop it later otherwise.”
He chuckles, “What, no staff?”
Kicking off my shoes, I place them on the rack before switching on more of the lights and heading towards the kitchen with the snacks. “No, not this weekend. My parents thought Millie would want it more private and casual, so it’ll just be us.”
“What Millie wants…Millie gets.” He shakes his head with a small smile. If only he knew how much those words feel like a hand wrapped around my throat.
Most of the downstairs living areas are open plan, so I watch him wander around from the kitchen as he takes a closer look at the fireplace.
He runs his fingers over the bookshelves, pulling out a few to read the back of them before sliding them back into place. When he stops to smell the fresh flower centerpieces on the dining table, there’s a strange pattering in my chest that doesn’t ease up, even when he stands in front of the glass wall to look out over the valley. I force myself to look away, hating how strangely soft and…almost vulnerable he looks at this moment.
“How do you ever leave here?”
I glance up from putting the snacks away in one of the cupboards. “Huh?”
Zale has this strange, almost wistful look on his face as he presses his hand to the glass. “This place, it’s so…it’s really nice. Quiet.”
Nodding in agreement, I grab us both water from the fridge. It could see how it might be nice to be here more often if you had someone to share it with. “It is. It’s not my favorite property though. I like the villa in Crete. I prefer the warmth, and the saltwater air any day over snow and cold. Plus, the culture is very different there.”
I hand him the bottle, ignoring the way a shiver skitters across my skin as our fingers touch. I’m desperate for that shower, my skin still on fire as my heart keeps going crazy, like a one instrument marching band in my chest. I subtly try to stretch, to ease the ache I feel in my bones as my skin feels too tight, too hot, too sensitive. Too much. Not enough .
There’s a lot going on right now and I’m overstimulated as Zale offers me a ghost of a smile. “Yeah, but there’s something about a fresh blanket of snow and staying cozy.”
I swallow, feeling clammy as I wipe my hand on my jeans. “Well, the guest rooms are up the stairs and to the right or Millie’s room is the second to the left. There are two bathrooms upstairs, besides my parents’ ensuite. You obviously know where the kitchen is, help yourself to whatever you want. I’m gonna shower and sleep.”
“Yeah. Yeah. It was a long drive.” He reaches out, wrapping his hand around my wrist gently as I turn to leave. When he seems to register what he’s done, he drops me like a hot potato. “Where’s your room? Y’know. Just in case there’s an emergency or something.”
“All the family rooms are on the left. I'm in the room at the end.” I point, showing him where my door is, right next door to my twin’s.
“If you’re not tired—” His phone rings, interrupting whatever it is he’s about to say.
Exhaling in relief I scurry away, ignoring the way my stomach tightens when I hear him say, “Hey Mills. Are you having a good night? Yeah. I’m here. No, he’s not being weird. It’s fine.”