Chapter 10 Erik
The boardroom is too bright and I’m two minutes late and I can still taste him in my mouth.
“Continue,” I say, and my voice comes out wrecked.
I showered and changed my shirt before leaving the apartment but I couldn’t do anything about the bite mark throbbing under my collar. The shower has maybe diminished but I’m sure I still reek of sex and omega and him, and everyone in this room knows it.
The presentation resumes. I watch numbers on the screen scroll past without registering a single figure.
I had him against the wall, his legs wrapped around my waist, wearing nothing but water and rage, and I—
I shift in my chair. Thank God for the table.
This isn’t who I am.
I am disciplined. I have better control over the base urges that turn other alphas into pawing, rutting animals. I don’t raise my voice. I don’t lose my temper. I certainly don’t shove omegas against walls and drop to my knees like I’m starving for it.
Please don’t stop.
His voice cracks through my memory and my whole body tightens. The way he looked down at me. The way his thighs shook under my hands. The way he said my name when he came, like it was punched out of him, like he hated himself for it—
“Mr. Nilsson?”
I blink. The room is staring.
“Could you repeat the question?”
My CFO’s stylus hovers over her tablet. I never ask for repetition. I never need to.
“The Singapore timeline,” she says carefully. “Your thoughts?”
I have no thoughts on Singapore. I have no thoughts on anything except the sound Nolan made when I first put my mouth on him—this broken, startled noise, like he couldn’t believe I was doing it, like he couldn’t believe I wanted to do it.
I wanted to do it. That’s the part I can’t stop circling back to. I didn’t just lose control. I wanted him so badly I couldn’t think straight. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything except get my hands on him and make him fall apart.
“Push it to Q3,” I manage. “We’ll revisit once the regulatory landscape clarifies.”
She nods, giving me curious look, and then makes a note. The meeting continues.
I watch the clock and try to remember who I was before this morning before I learned what Nolan tastes like and before I memorized the exact pitch of his moans, the way his back arches, the specific shade of furious want in his eyes when he’s about to come.
I was taken by surprise. That’s all it was. I wasn’t prepared for him to be standing there half-naked and dripping wet, all that golden skin on display, looking at me like he wanted to fight me and fuck me in equal measure. Anyone would have lost control.
Anyone would have shoved him against the wall and kissed him until neither of them could breathe.
Anyone would have dropped to their knees on the hardwood floor and—
Stop.
I press my palm flat against the table and focus on breathing. In and out. I’m a CEO. I’m a professional. I’m an alpha who has never, not once in his life, behaved the way I behaved this morning.
The meeting ends eventually. I escape to my office and stand at the window staring at the city below.
I think about the kind of omega I always imagined. The omega I want is someone submissive and respectful. Someone who will keep my home and bear my children. He’d be someone who would respect me and defer to me, the way nature intended.
Not someone who wears jeans to his own wedding. Not someone who drips water all over my floor while standing naked in my hallway. Not someone who looks at me like I’m the worst person he’s ever met and then kisses me like he’s trying to crawl inside my skin.
My phone buzzes. I glance to see a reminder from the compliance app, telling me that our ridiculous compliance requirements beings at 6pm tonight.
I have to go back soon and when I go back, I’m not going to have the excuse of having a meeting to escape to.
The terms of our agreement with the Bureau are clear.
We’re allowed short windows away from each other, nominally agreed to allow Nolan to visit his sister.
They’re not meant for me, although there is no reason I can’t take advantage.
I need to spend the afternoon with my personal assistant, rescheduling everything I can for the next two weeks.
I don’t have a separate office at the apartment.
There’s just the kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedroom.
I don’t want to do business sitting on the sofa with my laptop on my lap and certainly not for two weeks in a row.
My reflection stares back at me from the glass. Perfect suit. Perfect posture. Every hair back in place. I don’t look like the absolute mess that I feel.
The reflection doesn’t show the scratches down my back. It doesn’t show the way my hands shake when I think about touching him again.
I sigh and turn away from the window and get on with the business of shutting myself away from everything I have worked for.
I drive myself back to the apartment at 5:30, somehow both desperate to see him again and dreading dealing with weeks of hostility and Nolan refusing to look at me, or looking at me with that cold contempt he does so well.
The apartment smells like garlic and herbs when I unlock the door.
He’s at the stove with his back to me, stirring something in a pan.
He’s wearing a soft grey henley that clings to his shoulders and hangs loose at his waist. His hair is curling softly at the nape of his neck.
He glances over his shoulder when I enter, and his expression is—
Pleasant. Polite. Utterly neutral.
“Dinner’s almost ready,” he says. “Made enough for two.”
I wait for the anger. It doesn’t come.
I don’t know what to say. I’ve been mentally preparing for a fight all afternoon. “You didn’t have to do that,” I say finally.
“I was hungry. Seemed inefficient to cook separate meals.” He turns back to the stove. “Hope you like pasta.”
His tone is perfectly reasonable like this morning never happened. Like I didn’t have him pressed against the wall with my hand around his cock four hours ago.
I should be pleased but somehow it is infuriating.
I set my bag down by the couch—my bed for the foreseeable future—and hover awkwardly in the kitchen doorway. He moves around the small space easily, seemingly at home. I haven’t cooked anything since university, and even then it was barely edible.
“Can I help?” I ask, just to be polite.
“Almost done. You can set the table if you want.”
I open a cabinet. Wrong one—cleaning supplies. Try another. Glasses. Third time’s the charm: plates. I really haven’t been here in a long, long time.
“Cutlery’s in the drawer by the sink,” he says without turning around.
I retrieve forks and knives and set two places at the small table. It feels absurdly domestic as if we’re a real couple and I didn’t call what happened between us a mistake and flee with my shirt still hanging open.
Nolan plates the food—pasta with vegetables in a cream sauce—and sets a dish in front of me before taking the seat opposite. Our knees almost touch under the table. The apartment is that small. He shifts his leg away casually.
“Thank you,” I say. “For cooking.”
“You’re welcome.” A small, polite smile. Nothing behind it. His face is carefully blank. I don’t know if the sex has softened him or made him so angry that he has withdrawn completely.
We eat in silence. The food is really good. Better than restaurants I’ve paid hundreds of dollars to eat at. Anna would love it.
The pasta is perfectly al dente, the sauce rich with cream and garlic and a touch of thyme.
“This is excellent,” I offer.
“Thanks.”
There’s no warmth to it and no pleasure at the compliment. Just acknowledgment, and then more silence.
He’s angry. He has to be.
He takes another bite, chews, swallows. I watch his throat move. The same throat I had my mouth on this morning, tasting his pulse, feeling him gasp against my lips—
I look down at my plate and focus on the food.
“How was your day?” he asks.
I nearly choke on my pasta. He’s asking about my day. I don’t know what he’s doing and it’s disconcerting.
“Fine,” I manage. “Meetings. Nothing noteworthy.”
“Mm.”
He twirls pasta around his fork. I watch his hands—those hands that were in my hair this morning—and have to force myself to breathe normally.
“How was yours?” I ask, because the silence is worse.
“Good. Quiet. I stopped by to see Ellie. Did some reading. Caught up on sleep.” He gestures vaguely toward the bedroom. “That bed’s comfortable.”
“I’m glad,” I say stiffly.
Another silence. He reaches for his water glass and I watch his lips press against the rim, watch him swallow, watch the way his throat moves. He catches me looking. Our eyes meet across the small table.
For one second, the mask slips. I see something flash in his expression and my whole body responds, blood rushing south so fast it makes me dizzy.
Then he sets down his glass and the moment’s gone.
“More pasta?” he asks. “There’s plenty.”
“No. Thank you.”
God, this is torture. I almost prefer when he was yelling at me about the research. At least then I knew what he was feeling. This polite, reasonable version of Nolan is impossible to read.
“Weather’s supposed to be nice tomorrow,” he says. “Not that it matters. We’ll be inside.”
We.
“I think we’re allowed to leave the apartment, as long as we do so together and can complete the check ins together.” A thought occurs to me. “I could come with you to the hospital.”
Finally, I get a reaction. A look of horror crosses his face.
“I have no intention of coming with you to see your sister,” I say hurriedly. “I could maybe wait downstairs in that coffee shop of yours. It’ll give me a chance to catch up on work and I’m sure that if we arrange a place in the hospital, we can both get there in time if the Bureau checks in.”
“That’s... practical,” he says.
“I try to be.”
He takes another bite. I watch his mouth. The way his lips close around the fork, the way his tongue darts out to catch a drop of sauce at the corner of his mouth—