Chapter 13 Mattaniah #2
His thumb traces down my jaw to my chin and tips my face up. "You don't need an excuse to come to my office, firefly. You don't need a folder or a question or a reason. You just knock."
"That's a terrible idea and you know it."
"I know it's what you want." His thumb presses against my lower lip, light enough that I could pull away.
The warmth of the contact spreads through my mouth and down my throat and settles somewhere behind my ribs.
"And I know it took you three tries to work up the nerve, because my assistant told me you've been haunting the elevator bank all morning. "
"Your assistant is a snitch."
"My assistant is observant." He drops his hand and steps back. My body sways toward the space he just vacated before I catch myself, and the inch I lean tells us both everything my mouth is refusing to say.
"Go back to your desk, Mattaniah. Finish your work.
" His voice shifts into something that sounds like dismissal but carries a different promise underneath.
"And when you're done for the day, come find me again.
" He turns back to his monitor like he didn't just rearrange my entire afternoon with a few words .
"And next time," he adds without looking up, "don't bring a prop. It's insulting to both of us."
My face is still burning when the elevator doors close. I press my cold hands against my cheeks for the entire forty-second ride but the flush won't cooperate, so by the time I reach my desk I've accepted that I'm just going to look like this for the rest of the day.
Tamsin glances at me. "Find what you were looking for?"
"Shut up."
She grins and goes back to her screen.
The afternoon passes in a blur of correspondence and filing until Richard emerges from his office around three.
I keep my eyes on my screen and my fingers on my keyboard, but I track him in my peripheral vision as he crosses the floor toward the break room.
He passes behind my chair, his hand landing on my shoulder as he goes before heading for the coffee machine.
A spike hits me thirty seconds later. It's nothing like the bathroom incident, just a low cramp in my abdomen that makes me grip the edge of my desk, my body reacting to the threat of one Alpha by screaming for the scent of others.
The blockers strain against a surge of slick that I clench against, my thighs pressing together under my desk while I breathe through the wave.
Richard returns from the break room, pausing beside my cubicle long enough for me to feel his gaze on the back of my neck.
"You look flushed, Mattaniah. Feeling alright?"
"Fine, sir. Just warm."
"Mm." He moves on.
The spike fades within ten minutes, but my hands don't stop shaking for another twenty. Richard leaves at five for another dinner meeting, but not before stopping by my desk. His hand lands on my shoulder and drags across to the other one as he passes, once again putting a possessive claim on me.
"We'll continue your review tomorrow," he says without stopping. "I want to discuss your career development. My office, eight sharp."
The promise in his voice makes my skin crawl long after the elevator doors close on him.
Mom has fucked off into the new life we've been afforded, which means for once I don't have to perform for her, but Richard's attention is a different kind of cage, one I'm only beginning to understand the shape of.
I finish the last of the filing, shut down my computer, and sit at my desk for a full minute staring at the blank screen. A smart Omega would go to his home, to his room, and lock the door and take his blockers and go to sleep, despite the fact that Dominic said to come find him.
I pick up my bag and walk to the elevator bank and hit the button for the twelfth floor.
Dominic's office door is open when I get there.
He's still at his desk with his jacket off, reading through something on his screen, Amos perched on the corner of the desk beside him with his own laptop balanced on his thigh.
One of Amos' hands rests on Dominic's shoulder, and as I watch from the doorway Dominic's hand comes up without looking and covers it, squeezing once before returning to his keyboard.
The gesture stops me in the doorway. They look like they fit together, their scents blended, their bodies in contact without either of them seeming to notice.
I'm standing here because my body told me to come, and looking at the two of them side by side I have no idea where I belong in this picture.
Amos looks up first. "Niah." His smile hits me in the chest. "Done for the day?"
"He came back," Dominic says to Amos without taking his eyes off me. The hunger in his gaze makes my stomach flip.
"I didn't come back, I just..."
"You just happened to end up on the twelfth floor at five fifteen on a Monday." Dominic closes his laptop. "Twice in one day. Without a prop this time, which I appreciate."
Amos slides off the desk and crosses the room toward me. His hand finds my elbow and guides me inside while his other hand closes the door behind us. The click of the latch sends my pulse racing, his thumb pressing against the inside of my elbow in small circles that suddenly make it hard to think.
"Have you eaten?" He asks it close to my ear.
"Not since lunch."
"Then we're fixing that." He steers me toward the small couch against the wall and sits me down, then looks at Dominic. "Order something. He's not leaving this office until he's eaten a full meal."
Dominic pulls out his phone without argument.
Amos sits beside me, close enough that his thigh presses against mine, his arm draped along the back behind my shoulders.
"How was your day?" he asks, like the three of us sitting in an office at five fifteen on a Monday is something that happens regularly instead of the latest in a series of increasingly insane decisions my body has made on my behalf.
"Terrible." I lean back and my shoulders brush his arm. "Your father hit my knuckles four times, I can't make coffee to his specifications apparently, and I spent the entire afternoon trying to stop my feet from walking me to this office."
Amos' laugh is quiet. "And how did that work out for you?"
"Obviously it didn't, because I'm sitting on your couch."
Dominic sets his phone down and looks at me from across the room. "You're sitting on our couch, firefly. There's a difference."
My scent wavers in response to Dominic’s possessiveness. I press my knees together and stare at my hands in my lap because the list of reasons this is a bad idea keeps getting longer and my body keeps refusing to read it.
I try to ignore the heat building in my belly as I pick at my fingers, silently passing the time until a spread of Thai food arrives, a feast that's better than anything I've ever ordered for myself.
My guards slowly come down as I stuff my face, Amos asking about work while Dominic listens with his food in one hand and his other on my knee, his thumb tracing circles I don't think he's aware of.
"How long have you two been working together?" The question slips out between bites of pad Thai. "Not at the company. I mean together together. On the financial stuff."
His chopsticks pause halfway to his mouth and he exchanges a look with Dominic that lasts less than a second but carries a conversation I'm not invited to.
"A while," Amos says carefully.
"A while meaning months or a while meaning years?"
"A while meaning you're asking questions that are going to lead somewhere I can't take you tonight." Amos' voice stays warm but something in his expression sharpens, a line drawn in the air between us. "Not yet, Niah."
I file that away alongside every other piece of evidence I've been collecting. The shared looks, the coordinated approaches, the financial data Amos has been compiling on his own father's company. Something is happening underneath the surface of this family that I'm only seeing the edges of.
"Okay." I lean back into the couch and let it go because pushing Amos when he gives that particular expression is a losing game. "Not yet."
Dominic's phone buzzes on the arm of the couch. He picks it up, swipes through something with his thumb, and then a deviant smirk crosses his face.
"What?" I ask.
"Your mother is bold." He says it with something that almost sounds like admiration. "I knew she was a gold digger. She practically radiates it. But using my father's credit card is a low blow, even for her."
My stomach drops. "What are you talking about?"
He turns his phone toward me. The screen shows an account statement with a string of charges highlighted in yellow, department stores and boutiques and a spa visit that costs more than two months of my rent at the old apartment. My mother's name is attached to every transaction.
"She's been swiping the account every chance she gets.
" Dominic scrolls through the charges with his thumb.
"Looks like she started the day after she stepped into the house and she's been escalating.
This charge here is from yesterday." He whistles through his teeth.
"Four thousand dollars at Bergdorf's. She doesn't do anything small, does she? "
"She does that." My voice comes out hollow.
The food in my stomach turns to concrete because this is what Mom does, this is always what she does, and seeing the evidence laid out on Dominic's phone screen makes me feel like I'm back in every apartment she ever burned through, watching the scheme unfold from the inside.
"She... fuck. She always does this. She finds the accounts and she drains them and by the time the mark notices, she's already moved on to the next one.
I'm sorry, I didn't know she had access to your father's. .."
"Hey." Amos' arm tightens around my shoulders, his thumb pressing against the side of my neck, right over my pulse. "It's all good, Niah. Breathe."
"It's not all good; she's stealing from your family."
"She's stealing from our father." Dominic pockets his phone and picks his food back up with a shrug.
"We have enough documentation for whatever scheme she'll try to pull, and Father isn't stupid. Hell, I’m pretty sure he gave her her very own card.
If he really cared about the account he would have cut her off immediately. "
"Then why hasn't he?"
Dominic and Amos exchange another look. This one lasts longer than the first, and when Dominic turns back to me his expression carries something I can't read.
"Because your mother isn't the only one running a long game in this house.
" He says it lightly but the weight underneath makes my skin prickle.
"Father lets people take rope, Mattaniah.
He lets them think they're getting away with something.
It's how he identifies what they want so he can use it against them later. "
The pad Thai sits like a stone in my gut.
My mother thinks she's playing Richard. Richard is letting her play because he's building a file on her.
Both of them are circling each other in a game I'm standing in the middle of, and until thirty seconds ago, I didn't even know the board extended past my mother's side.
"You look like you're going to be sick," Amos says.
"I'm recalibrating." I press my fingers against my temples. "I spent my entire life thinking my mother was the smartest person in any room she walked into. Finding out she might have finally met her match is... a lot."
"She's smart." Dominic's hand returns to my knee. "She's just not as smart as she thinks she is. That's a different problem."
The food slowly disappears between the two Alphas but I’m left sifting through my thoughts.
These two aren't just Alphas who want me in their bed.
They're playing a game I don't fully understand against a father I'm terrified of, and they're doing it while simultaneously dismantling my mother's operation and holding me together on a couch with pad Thai and casual touches.
"I have about four hundred more questions," I finally spit out.
"I know you do." Amos presses his mouth against my temple. "And we'll answer them. Just not all tonight."
I settle back into the couch because my body has no interest in going anywhere and the questions can wait.
Amos' arm tightens around my shoulder as I let my head drop against the curve of his neck.
Dominic stretches his legs out and pulls my feet into his lap, before discarding my shoes on the floor, his thumb pressing into the arch of my foot hard enough that a groan escapes me.
"Good?" Dominic asks, his thumb digging into a knot I didn't know I had.
"If you stop, I'll kill you."
Amos laughs against the top of my head, his hand finding its way into my hair and scratching lightly against my scalp while Dominic works the tension out of my feet, the combined effect turning my bones to liquid.
My scent warms and sweetens past the point where the blocker can contain it, filling the small office with evidence of exactly how content I am, both of them silently reacting to it.
"Your mother's going to wonder where you are," Amos murmurs.
"My mother can wonder." I close my eyes as Dominic's thumb finds another knot making my toes curl. "Five more minutes."