Chapter 9 #2
I let myself rest for a while. The silence is peaceful, calming almost, and I drift off into a hazy sleep even though I know I shouldn’t. Just a few minutes. Not long.
I come to slowly, the way you do on a Sunday morning when there is nowhere to be. The sun has moved. The warmth on my face has shifted from forehead to cheek. My shoulders are loose in a way they have not been in weeks.
Then, I register that someone is watching me.
I open my eyes.
Sienna is sitting across from me.
Not behind the oak, where I left her. Here.
Facing me. Legs drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, chin resting on the top of one knee.
Her blazer is off and folded under her as a cushion.
Her hair has come half out of its twist. There is a single leaf caught in it that she hasn’t brushed away.
She is looking at me with an expression I can’t read.
I blink at her slowly. “When did you move?”
The corner of her mouth tugs. “Ten minutes ago.” Her voice is soft, the kind of soft you use around someone you don’t want to wake. “You fell asleep.”
I feel the heat climb up the back of my neck before I can stop it.
The Alpha of Silvercrest Pack does not fall asleep in his own garden in the middle of the working day, and certainly not near the woman he is trying, with the discipline of his entire being, to keep at arm’s length.
“I was…” I clear my throat, sit up straighter, rake a hand through my hair and discover it is sticking up at an angle. “The sun.”
“The sun,” she repeats gravely.
“It was warm.”
“It is warm,” she agrees, amusement in her eyes.
“I’d been working since breakfast.”
“Mm.”
I feel embarrassed and flustered, two emotions I never experience. But this woman seems to bring out parts of me that I never thought existed.
Slowly and deliberately, she lifts one hand and reaches across the short space between us. My whole body goes still. Her fingers don’t touch my skin; they find the knot of my tie instead and hover there, just close enough that I can feel the heat of her hand through the fabric.
“I like your tie,” she murmurs.
My pulse jumps so hard, I swear she can see it in my throat.
“I just wanted,” I say, and my voice comes out lower than I mean it to, “some color in my attire.”
Her eyes, clear and very green in this light, lift to mine. She is thoroughly amused.
“Is that so.”
“Mm hmm.”
“Just a phase you’re going through.”
“Personal growth,” I say, because I have lost my mind.
Her mouth curves. She holds the tie between two fingers for one more heartbeat—she appears thoughtful, as if considering whether to pull on it. Then, with a look that could be pity or cruelty but is unmistakably one of a woman enjoying herself, she lets go of it and pushes herself up to her feet.
She stretches both arms over her head. Her blouse rides up an inch. I try my best not to look and fail. I drag my eyes up to the canopy of the oak like a child being tested in school, looking for the answer.
Sienna rolls her head on her neck, addressing the sky. “I’m thinking of getting my two assistants some brighter clothes.”
I take a deep breath to calm myself.
“They look like funeral directors,” she continues in a conversational tone. “Matching black suits. No personality. It’s a little bleak, honestly. I might take them into town and pick out a few things. Cheerful colors. A nice—”
I am on my feet without thinking, my hand closing around her wrist. “No.”
She looks down at where my fingers are pressing her pulse point. Then, she looks up at me, blinking slowly, and tilts her head to one side.
“Why not?” she says pleasantly. “I am a single woman.”
Something in me snaps.
I turn her. One smooth motion and her back is against the trunk of the tree, my hand releasing her wrist so I can plant a palm flat against the bark beside her shoulder. My other hand comes up on her other side to cage her in.
My wolf is snarling. “I said no.”
She doesn’t so much as flinch. Her chin even lifts slightly. “I asked you why.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The leaf is still caught in her hair. Her lips are parted. I can smell her—jasmine, citrus, and her warm, clean skin. I realize there is no answer I can give her that is not the truth.
She watches me fail to find words. Her eyes drop, deliberately, to my mouth.
Then, she leans forward. Just slightly, but it’s enough that I can feel her breath on my lips. Enough that my entire nervous system short-circuits between one heartbeat and the next. Because she is only a breath away, close enough that all I would have to do is drop my head half an inch.
“Careful, Alpha Steele,” she whispers, a smirk in her voice. “I might start to think you’re jealous.”
The words are like a hand around my throat.
Before I can do a single thing, before I can decide whether to lean in or pull back or simply remember to breathe, she ducks neatly under my left arm, picks up her things, and walks away.
I stand there with my palms flat against the tree, my heart pounding in my ears, my mouth open on a word I did not get around to saying, staring at the space where she was a second ago. I can still feel the warmth of her along the front of my body. Her scent is still in the air.
My wolf is a low, continuous growl under my skin.
I close my eyes, press my forehead against the rough bark, and silently count backward from ten.
Finally, I shove off the trunk and drag both hands down my face. What is wrong with me? She’s not even doing anything, and I’m panting after her like a dog, unable to let her go.
Across the lawn, very faintly, I hear the sound of her heels in the stone courtyard.
My pants feel uncomfortably tight, and the ghost of her breath lingers on my skin.
I can still feel how thin her wrist was, the weight of it pressed into my fingers.
Blindly, I look down at my hand. Somewhere in the back of my head, a very patient voice is telling me that I have just made everything worse.
I don’t sleep well that night. Lying on my back in the dark, I listen to my heartbeat, going over every second of the exchange under the oak like a cop examining a crime scene.
I play out what happened from different angles, imagining how I could have stepped back, the moment I could have released her wrist, every single thing I should have said but didn’t.
By the time the sun comes up, I have settled only one thing: she is not buying those men any fucking clothes.
By six-thirty, I am at my desk. Dressed in the most severe black suit I own, with a tie the color of tar. My wolf, deeply displeased by this decision, has been pacing inside me for an hour. I ignore him.
At quarter past eight, I hear footsteps in the corridor outside my office. Two sets. Cheerful, familiar voices. The unmistakable rustle of shopping bags.
I am at my door before I have thought it through.
“Vance. Cole.”
Both of them stop.
Jason Vance has three bags in one hand, a coffee in the other, and a truly regrettable smile on his face, the kind of smile a man wears when a woman he admires has just given him a gift. Eric Cole is carrying a smaller bag and a box, and at least he has the good sense to look wary.
“Alpha,” Vance says. “Good morning.”
“What’s in the bags?”
“Oh.” He glances down at them, still smiling. “Miss Carter picked up some things for us last night. Said our wardrobes were too gloomy for an integration team. She’s got a real eye. It’s—”
“Give them to me.”
Vance’s smile falters. “Alpha?”
I hold out my hand.
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t have to. The look on my face has Cole taking a small, instinctive step backward. Vance looks down at his hand, then up at mine, then back and forth in the hallway as if he is hoping someone else will arrive and explain what is happening.
“Sir, she—”
“You are not permitted to accept gifts from the liaison. Neither of you. It is a conflict of interest while the assessment is ongoing. Hand them over.”
It’s a thin excuse. We all know it’s a thin excuse. But I am the alpha of this pack, standing in my own estate house, very obviously sleep-deprived, and neither of these men is going to argue with me.
The parcels change hands.
Vance appears, briefly, as if he wants to say something. Then, he looks at my face again, and he does not say it.
“Understood, Alpha,” Cole says quietly.
“Go.”
They scurry away with their tails between their legs.
I walk back into my office with four shopping bags looped over my wrist and a box under my arm. I set it all down on my desk in a neat row.
I look at them for a long time.
Then, I open the first one.
Inside is a shirt in a deep, cornflower blue, folded with tissue paper tucked under the collar the way nice shops do.
I stand there in my black suit and tar-colored tie, my hands holding the blue shirt that my fated mate bought for another man, and for a second, I’m not sure whether I am going to laugh or put my fist through the wall.
I place the shirt back into its bag with more care than it deserves. I leave all the packages on my desk, sit down in my chair, and stare down the curve of the west wing at the open window of her office for a long, long time.