Chapter 10
10
Layne
“ I think we can stop pretending now,” I say, finally putting some distance between me and Dante’s mouth. Just to get some air in my lungs. Although I’m pretty sure if push came to shove, I’d be perfectly content to breathe in Dante’s sweet, nutty scent. It’s like Amaretto—almond-infused bitterness hidden behind juicy, summer-sweetened cherries.
“Nope. We need to keep up appearances. Come here.” He flicks his chin up in invitation, but there’s a small push of his designation that makes my reservations disappear.
God, I could kiss this man forever. The same with his brother…and Matteo. I hope we find ourselves in lots of situations that require us to put on these public displays, because I am so down for it.
My tummy rumbles, kind of ruining the moment, and Dante pulls away to look at me. “You haven’t eaten?”
“Honestly, I was too anxious after this morning, and then work was busy. I brought enough food from the restaurant to share, but it’s in the boxes.”
“What happened to our deal about scent blockers?” I ask suddenly, glaring at him. Now that I have a bit of distance from his distracting mouth and intoxicating scent, it hits me that he’s not following our agreement.
“I think you worded it in such a way that Valentine could agree. He should have clarified that we can use blockers in our home, but outside, particularly in our world, it’s a sign of weakness if you cover your scent.”
“Dante.” I start to argue, but my tummy makes an even weirder noise, and I get hit by a wave of dizziness. I blink, trying to make the spinning stop.
Of course, he doesn’t miss it.
“Let’s get you upstairs. They’ll follow in a second.”
“You’re not worried?”
“About them? No chance. I trained them both myself, plus Ahmed…”
And he stops talking mid-sentence.
“Ahmed?” I prompt. I can see him backtracking fast, but it’s not like I ever believed Ahmed was merely an Uber driver.
Dante stops coming up with excuses and looks at me, not surprised or impressed, just watching. After a few moments of neither of us explaining ourselves, we both let the question pass.
It wasn’t hard for me to figure out Ahmed is something besides a struggling Uber driver. He’s overly aware, plus he’s wearing expensive boots with distinctive corded laces. I may have checked how much they cost on my phone while we were driving, and the fact the only retailer that stocks them is a tactical supplier confirmed my suspicions.
But my role here is temporary, which means I don’t need to know everything about what they do and why. Just what relates to me and my safety. Which is a good reminder—a pack of delicious Alphas who can kiss is just a pack of delicious Alphas who can act the part.
“I’d like to go on up. I’m tired and hungry.” I move past Dante and wait at the elevator, ignoring the small wave of confusion I can feel from him.
He comes up behind me and leans over my back to press the button.
Still unsure whether he should be leaving his pack mates, I twist my head and get a clear view out the windows. The women are storming off, leaving Matteo and Valentine to collect my things, which means Dante has nothing to be worried about.
I slip out from under his arm, needing some space and fresh air, instead of his scent, which is making the lines blur between our deal and reality. “We can stop acting now, they’re leaving.”
“You don’t want to know who they are?” he asks just as the elevator arrives and the door opens.
I move into the far corner, and he watches me until I answer. “Not really.”
“Yet you decided to deal with them by publicly claiming us.” He smirks, quirking his eyebrow.
“Well, you are paying me a lot of money for a reason. Before the sun is up, I can guarantee you, every person in your world will be aware of the fact you’re ‘courting.’” I use my fingers to emphasize the word. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Dante doesn’t reply. Instead, he leans against the side of the elevator and watches me. When we arrive at their home, he holds his hand out to stop the doors from closing when I’m slow to move.
“Sorry,” I mumble, stepping out. “Hey, is there another room I can use? Matteo showed me one earlier, but I don’t know, it’s got a weird vibe to it. Anyway, I was wondering if you have a different room I can use while I’m here?”
The blue of his eyes swirls, his scent getting a slight edge to it. “What happened? In the space of, what”—Dante holds his hand out, as though to check his watch—“a few seconds, not even minutes, you’ve done a full about-face.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll try to do better,” I offer blandly, holding his challenging stare.
“Layne, what is going on?” he pushes, making his scent more pronounced and the press of his designation something I nearly can’t ignore. It’s not aggressive, but it is persuasive.
I take a step away from him. And then another. “I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m in the house of a pack I don’t know after quitting my job and leaving people who are worried about me. I acted impulsively when I saw the women downstairs, but I could see how close Valentine was to losing it, and I just responded.”
“And what is the problem with that?”
I shrug, not answering, but I really don’t want to confess that my thoughts and emotions are getting tangled because of their scents. “Perhaps, in the morning, we can discuss how I should and shouldn’t act. I think that’s what it is. I don’t know what I?—”
“Did that guy contact you?” Dante interrupts.
“What? What guy?”
“The one that left his marks all over you?”
“What? No!”
“Then, what is wrong? You are not making sense right now. In the short time I’ve been watching, you’ve appeared so strong and confident, and you have done nothing wrong. Which means something is going on inside your head, and you’re not letting me help!”
“It’s not your job!” I insist.
“Bullshit. If you are not safe, then of course, it’s my job to make you feel safer.”
Dante isn’t angry, but he is determined to get to the bottom of it.
“You were fine when you left for work. And when you got back, you owned the moment better than…”
I feel irrationally foolish, and I know he won’t stop until he gets to the bottom of it. He has that kind of temperament. But then Dante stops talking, and what follows is an obvious moment of realization.
“It’s the scent thing. Right?”
God, this man should be employed by the government as a weapon of secrets deconstruction. Before I can stop myself, I’m confirming he’s on the right path.
“Please, Dante. I can do whatever you need—I know I can—but you have to get everyone to agree to wearing scent blockers.”
Dante looks at me hard, almost scowling. His blue eyes become like jewels as he races through scenarios in his head until his eyes flare, then soften.
“What the fuck did that motherfucker do to you?”
I mean, he’s halfway right in his assumption. Maybe because I’m hungry and I’m tired—tired of life and the way I am living—I’m swaying in my vulnerability, instead of standing proud at surviving. But Dante makes me feel weak, and I kind of hate him for it.
Dante’s jaw locks, and he closes his eyes in a bid to calm himself. “Layne, scents are so fucking important. They give you clues about people’s intentions. This modern bullshit fad of people hiding behind medication is dangerous.”
I scoff, because as an Alpha, he would have no reason to know any different. Scents changing slightly to make way for intentions is irrelevant; if an Alpha wants something, they will take it whether they can scent it or not.
But he’s not finished. “I’ll teach you how to read scents.”
“I know how to read scents, Dante. Far out, everyone does.”
“Then, what does mine say right now?” he asks, dropping a sumptuous cloud of his Amaretto over me, making my jaw ache and my body throb.
I want to tell him the truth about how his scent makes my blood sing and urges me to curl up on his chest and ask him to hold me tight. But the man would think I am nothing but one of the gold diggers they are so intent on avoiding. I take a purposeful breath in and ignore the notes of promise and focus on the steely scent of his need to protect. “It says you’re worried about me not being myself. There’s a stronger part saying you want to prove to me that you can protect me.”
“What else?”
His scent curls around me more, and I smile up at him. “It says I should get some rest because you’re going to teach me what to do after reading a person’s scent. You’ll show me how to protect myself.”
It doesn’t at all, but I twist the situation around until it works, or we will be here all night. No matter how much he pushes, I’m not admitting the truth that I’m already wondering how I’m going to survive leaving them in fifty-nine days.
When you combine Valentine’s heady coffee scent with Matteo’s sweet vanilla scent and Dante’s Amaretto, the three of them are a walking, talking, breathtaking to look at affogato. We are so scent compatible that, when I think about them, I can not only taste their individual scents, but I can also visualize each of them, down to the smallest detail.
And that is scary as hell.
“Hey,” he says softly, “I thought you said we were done acting? I mean, if we’re still pretending, come here.”
The man can flip his mood and the different hats he wears as quickly and as easily as I can. When he runs his hand up my shoulder to rest on the back of my neck, with his other hand, he lifts my chin, dipping down to kiss me back to being dreamy.
Dante is more restrained than he was downstairs. His sweet kisses are still full of hunger, but they’re lazier, like it’s a Sunday morning and we have time to do nothing but make out.
I’m helpless to stop the moan I make, and instead of pulling away, he sucks my lower lip into his mouth and holds it between his teeth until I’m looking at him. He lets my lip drag slowly from between his teeth before he flicks his eyebrows up suggestively. “Better.”
“Better what?”
He runs his fingers through his hair, standing up to his full height, the blue of his eyes lost behind the heat we’re both ignoring. “We need to practice doing that more. No one will believe we’re courting if you kiss me like that in public.”
Not letting me get in another word again, Dante moves fast and sweeps me off my feet. He carries me into the bedroom Matteo set up.
“You need to be in this room.” He talks quickly, leaving no space for argument. “If we have anyone come visit, and they see you’ve been sleeping on the sofa and not in here, everything we’re doing will be for nothing.”
Which is the only reason I agree to use the De Luca Omega suite.
For a few seconds, I nearly believe my own BS too.
When I come back out after the world's most incredible shower, smelling like all the luxury soaps and lotions they had lined up, ready for me to use, the overhead lights in the room are off but the bedside lamp is on. The soft glow is so warm and inviting. As is the tray of food set up on the bed, as well as a brand-new satin sleep set.
Bypassing all those small luxuries, I pick up the note first and the single white lily. The perfume of the flower is exquisite, but it’s the lingering scent of two Alphas and a Beta who each wrote something small on the note that has me smiling like a lunatic.
“I’ll get better at this, I promise,” I say quietly to myself.
When I dress for bed in the silky mint-green pajamas, I say it again.
And again, when I taste the risotto someone heated up. It’s incredible.
I think I say it over and over nearly fifty times until I fall asleep in the middle of the softest, most wondrous bed I have ever dared to dream about.
I wake up in the morning to an empty house. I don’t find the note they left on the kitchen counter until I have walked through nearly the whole place, looking for them.
It’s weird that I don’t see them that entire day. Or the next. By the time I go to bed on the third, I’m starting to think they’ve changed their minds, despite the different colored notes they leave each morning, telling me they’re busy.