8. Chapter 8
Chapter eight
Alex
Tomlinson's office is warmer than I expected.
Books on actual shelves, not for display. A coffee maker on the credenza that looks used. Two chairs across from his desk, a window behind him facing the quad, afternoon light coming in low and grey.
He's at his desk when I come in, jacket on. He looks up when I knock and gestures to the chair.
I sit. Dalton takes his position near the door.
Tomlinson looks at me for a moment — the direct gaze I've come to recognize, no management in it.
"I wanted to talk to you about Becky," he says.
"Okay," I say.
"She's one of our best RAs," he says. "Reliable, perceptive, good with students who are having a hard time adjusting." He pauses. "She came to me this morning and asked to be reassigned from your case."
I keep my face even.
"She didn't give me a specific reason," he says. "Which is unusual for Becky. She's normally very articulate about her reasoning." He holds my gaze. "I'm not asking you to explain yourself. I'm asking if there's something I should know — something that would help me support both of you better."
I look at him. The honest eyes. The not-pushing quality of him, the man who told me I had space to breathe here and meant it without an angle behind it.
"She's fine," I say. "I'm fine. I know where everything is. I don't need an RA."
He nods slowly. "You're not going to tell me what happened."
"Nothing happened," I say.
He looks at me for a long moment. Decides not to push.
"Okay," he says. "If you change your mind about wanting support, my door is open.
" He reaches behind his desk and lifts a gym bag onto the surface.
"In the meantime — I heard your belongings situation is limited.
We keep some basics on hand for students who arrive without notice. "
He unzips the bag.
Workout gear — leggings, a thermal top, socks, all of it in dark colors, nothing that looks like it came from a supply room.
Running shoes, my size, laces still new.
And underneath, folded carefully, a parka.
Heavy, properly insulated. Forest green — the deep solid color of the treeline outside my window.
I look at it.
The parka. The shoes. The thermal top folded like someone thought about how it would arrive.
"Thank you," I say.
He nods once. Doesn't add to it. "The parka especially. Alaska in February without a proper coat is a statement I'd rather not have any of my students making." The almost-smile. "Even the ones who aren't technically students."
I zip the bag closed and stand. "Thank you," I say again.
He nods. "Take care of yourself, Alex."
Dalton holds the door and we step out into the cold. I pull the parka from the bag before we've made it off the faculty building steps and put it on and it's warm immediately — properly, entirely warm, the kind that wraps around and stays.
"The color," Dalton says.
"I know," I say.
"It suits you."
I look at him sideways. He looks back. Sincere, no production.
We walk. The afternoon is quiet — late enough that most classes have ended, early enough that the dining hall hasn't opened for dinner.
The quad has the stillness of a campus between things, a few students cutting across the paths, someone's music from an upper window.
I'm thinking about RJ at the fence. About Lumi and what she's still working on.
The door to the building on my left opens and Gray steps out, takes one look at me, and grabs my hand.
"Hey—"
He pulls me inside.
Empty study room — round table, chairs, a whiteboard with notes half-erased on it. Gray lets go of my hand and leans against the table. Dalton comes through the door behind us and pulls it closed.
"Meeting go okay," Gray says.
"Fine," I say. "Tomlinson wanted to know why Becky asked to be reassigned."
"What did you tell him."
"Nothing happened."
Gray's mouth pulls. "And what actually happened."
"Nothing," I say. "Happened."
He looks at me, then at Dalton. Dalton is leaning against the closed door with his arms crossed, jaw working slightly, holding whatever's in his face down to a controlled simmer.
"Writing 101," Gray says, turning back to me. "You want to explain that."
"Explain what."
"You put your hand on my face," he says. "In front of the whole class."
"I was redirecting your attention," I say.
"From Becky."
"From the conversation you were having with Becky."
"The conversation she was having at me," Gray says. "I wasn't participating."
"I know," I say. "I was clarifying that."
Gray looks at Dalton. "Does that sound like clarifying to you."
Dalton's eyebrow goes up. Slow. "It sounds," he says, "like our alpha was letting everyone know who is hers."
"That's not—" I start.
"Because," Dalton continues, like I haven't said anything, "that's exactly what it looked like."
"I was—"
"You grabbed his face," Gray says. "In front of seven people."
"She wasn't in the room yet."
"Seven people," Gray says. "That's not better."
"She was bothering you."
"She was talking to me."
"About showing you around," I say. "Which is my job."
Gray goes still. The amusement drops out of his expression, replaced by something warmer — his eyes steadying on my face, his head tilting just slightly, the look of a man who has just been handed information he's going to sit with.
"Your job," he says.
"Somebody has to," I say. "You don't know where anything is."
"I found the library," he says.
"Because I told you where it was."
"And the dining hall."
"Window table, left side, faces the trees," I say. "I told you that too."
"So you're very invested," he says, "in making sure I know where things are."
"I'm invested," I say, "in not having Becky show you where things are."
The room is quiet.
Then Gray says, "Yeah," and crosses the room. He stops close — the bond running warm between us, his eyes on my face.
"For the record," he says, low. "I didn't need the clarification."
"I know," I say.
"But I didn't mind it."
He puts his hand on my jaw the way I put mine on his — not asking, just placing it there, his thumb at my cheekbone.
"Ours," he says.
I hold his gaze. "Yeah," I say. "Ours."
Then Dalton says, from the door, "This is a study room."
We both look at him.
He's still leaning against the door, arms crossed. "With a lock," he adds. "For what it's worth."
Gray looks at me. I look at Dalton.
"Lock it then," I say.
He does.
***
Gray takes the parka off me first.
He unzips it slowly, his eyes on my face the whole time, and drops it over the nearest chair.
Then his hands find the hem of my shirt and he pulls it over my head and I let him.
He takes his time with everything underneath — unhurried, systematic, the same focus he brings to everything that matters to him.
By the time he's done I'm sitting on the edge of the table in nothing and he's stepping back to look at me.
I let him look.
Dalton is still against the wall. Jacket off now, shirt open at the collar, one hand loose at his side.
He's watching Gray look at me and his jaw is set and his eyes are dark and his other hand has moved to the front of his pants, slow and deliberate, watching us like he has all the time in the world even though his bond says otherwise.
"You're comfortable over there," I say.
"Very," he says.
Gray drops to his knees.
He pulls my hips to the edge of the table and puts his mouth on me and the sound I make is not quiet.
His hands hold my thighs exactly where he wants them, pining me and he works me open with his tongue in slow precise circles that make my whole body pull toward him.
I grab the back of his head. He makes a sound against me that I feel everywhere.
I look at Dalton.
He's still watching. His cock is out and his hand is moving now, slow strokes, his eyes going between my face and Gray's mouth and back to my face. The bond between us is a low urgent heat, the controlled patience of him burning off one degree at a time.
"Come here," I say.
He pushes off the wall.
He crosses the room and stops in front of me, behind Gray. Leaning forward, I reach for Dalton. I wrap my hand around him and he makes a sound low in his chest and his hand comes up to grip the back of my neck — not rough, just there, holding.
I bend forward and take him into my mouth.
His grip tightens. His other hand finds my hair.
He doesn't push, just holds, and I take him deeper and feel him shudder and hear the sound he makes when I find the right pressure and the right rhythm and Gray pulls me farther onto his face, I am being held there as he cradles my ass and eats me.
He is making it very difficult to concentrate.
Gray works me to the edge of orgasm and keeps me there, reading every shift in my breathing and adjusting, and Dalton's hands are in my hair and his bond is blazing and I'm making sounds into him that I can feel vibrating through both of us — and I can't think, can't track anything beyond the two of them and what they're doing and the bond marks blazing on my wrist. Dalton breaks first, spilling down my throat and then I’m done.
I come with my face pressed against Dalton's hip and Gray's name coming out of me and Gray's hands holding me through all of it.
Gray stands.
He strips off his clothes and focuses on me as he moves behind me. His hands find my hips and pull me back into him and I feel him there — the heat of him, the bond blazing bright — and then he pushes inside me slowly and we all go still.
Dalton is in front of me. Gray is behind me.
"Okay," Gray says. Not a question.
"Yes," I say. "Move."
He moves.
The angle hits — deep, exact, no adjustment needed.
My hands go to Dalton’s hips. He’s already there, already pulling my face up, forcing me to look at him.
Whatever he keeps locked down is gone. No distance. No professionalism. Just Dalton watching me take Gray like he’s one second from losing control.
The bond on my wrist flares. I gasp.
"There," Gray says, catching it. He drives into it again, deliberate.
"There—" I try, and it comes out wrecked.
Dalton’s thumb presses into my lower lip, drags it down. His eyes are blown wide, dark enough to swallow light.
"You look—"
"Don’t," I cut him off. "Not nice. I can’t do nice right now."
That almost-smile — wrong for the moment — flickers and disappears.
"I wasn’t going to," he says.
Then he leans in and says what he was going to say — low, filthy, precise — and my grip snaps tight around his wrists.
Gray feels it. His hands lock on my hips.
The rhythm breaks.
Then rebuilds — faster.
Gray's rhythm driving deep and steady, Dalton's hand finding my clit and working in tight circles, both bonds blazing at full frequency, the bond marks on my wrist so hot the skin around them pulses with it.
I come hard and loud with Gray's name and Dalton's, my whole body locking up and then releasing in waves, and Gray drives through it with his jaw against my shoulder and follows me over with my name in his throat, and Dalton's hands hold my face and his eyes stay on mine through all of it.
We stay like that for a moment.
All three of us.
The room settles around us. The air shifts. Normal sounds slowly return.
***
I end up between them on the floor — Gray gets there first, pulls me down. Dalton follows.
Gray at my back, his arm around me, his heartbeat slowing under my hand where I’ve pressed it to his chest. Dalton facing me, his thumb moving along the bond marks on my wrist with the slow, careful attention he gives to things that matter to him.
Nobody says anything for a while.
The bonds run warm.
"The face grab," Gray says eventually. Into my hair.
"Yes," I say.
"You were marking your territory."
"I was clarifying a social situation."
Dalton makes a sound. Wipes his nose with the back of his hand — the tell that only comes out when something actually gets him.
"She's not going to admit it," he says.
"I know," Gray says. "She doesn't have to."
"I'm right here," I say.
"We know," Gray says.
Outside the window the campus is going into evening — lights coming on in the dorm windows, someone crossing the quad, the treeline going dark. The forest between here and everything I'm not allowed to go back to yet.
But right now Gray is warm at my back and Dalton's thumb is moving on my wrist and the bonds are running quiet and full and I'm not going anywhere yet.
"We should go," I say. Not moving.
"Yes," Gray says. Not moving either.
Dalton looks at the window. Looks at me. Looks at Gray.
"Five more minutes," he says.
We stay.