Nineteen
I stumbled away from Edison’s office door, my heart hammering in my chest as I sucked in a drag of air that was clean of Perrie and Edison’s intermingled scents.
I’d been coming to tell Edison about the latest word from the Japanese—which wasn’t much of anything as they still didn’t know who had framed them for ambushing our shipment—when I’d heard the familiar moan of the omega who I’d spent nearly every waking moment with for the past two weeks.
The door had been open only a crack, just enough to see a very naked Perrie clinging to Edison, the muscles in her slender back spasming as he thrust inside of her. Not wanting to eavesdrop on their moment, I’d initially turned to walk away, but then Edison’s golden eyes had caught mine and we stared each other down.
His expression told me everything I needed to know. He wanted me to throw caution to the wind and come into the office to join him.
He’d even teased Perrie about it and when I’d seen her seem to become even more feral at his words, her moans growing louder, I’d nearly done it.
Following Perrie around for the past two weeks, it was nearly impossible not to like the younger woman.
She looked at the world around her with a gaze that no one in my line of business did, finding the beauty in the little things like the way light hit the water of a fountain or watching pigeons beg for scraps of food from the college students on campus. She used that eye to take her pictures, but she’d also looked at me in that same way.
Like she saw some sort of beauty in me and I’d caught her snapping pictures of me more than once when we were sitting in the quad eating lunch.
There were a few times I’d almost asked her to see the pictures so I could see what she did, but that wasn’t what a bodyguard did, so I resisted the urge.
But watching her with Edison had nearly made me forget all of that.
Then, like always, the voice of Edison’s father whispered into my ear the way it always did when I considered having more with Edison.
Keane leaders don’t have packs .
It was stupid and traditional—but at its core it made sense. The Keanes valued bloodlines above all else, specifically the golden eyes that were a show of that purity.
What if I gave in with Perrie and one of her children came out with dark eyes? Could I live with myself if a child was treated the way I had been?
I was barely a Keane as it was. My father was a part of a distant branch of the clan and my mother had been a sex worker. He denied my existence for the first nine years of my life, and if I closed my eyes, I could still envision the dirty studio apartment I’d lived in with my mother until Declan Keane had shown up one day.
He’d offered me his hand and a place next to his son, probably knowing that giving an abused little boy a chance at life would buy the kind of loyalty you couldn’t get anywhere else.
Which was exactly what was fucking me up about the whole situation with Perrie. I should have felt that loyalty to Declan, even if he was dead, and ignored Edison’s actions completely. I was supposed to be his subordinate and now that Edison had a wife he could trust not to kill him in his sleep, I needed to stop our little arrangement.
So why did even the thought of it make me feel as if I’d swallowed glass?
“Hey, bossman,” Collum greeted as I stepped into the gym.
I ignored him in favor of heading for the changing room where I kept my workout clothes.
As I changed, I groaned when I realized that I was sporting a half-hard erection. There was no way I was going to be able to go back out there like this.
I could still hear the guys outside chatting with each other as the sound of weights clanging together filled the gym.
Shucking my clothing off, I stepped into one of the shower rooms and pulled the door firmly shut behind me.
Turning the water to as cold as I could get it, I stepped under the spray with a hiss and stared down at my current predicament.
Seeing Perrie and Edison like that had been… shocking. She’d spent the past few days ignoring him and I knew it had been pissing him off, so to find them on his desk had been like a fever dream.
Hearing the sounds of Edison’s grunts and Perrie’s moans had nearly done me in, but that hadn’t been the strongest pull coming from Edison’s study. No, that had been their scents.
Perrie perfumed often without realizing it—her strawberry scent leaving a delicious trail in her wake as she went about her day. There had been several times I’d had to glare off some of the younger alpha idiots on campus who tried to talk to her when they caught a whiff of it in the air.
But Edison’s vanilla scent almost never swelled the way it was when I found them together.
The only time it came even close was when we were together in his room.
My mouth had watered as I sucked in long drags of it and I could still taste it on my tongue even as I stood under the icy waterfall.
“ Fuck ,” I muttered to myself when I glanced down to find that instead of calming down, my cock had raised to full attention thanks to the turn of my thoughts.
With a groan, I wrapped a hand around my length and gave it a pump, images of Edison and Perrie together filling my mind. My hips jerked forward, as if urging my hand on and I finally gave in.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, jerking my cock and chasing the image of the two people that made me feel the most off balance, but by the time I came and jets of cum splashed down the drain, the water had become tepid against my icy skin.
Shivering, I stepped out of the shower and grabbed the towel, immediately starting to dry my hair.
It was at that moment that I realized I wasn’t alone in the locker room anymore.
“You were in there for a while,” Edison’s voice made me freeze mid-scrub of the towel.
Pulling the cloth away from my face, I found Edison sitting on one of the long wooden benches that lined the lockers. He was still dressed the same as earlier, though he’d haphazardly tucked his shredded shirt back into his pants and hadn’t even bothered to hide the freshly bruised bite mark peeking out from underneath his undershirt.
“Where’s Perrie?” I asked, surprised he’d been able to deflate his knot so quickly. Neither of us had ever knotted an omega—and alphas rarely tried it with each other—but Edison’s knot could sometimes stay swollen for hours after sex.
One glance at the clock told me it had barely been thirty minutes since I stepped into the shower to relieve some of the tension in my body. Tension that was very quickly returning again now as we stared at each other.
As my body warmed up again, all of the senses that had been dulled by the cold water were starting to return, including my sense of smell.
Edison was wearing Perrie’s scent on him like a badge of honor and even though he was sitting several feet away from me, I could smell it as if he was rubbing it in my face.
“She’s asleep in her nest. She was a bit worn out after our time together.”
I snorted at that. Anyone would be after getting fucked by Edison Keane. The man was an animal that didn’t know when to give someone a break.
“So why are you here instead of there with her?”
“Because I want to know why you didn’t come in and join us.” Edison folded his hands in his lap, shooting me a glare that made me realize that I had hurt the other man’s feelings when I’d turned and ran earlier. “You heard me ask her about it, an explicit invitation, and yet you still didn’t come in.”
“You don’t understand—” I began wrapping the towel around my waist and securing it in a knot.
“I understand your reservations completely, Rhodes,” Edison cut me off before I could say anything else. “My father has been dead for two years and yet you still bow to him like a dog.”
That hurt like a bitch to hear Edison say and I worked to not flinch at the words he was throwing at me like darts.
Edison uncrossed his legs and stood, crossing the tiled space to me. He smelled of vanilla and strawberries, and it nearly made me stumble right back into the shower for another round of Antarctic-tug-and-pull.
“Stop.” I put a hand out to keep him from coming any closer.
Edison’s expression crumpled a little bit, his gold eyes pinching at the corners as he frowned at me. “I’m trying to give you the world here. You like her and I’m fairly sure she likes you judging by the way she clamped down on my knot when I mentioned you earlier. So why are you so reticent about it all? Is it the branch heads?”
It was. Edison’s position had been on shaky ground since he took over and throwing out all of the traditions and values that the oldest members of the Keane clan held had made it even worse.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I was the reason for toppling the man who was everything to me.
“It was supposed to be a secret.”
“What was?”
“Us. The things we do in the privacy of your room,” I muttered, looking away from his intent gaze. Only Edison had ever been able to tell my real feelings just by looking me in the eyes.
“We fuck. Call it like it is. Are you ashamed of us fucking?” Edison asked slowly.
I wasn’t. But what had started as sex out of necessity had transformed into the sort of naturally progression partnership that I realized I always wanted with Edison.
I’d spent years watching him pursue men and women—though he usually favored those of the fairer sex—and it used to make me irrationally angry.
But I’d always told myself that it was because he was putting himself in danger by the constant revolving door that he surrounded himself with. I had even gone so far as convincing myself that it was because Edison needed to just get married so that I could better protect him.
And now he was married and I still felt jealous. Except I didn’t want Perrie to disappear—no in fact I felt the opposite. I wanted to do exactly as Edison had asked earlier and join them.
I had no good answer for Edison, so I said nothing and we stood there in the locker room for what felt like hours but must’ve only been minutes.
Finally, I heard Edison sigh. “Fine. I hear you loud and clear.”
Tension started to seep out of the tight bunch of my shoulders as Edison turned to walk away.
Then he stopped at the door and turned. “But if you don’t want this—me and Perrie—in front of the world to see, then you won’t get it in private either. Make a choice Rhodes. You can either continue to live in the past, or take a step forward with me into a much brighter future.”
The door to the locker room slammed shut with a bang, leaving me still standing in just a towel but feeling like I’d been stripped down to the bone by the man who I would never admit out loud that I was actually in love with.
“It’ll be so fun, I swear!” I heard Kailey squeal to Perrie as they sat ten feet away from me in the on-campus coffee shop they frequented most days after classes.
Three weeks had passed since Edison confronted me, and strangely enough, everything settled back into the same comfortable routine that we’d built up ever since Perrie came to live at the Keane Estate.
Breakfast together every morning, then I followed Perrie around to all of her classes and half-pretend to be paying attention to camera shutter speed and settings, lunch in the Quad where Perrie would try in vain to get me to conversate for longer than a couple of words, afternoon classes, then Perrie would get coffee with her friend, after that we’d go home, have dinner together, maybe do some self-defense lessons and then everyone goes to bed.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
I was absolutely miserable.
Edison made good on his word from that day and everything was like it had been four years ago before we’d started our secret rendezvous. He didn’t treat me poorly, but now there was a wall between us that I didn’t realize had been torn down over the years of our sexual relationship.
Sometimes I thought he was staring at me when we worked in his office in the evenings, but every time I turned to look he was focused on his work again.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…” I could hear Perrie say, her part of the conversation being quickly muddled by the busy coffee shop as one of the baristas used the milk frother.
Even though whatever Edison and I had been now seemed to be gone completely, Perrie and Edison’s relationship seemed to have taken off like a rocket.
There was a softness and an intimacy that hadn’t been present before that day in Edison’s office. They would reach for each other at mealtimes and I’d caught Edison staring out of his study window that overlooked the pool where Perrie spent most of her late afternoons swimming and taking pictures.
Not to mention the fact that Edison barely ever slept in his room anymore, instead choosing to head to the tower most nights to be with his omega.
Everything was as it should be and I should’ve been happy about it. Yet, with each passing day, I felt more and more discontent. Like I was being left behind completely.
“C’mon, Per, you never do anything outside of normal, live a little!” Kailey cajoled and I watched the taller beta give Perrie a nudge with her elbow.
I was on my feet before she could say anything else.
“And what is it you’re trying to convince her to do?” I asked, sliding into the seat next to Perrie and glaring at the other girl.
Kailey glared right back, her nose scrunching with irritation.
At first, Kailey had blushed every time she looked back at me while she walked with Perrie to class, and then things had taken a turn when she tried to get Perrie to go to a bar with her.
Kailey was a young college girl, so it made sense that she wanted to go out and party. But Perrie wasn’t allowed.
Just the thought of trying to keep her protected in a crowd of people made my skin itch and she refused to let a team follow her around. So bars were off limits.
“It’s okay, Mr. Knight, your princess isn’t going to go into any strange clubs or bars. I’m just trying to get her to come over to my place for a girl’s night—and by girl’s night I do mean girls only.”
“No.” My answer was automatic as my brain conjured up a million possibilities of what could go wrong.
Perrie seemed to deflate at my fast refusal, glancing over at Kailey who looked as if she was about to pop with how red her face was getting.
“I know she’s a married woman, but you can’t just cloister her away in the house all the time. She needs to be social. To meet new friends and I’ve got a group of girlfriends that are perfect for her.”
I grimaced at that. Whatever friends Kailey had, I wasn’t sure I wanted them to hang around Perrie.
“Kailey, can you give Perrie and me a moment?” I asked, dismissing the girl before she could continue her campaign to let Perrie go to girl’s night.
Kailey looked like she wanted to argue, but Perrie just shook her head quickly.
With a sigh, the other girl stood up. “Fine, but I’ll be back in five minutes and I hope you’ll pull your head out of your ass enough to let Perrie have a fun Saturday night.”
I waited for her to leave before finally turning back to Perrie who was picking at her cuticles. “I can’t protect you at something like that, Perrie.”
“I can protect myself you know—you even said it yourself yesterday that I’ve gotten better at defending myself.”
That was true. Perrie had made huge strides in a short amount of time during the stolen hours of self-defense classes that we managed to get in. But we hadn’t even started on how to disarm an assailant with a weapon and Perrie’s stamina still left much to be desired.
Despite being able to swim for long stretches, on land she could barely run a mile without needing a break and more often than not she was left wheezing by the time we finished the more complicated maneuvers of self-defense.
Eli had told me after her clean bill of health at her check-up that her body could take years to build the kind of stamina a completely healthy young adult should have again and to take it easy on her.
Which meant that if she was alone and being attacked, I highly doubted that she’d be able to defend herself against an assailant bigger than her which was most people seeing as she was barely five-foot-two and it seemed like a stray wind could take her away.
Perrie’s gray eyes lifted to meet mine, practically pleading for me to agree. “And we’re just going to be at Kailey’s house. You and the security guys you pretend aren’t on campus everyday with us can sit outside in a van or something.”
I frowned. Perrie wasn’t supposed to know about the team of five that were on standby in case I needed them. We were supposed to be playing along with the illusion that it was just me on campus protecting her.
“Please, Rhodes, I’ve never been to a sleepover before.”
Perrie’s words shot right through my resolve. I should have said no again and left it at that, but the memory of how she’d looked the first night we’d met rose unbidden in my mind.
She’d only been eighteen then and had been about forty pounds lighter, but she’d had that same look in her gray eyes. Like life was busy passing her by and she didn’t know how to stop it.
“Fine,” I finally gave in with a sigh. “But you will keep your phone on you at all times and if I see anything weird happening, we go.”
Perrie squealed and threw herself out of her chair at me, her arms linking around my neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you !”
Strawberry mixed with vanilla filled my nose as I held myself stiff in her embrace. I hadn’t really smelled it up close since Edison had confronted me in the locker room and I wanted to pull her fully into my lap and press my nose to where the mingled scent was the strongest.
But Kailey was already returning with a fresh coffee in hand and a squeal of her own.
“Did he say yes?”
Perrie nodded and slumped back into her own seat, her pale cheeks flushed pink as her brows drew together into a momentarily confused expression before Kailey was also wrapping her up in a hug.
“This is going to be so fun!” The beta looked over at me with dancing eyes. “Thank you, Mr. Knight-in-shining armor. You won’t regret it!”
But two days later as I stood in Kailey’s living room staring at Perrie’s cell phone on the coffee table and none of the girls to be found, I realized just how much I’d fucked up agreeing to let her go.
Pressing call on Edison’s number, my words caught in my throat when he finally answered.
“Hey, what’s up? I’m in the middle of a meeting right now. Is sitting in the van boring you more than you thought it would?” Edison was in the next city over for a meeting with Shuuhei Saito who’d apparently dug something up—something that had put Edison in a good enough mood to agree to let his wife hang out with her friends for the evening.
“Edison,” I began, my words choked. “I lost her.”