Page 34 of Gift from the Tree

“Finally, my brain’s melting, and my stomach’s eating my spine,” Draken says dramatically, standing up and stretching his arms over his head, exposing his tanned, lower abs.

God, he’s a fine specimen of a man.

He clears his throat and I rapidly pull my eyes up and meet his hungry cobalt orbs. Other than the heated look reflecting back at me, he thankfully doesn’t call me out on my wandering eyes, and I duck my head to hide my embarrassment.

Since when do I ogle men? Especially a man I only met a day ago.

Jeez, get it together, Willow.

“Ready to go eat, little wanderer? The guys are going to be waiting on us,” he says.

“Why would they be waiting?”

“Oh, well, we eat dinner together every night that we can. We have since we became a Nexus group,” he answers nervously.

“I don’t want to interrupt your routine. I can eat dinner with Gaster or alone in the room I’m staying in.” I kindly try to reject.

It’s not that I don’t want to join Draken for dinner. I don’t want to be in a room with the other three. Corentin’s a grade-A asshole, despite his gentleness when I panicked. Caspian looks at me with such disdain it makes me uncomfortable. And Tillman won’t even speak to me. I don’t want to be stuck in a room with three guys who clearly don’t want anything to do with me.

“You aren’t interrupting anything. We want you there,” he says with full conviction.

“You may want me there, Draken, but the other three most certainly don’t.” I snort.

“Everyone just needs time to get to know one another. They know and are expecting you to be there.” He doubles down.

“Fine. But the moment Corentin’s an asshole, I’m out,” I agree, giving in to the puppy dog eyes he’s shooting me.

“He won’t be. Come on, I need food.”

“Gaster, are you joining us?” I ask him hopefully.

“Not tonight, child. I need to stay and get some work done. I’ll come to get you in the morning, and we can try breakfast again. Enjoy dinner with the guys. You can handle them,” he says with certainty, like he truly believes I’d be able to do anything with these men.

“Okay, see you in the morning.” I try to hide the disappointment in my voice, not wanting to offend Draken, but I’m not very sure I can keep my cool around the lot of them without Gaster there to mediate.

Draken reaches his hand out to me, and I take it willingly. Why? Fuck if I know. He’s a very touchy-feely person. Throughout the whole day, he’s touched me whenever he could. A brush of his fingers, a hand to the shoulder when I got worked up, he even tucked my hair behind my ear a couple of times. Each time making me blush scarlet.

I know I shouldn’t be allowing him to do it for multiple reasons, but I can’t seem to tell him to stop. His touch sends electricity through my body that makes me feel alive but also calm at the same time. All day he went out of his way to make me feel heard and not like an idiot. If Gaster was explaining something that I just didn’t understand, he stepped in and said it in layman’s terms, explaining it in a way that I could better relate to. Not the slightest bit judgmental, just completely supportive.

Regardless of him treating me so sweetly, I have way too much on my plate right now to worry about feelings for a man, especially when I’m technically still married to a piece of shit one.

No, I won’t be allowing myself to catch feelings for the first guy in my life who’s been nice to me.

I’ll just look at his incredible body.

And hold his hand when he offers it.

Thankfully, Draken doesn’t try to start a conversation while we walk back to the mansion. I’m already fighting a personal dilemma in my mind over him, and his flirty conversation will just make me even more confused about why I can feel this way over someone I don’t even know.

When we approach a different back door than the one we used before to reach the kitchen, he finally speaks. “Corentin wants us to eat in the dining room tonight, so when we walk in here, we’ll just have to go down the hall a bit.”

“Where did we have breakfast at if that wasn’t the dining room? How many dining rooms are in this house?” I ask.

“The room you had breakfast in is pretty much the breakfast room. That’s the only meal we eat in there. It has the best view in the morning. Then sometimes we munch in the kitchen like we did today, but only if the chef is out. You don’t want to get in his way. And then the dining room we eat our dinner in, lunch sometimes if we’re home.”

Okay, so nothing too crazy. Back at the estate, I ate my breakfast in a different area than my dinner, so that made sense, and that room I accidentally destroyed this morning did have a beautiful view.

“Did I mess anything up badly in there this morning?” I ask guiltily.

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