Page 109 of Golden Eagle

Nikita stood up suddenly, vodka slopping out of his glass. Vibrating with tension, rigid as a board. He glared at her. “I will not.” Furious, shaking, words clipped off. “Make a him a slave. Don’t fucking–”

Sasha grabbed his hand, and murmured something urgent in Russian.

Nikita murmured back, anguished.

“It would protect him,” Trina pressed.

Nikita’s head snapped around, his teeth bared. “It would force him to me.”

Jesus. “You’re already attached at the damn hip,” she said.

He growled–

And a knock sounded at the door.

Nikita gave her an awful look, lip curled off his teeth, before he threw down the rest of his vodka in one swallow and went to answer the door.

Alexei and Jamie trooped in.

Dante was with them.

“Oh no.” Lanny got to his feet. “You can hang out with whoever you want in your own time,” he told Alexei, and stabbed a finger through the air toward Dante. “But he’s not pack. What part of ‘pack meeting’ didn’t you get?”

Alexei halted at the edge of the rug and stood up straight, hands linked behind his back. A formal posture. The posture of a prince. “I propose we add Dante to the pack.”

Lanny barked a single, harsh laugh.

“I’m not kidding.”

“Neither am I, Daddy Dearest. No. You, hit the bricks, pretty boy.”

“What’s going on?” Trina asked Jamie, snagging the sleeve of his sweater as he tried to slip past her.

He worried his lower lip between his teeth. Radiated guilt. “I’m not saying anything,” he said, and wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I think I’ve fucked things up enough as is.”

“Jamie,” she hissed, but he tugged loose, and slipped through to the opposite side of the room.

She turned her attention back to the unfolding tableau: offspring facing off from sire. With Alexei’s chin kicked up to an imperious angle, he and Lanny couldn’t have looked more different; they came from completely opposite worlds.

Then she looked at Dante – closely. And did a double take.

He was dressed simply, in jeans, t-shirt, and a worn leather jacket that highlighted his leanness. His hair was fluffy and frizzy around his face, rather than slicked-back the way it had been the night before.

But it wasn’t the outfit or the hair that pulled her up short. No, it was his face. The graveness of his expression, the hollows of sleeplessness beneath his eyes. Last night he’d been all smug smiles and charm, and today, all that had been stripped away, highlighting the sharp bone structure, and a depth in his expression that she now knew had been carefully veiled before.

This wasn’t some playboy friend of Alexei’s. No, not close.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Lanny and Alexei were still arguing, but they stopped, and turned to her.

Dante turned to her with outward dread.

The room went very quiet.

Nikita caught her gaze, briefly, from his position in the doorjamb, his expression closed-off.

“This isn’t bring your boyfriend to work day,” she said, locking in on Dante again.

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