Page 36 of The Alpha's Gamble
“Feeling better?”
Declan’s patronizing tone shredded the last of my already frayed nerves.
“Like you care,” I snapped, glancing up from my plate to meet his eyes. If I’d been someone else, anyone else, he genuinely would have cared, probably. This…I’d freaked out. He wanted me fit for fucking. Ergo, food and a few minutes of downtime.
He gazed at me steadily, pinning me in place.
“You can explain what just happened,” he said. “Or not. But if you choose not to, then you can’t expect me to give a damn if it happens again. Next time I’ll keep fucking you.”
My chest ached as if he’d punched me in the sternum instead of saying precisely what I’d expected him to say: a variation on “No, I don’t really care, and I’m only going to humor you so far.”
I wanted to tell him. That was the worst of it. I truly wanted to. A faint possibility existed that he’d…take pity on me? And even though imagining it made my skin crawl, at least it’d be better than his hatred.
But I couldn’t. If I told him the whole story about my father, about how he’d treated me and Brook, about his shaman and his lies and his pretense all those years, Declan might take his revenge on me a step further: he could make it public. As far as I could tell from glancing at the business news over the last couple of months, Brook had been doing a damn good job as the new CEO of Castelli Industries, now that he’d ousted the old regime. And as much as I resented his success, since I never could’ve achieved it, and as much as I hated the way he’d tightened up the purse strings and kept all the financial reward of that success away from me…I couldn’t risk it.
I’d had a similar thought the other day when Declan blackmailed me. But then, I’d been focused on how humiliated I’d be if everyone in my life knew how low I’d sunk. Now I’d reached a depth of personal humiliation I hadn’t thought anyone could plumb. And that made the thought of Brook’s sneers, my father’s incandescent rage, the board’s grim-faced, head-shaking contempt—well, kind of distant and unimportant.
And that dream. I couldn’t shake that dream, or the thought that had come after I’d remembered it: What did Brook wake from, screaming or shaking or lying panting and sweaty in his bed, when he had his own nightmares?
Losing the company, probably. Losing what he’d worked for.
I doubt you’ve ever worked a day in your life, Castelli. Declan’s words. True words. I never had. I’d never had to, and I’d never wanted to.
Brook and Declan wanted to work, and they were good at it, and I’d already ruined Declan’s life once by fucking with his livelihood; I’d destroyed his efforts, even though I couldn’t remember the details. The thought of doing the same to my own brother, bringing a scandal to light that he’d gone to incredible pains to cover up, even though he must have been aching to see our father suffer the public consequences of his actions…
I couldn’t do it.
Brook would never know that I’d done this for him, and honestly I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. He’d hate me even more for it, probably, simply on principle: he didn’t want anything from me.
“Blake? Earth to Blake?” Declan’s sardonic voice brought me out of it, back to Earth. I wished I really had been out somewhere beyond the atmosphere, past the moon, among the stars. A distant place where he couldn’t reach me, where the lights of Las Vegas were just another faraway twinkle. Meaningless.
I blinked at him, taking in his frown and his cold dark eyes. No more pity there, only annoyance.
And that was good. I could deal with that.
“I’m not explaining anything,” I said evenly. No more snarking and snapping at him. I didn’t have it in me. Dealing with the revelation, slowly unfolding inside my stunned brain, that I wasn’t actually worth a damn thing to anyone at all in the whole world, would be taking up most of my mental real estate for a while. “It doesn’t matter to you. You should go ahead and knot me if you still want to. And I’ll lie there and take it, because that’s my job. We have an arrangement, right? So let’s stick to it.”
Declan’s expression hardened and his jaw set tight.
“All right. Turn over and put your ass in the air for me, then. Since that’s your job.”
I had to hand him the cheesecake plate so he could set it on the nightstand first, which felt all kinds of horribly awkward, but then I rolled over, face down and ass in the air, like he’d told me. I didn’t have to care, either. About any of it.
Ironically, I now appeared to be working for the first time in my life.
Wouldn’t Brook be proud.
Declan fucked me, and I came, and so did he. But he pulled out before he could knot me, said, “We’re done for tonight,” and got off the bed. He hadn’t wanted to be stuck with me for another half hour, then. Did I blame him? Not really.
The bathroom door shut and the shower came on.
I heaved myself up and went down the hall, gathering up my clothing and detouring to the dining table for one of the plates of steak on my way to my own room.
I showered too, and I ate mechanically, and I went to bed.
And I tried very hard not to think about anything at all.
Chapter 12
