Page 57 of The Alpha's Gamble
He grinned down at me, teeth a little sharper than usual. I could only be glad he’d kept his claws in. “Everyone at that party with supernatural senses is going to know you’re mine.” He sounded so smug he might explode. Glancing down at the damp front of me, he added, “And they’ll know I keep you satisfied. Go clean up a little, but don’t change your underwear. I want to scent you all night.”
Oh, gods…I whimpered a little and managed to lever myself off the sofa as he stood back to make room for me. That was so gross—at least to the human part of me.
My more instinctive side wanted to tear off all of my clothes, even the scented ones, and put my ass in the air.
Fuck. Party. We were going to a party?
I wobbled to my feet and headed for my room, feeling the weight of his gaze on my retreating back the whole way to the door.
I could scent him on me, too.
Mine.
He’d said I was his.
Yeah. I couldn’t really argue with that anymore. He owned me.
And right now, I couldn’t even pretend to hate it.
Chapter 18
This Won’t Go On
Declan hustled me out the door the second I emerged from the bathroom, ushering me downstairs and into a waiting limo. A nice one: black, not too stretched, no neon lights or anything tacky, nothing I’d have to be embarrassed about riding in.
I tried to focus on how good it felt to be wearing decent clothes, going somewhere in a respectable vehicle, and for fuck’s sake, actually leaving the Morrigan and going somewhere, rather than on being in an enclosed space with Declan and our combined scents of sex and alpha desire.
If I focused on that, I’d end up begging him to knot me in the car after all.
The limo pulled out of the Morrigan’s driveway and into traffic on the Strip. It was Friday night stop and go. Maybe we had time for a fuck after all?
“Where are we going? Am I allowed to ask?”
“Not far,” he said, putting paid to my hopes. “A few blocks. If I’d been going with Wa—colleagues I probably would’ve walked. I thought you might appreciate going in style.”
I might’ve appreciated the chance to stretch my legs even more, but I couldn’t help melting a little. A glance over at him out of the corner of my eye showed him staring straight ahead, not looking particularly melted himself.
If anything, he looked uncomfortable, awkward in a way I’d never seen him before, controlled and in-charge as he usually was.
And silent. Fuck, it was like pulling teeth to get him to tell me anything.
“What’s the party?”
He sighed. “Nothing exciting, I’m sorry to say. Nothing up to your usual standards, so no half-naked Greek tycoons or piles of coke on the sideboard.” That had a little bit of bite to it, and I turned, startled, to stare at him. He’d looked me up online and read the tabloids? Seriously? I’d done a bit of online research into his family, of course, but I hadn’t thought he’d stoop to my level. “It’s a stuffy cocktail party for slot machine manufacturers and vendors,” he added quickly, as if hoping I wouldn’t notice the specificity of what he’d said. “It won’t be fun. It’s business, and I find this aspect of what I do boring too. You’ll just have to suck it up with me.”
Well, those were my expectations well and truly set. What a bummer. Something snagged at my brain, though, and then it twigged.
If I’d been going with Walter. He’d been about to say that, and then corrected himself.
Walter was usually his date to these events, and he’d replaced him with me?
Did that have anything to do with last night? He hadn’t mentioned this party to me previously, even though it had to have been on his calendar for a while.
How did I even begin to ask about that?
Obliquely. I had to approach indirectly, because every other time Walter had come up, Declan had been incredibly defensive.
“I’d think Walter would actually be the better choice for an event like this,” I said as evenly as I could. Neutral. I had to try to at least sound neutral on the Walter issue, even though I’d never been less neutral about anything in my life. “I mean, I get replacing one employee with another when someone’s busy or whatever, but I don’t know anything about the manufacture of slot machines.”
