Page 93 of Drawn By Dragonblood
I laced our fingers together, offering the back of her hand a quick, chaste kiss, before releasing her. “Come.” I led them, keeping my hands to myself lest my employees have something to gossip over. Rarely did I spent much time in the New York office, and with things wrapping up on the morrow with one last early meeting, I looked forward to returning home where there would be nothing to distract me from assuring Jon of his place for a handful of weeks.
“Mr. Tolzman!” Ashley’s raised voice pulled me up short of the office exit. She hurried toward me, a file in her hands.
Both of my mates stiffened beside me as my secretary drew near.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
My inner beast purred at her nearness as he always did. Not in a sexual way but more along the lines of how I might have felt connected to a sister if I’d had one. It was the only reason I’d kept her on staff, since she had the memory of a toddler.
And same as every time Ashley came into close proximity with me, I thought of Dolyn. Why, I wasn’t sure. They looked nothing alike with her dark hair compared to his golden. Her height would have been dwarfed by his as well. Even their personalities were opposites, although Ashley did seem to carry a sense of heaviness about her as my ex-lover had.
When she’d arrived for her interview, both halves of me recognized the woman needed looking after. It’d been that tortured look in her eyes that had made the decision an easy one even in knowing I would be reminded of all I’d lost every time I set eyes on her.
“The files you needed.” Ashley’s smile hid something as it always, but the usual sting of remembrance of Dolyn while in her presence didn’t prick at my chest with the same intensity.
Perhaps the final aspect of healing from my grief had begun—thanks to Jon and Dakota.
Heart lightened, I took them from her hands and stepped back, motioning Dakota into the elevator. “Thank you, Ashley.”
“Of course, sir. It was nice meeting the two of you.” She smiled at my mates before turning away, not waiting for Jon or Dakota to state the same.
I glanced down at Dakota to find her gazing after the woman, a frown denting her brow.
Jon stared after the woman as well, an even deeper dent between his eyebrows. He glanced at Dakota and snaked an arm around her back, tucking her close against his side in a possessive hold as if wishing to shield her from the smaller, unthreatening woman.
Had something happened between the three of them earlier in the day?
“Is everything okay?” I asked, following them into the elevator.
“Yeah, just fucking starved,” Jon answered first, seeming to force feigned relaxation onto his face. “Any place around here we can pick up a steak and some loaded potatoes?”
Choosing his redirection of our conversation for the time being, I pulled my cell from my pocket. “I know the place—and they’ll deliver.”
“Thank fuck.”
While en route to my apartment, Dakota once more sat between us, her fingers laced through Jon’s on her thigh, her head resting on my shoulder. A subtle hint of springtime flowers filled my nose, Jon’s wilder, fall-like wind beneath.
My mouth watered to taste them, to feel their bodies beneath me, but something unsettling had definitely changed the atmosphere around us. I’d promised Dakota we would be together that night, and I had no plans to disappoint our female, but would Jon still be willing?. The sexual energy between him and I would demand he play a part, but would he open his heart? Would he submit his body once more to my command, or had whatever insecurity that had set him on edge close him off to the intimacy we needed to experience together in order to strengthen our bond?
Once inside my suite and surrounded by his alpha’s scent, Jon’s tension visibly eased in his shoulders as well as smoothing the line he’d had furrowed between his eyebrows.
Still, dinner at my small table proved a silent affair. I’d expected more unrest, but the quietness zapped with energy and filled with heated glances, ripe with an aroma of arousal. Every second not touching my delicious mates heightened my awareness of their pulses. My inner beast roamed restless beneath my skin, desperate to become one with them.
Whatever had set Jon on edge earlier in the day no longer mattered as my mind focused on moving forward.
Soft classical played from the overhead speakers, and even Jon seemed so wrapped up in his own mind that he didn’t mention my lack of taste or tease me about my choice of music. No easy grin lifted his lips, no smirk of arrogance, but I made myself content with the way he stared at my lips, with his enlarged pupils in the candlelight of my penthouse suite.
He couldn’t hide or deny his desire for his alpha, same as I couldn’t for him.
Dakota, in her usual display of servitude that gave her great joy, insisted on cleaning up our dinner things. Jon and I sat before the windows overlooking Manhattan, me with a glass of wine, his hands empty and resting on his thighs. We studied each other, him with an inquisitive stare while I allowed him to seek out the truth of what he longed for in my eyes. The tension between us went beyond sexual, and while we’d once been vulnerable with each other in the dark of my home, the wall he’d erected to keep himself safe once more sat like a literal mountain between us.
I considered ordering him to kneel at my feet so I could touch his hair, his face, assure him with gentle caresses that he held half of my heart forever and always. I considered crawling across the space between us and resting my cheek against his knee, showing my beta that he owned my soul, and I would go to any lengths necessary to prove it to him.
Torn between figuring out exactly what he needed, I held my silence and remained in place.
Dakota approached but hesitated from sitting beside either of us.
She was our buffer, I realized in that moment, a bridge to span whatever distance Jon’s mind had placed between us.
