She said she’d gotten over it, but if she hadn’t, I didn’t want her hiding her worries from me.
“I want to trust my emotions with you,” she said, her thumbs working furiously across the phone. “Not think they’re manufactured by fate. Trust your emotions when you say you want me.”
I sat in a chair opposite from her. Leaned forward and cradled my glass between my palms. “I’m here with you, disobeying every rule Anson has in place.”
Her smile turned sly, although her focus remained on her phone. “He is a little stuffy with the rules.”
“I risked a pack war to be here with you.” An exaggeration, but I wasn’t comfortable with the way my back had stiffened over the trust issue. What I felt for her.
Noa quipped, “Only because I get in trouble when you’re not around.”
I raised the cognac, sniffed, swallowed. “Now who isn’t trusting her emotions?”
“Is that what I’m doing?”
I set aside the drink, rose to my feet and gently pried the phone from her hands.
Stop thinking so hard, Bedisa. I found it easier to issue orders through our private bond because they didn’t sound as dominating. Think about how your heart races when I hold you.
When I pulled her into my arms, she came willingly.
Safe. Her mental voice was a caress. I feel safe.
She pressed her palm against my chest, above my beating heart.
I covered her hand with mine. Yes.
She snuggled in, setting off my imagination, how we would share the cognac, and what would come after—but someone was pounding a fist against Noa’s apartment door, and I knew who it was before I found him standing stiffly in the hall, his arms crossed, legs braced, auburn hair catching the light from the overhead fixtures.
“Alpha,” I said, trying not to grin because Noa’s “stuffy” observation was still in my mind.
Anson scowled. “You’re staying here, then?”
I nodded, since it should be obvious. And he’d known I was here the minute I crossed his wards. Only for Noa had he refrained from a confrontation. For the debt he owed her over the hybrid attack.
I glanced over my shoulder, toward the two glasses on the side table. The expensive bottle of cognac. My shirt tossed over a chair from earlier, and while I didn’t want my mate thinking I was a slob, I hadn’t gotten around to moving it yet.
“We had an agreement,” said Anson, as if I couldn’t have forgotten.
Behind him, two men lounged in the hall, part of his security detail pretending nonchalance by leaning awkwardly against the wall.
“I have pack problems of my own, Anson,” I said, loud enough for all to hear. “I’m not fighting you in the street for dominance.”
His chin tipped up. “You’d fecking lose, man.”
The smile gave him away, and I slapped him on the shoulder, held the door wider so he wouldn’t miss Noa, hovering with her bare toes pressing against the floor.
“Are you coming in, Anson?” she asked, feisty as ever, and I secretly hoped she was as unhappy over the interruption as I was. “Or do you two boys need a moment to finish the pissing contest?”
“You’ll probably join that contest,” he told her, “once you hear why I’m here.”
Noa straightened, crossed her arms. “Why?”
“The packs have agreed to a Gathering. Lec Rus will arrive in the morning.”
“I probably shouldn’t go to your Gathering,” she said hours later. Her voice was soft with the drowsy, heavy-lidded lethargy she savored after sex. “Not if Lec Rus is here.”
Her body was warm and supple beside mine, and I propped my head high enough to watch the expressions cross her face.
