Dimitri nuzzled my ear, rubbing his head against the side of mine like a big cat instead of the wolf I knew he was. Soothing me.
Condescending prick. He didn’t want to touch me for his own sake.
But it still felt so good I could’ve stayed like that for hours.
“You’ve spent your whole life with your asshole of a father,” he said at last, very quietly. Very evenly. “But you don’t seem to know him all that well. Someone like that isn’t going to change. He won’t ever respect you the way you want him to. You get that, right? He didn’t want you to have an alpha mate because it’d make you more important in his eyes. He wanted you to have an alpha mate because then someone else could take responsibility for controlling you, keeping you in line.”
He was right, of course. Absolutely, inarguably right.
But that didn’t give him a right.
“So you decided to just give him what he wanted.” I had to stop and swallow down the bitter, searing taste of bile in my mouth. “You might as well control me? Since he’s not going to respect me anyway.”
Another nuzzle, and this time his lips lingered, brushing over the shell of my ear. I shivered, oddly, as the heat of it arrowed down into my belly and pooled there. What the hell was he doing?
“He’s not going to respect you, even though you deserve it.” Dimitri shifted his head, breathing hot against my earlobe, his arms tightening around me. “But I do, okay? And he might back off if I don’t back down.” Another brush of his lips, another shiver, and my abdomen felt molten. “And then you can do whatever you want, make any decisions you want with me running interference. That’s why you paid me to do this. So I could put up an alpha front for you, and you call the shots from behind the scenes, yeah?”
Was that why I’d paid him to do this? Had I paid him to…hold me in his arms and cuddle me? No, I’d paid him to…my eyes drifted shut. I’d started having trouble remembering what exactly I’d paid him to do. What he’d said sounded reasonable.
I’d have to think about it later. When I had a clearer head.
“Fine,” I managed. “You can let go of me now.” I really didn’t want him to. Of course I wanted him to, I didn’t want to be held like this. Christ. “Seriously.”
A second later, he let me go, unwrapping his arms from around me and getting up off the couch in one smooth motion. I had to brace myself on the cushions to keep from toppling right over, and blink a couple of times to bring everything back into focus.
Dimitri picked up the spoon, frowned at it, and then looked back down at me. “I’m going to reheat dinner. You going to eat with me? Since no one else wants to, apparently?”
He pulled an exaggerated grimace, and I couldn’t help laughing. “I’ll eat with you.” My stomach rumbled, right on cue, and he grinned at me. “Apparently I’m hungry.”
“I hope so, because I made my grandmother’s recipe, and she’ll roll over in her grave if you don’t eat until you can’t make it up the stairs.”
He turned toward the kitchen, but I couldn’t quite let it go. “Dimitri?” He turned back, eyebrows raised. “That was seriously all for show? You’re not going to—I need to be able to be comfortable when we’re alone. I hate being steamrolled. I’ve spent my whole life being steamrolled.”
Dimitri sobered, his expression as serious as I’d ever seen it. “Brook, I swear to you, on my grandmother’s grave and her recipe for blinchiki. I have no interest in telling you what to do. You’re a grown man, not a dependent. Hired for a job, doing the job. Remember? I have enough trouble running my own life. Honestly, you calling the shots on this is kind of a vacation for me. You hired an alpha asshole to act like one on cue, and that’s what I’m doing. Okay?”
When I smiled, I felt it down to my toes, the tension ebbing away. “Okay.”
He nodded. “Then come and eat. You know, if you want. Far be it from me to give you any orders.”
I followed him into the kitchen, still smiling. Maybe if I ate enough Russian food, I’d recover the mental energy I needed to plan that meeting with my father in the morning.
Because my poor display this evening notwithstanding, I had a plan. And I had no intention of letting him roll right over me this time around.
Chapter 9
The Best Defense
The glass and concrete front of Castelli Industries’ main campus shone blindingly bright in the morning sun, which had risen about the same time I did. By the time I pulled into my assigned parking spot right in front, it’d gotten high enough to light the building up like a beacon.
Only a couple of other cars scattered the lot: my father’s, of course, in its very special parking spot even closer to the entrance than the handicapped spaces—possibly illegal, but no one said anything—and also a couple of others farther back, belonging to security guards and janitors.
Dimitri had seen me off, much to my surprise. His absurdly rumpled bedhead, ferocious scowl, and slitted eyes had confirmed my impression of him as not much of a morning person. But he’d started the coffee machine while I took a shower, grunted something that sounded encouraging as he handed me a cup, and hadn’t killed me.
Overall, not the worst way to be sent off at the crack of dawn to a meeting that promised to make me want to kill myself if no one else got there first.
Not that I thought my father would necessarily win this round. I gave it sixty-forty in my favor, because for once, I held enough cards to play the game. But I still had a trickle of nervous sweat on my spine. And I knew it’d get ugly.
I found my father in his office on the top floor, seated behind the broad, polished desk that never held more than a laptop and his cup of coffee.
