He was on my side. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. Dimitri had said he was my mate, and now, calmed down and a bit chastened by Jackie’s demeanor, I knew I’d been an asshole. Besides, I wasn’t jealous! And if my mate bond had me acting like it, I needed to be conscious of it and dial it back.
“Thanks,” I said to Jackie, looking her in the eyes and smiling. It felt forced, but she brightened up, so it must have been convincing enough. “I was going to have Dimitri shadow me in that department heads meeting in a while, but he doesn’t need to be there while I talk to Adam. Maybe you could show him around a little bit in the meantime?”
Getting the words out took real effort, because sending them off to talk and flirt made me grind my teeth.
But another glance at Dimitri told me it’d been worth it. That incredible, warm, charming smile he’d aimed at Jackie earlier—well, there it was again. Only this time, it was all for me.
“Sure,” Jackie chirped, back to her usual cheer. Jesus, I really had been a dick. Tearing my eyes away from my mate took another palpable effort, but at last I did it. Jackie shot me a smile and said, “I’ll send Adam in when he gets here. And Dimitri, I’ll take you to meet the guys down in engineering. One of them is Russian, I think. Maybe you’d both enjoy saying hi.”
She slipped out again after Dimitri thanked her, leaving me feeling like even more of a jerk. Taking him to meet the Russian engineer didn’t exactly qualify as trying to get him alone.
And why would she? As I met Dimitri’s clear gray eyes again, they penetrated the haze that had descended over me. What had come over me, anyway? And why had he…he’d put me in his lap. I couldn’t think about that, about his fingers pressing between my legs, touching my hole. He’d noticed the mate bond fucking with me, and he’d used his position as the dominant mate to break me out of my emotional tangle.
That was all.
A little manipulative, maybe, but I’d also deserved it for acting that way.
“You should take a minute to tell me about this meeting you want me in later,” he said, managing to sound genuinely interested. “So I know what you want me to do. Intimidate them? Sit back and keep my mouth shut? Nod and agree with everything you say?”
My immediate impulse was to tell him to simply sit back and keep his mouth shut—which, to be fair, would probably be intimidating enough. That had been my basic plan for having him around, so I hadn’t bothered briefing him for the meeting.
But now that he mentioned it…maybe if he really wanted to help me, and not simply be a silent prop in my unspoken war with my father, he could be genuinely useful. Two of the other alpha-douchebag VPs who’d be in this meeting took every opportunity to undermine me: stealing my ideas, talking behind my back, and sucking up to my father. I knew anything I suggested in this meeting, which was meant to help us keep our respective departments communicating and collaborating, would get shot down. And then probably resurrected later on, when one of those assholes emailed the more senior executives with “his” bright ideas.
“Sit back and keep your mouth shut at first,” I said after considering it for a moment. “You can feel free to look as unfriendly and threatening as you want, though. You know the expression I’m talking about.” He raised his eyebrows at me and then scowled, fangs very slightly on display, and I cracked up. “Yeah, like that. I’ll present my ideas at some point. They’ll ignore them and suggest their own. Then you can tell them their ideas suck and suggestyourown, which will just be mine, only in your own words. And we’ll see how that goes. Okay?”
Dimitri’s eyebrows went up even higher. “Sure, I can do that. But you know your company culture sucks, right? This is such bullshit. Who cares whose idea it is as long as it’s a good one?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Welcome to the corporate world. Honestly, it’s not that different from other places, I don’t think, except that here it’s all based on who’s an alpha. But it’s the same shitty politics everywhere.”
“God save me from having your job,” he muttered. “Seriously, if you were worried I might try to cut you out? Don’t be.”
“Even if it came with my salary?”
Dimitri laughed, stood up, and slipped his phone in his pocket, picking up the jacket he’d shrugged out of at some point while I worked. “I’m your kept mate, Brook. I get your salary without having to do your job. I don’t have any interest in rocking the boat.”
Amusement, warmth, and sincerity trickled through the bond, reassuring me and making me feel better than I had all morning.
When Jackie announced Adam, and she and Dimitri went off for their tour, that sensation lingered, keeping me upbeat, confident, and ready to take on the world.
Chapter 12
Twice Is a Coincidence
After that first day in the office, Dimitri and I settled into a routine. We left for work together three or four days a week, with him staying home and doing his own thing the other days. On weekends I stuck to my usual system: wake up early, go for a run, and work from home.
He told me my life sucked, but he didn’t try to stop me. And occasionally he’d even join me for the runs, both of us shifting into our wolf forms and racing through the woods until we were panting and exhausted. I liked those mornings. Company without any expectation of conversation soothed me after full weeks of nothing but talking, negotiating, telling people what to do.
Dimitri had kicked ass in that first meeting, doing exactly what I’d asked of him and pulling it off flawlessly. No passive-aggressive emails with my stolen ideas. No arguing.
Although the fact that it’d worked, that my colleagues listened to him when they wouldn’t to me simply because his dick had a knot…well, that rankled. Deeply.
Even though I’d known it’d be that way.
I had to keep reminding myself that it wasn’t Dimitri’s fault; it was theirs. Sometimes I started to resent him for the way he forced my plans through in meetings when he knew jack shit about what we were doing or why.
But I’d paid him for exactly that. My father had put this company culture in place, and Dimitri was helping me get to a position where I could start to undo it. Being angry with him would be both unfair and counterproductive.
Still, the stress had started to get to me, and to make it worse, my mother had gotten the bit between her teeth regarding a formal mating reception a day or two after my father had let go of the idea of forcing me to break my bond with Dimitri. She’d finally reached the point in planning where she wanted to harass me every ten minutes.
