He looked down and stabbed his fork into his salad. The brick-red flush along his cheekbones made me hide a smile. Yeah, I was getting to him. But he didn’t seem angry, precisely. More…off-balance. Yes.
“I’m not playing at anything,” I said quietly. “That was sarcastic, I admit.” He’d be even more off-balance and disarmed if I was faux-candid. I’d used that successfully before on all kinds of people: accountants, my mother, girlfriends. My brother never fell for it, though, the little bastard. “But I’m just trying to be nice.”
He paused with a bite of salad halfway to his mouth. “You and nice aren’t even in the same zip code,” he said flatly, and stuck the fork in his mouth.
No, I would not feel hurt by that, damn it all. First off, I wasn’t actually trying to be nice, so it wasn’t like he was wrong. And second…well, I didn’t care what he thought of me.
“Fine. But if we’re eating dinner together, we have to talk about something. Telling me about your day at work isn’t the worst thing, right?”
MacKenna swallowed and poked at the salad again, chasing a cherry tomato. My fingers twitched. Put it out of its misery!
“You don’t give a fuck about my day at work. Besides, you wouldn’t understand it. I doubt you’ve ever worked a day in your life, Castelli.” He looked right at me, pinning me with his gaze. “If you want to make friendly small talk, how about you tell me why you were having a nightmare about your father murdering you and taking your alpha powers instead?”
My throat closed up and I gagged, choked, and sprayed my very first sip of wine across my steak and potatoes, eyes watering and lungs spasming. I set the glass down with a thunk and a slosh, wine spilling and staining the white tablecloth like blood.
Another choke, and a long, drawn-out wheeze, and I managed to get a breath again. I stared at him in horror, eyes still blurred.Thathad been my nightmare? How the fuck had he gotten that from whatever I’d been yelling when he woke me up? Unless…
“How long were you watching me sleep?” I demanded, voice scratchy and weak. I coughed again. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“You were shouting the hotel down. What was I supposed to do, Castelli?”
“Mind your own fucking business!” And suddenly, his use of my last name hit my very last nerve. “And call me Blake, Jesus. You think maybe I’m not that excited about being called by my family name right now?”
Silence fell for a long moment.
“Blake,” he said slowly, and it sent an uncontrollable shiver down my back. “You going to call me Declan?”
“I’m not calling you anything,” I hedged. I’d been thinking about him as MacKenna, and maybe I’d used his name out loud once or twice. But I didn’t need to use a name for him at all. I really, really didn’t want to. His first name felt heavy on my tongue, too heavy to let fall.
“Say it,” he said, with a note of alpha command creeping in.
I couldn’t look away from his eyes.
“Declan,” I whispered, and they darkened even more.
His fork dropped to the salad plate with a clatter. “Dinner can wait.”
My mouth went dry. I was starving, yeah, but…dinner could wait. My cock pressed painfully against the zipper of my jeans, which I’d put on without any underwear as part of my plan to be seductive.
Well, that had backfired on me, because seductive or not, it hurt.
Without even thinking about it, I got up and moved around the table. MacKenna—gods, Declan, he was Declan now, and something about that had flipped a switch in my brain and messed me up—kept his eyes locked with mine, and I still couldn’t tear my gaze away. Dark eyes, compelling me.
I went to my knees beside him. He pushed back from the table with a scrape of chair legs on hardwood, turning so that he faced me, feet apart and thighs spread to make room for me. I shuffled closer, laying my hands on his legs.
The bulge in the front of his trousers drew my eyes away from his at last. Fuck, I needed to unzip my jeans and take my own cock out before it broke in half. But I couldn’t—or could I? Why not? I’d been planning to unsettle him with my enthusiasm. So I’d wanted that enthusiasm to be fake. But he wouldn’t know the difference, right? Following my plan and getting more comfortable could totally be compatible.
That was my story and I was sticking to it.
I let go of him, leaned back enough to relieve the pressure, and unbuttoned and unzipped my jeans, pulling the sides back and letting my cock spring free. It pointed up at me, shiny at the head and flushed dark red.
Declan made a funny sound in his throat.
My heart pounded. Time to follow the plan. I looked up at him again, finding his black eyes overlain with a gleam of alpha gold.
“See how much I want to suck your cock?” I asked, breathy not because I wanted to be, but because I couldn’t seem to suck in enough air. No worries, because if this went as I expected, I wouldn’t have room in my throat for air anyway. “Please? Declan?”
His eyes flicked down to my exposed cock and then back up, his chest rising and falling a lot faster now. A hand shot out and wrapped around the back of my head, fingers tangling in my overlong hair. And then he pulled, shoving my face between his legs. I toppled forward, catching myself on his knees but not resisting more than that. His still-clothed cock rubbed over my lips and my cheek, and I mouthed at it, wrapping my lips around the side of his shaft, prodding with my tongue, inhaling the scent of him, his arousal and lust and alpha magic.
