Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 18

Kate's POV

The silence in the car was suffocating.

Damon drove with one hand on the wheel, his jaw tight, his usual effortless charm stripped clean. Whatever game he'd been playing at dinner, he'd dropped the mask the moment I shut him down, and now the air between us sat thick with all the things neither of us was willing to say.

When we reached my building, he walked me to the door. His eyes caught mine, dark and searching, and something flickered in them that I couldn't name. His hand rose, slow, reaching for a strand of hair near my temple.

I swiped my keycard before his fingers could touch me.

The lock clicked. The door swung inward.

And then every molecule in the hallway was swallowed by cedar and cold steel.

The apartment was pitch black. But in the faint glow bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows, I saw him.

Damian. Standing behind the kitchen island like he'd been carved from the shadows themselves, arms folded, posture locked tight. The second his gaze caught the sliver of light behind us, his eyes burned like frozen fire.

A predator who'd already chosen his ambush point. Just waiting for his prey to walk in.

Damon went rigid behind me. I didn't need to turn around to feel it. Two Alpha presences slammed together in the narrow space between my shoulder blades, pressing down on my ribs until I could barely draw breath.

I was caught between two oncoming storms, and I was far, far too small to stop either one.

"Interesting." Damian's voice cut through the darkness. Low. Measured. Lethal. "I was just wondering what time Italian restaurants close their dinner service. I smelled the truffle oil the second you stepped off the elevator."

His gaze slid past me. Locked onto Damon.

The temperature in the room plummeted.

"Damian." Damon's tone was level, but I heard the careful restraint beneath it. Nothing like the easy confidence he'd worn all evening. "What are you doing here?"

"I think the better question is why you're here." Damian unfolded his arms and rounded the island, closing the distance with unhurried precision. "Standing at her door. At eleven p.m. After a private dinner you didn't mention to anyone."

"I wasn't aware pasta required your approval."

"It doesn't." Damian took one step forward. Just one. But my lungs locked. "However, you do remember the terms of our agreement. The ones you personally drafted. Kate is here for a purpose. She is not a date. And she is not a test subject for you to study."

The air between the two Voss brothers crackled like a live wire.

I stood frozen in the doorway, pinned between two colliding glaciers. Both too massive to stop, and me too small to matter.

But beneath the fear, my wolf stirred. Not cowering. Not retreating. She wanted to step between them. She wanted to act.

Had she lost her mind?

Damon's jaw flexed. A long, weighted silence stretched between them before the composed mask he'd maintained all night finally cracked. Just a fraction. Just enough to expose something raw beneath it. Regret. And hurt.

He adjusted his cuff. "I trust you hold yourself to those same terms, Damian. You're keeping things from me." His voice was quiet, controlled, final. "But this won't happen again."

He turned and left. No glance back. No smile. No goodnight.

The elevator chimed. The doors closed. He was gone.

I stared at the empty hallway for three full seconds before I whipped around.

"How dare you."

Damian's brow lifted a fraction. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me." I stepped inside and shoved the door shut behind me. The slam echoed through the apartment like a gunshot. "This is my space. Your company uprooted my entire life for this investigation and gave me this apartment as compensation. Even if the lease is in your name, you do not get to sit in my living room in the dark like some kind of possessive gargoyle, interrogating anyone who walks me to my door."

"Gargoyle." He repeated the word, flat, as though out of every name he'd ever been called, that one was new.

"Yes. Gargoyle. Perched in the dark, waiting to swoop down on anyone who dares to..."

"He touched you."

Three words. They sliced through my stuttered tirade like a blade, severing my train of thought completely.

I blinked. "He didn't."

"Don't tell me he didn't touch you, because I can still smell him on you. I know my brother's scent better than you ever will." Damian stepped closer.

His words hit me like something physical, dragging me back to dinner. The way I'd leaned into Damon's charm. The thrill of flirting with a man who wasn't my husband. I couldn't deny it. I was married, and tonight I'd felt something I had no right to feel.

But I'd also seen through Damon's strategy. The charm, the questions, the calculated warmth. That realization had killed the thrill dead. And hearing Damian lay it out like this didn't shame me.

It pissed me off.

"So what if he touched me?" I lifted my chin. "So what if someone walked me home, or, God forbid, was nice to me? Is that a crime in Damian Voss's world? Am I not allowed to have a handsome man show me basic kindness?"

"This isn't about the contract."

"Then what is it about? And what gives you the right to question me?"

Silence expanded between us, filled with nothing but my hammering pulse and the tangle of our ragged breathing.

Damian stared at me. I glared back. And somewhere in the middle of it, without either of us noticing, the distance between us had collapsed. Less than a fist's width of air separated his body from mine. In the dark, something shifted.

I caught his scent. The same frequency I'd buried my face into this morning, nose pressed to the lining of his coat.

Then his gaze dropped to my lips.

One second. One heartbeat. But I saw it, and the wave of heat that tore through me was so sudden, so violent, my knees nearly buckled.

"You should leave." My voice was barely a whisper.

"I know."

He didn't move.

"I mean it."

"So do I."

His hand came up and pressed flat against the wall behind me, caging me between his body and the plaster. He leaned in, his lips hovering millimeters from mine. I could feel the static between our mouths, electricity racing from my lips through my veins, making my fingers curl into the hem of my shirt.

At the last second, I turned my head.

His lips met nothing. Damian froze. Then he pushed off the wall, stepped back without looking at me, and walked to the door.

"Lock the door behind me." He didn't turn around.

The lock clicked shut behind him.

I stood pinned to the wall, pulse thundering in my ears. My lips still tingled, even though I was certain we never touched.

And somewhere beneath my sternum, where my wolf slept, something flickered. Not a howl. Not a sound.

Warmth. Brief, impossible, and unlike anything I'd ever felt.

I pressed my hand harder against my chest, willing it to stop.

I didn't sleep. Or rather, I couldn't.

When I finally drifted off, my dreams refused to behave. In the dark, I was tangled with a man whose hands mapped every inch of me with devastating precision, as if he intended to memorize every curve, every hollow, every scar. His hands, his mouth, his weight pressing me into the mattress until I couldn't breathe, couldn't think.

In the dream, I didn't turn away. I let him consume me. My soul knotted with his.

When I shattered, he whispered my name. Kate. Over and over, relentless, and then his mouth found mine.

Then I saw his face.

Damian.

No, no, no, no, no.

I woke gasping, heart slamming against my ribs, drenched in sweat, shame and emptiness pulsing through me in waves. I pressed both palms to my cheeks and felt the heat radiating off my skin like a furnace.

The worst part? I'd finished in the dream.

I kicked off the covers, staggered to the bathroom, and cranked the shower to the coldest setting. Water poured over every overheated inch of me while I prayed the memory would drain away with it.

This isn't real. This cannot be real. Just stress. Just two Alphas in one night. That's all.

I stepped out, grabbed a towel, and checked my phone.

Seven missed calls. All from Darius. Six texts. Before I could read a single one, another call lit up the screen.

"Kate." His voice was clipped, taut. "Where have you been? I've been trying to reach you since last night."

"I was sleeping. I..." I was having an explicit dream about your brother. "Phone was on silent. What happened?"

"Your husband didn't come home at his usual time last night. He returned late, stayed less than thirty minutes, then left with a suitcase. I cross-referenced transit databases and pulled the flight manifest. He booked a ticket to Seattle. Took two days off. His plane lands in approximately three hours and forty-two minutes."

The phone nearly slipped from my wet fingers.

Seattle. The city I was supposed to be in for my fake business trip.

"If he gets there," I choked out, already spiraling, "and finds out I'm not there, it's over, Darius. Forget the evidence, forget Catherine. Ronald doesn't tolerate lies. Our marriage..."

"Kate. Breathe."

"I have to book a flight, Darius! And pack!" I threw the phone onto the bed, speaker still live, and tore open the closet, dragging out my suitcase, stuffing clothes inside with zero logic.

Darius was still talking, but I couldn't hear him. I couldn't hear anything over the roar in my own head.

Then someone knocked on my door.

I froze. Cinched my robe tight, pressed my eye to the peephole, and felt my jaw drop.

I yanked the door open.

Darius filled the hallway. Black fitted tee stretched across his shoulders, tactical duffel slung over one arm. He scanned me head to toe, calm, clinical, like he was running a field assessment. And yet, somehow, the steadiness of his gaze made my hammering pulse slow by half.

"You don't need a ticket." His low voice settled over me like armor. He stepped inside, took the half-packed suitcase from my hands as if it weighed nothing. "There's a private helicopter on the roof of this building. Flight clearance was approved thirty minutes ago. This route puts you on the ground one hour and fifty-three minutes ahead of Ronald's plane."

I stared at him, speechless.

He glanced at me, blinked once. "As for your hotel in Seattle, it's been checked in under a Voss Group account since the day you left the apartment you shared with Ronald. Now get dressed. We have a helicopter to catch."