Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 16

Kate's POV

I woke to a scent I couldn't name.

Not the usual coffee or laundry detergent that pulled me from sleep on ordinary mornings. This was something I felt before I smelled it. Cedar and cold iron, laced with something deeper, something that belonged to the edge of a forest at night, where trees dissolved into darkness and the air carried the earth's own exhale.

It had seeped into my skin, as though I'd been soaking in it all night.

And it stirred something inside me. Something urgent.

I'd rarely woken up like this during my marriage to Ronald. Never this desperate, this aching, this unbearably aware of the heat pooling between my thighs. But Ronald would have left for work by now, wouldn't he? So I let my hand drift slowly downward, past the waistband, between legs that were already slick and pressing together on their own.

The moment my fingers found the wet folds and grazed my c**t, a moan slipped out of me.

I flinched at the sound of my own voice. It was breathy, wanton, nothing like the muted sounds I made with Ronald. I didn't even recognize it as mine.

I was equally stunned by how wet I was. My underwear was soaked through, the fabric clinging and useless, the slickness spreading with every shift of my hips. I had never produced this much. Not once. It was like a faucet someone had forgotten to turn off.

My fingers circled. My teeth sank into my lower lip.

My other hand clenched the fabric beneath my cheek on instinct. Expensive. Cool to the touch. And carrying a scent that made me press my face deeper, chasing it, burying myself in it the way a woman buries her nose in her lover's shirt.

My eyes snapped open.

This was not my bed.

This was not my apartment.

The ceiling stretched higher than any ceiling had a right to. Morning light poured through floor-to-ceiling windows, pale and golden as champagne. The sheets were dove gray. The pillows clearly belonged to someone else. And the thing I'd been clutching like both a blanket and a lifeline was a man's suit jacket. Charcoal wool. Monogrammed on the inner breast pocket in initials I couldn't fully make out.

I yanked my hand from between my legs. My nose twitched. Then I sat up, grabbed the jacket, and fanned it vigorously several times.

That shouldn't leave a scent. Right?

I brought it to my nose one more time, sniffing carefully, making absolutely sure nothing incriminating lingered, then crept into the living room on silent feet.

It was already half past ten. I hadn't expected anyone to be here.

But Damian was sitting on the sofa.

I stopped breathing.

Something was off.

Damian was always immaculate. A man built from sharp lines and tailored cold. But right now his shirtsleeves were rolled to the forearms, and several strands of his usually flawless hair had fallen across his forehead, as though he'd raked his fingers through it a hundred times. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the vase that had sat on the hallway table was gone. One corner of the table had been smashed clean off.

When he looked up at me, the expression I'd grown accustomed to was absent. That elevated, appraising stare that always made me feel like I was reporting to a superior. Gone. In its place was something heavy. Something that looked, for the first time, like he was seeing me not as an employee, but as someone who mattered.

His gaze held a kind of restrained intensity so dense it pinned me where I stood.

But then, in barely a second or two, the mask slid back into place. He became the Damian I knew.

"You collapsed in the living room last night." His voice was low and rough. "The doctor said it was extreme fatigue combined with low blood sugar."

I frowned, pressing a hand to my chest. I didn't feel like someone with low blood sugar. What I felt was something inside my ribcage trying to claw its way out.

"I... I'm sorry." The words came out in a murmur as I hugged myself. "I didn't mean to cause you so much trouble."

I braced for the usual sharp retort. The infamous Damian Voss, who ran his life on strict schedules and kept his home so spotless he probably had a clinical diagnosis, could not possibly be okay with me spending an entire night in his apartment. But he didn't sneer. Didn't even sigh. He just looked at me, and his voice dropped to a register I would normally interpret as gentle.

"Don't apologize, Kate. You're not a burden to anyone."

I froze. This was so far outside my prediction of Damian's response that my brain short-circuited. Without thinking, I took a step forward and stopped at arm's length from him. And in that moment, the scent hit me again. Stronger. Richer. Fresher. Cedar and cold iron, flooding my senses.

Deep in my chest, something trembled. A tiny spike on an otherwise flat line, like a heart monitor registering a blip that shouldn't exist.

I pressed my hand to my sternum.

"Are you in pain?" Damian asked.

His eyes locked onto the hand I'd placed over my chest, and in that same instant his jaw clenched tight.

"No." I lowered my hand. "I'm fine."

Before I could process what I was feeling, the front door flew open.

Darius strode in waving a manila envelope. "Got the restaurant surveillance footage." His gaze had been aimed at Damian, but the second he noticed me he stopped dead.

His eyes shifted. Locked onto me. For exactly three seconds the room went eerily quiet, the silence stretching until it became unbearable. I waited for him to say something, but he just stared, nostrils flaring slightly.

"You look much better than last night. Color's improved. Heart rate appears more stable from visual assessment." Darius finally spoke, then added, completely out of nowhere: "Did you switch shampoos?"

The question was so abrupt, so wildly out of context, that I just blinked.

"Um... no?"

Darius frowned. He tilted his head like a scientist examining an anomalous data set. "Strange. Your scent is completely different from yesterday."

"Is it?"

I grabbed a strand of my hair and sniffed it. Nothing seemed different to me.

But I felt a prickle of embarrassment. I'd passed out last night without showering. Could Darius's nose really be sharp enough to detect the faint accumulation of sweat and oil that would barely register to a normal person?

Before I could spiral further into that thought, Darius closed the distance between us in two strides and leaned in. His cheek grazed my ear. His nose skimmed the curve of my neck, and I could feel the warmth of his breath fanning across my skin. If I moved even slightly, his lips would touch my throat.

Clack.

Damian set his coffee cup down on the table. Hard.

I snapped back to reality and shoved Darius away, my cheeks instantly on fire. "Why are you smelling me?"

"I wasn't trying to smell you." Darius looked genuinely confused, though whether by my anger or by what he'd detected, I couldn't tell. "It's just that your scent, compared to last night, it's gotten more concentrated. Very subtle, but I can sense it. It's within the baseline range of werewolf sensory perception. The detection radius is approximately..."

"Shut up, Darius."

Damian's voice didn't just cut through the air. It sliced between us like a blade, his body suddenly there, physically positioned between me and his brother.

Darius did shut up. But not out of simple obedience. His gaze flickered between me and Damian, eyes widening fractionally, as though something had just clicked into place.

The atmosphere in the room shifted violently. Before Darius could open his mouth again, Damian was already steering me toward the front door with a firm hand on my shoulder. "If you're unwell, rest for a few days. No surveillance assignments for Catherine in the meantime. Darius and I need to discuss some work matters."

The door closed behind me with a definitive slam.

I squinted at it, puzzled.

Had something happened last night while I was unconscious?

Because everyone was acting very, very strange today.