Alphas' Indecent Proposal

Chapter 17

Kate's POV

Damian was right about one thing. My body really was exhausted.

Back in the apartment downstairs, the one they'd set up for me during my so-called business trip, I barely made it through a shower before collapsing into bed again.

I couldn't remember ever sleeping this much, not even during the growth spurts of my teenage years.

I tried to reach my wolf. Tried to feel for her in the quiet dark of my mind the way I sometimes did when things felt uncertain.

Silence. As always.

I'd gotten used to her absence by now.

By the time I woke, the sky had turned amber. Dusk. My stomach was hollow with hunger, but there was an interior design draft on my desk that was almost finished. Just a few more touches. I wanted to complete it first.

Before I married Ronald, I'd actually been passionate about the interior design degree I was pursuing in college. My grades were strong, and for a brief, exhilarating stretch, a social media account where I posted my design renderings had gone semi-viral. Through that account, I'd connected with a handful of clients who genuinely loved my aesthetic. The freelance commissions paid off my student loans and even covered a portion of the deposit on the small apartment Ronald and I moved into together.

Of course, my contribution was nothing compared to the bulk of what Ronald had put down.

But I'd treasured it.

That money represented something rare: being recognized for something I loved.

Ronald didn't know about any of it. I'd wanted to tell him at the time, but a client I'd been working with through that account had talked me out of it. Everyone carries a little secret or two, I'd reasoned. I tell Ronald everything else. This one thing, this one private corner of my life, might even make me more interesting to him.

Shortly after that, Ronald proposed. We got married, moved in together, and he made it clear he wanted me to be a full-time homemaker. He wanted us to start a family as soon as possible. So I shelved my plans to job-hunt after graduation and stayed home.

But after years of trying, nothing happened. My body refused to cooperate.

I wanted to see a doctor. Ronald wouldn't allow it. He didn't want me doubting my own body, he said. Maybe the problem was psychological. Maybe I was too fixated on getting pregnant and the stress was working against me. His suggestion: get back out into the world, take on something simple, interact with other people. The pressure would ease, and a baby would come naturally.

I'd taken his advice. Sent out resumes. Landed an internship at Voss Corporation.

And now, through the most absurd chain of events, my husband's affair with Damian's fiancée had tangled me up with all three Voss brothers.

The one silver lining of this unwanted, involuntary "business trip" was that I'd decided to put my idle hours to use. Sitting around with nothing to do would only invite overthinking. So I'd logged back into my old design account.

To my surprise, one client had been sending messages periodically for years. He wanted me to design a new home for him and his future wife.

The fact that someone still remembered me after all this time, still preferred my style, already made my chest tighten with gratitude.

What moved me even more was that he hadn't gotten married yet. His house was still waiting. For my design.

So from the day I'd moved into this apartment Damian had arranged, every spare moment had gone into that commission.

The evening slipped away with the sunset, quiet and unnoticed.

Click.

The living room light flicked on.

Damon was here. I hadn't even heard the door. He was leaning against the hallway wall, his dark suit jacket draped loosely over one arm, no tie, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. In the warm, low light, his eyes looked impossibly deep, and the slow, amused sweep of his gaze across me sent a wave of tingling heat over my skin.

"What's got you so focused?" Damon smiled as he walked in, his voice filling the apartment like a warm current.

"Nothing much. What brings you here? Is there another surveillance session tonight?" I scrambled to gather the papers and tablet from the desk, clutching them against my chest, and offered him an awkward smile.

Damon's eyes flickered over the edges of the drawings visible above my arms, but he was tactful enough not to press the question I'd dodged. Instead, he extended an invitation. "Of course not. Voss Corporation doesn't work its employees that hard, especially not injured ones. Come on. I'm taking you to dinner."

"Just us?" I blinked.

"Having dinner alone with me shouldn't be that horrifying, should it?" His mouth curved. "There's a fantastic Italian place downstairs. You need food that doesn't look as pale as you do right now. And I'm guessing Damian hasn't taken you anywhere besides Catherine stakeouts, which means you're long overdue for an evening outside this apartment and its lovely ambiance of suspicion toward your husband."

I hesitated.

But Damon possessed a terrifying gift. He could make the word no simply vanish from your vocabulary. There was no coercion, no pressure. Every word, every gesture, every micro-expression radiated a kind of effortless ease that made you feel like you were strolling down a beautifully landscaped garden path, only to realize at the end that the destination had been his idea all along.

I nodded.

What was there to hesitate about, really? Good food, good-looking company. It was just dinner. Not an affair. I was supposed to be on a business trip anyway. Might as well do something that actually felt like one.

The restaurant was dimly lit and intimate. Sitting across from Damon, I thought of Priya and her breathless obsession with the Voss triplets, and had to suppress a laugh. If Priya knew I'd been collecting them like stamps, having had private dinners with two out of three brothers now, the decibel level of her shriek would probably shatter glass.

Damon didn't ask what I liked. He ordered a bottle of Sicilian red without consulting me. I opened my mouth to protest the presumption. His features were so similar to Damian's, and the high-handedness was an uncanny echo, which triggered my reflexive urge to push back. But then I took a sip, and the objection died on my tongue. The wine was flawless. Not too sweet, not too dry. The finish carried a warm spice that lingered on my palate without a single flaw I could name.

Across the table, Damon watched my expression and smiled.

"How did you know I'd like this?" I asked.

His fingertip traced the rim of his glass, his smile unhurried and assured. "There's a mug on your desk. The bottom has a wine stain. Dry reds don't leave that particular shade of residue. Your drawer has dark chocolate in it, seventy-five percent cacao or higher, which tells me you lean toward bitter, full-bodied flavors. Add the fact that you drink your coffee black..." He met my eyes. "I guessed you'd enjoy a Sicilian red with a spiced finish. Purely a guess. I hope it didn't disappoint."

I stared at him over the rim of my glass.

The mug. The chocolate in the drawer. Both of those details had existed within the window of less than two minutes, when he'd watched me scoop the papers off the desk and carry them to my room.

He'd extrapolated my wine preference from that.

I wasn't sure whether I was deeply impressed or deeply unsettled. Possibly both.

Because the man sitting across from me was clearly not someone who would, under any normal circumstances, seek out a woman like me for casual conversation.

And yet here he was. Unless I was reading this entirely wrong, he was trying to charm me.

The contract between me and the three brothers was airtight. There were no more loopholes to exploit. What could I possibly have that was worth this level of effort?

But Damon was a master of words, and he didn't leave me much room to think. Or perhaps it was simply the first time I was seeing him untethered from his brothers. Away from Damian and Darius, he was a different creature entirely. No longer the calculating mediator. Tonight, all of that dazzling, disarming focus was aimed squarely at me.

He asked about my work. Not the generic How's the job going? He referenced a specific interdepartmental conflict I'd mediated last month.

"I used a listen-first-negotiate-later approach," I explained under his probing, though something inside me felt strangely exposed.

The things I handled at Voss Corporation were probably the least noteworthy matters anyone could bring up. If something was important, it wouldn't be assigned to an intern.

Unless it was both unimportant and a headache.

Then it landed on my desk.

But Damon's eyes lit up. "Do you know there's a legal term for what you just described? It's called a controlled concession. You didn't even realize you were deploying an advanced persuasion tactic. You say nobody taught you. That's because your instincts are that sharp."

The tips of my ears burned.

It wasn't that I'd never been praised before. When my design account had gained traction, I used to grin at the complimentary comments for longer than I'd ever admit. But no one had ever looked at me like this while saying it. When Ronald complimented me, it was always Great dinner or That dress looks nice on you. Praise that reduced me to a function. Damon was complimenting my mind.

A smile spread across my face before I could stop it. My cheeks grew warmer.

But then, mid-gaze with Damon, a prickle of unreality crept up my spine.

Tonight had been too perfect. Every topic, every smile, every detail Damon happened to notice. Not a single flaw.

Maybe it was because nothing in my life had ever been this seamless. And unfamiliar things always triggered my guard.

I mentally rewound the conversation.

Not just the moments he'd made me laugh. The details. Like when he'd casually asked if I remembered anything from last night. When I said no, he'd nodded and moved on, but his gaze had lingered on my face a beat longer than before.

Or when he'd asked whether I'd experienced any "unusual discomfort" during my days in the apartment. I'd said just headaches. Damon had said Good, but his finger had tapped the glass once, sharp and deliberate.

He'd also brought up Catherine's incident at the restaurant, mentioning it lightly, as though the woman was simply causing trouble again. But the focus of his questions hadn't been on what Catherine said. It had been on whether my body had any physical reactions afterward.

The anxious hammering in my chest, the one that had felt like carrying a treasure that didn't belong to me, settled into stillness.

I understood now. Damon had come here to get information out of me.

The question was: what did he know that I didn't? And what had changed about me that was apparently already obvious to everyone except me?

I set my glass down and studied the warm, perfect, impeccable smile Damon turned on me after waving the waiter over for the check.

"Damon," I said quietly. "Why did you really bring me out tonight?"

"Because you deserve a good meal, Kate. It's that simple."

My gaze dropped. The restaurant's elegant decor no longer looked beautiful. The food I'd just eaten no longer tasted like the best meal of my life.

On the way back, Damon held the car door open for me. As I slid inside, his fingers brushed across the back of my hand. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe the door handle was just narrow. That fraction-of-a-second contact kept the patch of skin on my hand burning for the next ten minutes. My responses to Damon inside the car turned stiff.

I stared through the window at the blurred city lights, my heartbeat refusing to settle.