Page 35 of Forbidden Bonds
“There is only one seat,” she says.
“So there is…” I’m not necessarily anti-people, just anti-outside. But I also like my privacy, especially when I am working. Lucian occasionally comes inside, but never for long. “If I were a gentleman, I’d give the seat to you.” I scoop her up, sit down, and drop her onto my lap. “There. You can stay here while I work. As I found out this morning, when I was with Lucian, I need to be close to you. Is this okay with you?”
“Yes,” she says. “I prefer it.”
A warm, contented, and completely alien sensation grows in the center of my chest. She prefers being close to me, too.
I pull up to the desk. I enter her details and set the bots to crawl the systems for chatter; everything else can wait. It’s not long before an alert starts.
“What is that?” she asks.
Well, fuck. That came around sooner than I was expecting. “Ethan Black just entered the building.”
Lucian
“Where is she?”
“She?” I play dumb and casually hit the call button to get my enforcers up here pronto. Madelyn is pregnant and will throw a fucking fit if I smoke, but right now I could do with something to take the edge off. This conversation is about to go south fast. I’ve no doubts my brother has his surveillance in place. He has probably been tracking Ethan from the moment he stepped into the building.
“The bitch omega I left here,” Ethan elaborates, like I don’t already know.
“She went into heat after you left. I had to act… and she’s busy now.”
“Still?” His voice rises an octave, and in a very un-Ethan-like way. “That was a fucking week ago.”
“Eight days.” I offer a broad smile. “You may consider her permanently busy… and someone else’s problem.”
His eyes narrow. “You let someone mate her, claim her? Larissa-fucking-Olsen! Are you insane?!”
I wince at his roar, then go for nonchalant. “Letis a strong word. She went into heat within thirty seconds of you leaving.What the fuck was I supposed to do? Call you back? You were in full-bore, raging alpha mode, and acting like a dick!”
“No, no, no…” He grips his hair and starts pacing. “Tell me you didn’t give her to your gecko-loving brother.”
“Fine,” I say reasonably. “I won’t tell you that.”
The door opens and, as if on cue, my gecko-loving brother walks in.
What I’m not braced for, and neither is Ethan, is my brother slugging him in the face.
Rhett
“Fuck.” I shake out my fist. “I think I broke my hand.”
Lucian chuckles.Bastard.
The elevator beside me springs open, and Jordan and Kade enter the office like they’re ready for trouble. I’m guessing Lucian called them the moment Ethan turned up.
If Ethan loses his shit, we’re probably all fucked, but at least the two deltas even up the odds.
Lucian walks over to Jordan and, in an impressively slick move, liberates Jordan’s gun and levels it at the center of Ethan’s head.
“What the actual fuck!” Ethan growls, still rubbing his jaw where I punched him. With a scowl, he slowly raises his hands.
“Take a seat,” Lucian says, the gun never wavering as he nods at the casual seating arrangement: a couple of long couches facing each other with a chair on either side and a coffee table between.
“Motherfucker,” Ethan mutters, stalking over to one of the couches and dropping his ass down.
“Rhett, take a seat, too,” Lucian says coolly. “I don’t trust either of you, and I need your asses where I can see them. The only person who gets to kick shit off in my office is me.”
