I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. It served him right.
“Linus, this is Caden Kuhl,” Saint introduced the auctioneer. “And his partner, Hamish Farrow. They’re the owners of the Dark Fantasies Club.”
My brow inched up slightly. Two alphas as partners? It was rare and a little taboo, but I knew it happened.
“We’ll do whatever it takes to make this right,” Hamish said.
“Just don’t ever let it happen to anyone else, ever again,” I said hoarsely.
“Absolutely not,” Caden said.
Both of the club owners looked beside themselves with regret, which made me feel better. That didn’t mean I was ready to be the center of everyone’s attention and host a tea party when I was still naked under the blankets wrapped around me.
Saint seemed to pick up on my reluctance to be around alphas. “We need to sort this all out and make amends, but not right now,” he said, subtly holding up his hands to Caden and Hamish, like he was shooing them away.
“Of course,” Hamish said with a nod. “We’ll give you some space.”
“We have the entire lodge booked for the whole weekend,” Caden said, a bit awkwardly. “You’re more than welcome to enjoy the suite until Monday morning, complete with room service, on us, if you’d like,” he told me.
“Um, I don’t know,” I said.
“I’ll make sure he’s okay,” Saint said, gesturing for Caden and Hamish to leave with a little more insistence.
The two alphas made more apologies and excuses, then left. I was so relieved once it was just me and Saint in the room that I blew out a breath and relaxed to the point where the blankets slid off one of my shoulders.
“I can leave too, if you’d like,” Saint said. I knew he wanted to stay right where he was.
“No, you can stay,” I said, confused by my own feelings. “I…I know none of this was real, but I don’t want to be alone right now.”
“That’s a perfectly reasonable response,” Saint said, coming back to kneel in front of my chair, like he’d done earlier. He looked bashful for a moment before saying, “As it happens, my day job is as a grief and trauma counselor. I deal with people going through shit all the time.”
“Oh?” I blinked, feeling even more at ease with him. “You know, you’ve got a good bedside manner for that job. I should be terrified of you, but you’re actually making me feel safer.”
I wasn’t sure I should have blurted all that out. It was too late now.
Saint relaxed into a smile and sat back on the carpet. “I have been told that I have a calming presence.”
“You do,” I said. I felt embarrassed, almost like I was gushing over him. It had to be because my heat was so near.
I wondered if Saint would be available to take me through my heat.
But no, that was the panic and false sense of safety and dependence talking. Saint was a stranger. I couldn’t ask him to deal with my heat.
“I’m a primary school teacher, first grade,” I said, feeling stupid for making small talk with a strange alpha in a designer suit, who still hadn’t taken off his silken mask, while I was naked and curled up in a cocoon of blankets right next to him. “You know you’re still wearing your mask, right?” I asked, then felt even stupider.
Saint grinned sheepishly. “Um, yeah, that’s on purpose,” he said, surprising me. “I have a bad scar.”
“That’s okay, I don’t mind,” I said, suddenly eager to see the scar.
He paused, like he thought maybe I should mind, then reached for the back of his head. He untied the scarf and lowered it, revealing a wicked scar that ran across his forehead, through his left eyebrow, and across his temple into his hairline. It was old and white, but it must have been bad when he’d first gotten it.
“It’s not as bad as all that,” I said. “It’s just a scar.”
“I’ve been told it makes me look scary, and in my line of work, I need to not look scary,” he said.
My eyebrows went up. “Do you wear that when you’re consulting with patients?”
“Sometimes,” he admitted with a nod. “Not with adults. Mostly with kids. I tell them it’s my superhero mask.”
