“It’s the scent thing. Right?”
God, this man should be employed by the government as a weapon of secrets deconstruction. Before I can stop myself, I’m confirming he’s on the right path.
“Please, Dante. I can do whatever you need—I know I can—but you have to get everyone to agree to wearing scent blockers.”
Dante looks at me hard, almost scowling. His blue eyes become like jewels as he races through scenarios in his head until his eyes flare, then soften.
“What the fuck did that motherfucker do to you?”
I mean, he’s halfway right in his assumption. Maybe because I’m hungry and I’m tired—tired of life and the way I am living—I’m swaying in my vulnerability, instead of standing proud at surviving. But Dante makes me feel weak, and I kind of hate him for it.
Dante’s jaw locks, and he closes his eyes in a bid to calm himself. “Layne, scents are so fucking important. They give you clues about people’s intentions. This modern bullshit fad of people hiding behind medication is dangerous.”
I scoff, because as an Alpha, he would have no reason to know any different. Scents changing slightly to make way for intentions is irrelevant; if an Alpha wants something, they will take it whether they can scent it or not.
But he’s not finished. “I’ll teach you how to read scents.”
“I know how to read scents, Dante. Far out, everyone does.”
“Then, what does mine say right now?” he asks, dropping a sumptuous cloud of his Amaretto over me, making my jaw ache and my body throb.
I want to tell him the truth about how his scent makes my blood sing and urges me to curl up on his chest and ask him to hold me tight. But the man would think I am nothing but one of the gold diggers they are so intent on avoiding. I take a purposeful breath in and ignore the notes of promise and focus on the steely scent of his need to protect. “It says you’re worried about me not being myself. There’s a stronger part saying you want to prove to me that you can protect me.”
“What else?”
His scent curls around me more, and I smile up at him. “It says I should get some rest because you’re going to teach me what to do after reading a person’s scent. You’ll show me how to protect myself.”
It doesn’t at all, but I twist the situation around until it works, or we will be here all night. No matter how much he pushes, I’m not admitting the truth that I’m already wondering how I’m going to survive leaving them in fifty-nine days.
When you combine Valentine’s heady coffee scent with Matteo’s sweet vanilla scent and Dante’s Amaretto, the three of them are a walking, talking, breathtaking to look at affogato. We are so scent compatible that, when I think about them, I can not only taste their individual scents, but I can also visualize each of them, down to the smallest detail.
And that is scary as hell.
“Hey,” he says softly, “I thought you said we were done acting? I mean, if we’re still pretending, come here.”
The man can flip his mood and the different hats he wears as quickly and as easily as I can. When he runs his hand up my shoulder to rest on the back of my neck, with his other hand, he lifts my chin, dipping down to kiss me back to being dreamy.
Dante is more restrained than he was downstairs. His sweet kisses are still full of hunger, but they’re lazier, like it’s a Sunday morning and we have time to do nothing but make out.
I’m helpless to stop the moan I make, and instead of pulling away, he sucks my lower lip into his mouth and holds it between his teeth until I’m looking at him. He lets my lip drag slowly from between his teeth before he flicks his eyebrows up suggestively. “Better.”
“Better what?”
He runs his fingers through his hair, standing up to his full height, the blue of his eyes lost behind the heat we’re both ignoring. “We need to practice doing that more. No one will believe we’re courting if you kiss me like that in public.”
Not letting me get in another word again, Dante moves fast and sweeps me off my feet. He carries me into the bedroom Matteo set up.
“You need to be in this room.” He talks quickly, leaving no space for argument. “If we have anyone come visit, and they see you’ve been sleeping on the sofa and not in here, everything we’re doing will be for nothing.”
Which is the only reason I agree to use the De Luca Omega suite.
For a few seconds, I nearly believe my own BS too.
When I come back out after the world's most incredible shower, smelling like all the luxury soaps and lotions they had lined up, ready for me to use, the overhead lights in the room are off but the bedside lamp is on. The soft glow is so warm and inviting. As is the tray of food set up on the bed, as well as a brand-new satin sleep set.
Bypassing all those small luxuries, I pick up the note first and the single white lily. The perfume of the flower is exquisite, but it’s the lingering scent of two Alphas and a Beta who each wrote something small on the note that has me smiling like a lunatic.
“I’ll get better at this, I promise,” I say quietly to myself.
