JACK
“Another letter from Avendene for you.” Nolan dropped the missive onto Jack’s blotter and set the morning’s third cup of coffee beside it.
Jack removed his reading glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose and rub the corners of his gritty eyes. He cracked a huge yawn. “Anything else? Did Crewe respond yet?”
It was his last piece of business. If the blasted man would do his lordly duty and sign off on the Quinton purchase as Jack had been badgering him to do since, it seemed, the beginning of time, then Jack would be free to go home to his men. He’d given Beckett some space with Arden, and?—
Nolan shook his head.
“Fuck’s sake,” Jack grumbled. “If he doesn’t hurry up and sign the documents, I’ll go over to his house my damn self, drag him down to his study, and stand over him while he—no. Hah. I’ll send you over.”
Alpha or not, Crewe would bend to Nolan. He always had.
Nolan’s face pinched, making Jack laugh. “Please do not,” he said.
“You can handle him.”
“I wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole.”
Nolan was the son of Jack’s childhood tutor, and he had a lifetime of experience when it came to managing alpha lords. He’d been taught alongside Jack and had bullied him through his studies, when Jack wasn’t busy brawling around and getting into scrapes.
If Crewe didn’t get off his arse and let Jack do his job and go home, hewouldsend Nolan over. Nolan could take a ten-foot pole with him if he wanted, and he could do whatever he liked with it, as long as he got Crewe to pull his weight.
He shared this with Nolan, took a sip of his coffee, then opened the letter.
“Jack?” Nolan said from the doorway. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Hmm?” Jack glanced up. Nolan hurried back across the room, frowning with worry. Jack flipped the letter over, flattened it on the desk to hide it from Nolan’s innocent eyes, and then realised that Arden had drawn on both sides. He grabbed a ledger from the stack off to one side of his desk, and shoved the paper under it. “Yes?”
“What is it? Is there a problem?”
Besides all of the blood rushing from his head to his cock when instead of a letter, he opened up an exquisite and lovingly detailed sketch of Beckett?
Nude?
No. No problem at all.
“It’s fine. It’s from Arden. It’s fine.”
Nolan squinted at him.
“It’s a letter from Arden, that’s all.”
That was not all.
Arden had drawn the sketches and addressed the envelope. The rest of the words, however, were written in a blunt, slightly uneven hand that Jack recognised as Beckett’s.
He waited until Nolan had left before sliding the sheet of paper out from under the ledger.
Did it even count as a letter when all it said was,Come and get it?
The sketch beneath the words showed Beckett lounging like a prince in a bath. Jack wondered what Beckett had thought when he saw himself. He wondered if Beckett saw the same emotion behind the lines that Jack did.
Probably Beckett would have taken one look at the sketch, said,Give it here, and sent it off to let Jack know that they were done waiting.
What Jack saw was a powerful young man, staring at the viewer with heat and demand in his eyes.
Jack touched a light fingertip to the beloved face.
