The silence that followed told me exactly what they thought of that answer.
"You're not alone anymore." He said it like a fact, not an argument. "You don't have to white-knuckle through this by yourself."
"I know."
"Do you?"
I didn't answer. He let my chin go and I rolled over and pretended to fall asleep, and in the morning I went to work anyway because the alternative was staying in that house alone while Richard could have access to me and my body ached for Alphas I couldn't reach.
They didn't fight me on it. They just made sure one of them was always within a few floors, their phones on loud, their schedules cleared of anything that couldn't be interrupted. The compromise sat between us unspoken: I wouldn't stay home, but they wouldn't let me be alone.
I've even stopped pretending I have reasons to find them. The excuses died somewhere around the fourth day, when I walked into Amos' office carrying nothing before sitting on his couch and reading through the forensic accounting data he'd been compiling while he worked.
We spent two hours like that, not touching, barely talking, just existing in the same room while his scent settled into my clothes and my scent warmed his office and the whole thing felt so domestic and comfortable that it should have terrified me.
It did terrify me. I went back the next day anyway.
Now it’s Thursday and Richard has been in meetings since one o'clock, which should mean the executive floor belongs to me and Tamsin. I finished my actual work an hour ago. The filing is done, the correspondence is sent, and the expense reports are reconciled.
Except... Richard's meeting ends early. I hear his voice in the corridor before I see him, that particular cadence he uses when he's wrapping up a conversation he's already won. My spine straightens on instinct as my hands find busywork on my keyboard, the performance of productivity that's become second nature in his presence.
Instead of going to his office, he comes straight to my desk.
"Mattaniah." He stops beside my cubicle, close enough that his cologne fills my nose and his hip brushes the edge of my partition. "Walk with me. I want to discuss your development since I was too busy recently."
I was hoping he forgot about that or at least had backed off after Dominic confronted him. My stomach drops but I standanyway, because refusing Richard in the middle of the office isn't an option I have.
He leads me toward the corner where the executive floor meets the windows, a stretch of corridor that's empty this time of day because the afternoon light makes the temperature uncomfortable. No one comes here between two and four. He knows this. He chose this.
"Dominic seems to think he has a claim on you." Richard's voice remains pleasant. "He was very... protective the other day. Territorial, even."
"I don't know what you mean, sir."
"Don't lie to me, Mattaniah. It insults us both." He stops walking. We're alone in the corridor, the rest of the floor fifty feet away and around a corner. "My son pulled you out of my hands and told me that people should get the wrong idea. That's not ambiguous."
"I can't control what Dominic does."
"No. But you can control what you do." He steps closer. His hand finds my hip, his thumb pressing into the tender skin there, my body going rigid with the effort of not flinching. "You can control who you encourage. Who you seek out. Who you let touch you."
"Sir—"
"I've been patient with you." His other hand comes up to cup my jaw, tilting my face toward him. His thumb traces my cheekbone in a mockery of tenderness. "I've given you time to settle in, to understand how this household works. But my patience has limits, and my sons are testing them."
His scent is everywhere. Overwhelming.Wrong. My body wants to gag on it but I hold still, caught between making a scene and just waiting until this is over. Richard wouldn’t... he wouldn’t...
"You work for me." His thumb traces down to my lower lip and presses against it, not entering, just resting there with a promise of what he could demand. "You live in my house. You exist in my sphere because I allow it. Whatever my sons have told you, whatever they've made you feel, remember that. They can't protect you from me. No one can."
His hand drops from my face and then he steps back, straightens his cuffs, and smiles.
"Think about that. We'll talk more soon."
His footsteps echo down the corridor and around the corner, and I stand in the empty stretch of hallway with his scent on my skin and his thumb-print burning on my lip and my whole body screaming to get clean.
I make it back to my desk on autopilot. Tamsin looks up and her expression shifts the second she sees my face. "Matt? What happened?"
"Nothing." The word comes out hollow. "Nothing happened."
"You're shaking."
