“Do you trust me?”
Such a simple question.
One I should have immediately answered, but I froze. If I admitted it out loud, it would be like giving over the last piece of myself. The most important piece. The one that would give him the power to shatter me.
I was already broken, so why not risk it?
“Yes. I trust you,” I whispered, hoping I wasn’t making a mistake.
Eleven
KAELEN
In the days since I kissed Willow, I walked around with a constant hard-on. My alpha craved our sweet, strong omega. But I vowed to treat her like the queen she was. I hated the distance between us. I wanted nothing more than to carry her into my bed and never let her leave.
She needed time to adjust. I didn’t want to overwhelm her.
So I focused on work. Dimitri sent along a mountain of contracts, and Aidan finally uncovered Isabelle Sterling’s medical records.
On top of that, a contractor arrived to convert the additional room off the main suite that would serve as Willow’s nest. My omega would not spend another heat in anything less than luxury.
Regardless of whether she invited me to join her or not.
I assured her I wasn’t ignoring her. I didn’t want her to question what had happened between us. Our situation was delicate.
Instead, I asked her to join me at one of my casinos tonight. Theway her eyes lit up when I confirmed it was a date made the dark place where my heart resided thaw.
Stacks of papers were strewn across my desk as I pulled open the top drawer, patting the velvet box. The first of many courting gifts I would lavish Willow with. I expected her to be difficult and try to refuse them.
Too bad that wasn’t an option.
Almost every day, Torin took her to that farm on the outskirts of the city. I peeked through my ajar door as she walked by every night, her delectable scent calling to me like a spider’s web to a moth.
Fuck.
I would let her trap and torture me for an eternity.
Muddy, form-fitting jeans hugged her curves with an oversized sweater tossed over her slender torso when she padded by my office. I wanted to peel her out of them, unwrapping her like the gift she was.
Part of me hoped she’d see the open door as an invitation to join me, being as bold as she had been after her heat.
A few times, she lingered outside, never daring to enter, unfortunately.
Every evening, Torin reported on her activities. Things had been quiet. No one paid any attention to her. Granted, she didn’t go anywhere public outside of that lunch with her friend. No one knew what she was to me, not yet.
That would change after tonight.
I kept my affairs private, rarely flashing my dalliances out in public.Oh, how I couldn’t wait to show off Willow, gorgeous vixen that she was.
She liked horses. Rescue animals. Abused ones, rehabilitating them. Apparently, she was quite fond of a black stallion. According to Torin, it was gentle and calm with her, but bristled whenever any alphas got too close. In the last five years, she had worked with more than a dozen horses.
Shaking away my wandering thoughts, I stared unseeing at the contracts from the Bratva, pushing them aside and perusing the surprisingly slim records of Isabelle Sterling. I sent a copy ofthe medical findings to the head of internal medicine at Boston General. Who also worked for me as my personal physician.
I couldn’t make head nor tail of most of it. However, for someone who had been sick for nearly a decade with no diagnosis, there was a disappointing lack of testing done. The most recent doctor dismissed most of Isabelle’s symptoms as anxiety.
As I dove in, it appeared she always saw the same two doctors, each as incompetent as the other.
After my eyes went cross-eyed staring at the documents, a questioning knock echoed on the door. My dick stirred.
