“Please let go of me,” Chad forced the words out, looking away from both Peter and his mean friend. Then again, Peter was the one holding him. Maybe he was the mean one.
“Right,” Peter dropped his wrist, the laughing note gone from his voice. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
Chad didn’t stick around to hear what Peter didn’t mean to do. He walked toward the exit as fast as he could without running, slipping out the door and onto the sidewalk and feeling like he’d just escaped an execution.
Was that what it felt like to be hit on by an alpha? The thought was disquieting. Hailing a cab, his hand shaking as he lifted it up, he thought back to how he’d been flirting with the bartender. He was sure he hadn’t made her feel anything like Peter and Aiden had made him feel.
A cab pulled over and Chad jumped inside, purposefully not looking behind him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the pair of alphas were watching him leave and laughing at the puppy with his tail between his legs.
“Where you headed?” the driver asked, already pulling off the curb as he asked the question.
Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, Chad let the breath out slowly before giving the driver his address.
He just wanted to go home and sleep for another twelve hours.
***
Peter watched with a sinking feeling in his gut as the young alpha ran away. He’d completely misread the situation.
“What the fuck was that?” he growled at Aiden. His friend just gave him a look, and Peter turned his face away, feeling ashamed.
He couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t known that the young alpha—Chad—was uncomfortable. It had been clear in the way he held himself and the way he’d kept looking around the room for an escape.
Peter liked seducing alphas—liked making them squirm and wonder why an alpha was making their knot throb—but Chad hadn’t been seduced in the slightest. He’d just been cornered.
“Oh, come on! We didn’t do anything wrong,” Aiden said, lifting his bottle up high and draining it. “It’s not like we were gonna take him out back and rape him. We were just having some fun.”
Peter bristled. Sometimes Aiden could be a real jerk.
“We were assholes,” he said. “Fucking grade-A douchebags.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Aiden smirked.
Peter rolled his eyes. When Aiden had a few beers in him and got into this mood, he was impossible to deal with.
“I’m gonna head home,” Peter said. He’d been in the mood to find himself someone hot and willing to pound into the mattress, but now he wasn’t feeling it.
“Seriously?” Aiden looked pissed.
“Yeah. I’ll see you this weekend. Thanks for coming out tonight, even if you were an asshole.”
“Sometimes you can be such a sanctimonious prick,” Aiden said with no heat, putting his empty bottle down on the bar.
Peter didn’t answer. He clapped Aiden on the back and headed out, noting with a twinge of guilt that the bar was notably less crowded than it had been a few minutes ago.
No one wanted to be caught in the middle of an alpha fight.
Zipping up his coat and hailing a cab, Peter made his way back to his empty apartment. Alone and with guilt twisting in his stomach was not how Peter had expected his night to end.
Chapter 4
Peter leafed through the resumes of applicants Dawn wanted to hire for her division, trying to figure out what they all had in common. He wasn’t going to deny any of her requests—she had a budget and the people she hired on that budget were up to her—but he wanted to learn what to look for.
Peter wanted to understand what she wasdoing. He wouldn’t ever be a hacker or have the technical know-how Dawn and her people possessed, but he needed to speak their language well enough to effectively lead them.
With his mercenary teams, Peter knew exactly what to look for. But these technology hires? As far as Peter could tell, they were all over the map.
There was a knock on the door, and Peter put the resume he was studying down on the desk.
