The Mates of Monsters

Chapter 26

I secure a heavy towel around my body then peek through a slit in the doorway. The bedroom is empty, but I hear David's voice coming from the living room. He must be on the phone with Tarlo; maybe David is updating him.

Tonight Jeremy planned for me to wear the emerald green dress. It's long with a sophisticated cut, not too young or too old. He calls them my dresses, but I feel as if I'm borrowing costumes for a ballet performance. I smile, twirl about the room, and put all my recently-learned knowledge on our politics to use. David says that shape-shifting, people-pleasing person is me. If he's right, then I have never been so fractured in my life. Funnily enough, I have never felt so whole.

I leave the bedroom in the dress so David can zipper me in. My hair tumbles down my shoulders, still partially damp, and I gather it to the side for him. "David?" I call and appear from the hallway.

He's standing in the center of the room, half-dressed with dress pants but missing his shirt. He looks me over with the phone still pressed to his ear. "I have to go," he says to the device, "we're heading to dinner soon... Alright... Okay. I'll call again tomorrow."

He hangs up and I ask, "Was it Tarlo?"

"I was checking in on things," he says. I turn and display my un-zipped zipper and he needs no instruction. He draws it up and I feel the fabric secure around me as I catch sight of his shirt folded on top of the credenza. His fingers slide from the back of the neckline to my waist, and he steps against me.

"Are you trying to break me?" He questions, lower, referring to my little show before showering; when I undressed. "Careful, Brigette."

I spin around and say, "I forgot to close the door."

He shakes his head in disapproval. "I have control, but I also have my limits."

"Is that a warning? I can't make you lose control?"

"Not if you want me to be gentle."

My eyes freeze in his own as my lips pull apart only slightly; everything inside of me whirls into a black hole in a mere second. "I-I—"

David breathes in and lures me closer, not taking his gaze from my flushed face. "Are you thinking it over?"

"N-No—you," I glare at him and try to move away. "You're so full of it."

"You drive me crazy," he says, utterly serious, pulling me until my body is flush with his. "You, Brigette—I have never wanted something so badly in my life. And you stand around in your little underwear, and I'm begging myself to look away because if I don't, I know I'll do something I'll regret."

My brows furrow together. "David, I..."

"Let me control myself, for both of our sakes."

"I try to but—but I—"

He sits against the arm of the loveseat and lowers his eyes to align with mine as he urges me to say how I feel. His hands hold my hips, and my head teeters back and forth between the forming of words and his touch. "I yearn for you...arguably more than you do for me. So please, don't expect me to behave," I tell him.

David's eyes search my own. Soon he realizes our reality, and says, "We have to get to dinner."

"Then we should go."

His grip firms on my hips, but I ease them off with my own, enforcing his punishment of being an Alpha with duties and places to be. "I can wait," he says, "until after dinner. When we get back, we'll discuss this."

The formal dining room is separate from the cafeteria where I met Bonny. It is a long room in the initial, stone brick building, and in the center of the room sits an impossibly long table with enough seats to sit everyone. Something about it seems medieval; the metal-forged chandeliers and repetitive arched windows along the right side draw in my eyes the second we arrive. An impossibly detailed rug runs underneath the dining table with hues of red and gold, and the table itself is dressed for a king.