Ayla: Always an Alpha

Chapter 16 - Humor Me

~Ayla~

"So I was thinking," Killian began, after swallowing a mouthful of pasta.

Earlier in the evening, he'd given me an update on his sleuthing into Alpha Cox and the warriors on my territory. It had been a week since Killian had overheard the first suspicious conversation between Alpha Cox and one of his men, and while there was still no obvious evidence pointing to the alpha, Killian was catching more and more snippets of shady conversations. We talked it over, and after we decided that Alpha Cox was now the prime suspect to the bounty on my head, I tried to push all thoughts of that odious alpha out of my mind and move on with dinner. If Alpha Cox wanted to risk everything he had just to have me killed, so be it. I sure as hell wasn't going to let him succeed at it, and I wasn't going to let him ruin my mood tonight like he had so many times in the past. No, tonight, I was going to revel in the dinner Killian and I were having. For the first time since we'd started this whole scheme, we were eating at the small dining table in the cabin, eating like two normal people would, and I loved it.

To show him that I was listening, I shifted my attention to him from my plate, one with far less meat (I had added extra meatballs to Killian's serving). A long piece of spaghetti still dangled from my lips, and I unabashedly slurped it into my mouth while waiting for him to continue.

He didn't. Continue, that is. Instead, a look of mirth fell across his features upon hearing my noisy spaghetti slurp. Even when I first laid eyes on him, I thought he was hot in that dangerous, panty-dropping, sort of way, but when he looked at me like that, I couldn't help but find him handsome, like some initial draft of a Disney hero. (I was sure that Disney would never let anyone with that many tattoos be their male lead, and that was their loss.)

I knew that that change in perception, one in which I regarded him as the main character in my (unachievable) happy ever and not just a temporary character, was dangerous territory for me, so I intentionally broke the silence.

I pointed my fork at Killian and scrunched my eyebrows at him. "Hey now mister, dinner is a judgment-free zone. Not everybody can eat as silently as you."

Silent was an understatement. I don't know how he had done it, but he hadn't even managed to scrape his fork against his plate once since we started eating. Someone with misophonia would have loved to have dinner with Killian.

"Not judging," he emphasized, throwing up his free hand in a sign of peace.

"Hmm, I don't know about that one," I disagreed. "Prove it."

His right eyebrow shot up and disappeared behind a lock of stray hair that had made its way to his forehead.

"Make a noise," I implored.

The look he gave me next made it very obvious he thought I was insane.

"Come on. Humor me. Gulp your water down. Chew loudly. Tap your foot. Just make a noise, any noise." Clearly, someone had taken a drill press to his head, written "be undetectable" on a slip of paper, shoved it into the cavern they had left behind, and let his brain absorb the foreign object for the rest of his life. I wanted to know if he was even capable of being noisy, if his brain had passed the brainwashing point of no return.

Luckily, after three weeks of dinners, he had learned not to argue with my impulsive requests.

"Fine," he acquiesced and immediately dropped his fork onto his plate with a clatter.

I couldn't help it. A shit-eating grin made its way onto my face. It grew even larger as he continued granting my appeal.

Loudly sighing, he swept the hair that had escaped his bun out of his face with his left hand and picked up his water glass with his right, making sure to knock the bottom rim of it against the table before he raised it into the air. The ice in it swirled, clinking against the thin sides.

"Cheers," he declared and tilted the glass in my direction. Looking directly into my eyes, he gulped down half of the glass.

I didn't even notice when he roughly deposited the now empty cup back onto the table. It may have been the eye contact at the end, maybe I even had a small dominatrix kink, but something about what had occurred at my request turned me on.    

"Happy?" he asked with an evident tone of humor in his voice.

I had to release my lip from between my teeth to respond. "Very."

His gaze shifted to my mouth before he spoke, quietly this time. "Good."

When Killian reached again for his fork, it was inaudible, but I did hear a faint throat clearing noise before he continued his meal.

I let him eat a few more bites of the pasta before shoving the plate of grilled asparagus in his direction. "Fiber."

"God, you're as annoying as I imagined my mother would have been."

Having already tried to pry anything about his past out of him with no luck, I ignored the sympathetic pang in my chest at his comment. "I am still convinced that even just a teensy bit of fiber will loosen you up a little."

Killian rolled his eyes, a habit that I liked to think he had picked up from me.

"So you were thinking?" I questioned, trailing off as I waited for him to finish his earlier sentence.

"We should spar sometime. I can show you a bit of my own training. Maybe twice a week?"

Despite the trepidation that rose within me, I agreed. I didn't think I wanted to know how he was trained, but I'd be a fool to argue that learning moves from an assassin's point of view wouldn't help me.

"Let's start tomorrow night. Midnight. I don't see these cabin floors holding up to any sort of combat. Could we use the gym?"

"Yeah, I've never known anyone but me to go in there around that time."

"Do you make a habit of going to the gym at midnight?"

"I wouldn't call it a habit, but from time to time, yes, when I'm feeling overwhelmed, it's nice to not have to think, even if that means sweating buckets at midnight."

"I get that" he remarked, "although I wouldn't have used those words to explain it."

"Well, what would you have said?" I was hungry for the opportunity to get a glimpse into Killian's thoughts.

In deliberation, coffee-colored eyes looked up towards the outdated lighting fixture above the small dining table for a moment before returning back to me.

"Something like 'The pain distracts me from everything else.'"

~~~

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Dear reader, in case you haven't read my previous story, Ariadne: Almost an Alpha, I'm going to tell you now I am a BIG fan of the slow burn. Cute little chapters like this are a part of that. Hope you enjoyed :)

Question of the week: This one's about you, lovie. Have you ever taken a relationship slowly? Or are you more one for a fast-paced romance? Or both? How do your feelings in each differ?