I straighten my spine and go into logistics mode because logistics is safe. "The welcome gala starts at seven. That gives us about two hours to get ready. I need you in a tux and presentable."
"Wait, the gala's tonight?"
"Yes, the gala's tonight. Did you not read the itinerary I sent you?"
"I skimmed it."
"You skimmed it." I close my eyes. "Of course you did."
"Relax, I brought the tux. I'll be ready." He pulls his garment bag from the closet where he hung it and holds it up like evidence. "See? Prepared. I also brought backup cufflinks in case you forgot yours."
I didn't forget mine. But the fact that he thought of it, that he anticipated what I might need — I shove that away. "I'm showering first," I say, and grab my toiletry bag and my garment bag and close the bathroom door behind me before he can say anything else.
The bathroom is slate tile and amber lighting and a massive glass shower, and I lean against the door with my eyes shut and breathe. Through the door, I can hear Ray moving around the suite, opening drawers, humming something. The normalcy of it makes my teeth ache.
I strip off my sweater and catch my reflection in the mirror. I look wrecked — messy hair, circles under my eyes, and the bruise on my shoulder where Ray bit me, reddish-purple andunmistakable. I stare at it and feel two things at once: a hot rush of arousal and a cold wave of panic.
Below the bruise, lower on my torso, there's another mark. This one is older. A thin white scar that curves along my left side, just below my ribs. I don't usually look at it. I've spent years training my eyes to skip over it, the same way I've trained myself to skip over the things it represents. But tonight, standing in this bathroom with Ray's bite on my shoulder and this scar on my ribs, every mark on my skin tells a story I didn't choose. The bruise. The scar. The body that keeps betraying the life I built on top of it.
I turn away from the mirror and get in the shower.
The hot water helps. It loosens the knots in my shoulders and the tension in my jaw, and for about thirty seconds I feel like a normal person getting ready for a work event. Then my brain offers me a replay of Ray's grip wrapped around my cock, and my body responds immediately, blood rushing south, and I press my forehead against the cool tile and will it to stop.
It doesn't stop. I'm hard and the water is running over my back and I can hear Ray on the other side of the wall, and I think about his voice in the dark saying tell me what you want and come for me and the steady stroke of his fist and the way he cleaned me up afterward, careful and gentle, like I was worth taking care of.
I turn the water cold. It helps, barely. I finish washing, get out, and dry off. I unpack my toiletry bag and line everything up — toothbrush, paste, face wash, moisturizer, suppressant case.
I open the case.
I already knew. I knew from the count at home. The pharmacy wouldn't approve an early refill, and I told myself I could stretch what I had. Take a half dose one of the days. Manage it.
But looking at the pills now, with the altitude and the travel stress and my body already doing things it shouldn't be doing— the low hum under my skin, the heat that hasn't gone away since the plane — the math doesn't work. I'm one dose short. The alpha on the other side of this door is someone my body has apparently decided to respond to on a level I haven't experienced since before the surgery, before the suppressants, before I learned to shut all of this down.
I take tonight's pill. I have two left for two more days. If I skip the last morning, I'll be on the plane home before it matters.
It's fine. I've managed worse.
I close the case. I do my hair, brush my teeth, put on my dress shirt and trousers. I leave the jacket and tie for after — I'll need help with the cufflinks, and I'm not asking Ray for help with my cufflinks, so I'll manage.
I wrap the towel around my waist over the trousers because my undershirt is in my bag in the room and I didn't think to grab it, and I open the bathroom door.
Ray is on the phone. He's half-dressed with his tux pants on, white dress shirt unbuttoned and hanging open over his bare chest, feet bare on the carpet. He's pacing by the window with his phone pressed to his ear, laughing.
"—I'm serious, Dev, the bathroom is bigger than my apartment. I think there's a fireplace in the foyer. No, a different fireplace, there's one in the main room too. Yeah, it's stupid nice. I feel like I'm in a movie."
He turns around, still laughing, and sees me.
He stops talking. Just stops, mid-breath, his mouth still open. His eyes drop from my face to my bare chest to the towel at my waist and back up again, and the look on his face is one I've never seen directed at me before. Not from Garrett at the dinner, not from the alpha outside the club, not from anyone. Raw and hungry in a way that makes my skin prickle everywhere his gaze touches.
"Dev, I gotta go," he says, his voice different now. Lower. "Yeah. Yeah, I'll call you tomorrow."
He hangs up without waiting for a response.
The room is very quiet. The fireplace hums. We're standing maybe ten feet apart, me in my trousers and nothing else, him in his open shirt, and the space between us feels like a live wire.
"I need my undershirt," I say, because I have to break the silence. "It's in my bag."
"Right." He doesn't move. His eyes are on the scar along my torso. I can feel him looking at it, and I fight the urge to press my palm over it. But he doesn't ask. He just looks, and then his gaze comes back up to my face.