For a brief moment, our eyes meet.
There’s a strange silence between us. Maybe Blue intends for the atmosphere between us to stay tense and distant, but somehow, it doesn’t feel that way anymore.
Beneath that rigid aura of his, there’s this tiny opening again, a narrow energetic window through which I can tell… he’s no longer that angry with me.
Still, it’s hard to withstand the weight of his practiced stern gaze, so my eyes instinctively slip away, drifting down to something muchlessstern, his lips, and it's all completely by accident, of course.
Damn, they look soft, pink, and slightly moist, and I catch myself staring for a moment, wondering how things might have turned out if our circumstances had been different, if he hadn’t drawn such a firm line between us… Yeah, stupid thoughts.
Blue clears his throat meaningfully.
"Is that all?"
"Yes," I force out in a weak whisper.
What is wrong with me?
The burst of easy confidence I felt around other alphas is gone again, and it is just him and me, making me feel like a nervous teenager.
Blue turns away and walks back to the limousine.
Adams sits tucked into one corner of the limousine, staring out the window. I slide onto the opposite end of the same seat, while Blue settles into the middle between us, and… as he does, his thigh brushes lightly against my knee. It’s clearly accidentalon his part, but the contact still sends a small, pleasant shiver through me.
Blue doesn’t seem to notice my reaction. He simply leans back against the seat and pulls out his tablet.
For a moment, his scent drifts toward me, eucalyptus mixed with a subtle sweetness, tempting and fresh. I know it’s just his cosmetics and not Allure, but even so, I find it nicely dazing, like a hit of weed. Carefully, trying not to make it obvious, I let my gaze drop to his slender hand moving across the tablet screen, elegant, delicate fingers gliding over it. They could graze my abs like this, featherlight, ticklish, it could be something, right? Funny idea and… impossible.
We rarely sit this close in the limousine, and because of that, I find myself taking an almost embarrassing amount of pleasure in such a small thing.
Of course, after a few minutes of drifting in a soft pink haze, I come to my senses and stop myself from going too deep into this.
Yeah, Gabriel. Calm down. The boundaries between us have been made painfully clear, so why does some disobedient part of me still keep going astray, drawn to him?
The tiny problem is…
…when I close my eyes… why does it feel like something in him shyly responds?
As if he’s aware of my closeness in much the same way I’m aware of his. Tentatively… super carefully.
Eh, I'm probably imagining it.
We turn onto the street that leads downtown, and eventually, not wanting to spiral too far into the impossibility of us, I force myself to focus on the city sliding past outside the limousine windows, and a sigh escapes me. I should know my place by now instead of letting my unruly imagination keep feeding on things that could never become real.
For the rest of the ride, I sit rigid, fighting for control and avoiding looking at Blue while he calmly discusses something with Adams. The head of development still refuses to meet my gaze. I think he blames me, even if Blue doesn't.
Shortly afterward, as we're back in the penthouse, Blue eats lunch alone, with only my modest presence beside him.
There is mostly silence, but my thoughts keep churning, and eventually I decide to ask him something.
"Mr. Lowen, if I may inquire, tomorrow is Saturday. What does your weekend schedule usually look like?"
Blue, whose face was pensive and absent, lifts his head from his plate as if a ghost had spoken to him.
He stares at me for a few seconds.
"On Saturdays, I usually work until around 1 pm, mostly in the lab. I don't have meetings or conferences then. In the afternoon, my nephews or my brothers often visit, or I go to them."
He looks somewhere above my head. "Last week my nephew Sariel came by. But this time Axel is planning to visit, and we often play chess together."