Page 80 of The Alpha's Fake Mate

By the time we pulled up the drive to home, I was exhausted from my own nervous thinking.

Inside, I expected Holland to be waiting for me at the door. But there was no one. I immediately checked the dining room. Nothing.

Alston came to me in the hallway and said, “If you are looking for him, he’s at the pool.”

I raised my eyebrows in question, but he shrugged as if to say he had no clue why.

It was still too cold to swim. But then I remembered a pool was Holland’s favorite place for comfort. It was the place we’d first met and spoke while he sat in the slatted shadows of the patio, a shadow himself mixing with the dust motes and rusty, pre-autumn light.

I moved quickly through the house and came to the patio door. It was ajar.

Holland sat with his knees drawn to his chest, staring out over the still water of the long, azure pool. The lights were on in the water, making it glow in the early evening darkness. A faint chlorine scent shifted on the breeze along with cut grass and the faded fragrance of the old rose bush that grew beyond the patio gate.

As he heard my footsteps, Holland sat straight up and held out his hand. “Orion! You’re back. How do you feel?”

I took his hand and sat on the edge of the lounge chair beside him. Our sides pressed warmly. I wanted to take him into my arms and hold him forever.

“I’m fine.”

I heard him gulp.

“I was thinking,” Holland said. “If you don’t feel the Burn by tomorrow afternoon, we’ll lie and say we’re bonded. They’ll take our blood but it will be another day before they can get the results. It will buy us time.”

I stroked the back of his neck. “That’s good thinking.”

My voice remained calm, but inside my thoughts whirled, and everything felt out of control.

He leaned his head against my shoulder. “Would having more sex help stir things up?”

I couldn’t say no to him. “Maybe.”

I kissed him on the side of the head, my lips brushing his soft, silken hair. But my body was so taut and stressed I could barely think. Just the thought of losing him—my instinct was to fight, not fuck, a word I rarely used but at this point in time it seemed appropriate.

I had terrible, dark thoughts. I wanted to break Bosk in two, then bury him out back in the dark with only the owls as witnesses.

“Let’s go in,” Holland whispered.

We ended up in the dining room while the servants brought in platters of chicken, bowls of soup, and trays of fresh fruit. It all lacked flavor to my palette.

I brought out the whiskey afterward, and Holland said not one word, matching his drinking with my own, glass after glass of magical brown liquid.

I felt nothing. Tipsy maybe. Uneasy. But I never got fully drunk.

In my bed that night, he touched me everywhere but I could not respond. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” I kept saying.

He put his hand over my mouth. “Don’t apologize. Everything you’ve done for me--” His words faded away.

Later, he kissed my lips softly and said, “Hold me.”

Our naked bodies slid together. I clutched him tight to my chest. I breathed his essence and rubbed my face in his beautiful hair.

I didn’t see sleep until the curtains began to lighten with the coming dawn.

*

All morning I tried not to chastise myself. I felt no ability to function sexually. No hint of the Burn.

Had Wilde given me a placebo?