Page 59 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
Ren dug his heels into the floor.
Brody lifted him up. One arm under his knees, the other on his back. He carried him just like the night of the heat. Ren thrashed against the alpha’s chest, against his shoulders, but Brody walked toward the door without flinching.
The last thing Ren saw before leaving the gym was Jax sitting on the tatami floor, his arms resting on his knees and a smile as wide as a piano.
Brody set Ren down on the office floor as if he were placing a box of explosives on a table. Carefully, but without gentleness. He closed the door behind him, and the click of the latch echoed in the room lined with dark wood and shelves crammed with books no one read.
Ren took three steps back. He smoothed out his t-shirt, soaked with sweat from training, and crossed his arms. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel the pulse in his teeth.
Brody walked around the desk and leaned against the edge, facing him. He didn’t sit down. He didn’t claim the position of power that the desk offered him. He stood there, arms crossed, unconsciously mimicking Ren, and for a long moment neither of them spoke.
“Are you okay?”
Ren blinked.
“Pardon?”
“Physically,” Brody vaguely gestured toward Ren’s body with a nod of his chin. “Are you okay?”
The heat rose from his chest to his ears in a rush of warm blood that Ren couldn’t stop. He knew exactly what he meant. The heat. What they’d done in that bed that smelled of raisins and walnuts. The weight of Brody on top of him, inside him, the knotting that had kept them joined for a time Ren didn’t want to quantify.
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“Ren.”
“Perfectly fine, Kovac.” He fixed his gaze on a spot on the bookshelf behind Brody’s head because looking him in the face was unbearable. “I’d rather not talk about that.”
Brody watched him for a second longer than necessary. Then he nodded once, turned, opened the top drawer of the desk, and pulled out a long, white box. He slid it across the wooden surface toward Ren.
“Suppressants. Pharmaceutical grade, the same ones they prescribe at the Midtown clinics.” He ran a hand through his black hair, sweeping it back from his forehead, and something in his jaw tensed. “I should have given them to you on the first day. I didn’t think of it, and that was a mistake.”
Ren took the box. He held it between his fingers and turned it to read the label. They were good. Better than the ones he bought with the little money he had left after his father emptied his account. He pressed them against his chest as if they were a lifeline.
“Thanks.”
The word came out smaller than he’d intended.
Brody didn’t answer. He tilted his head in a slight nod of acknowledgment and leaned back against the desk. And Ren looked at him then. He really looked at him for the first time that morning, without the filter of anger or shame.
Brody looked better. The purplish dark circles that had marked his eyes since Ren had arrived at the mansion had softened. His shoulders no longer bore the tension of a cable about to snap. His skin, usually as pale as Ren’s, had a warmer tone, as if the blood were circulating better. As if something inside him had settled.
And Ren knew what that something was. He knew because his own body was screaming it at him from every cell, from every nerve ending that had ignited under Brody’s hands the night before.
He was glad for him. In some small, hidden corner he didn’t plan to admit out loud, he was glad that Brody seemed less broken.
“I need you to move your things into my room.”
That small, hidden corner burst into flames.
“What?”
“Your clothes. Your stuff. Whatever you have in the other room.” Brody said it as if he were announcing the lunch menu. “We’re sleeping together from now on.”
“No.”
“Ren.”
“I said no.”
