Page 17 of Sold to the wrong Alpha
He turned his head on the pillow.
The nightstand wasn’t hers. Neither was the lamp. The wall was a pearl gray shade that in his room was off-white. The window was on the right instead of the left, and the curtains were dark velvet and not the slatted blinds he couldn’t afford to fix.
The limbo broke.
Everything came flooding back. Without order, without mercy, like a drawer someone had tipped onto a table: the undergroundroom, the hands of two strangers washing him, the black latex jumpsuit that squeezed his chest until it stole his breath, the buyers’ eyes appraising his body as if he were livestock, Dimitri Reznov’s voice uttering a figure that amounted to the absolute ownership of another human being, the lights going out, the dash through corridors he didn’t recognize, the guard at the sentry box, the windowless room, the bolt.
And then.
Ren closed his eyes tightly.
The smell of raisins and walnuts, of home. The firm chest on his cheek. His own fingers clutched a stranger’s shirt as if that stranger were the only thing keeping him in the world. The surrender of his body, absolute, collapsing against Brody Kovac as if twenty-one years of resistance and rage were worth nothing, absolutely nothing faced with the scent of an alpha his biology had chosen without consulting him.
He had fainted in his arms.
He had fainted in his arms.
Ren opened his eyes and looked at the ceiling. Smooth, white, spotless. The ceiling someone with enough money to ensure even the plaster is flawless would have. He stared at it until his pupils ached, because if he stopped looking at the roof he’d have to face what he was feeling, and what he was feeling was a shame so thick it weighed on his sternum like a block of concrete.
I fainted. I fell like a rag doll onto a guy I don’t know. I lost complete control of my body in front of a stranger.
He cupped his hands over his face. His palms covered his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He breathed against his own fingers, and the air came out hot and shaky.
No.
He forced himself to lower his hands, made an effort to breathe. When life blindsided him, his usual response was to assess the facts, distinguish between what he could influence and what was beyond his control, and then act on those controllable elements.
Facts.
He was in bed. A clean bed, in a large room, in the mansion of an Alpha named Brody Kovac, to whom a certain Rocco had sent him with a folded piece of paper and a promise of safety that Ren still didn’t know whether to believe.
He was dressed.
Ren lifted the bedspread and looked at his body. Someone had taken off his latex jumpsuit. The mere thought brought on such a violent wave of relief that his eyes welled up. That synthetic second skin they’d slipped him into as if it were product packaging. His merchandise uniform was gone. Instead, he was wearing a gray cotton T-shirt, three sizes too big for him, and black sweatpants with the drawstring tied because they were too loose at the waist. Men’s clothes. Alpha’s clothes, judging by the size.
Brody’s clothes?
The thought pierced his stomach with a jolt that wasn’t unpleasant and that, for that very reason, horrified him.
Someone had washed him. Ren brought his wrist to his nose and smelled mild soap, the same unscented kind used on the sheets. They had washed away the sweat from the run, the makeup they’d put on him for the auction, the remnants of the products they’d applied to make him shine under the lights like a freshly polished object. Someone had run a sponge or a cloth over his body while he was unconscious, had dried his skin, had lifted his arms to pull his T-shirt over his head, had slid his pants down his legs, and had tended to his wounds.
Who?
The question burned in his throat.
It could have been anyone. An employee. An assistant. Someone from the staff of a mansion that clearly had staff. It could have been a professional, efficient person who had treated him with the same clinical neutrality with which the casino’s hands had prepared him for the auction, only this time to restore some dignity to him rather than strip it away.
But it could also have been Brody.
Brody, who had caught him when his knees gave out. Brody, whose arms had caught him before he hit the floor. Brody, who smelled of raisins and walnuts and domestic warmth, and who had shattered every barrier Ren had built with his mere physical presence.
The image assaulted him without permission: Brody’s large hands peeling the latex from his skin. The wet sound of the material separating from the flesh. Brody looking at his bare chest, his ribs, the flat abdomen that Ren strengthened every morning with sit-ups because he needed to feel that his body belonged to him. Brody sliding the gray cotton T-shirt over his unconscious torso with a delicacy those enormous hands shouldn’t possess.
Heat rose from the base of his neck to his ears. It pooled in his cheeks. It ran down his spine to a spot he didn’t want to name.
Stop. Stop right now.
He sat up in bed with a jolt. The sudden movement sent a sharp pain through his leg muscles—his calves tense from the run, his feet bruised by the asphalt. But the pain was a gift because the pain was real and concrete and had nothing to do with Brody Kovac or the effect Brody Kovac had on his body.
