Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 42

Chapter 42

Chapter 42

DENISE

He found me near the east terrace doors.

+10 Free Coins

I had stepped slightly apart from the main current of the salon-not outside, the evening ait was too cold for the dress, but near the glass doors where the room thinned and the noise dropped to something more manageable. My ribs had been making their opinions known for the past hour and I needed sixty seconds of not performing anything at anyone.

I had approximately forty of those sixty seconds before I heard his footsteps.

I knew them. Four years of knowing exactly how Dante Blackwood moved through a room-the particular rhythm of it, the weight and the pace-meant that I didn’t need to turn around to know who was behind me.

I turned around anyway, because I preferred to see things coming.

He looked exactly as he’d looked across the room earlier-composed, contained, the public version fully reinstated after whatever had happened in the corridor with Lyra. He’d left his drink somewhere. His hands were in his jacket pockets and he was looking at me with the expression that I had spent a long time misreading as depth.;

“You’ve been busy,” he said.

“I’ve been at a party,” I said. “Same as you.”

“Denise.”

“Dante.”

He moved closer, which reduced the conversational distance to something more private, which was what he’d intended. I held my position because moving back would have been a response and I wasn’t interested in responding to his spatial management tonight.

“The Nightshade family,” he said.

“What about them?”

“How long?”

I looked at him with an expression of mild inquiry, the one that indicated I didn’t know what he was asking, which we both knew

was not true.

His jaw tightened slightly. “How long have you had a connection to Kieran Nightshade.”

“I think you should be attending to your fiancée,” I said. “This is her family’s event. It would be noticed if you spent too long on the terrace side talking to a woman who was recently described as your unstable stalker.”

Something moved in his eyes. “I’m trying to understand what you’re doing.”

“I’m standing near a door,” I said. “My ribs hurt. I wanted a quieter moment.”

1/3

Chapter 42

AM

+10 Free Coins

“You walked into this event in a fifteen-thousand-dollar dress on the arm of Jayce Talis, were personally received by Rosaline Nightshade in the private salon, and watched Richard Silvermoon make concessions to you in front of forty witnesses.” He looked at me steadily. “Don’t tell me you’re just standing near a door.”

“It was a good dress,” I said.

“Denise.” His voice dropped, and I recognized the register-the one that had always operated differently than his public voice, that had existed in the private architecture of four years and carried the particular weight of that. “What are you doing?”

“Living my life,” I said. “Which is something I’ve recently been reminded I’m allowed to do.”

The silence between us had a texture.

He looked at me for a long moment with the expression of a man running a calculation that kept producing an answer he didn’t want. Then he moved-not dramatically, not in a way that would have been visible to anyone watching from the main salon-just the slight repositioning that brought him beside me rather than in front of me, and his hand closed around mine.

Not gently. With the certainty of someone who had decided on a thing.

“You still belong to me,” he said quietly. The words were low, for me only, delivered with the particular steadiness of someone who believed what they were saying. “Whatever this is-whatever you think you’re building-I’m not going to let someone take what’s mine.”

I looked down at his hand on mine.

Then I looked up at him.

“Let go of my hand,” I said, “or I will make a scene that will make last night look like a minor administrative issue.”

His grip didn’t loosen.

“I mean it, Dante.” My voice was completely level. “In this room, with these people, with Elena thirty feet away and her father currently recalibrating everything he thought he knew about the next six months-you do not want me to raise my voice.” I held his gaze. “Let go.”

A pause of several seconds.

“You’re doing this,” he said, “to get my attention.”

I stared at him.

“That’s what you think,” I said.

“You’re angry. You’re angry that Elena came back and you’re trying to-”

“I’m trying to stand near a door because my ribs hurt,” I said. “That’s the whole of it.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify