Chapter 40 Caught Between Alphas
Briar's POV
Reginald looked absolutely delighted. I, on the other hand, wanted to sink through the floor and disappear entirely.
Lucian sat down in the chair to my left without a word, his presence settling over the table like a weight. He reached for the wine glass the sommelier had just filled, drained it in three long swallows, and then went completely silent.
But somehow his silence was louder than any conversation happening around us, a kind of deliberate stillness that made everyone acutely aware of exactly where he was and what he was doing.
I watched the guests across from us exchange nervous glances, their eyes darting between Julian on my right, Lucian on my left, and me trapped in the middle like some kind of unfortunate buffer zone. No one seemed brave enough to approach Lucian directly, which meant the attention kept bouncing back to our little triangle, making my skin crawl with awareness.
The sommelier refilled Lucian's glass twice more and he downed both without comment, his expression never changing, but I could feel the tension radiating off him in waves that made the air feel thick and hard to breathe.
I shifted in my seat, trying to find a position that didn't feel quite so exposed, and immediately felt Julian's attention snap to me even though he was supposedly engaged in conversation with Reginald about vintage classifications.
"Sitting uncomfortably?" Lucian's voice was quiet but it cut through the ambient chatter like a knife, his eyes still fixed on his now-empty wine glass as he set it down with careful precision.
I forced myself to stop fidgeting and arranged my face into something resembling calm, very aware that half the room was watching our table with barely concealed interest. "The chair's just a bit hard, that's all."
"Need me to help you find a more comfortable position?" Julian's voice came from my right, smooth and dangerous. "My lap's available if you'd prefer."
I jerked my head toward him, shock momentarily overriding my carefully maintained composure, and saw several of the guests across from us suddenly decide they needed to relocate to different seats. The sound of chairs scraping against stone filled the brief silence that followed Julian's suggestion, and I felt heat flood my face as I realized exactly what kind of scene we were creating.
Julian's lips curved slightly as he watched my reaction, clearly pleased with himself, and he leaned closer so his next words were pitched for my ears alone even though I knew Lucian could hear every syllable. "Good. We'll make sure you get plenty of time to sit there when we get home."
I sat frozen between them, my mind scrambling for something to say that wouldn't make this situation worse, and came up completely blank.
"Need me to call the police?" Lucian's voice was ice-cold as he finally turned his head to look at Julian directly, his expression blank but his eyes burning with barely contained fury. "Pretty sure what you just described qualifies as sexual harassment."
I closed my eyes briefly, trying to will myself into another dimension where I wasn't sitting between two alphas who were apparently determined to turn a wine tasting into some kind of territorial pissing contest.
Julian was the obvious threat, all flash and open provocation, but Lucian was somehow worse with his quiet sarcasm and the way every word came out sounding like a threat wrapped in politeness.
The silence stretched between the three of us, thick enough to cut with a knife, and I could feel every eye in the room trained on our table even though most people were pretending to focus on their wine or their dessert or literally anything else that would let them eavesdrop without being obvious about it.
A server approached with another bottle and then seemed to think better of it, retreating back to the safety of the serving station near the entrance.
Julian's hand moved then, sliding up the exposed skin of my back where the dress cut low, his palm warm against my spine as his fingers traced the line of my shoulder blade with deliberate slowness. His touch was deliberately possessive, meant to be seen by everyone watching, and I had to force myself not to jerk away from him because that would only make things worse.
"Compared to last time I held you, you've lost weight. Have you been eating properly?" Julian said, and I felt his fingers press slightly harder against my skin.
Lucian's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, the only sign that Julian's words had landed, and I saw his hand curl around the stem of his wine glass hard enough that I worried it might shatter. "Sounds like you haven't been taking very good care of her."
"Jealous?" Julian's tone was light, almost playful, but there was nothing friendly in the way his hand tightened slightly on my back, his thumb rubbing small circles against my spine that made my skin prickle with unwanted awareness.
"You should be familiar with jealousy, shouldn't you?" Lucian picked up the wine bottle the sommelier had left on the table and refilled his glass with careful precision, his movements controlled and deliberate in a way that somehow felt more threatening than if he'd slammed it down. "You've given plenty of people reason to experience it over the years."
I turned to look at him, caught off guard by the admission buried in his words, and saw something flicker in his eyes—a flash of gold that came and went so quickly I almost thought I'd imagined it.
He was admitting it. Admitting that he was jealous, that seeing Julian's hands on me bothered him enough to make his wolf surface, and I found myself leaning slightly toward him without meaning to, my body responding to something my brain knew better than to acknowledge.
Julian must have caught it too because his smile turned sharp and cold, his hand sliding down from my back to rest possessively on my hip. "No one's ever dared to make me jealous."
"That's because you're too blind and arrogant to notice when someone's worth being jealous over." Lucian's voice was perfectly even but the insult landed like a slap, and I had to bite down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing at the expression that crossed Julian's face.
The temperature around us seemed to drop another few degrees, the air crackling with tension that made my skin prickle with awareness and made several nearby guests suddenly find urgent reasons to move to different tables. I watched Julian's hand curl into a fist on the table, his knuckles going white, and heard the soft pop of a cufflink breaking free from the fabric of his shirt.
The small blue sapphire cufflink bounced once on the tablecloth and then rolled off the edge, landing on the stone floor near my feet with a soft clink. It caught the light from the chandeliers overhead, throwing off cold sparks that somehow matched the expression on Julian's face as he turned his head to look at Lucian directly for the first time since he'd sat down, and I felt the air between them charge with something dangerous and electric.
I stared at the cufflink, my mind latching onto the distraction it provided, anything to avoid thinking about the way these two were circling each other like predators trying to decide who got to make the kill. My stomach twisted uncomfortably and I pushed my chair back slightly, the legs scraping against stone loud enough to break through the tension.
"I need to use the restroom." I stood up before either of them could respond, smoothing down the skirt of my dress with hands that weren't quite steady, my voice coming out higher than I'd intended. "My stomach's a bit upset."
I'd barely taken a step when Julian's arm shot out, his hand catching the back of my neck and pulling me down toward him with enough force that I had to brace myself against the armrest of his chair to keep from stumbling. His lips pressed against my collarbone, the kiss brief but deliberate, and I felt him smile against my skin before he released me.
"Come back soon," he said, his voice carrying across the suddenly silent table.
I froze for a few seconds before scrambling away in panic.