Nothing in my closet looked right. The clothes I'd brought with me were all too worn, too casual. The things I'd purchased for the Alpha gathering were too big or too conservative. I tried on every different combination I could come up with and hated every single one. This was the first time Gabriel and I would be seen together out in public; I wanted to look perfect. I was sure he would.

I was still in my bra and underwear when Gabriel knocked on my door and panic washed over me, a cold shock from my head to my toes. I reached for the most reasonable option in the pile: a deep teal wrap dress that I'd gotten as a back-up from the store in town in case the black gown had been too formal for the welcome dinner. It, like the gown, was just slightly too big, but if I tied it tightly around my waist it was passable.

After a last glance in the mirror and a couple steadying breaths, I opened my front door. I had been right—he looked perfect. Hair half-tied, rippling muscles on full display under a white button-down and slacks. He wore the sleeves cuffed and the way his forearms flexed made me want to pull him close so he'd wrap them around my body.

He turned back from where he'd been leaning on the porch railing waiting for me and let out a short breath, visible in the cold night air.

"Fuck Kiera, you look—" He stopped mid-sentence and shook his head as though to clear it.

Still holding the door open, I tilted my head in the direction of the house. "You sure you want to go out? We could have much more fun here, alone." I tried to put on my best seductive voice but it didn't work.

Gabriel chuckled and reached around me, dangerously close, to shut the door. "Not a chance." He brushed his fingertips over my cheek and my knees nearly buckled. "I want to show you off."

I could hardly sit still on the drive into town, bouncing my knee and fiddling with the radio and heat dials until Gabriel caught my hand and held it on the center console. He looked uncomfortable, though, and I couldn't help but smirk.

"You really don't like driving, do you?" I asked. He grunted and his hand twitched against mine, itching to get back on the steering wheel. His other tightened around it to compensate. Though tempted to tease him further, I kissed his knuckles and let go, instead tucking mine under my legs.

He parked a short distance away from the restaurant and offered me his arm for the walk. I linked mine through it, clinging close, and kept an aggravatingly slow pace. From the sidewalk, I could tell that the restaurant was already crowded. The knot in my stomach tightened. Gabriel felt me trembling and pulled his arm out of mine to wrap around me tightly, pinning me to his side.

"Relax," he whispered. His lips brushed the top of my head. "You look beautiful."

The restaurant was larger than I expected, with two adjoining dining rooms that were lit by antique hanging light features and glowing candles on each table. High-backed, plush booths lined the brick perimeter walls and greenery was draped from the ceiling, flowers and vines intertwined with the pendant lights. It had the aura of a vintage restaurant being reclaimed by nature, and I drank it in with a smile. It was almost enough to distract me from the number of tables that were already filled.

"Alpha Gabriel," the hostess greeted him kindly. I was all too happy to be ignored, but he pulled me to stand in front of him and looped his arms around my waist. I lost balance slightly on my heels, rocking back against his chest.

"My date and I have a reservation." My cheeks reddened, surprised by how openly affectionate he was. I'd never seen him this way with Odette; at most, Aubrey had reported once, they'd held hands the few times they went out in public together. Hastily, I pushed her out of my mind. If I thought about Odette, I would only spiral back to the questions that had me in tears just days before.

The hostess collected two menus and nodded for us to follow. Gabriel kept me in front of him, hands protectively on my shoulders. She led us in the direction of a secluded booth in the back corner, but Gabriel stopped her, shaking his head.

"That one." He gestured towards an empty table that stood dead center in the larger of the two dining rooms. I tried to catch his eye, to give him a pleading look, but he ignored me and instead used his hands to steer me in the opposite direction. The quiet followed us like a wave rolling to shore: slowly, nipping at our heels. I kept my eyes trained on the floor and tried to listen to the distant strains of piano music playing softly instead of the whispers that had begun to take the place of the silence.

Gabriel stood proudly and confidently as the hostess laid out the menus. Once he'd pulled my chair out for me to sit, he collected his place setting and rearranged the table so that he was sitting on the close side of the table, to the left, instead of across from me. The small gesture was thoughtful and his proximity when he sat, our knees touching beneath the tablecloth, soothed my nerves.

"Hey," he urged. "Look at me."

I pulled my eyes off of the candle flame and met Gabriel's gaze. His glowed in the low light, glinting mischievously.

"Good girl," he murmured. My body responded rapidly to his words, as he knew it would. He grinned when he smelled my arousal. I drew in a shaky breath.

While we looked over the menus, Gabriel laid my hand flat on the table and played his fingertips in swirling patterns over my palm. His touch, as always, made it difficult to focus and I squinted at the words. When the waitress came to take our orders, I picked the first thing I could read clearly. By then, it seemed that the other patrons had lost interest in us. The whispers died down, attention turned back to their own conversations. Finally, I felt like I could breathe. Almost as if we were a normal couple, on a normal date.

I watched Gabriel carefully while we talked. In this low light, the tiredness in his features was masked. The dark circles under his eyes were evened out; frown lines smoothed. The cut on his hand had finally closed and I couldn't pick out any other injuries on his exposed skin.

After a few minutes of comfortable silence as we ate, I decided I wanted to take charge of the conversation. It had been light up until then. Flirtatious. But I needed more from him.

I'd start him off easy. "What were you like growing up?"

"Trouble." Gabriel smirked.

I rolled my eyes. "I could've guessed that."

"I got in a lot of fights," he said, then clarified: "A lot of stupid fights."

I'd found my opening. "Your parents must have worried for you."

He froze, fork hovering above his plate, just for the briefest moment before he recovered his composure and shrugged. "All parents worry about their children."

"What were yours like?" Since dancing around the topic wasn't going to work, I'd try going at it directly. Mentally, I willed him to let his guard down. I would have been happy with just one fact. One true, complete sentence about his family. But he wouldn't budge.

"Normal, protective. Yours?"

I sighed. Fine, I thought. I'd play the game. Maybe, if I shared my story with him, he'd feel comfortable enough to share his own. "I don't remember my dad. He was an addict, I guess. My mom left him when I was three; that's when she brought me to Sawtooth. She'd grown up there but left to go to nursing school before she had me."

Gabriel had set his fork down and was listening intently. "She raised you alone?"

I nodded. "And she was the best at it. Until I was about sixteen, then she left again."

"Why did she leave?" His grip tightened on my hand. I squeezed back gently.

"She'd met my dad when they were in school together and he got her into stealing drugs from work. She was clean for a long time after we moved, but I guess working in the clinic was too much for her. She started using again, and when the other healers found out she went back to him. I'm not sure where they are now, or if she's even still alive."

"Shit, Kiera, I'm..." his apology trailed off and he dropped his eyes to his plate. "I lost both of my parents, too. Around the same age."

Now it was my turn to hold his hand tightly. "Thank you for sharing that."

I was hopeful he would continue the sentence, that it would be the start of a longer story. But he didn't, instead turning his attention to the dessert menu that the waitress had delivered at some point when we were lost in each other. I pulled mine towards me dejectedly. I thought sharing something personal of my own would have encouraged him to do the same.

"See anything you like?" Gabriel's voice was low and sweet and the way he was looking at me over the top of the menu told me he'd definitely found something he was hungry for. I blushed at the implication.

"The apple tart sounds...good." My voice caught almost imperceptibly when he began to caress my knee under the table, and it didn't go unnoticed. He smirked. The skin on my chest grew hot and red as his hand traveled upward, fingers tracing lightly over the thin material of my dress. He was trying to distract me. It was working.

"If you want it heated," Gabriel leaned in to whisper. "We might have to find something to do while we wait."

I swore under my breath and glanced around quickly, nervous that his very public display of affection would have caught the attention of the other diners. It hadn't yet, unless they were purposefully ignoring us out of respect for their Alpha—which was very possible. They could almost certainly hear his whispers, maybe even the rustle of the fabric under his fingertips as he began to hike the hem up my thigh.

Gabriel continued to toy with me under the table as he called the waitress over and placed our order and I tried not to squirm under his touch. Heat flooded between my legs and I clenched my thighs together before he could trace any higher. I looked at him, wide-eyed. He flashed me a devilish grin.

"I'd like to take a look at the kitchen," he announced suddenly, standing and offering me his hand. "Come with me?"

Subtle.

Gabriel directed me through the restaurant and down a hallway toward the kitchen, stopping just short to pull me into the bathroom. I fumbled in the dark for the light switch but he deftly caught my hands and pinned them above my head against the door. I heard the lock click into place beside my hip.

"We're not seriously doing this," I panted as his lips found their way to my neck, peppering needful kisses over my racing pulse. His hard length rubbed against my waist and I groaned, both unable and unwilling to deny him. I pulled one of my hands out of his grip and dropped it down to stroke him through his pants, taking my time to get from base to tip, payback for the way he'd played with me so slowly under the table before. The way he trembled was delicious.

Gabriel eased my dress off of one of my shoulders and worked his way down, moaning against me as he licked and sucked every inch of exposed skin. The coil in my abdomen tightened even further, such that I could hardly bear it. I dragged him back up and pressed my lips against his, desperately sweeping my tongue into his mouth to muffle the sounds he was forcing out of me. Without entering me, without even stripping me naked, he knew all the right buttons to press.

But one brief pause for a breath of air was all it took for me to come back down to earth. My mind filled suddenly with images of the others in the restaurant sneering at us in disgust as we returned to our seats. If they hadn't heard us before, they sure as hell had now. I put my hands on Gabriel's chest and pushed him back gently.

"Down, boy." I teased. "That's enough for now."

My eyes still hadn't fully adjusted to the dark, but I could imagine his sheepish grin, the way he'd be raking his hair back out of his face and readjusting himself in his pants.

He moved my hair aside and pressed his lips one more time to the back of my neck as I straightened my dress. "I just can't seem to get enough of you."

After we finished our dessert, Gabriel drove us back to his house. I knew what he wanted—what we both wanted—but the timing felt wrong. Despite the distraction, I was still disappointed in his avoidance over dinner. His reluctance to open up to me only reinforced my suspicions that I'd confided in Aubrey. After all, if this was only a fleeting diversion, why would he feel compelled to share anything at all?

We sat together on the porch swing, enjoying the quiet of the forest. I curled up against him for warmth, and he tucked his jacket around my legs. He swung us lazily with one foot against the porch railing.

"You know this kind of thing only works if we're open with each other." I shifted so that I could look up at him. "You can trust me; you know that right?"

Gabriel looked down at me, lips curling into a taunting smile. "This kind of thing?"

"Relationships, friendships, whatever this is." I scrambled to cover any inference that I thought of this as a relationship. Neither of us had yet put a label on what we were, but after his behavior at the restaurant, it was hard to imagine otherwise.

He turned away, fixing his gaze back on the treeline. "That doesn't come easy for me."

"It doesn't come easy for anyone. That doesn't mean you can just avoid trying." I stood then, handing him his jacket. Disappointment was plain on his face; he didn't want the night to end. I leaned down and kissed him softly on the cheek. I didn't want it to end, either, but it was more important to give him space to think about what I'd said.