The Joker; His foreign she-wolf

Awkward dinner

*Scarlett*

I know that among the high packs, rules exist regarding the order as to how one is seated around the dining table. Precedence, I believe it is called. I think their Lunas are required to memorize some tome in order to learn where to properly place people so as not to insult anyone. I can't imagine giving a fig as to which chair has been designated for my backside.

Still, I'm not altogether certain that the Luna has adhered to the proper sitting order. She and her mate are at opposite ends of the table. The three other members of the hand are lined up to the Alpha's right, my brother to our host's left. They have seated me beside Sam, which puts me across from beta Johnny. My mother is beside me, the other two she-wolves on either side of the Luna.

I'm rather certain that Sam has asked for me to be placed beside him out of brotherly love and because I'm not comfortable around strangers, he would have told them. But the truth is that he worries business might come up and he will need to be rescued. Because unlike him, I have always hung onto every word our father had uttered as if it had come from a God. Because that is what he has always been to me: a deity.

He had known everything, had commanded men and been a mover of industry. He built railroads, been instrumental in discovering ways to make factories run more efficiently. But his passion has been weaponry. The evolution of it has fascinated him, and I suspect, like me, he would have spent considerable time examining the armor that had been on display near the library as though a knight still stood in it. My taking long minutes to study it had delayed me and the Luna returning to the drawing room. Perhaps I wouldn't have been so surprised by beta Johnny’s presence if I'd been there when he entered the chamber.

Maybe I could have thought of something witty to say as he escorted me, at the urging of the Luna, to the dining table. The Alpha has offered his arm to my mother, who has preened as if being gifted with the Crown jewels while Sam has accompanied the Luna. Instead, I have not even been able to look at the beta, to meet his gaze.

Because the few times I had glanced over at him before the butler announced that dinner was ready to be served, I had found it difficult to breathe and I'm not certain it's entirely due to his being privy to my embarrassing secret. I fear it might have something to do with how remarkably handsome he is, with a patrician nose, bold cheekbones that would offer a resting place for his thick eyelashes, and a jaw that has quite possibly been chiseled from stone. And those lips. Those damn plump lips that have been sculpted to provide a cushion for a she-wolf's mouth.

Sitting at the table now, I realize I'm staring at them, remembering the softness moving provocatively over my own, urging me to part them and allow him entry. I had so blithely obliged and unleashed my inhibitions because I had never expected to see him again. I had thought he was a commoner, someone of the streets. Not a damned beta and future Alpha, not someone my brother is striving to entice into investing. Not someone with the power to prevent me from achieving my dreams.

When I lift my attention from his lips, I discover his eyes, speculative and curious, homed in on my face with such intensity that he might as well be skimming his fingers over my skin. His look is so thoroughly assessing, so profound, so incredibly penetrating. I suspect if he dipped his smoldering gaze, he would set my clothing alight.

With heat flaming my cheeks, I jerk my attention back to the soup that has been placed before me. I have no idea what kind it is. It has no flavor… or if it does, my senses are so overwhelmed by the memory of his taste that it dominates all else.

I suppose I'm expected to speak with him about mundane matters, topics I have learned at the boring finishing school for future lunas to which my mother had sent me because we are the nouveau riche and the she-wolf who had given birth to me in a small house on the outskirts of Chicago has wanted to erase any evidence of our origins. While I think our rise out of poverty is the most interesting thing about my family.

But I don't want to discuss mundane matters with him. I want to know why a man who is supposedly as rich as Croesus, according to my brother, all the members of the hand, is working in a questionable establishment. And worse, I want to know if he had enjoyed kissing me... at all. If I had done it correctly. If he ever ponders doing it again.