He had nothing to say to that. Alric sipped at his drink and avoided looking up past the rim of his glass.
Ravi blew out a noisy breath. “I want to hit him. Can I hit him?”
“No, Ravi,” Baldewin said, although even he sounded tempted to do so himself.
“But it would make me feel better,” Ravi grumbled. “Okay, let me spell this out for you, you stubborn dragon. Cameron isn’t interested in us.”
Alric’s head snapped back up. He stared at Ravi carefully, studying every whit of his expression. “But I’ve heard him compliment several of you. You especially, Baldewin.”
“I talked with Cameron about that. It turns out that your mage—”
He gave Baldewin quite the glare for that description as Cameron was most decidedly not his.
“—firmly believes people don’t compliment each other enough. He thinks it’s not healthy. He takes every opportunity to boost people’s self-esteem and compliment them when he can. And before you get it into your head that he compliments you for that reason—”
Surely Alric wasn’t that predictable. Well, alright, maybe he was.
“—he told me flat out he finds you incredibly attractive. Sex on legs, I think was his turn of phrase.”
Those words were like quicksilver in his ears. Alric dearly loved hearing them. If it was anyone but Baldewin telling him this, he’d demand verification, or to know the other man wasn’t teasing. But Baldewin clearly wasn’t teasing. Oh god, he wasn’t teasing. Did Cameron really think of him that way? So, the massage oil treatments were sincere? It wasn’t Cameron teasing him?
The click of a camera shutter sounded, and his head snapped around to see Ravi had his phone pointed at him.
“Look at that face,” Ravi cackled. “You’re so obvious.”
Alric’s eyes cut to him. “I sense a beheading in your near future.”
“Meh, I’ll take my chances. Cameron complained to me that you keep giving him mixed signals—he’s not sure how to take your reactions.”
Alric squirmed a little hearing that. He hadn’t meant to do that at all. It was his own instincts warring that made him react so.
“But do you get what we’re trying to tell you? It’s all well and fine for you to try and shuffle off to the side, give us all a shot at courting Cameron, but it’s not going to work if Cameron isn’t interested. And he’s clearly not interested. I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s super fun to hang out with. And he likes talking with all of us, and getting to know us—he’s really into that.”
“It’s quite fun,” Gunter agreed as he took the chair next to Alric’s, sipping at his drink. “He asks questions that force me to think outside of the box. I’ve rarely had the privilege of speaking to someone as intelligent as he is. And he is attractive—we all acknowledge that. But I, for one, am not interested in him.”
Alric regarded him in frank confusion. How could anyone not be interested in Cameron? It boggled his mind. “Truly?”
“I think most of the clan feels that way.” Baldewin dropped onto the three-seater couch nearby and stretched out comfortably with a sigh. “We all like him, we’re incredibly happy to have him with us, but we have no intention of dating him. Alric, be frank. At least with us. Do you want him?”
It felt strange, admitting something out loud that Alric could barely admit to inside of his own head. “I do.”
Ravi closed in on him, hugging him around his head and shoulders. “Look at you, being so cutely honest.”
Alric pushed him off with a huff. “Will you stop?”
Knuckling an imaginary tear from his eye, Ravi played to the crowd. “Isn’t he just the cutest like this?”
“I’m not going to try and save you when he finally gets around to beheading you,” Gunter told him, unconcerned. “But Alric, I’m glad to hear you can admit to that. Maybe do more than just acknowledge it?”
“In other words,” Ravi interpreted with a winsome smile, “make a damn move.”
* * *
Alric would neither confirm nor deny he sometimes used his nose to keep track of Cameron. Just when he was nearby. For safety reasons. He knew Cameron was close before he heard his voice in the hallway outside of his study. His dragon indulged in the scent of him, like a storm on the verge of sweeping through, mixed in with the citrus of his shampoo and soaps.
Really, Alric’s own reaction was a dead giveaway. Look at him now, how he’d paused in mid-motion to focus on Cameron. And the man wasn’t even in the room. Was it any wonder his friends had all prodded him and urged him to get his head out of his own ass?
“…and then Ravi got his tail stuck between two tree branches. Baldewin and I fell over laughing while he’s trying to get out of this tree,” Cameron was saying as he drew closer.