Dinner with Jael was a nice break, and he was too busy trying to keep up an air of everything being alright to notice the looks Jael shot him.
"Up for another movie marathon?"
Caspian jumped on the generous offer so quick, hopping to his feet. "I’ll grab the popcorn."
Jael didn’t protest; Asher had stopped blowing up his phone, and he couldn’t tell if it was because the Alpha was genuinely busy, on a flight back, or playing Russian roulette with his gun.
He had no plans to pick up, and Asher had eventually figured that out.
He supposed that them both freaking out about such a mundane issue meant that they really cared about each other.
Jael settled in to watch movies with Caspian, the Omega had been nice enough to grab some drinks as well.
He had just eaten dinner so he wasn’t hungry but having a drink was fine.
The night before Caspian had stayed up the entire time but tonight, he barely lasted a couple of hours.
Jael studied him as he slept, noting the bags under his eyes. If he didn’t know what to expect from the two of them he would be surprised.
They were acting out worse than a newly mated couple.
Getting Caspian to bed was easy, the Omega was wide awake as soon as he tried to help him up - couldn’t be Asher.
Caspian went to the bedroom all alone, turning down Jael’s offer to make sure he didn’t curl up and sleep in a corner of a hallway somewhere.
He hoped to get to bed and continue where he left off from - going to bed now meant that two days out of the week Asher would be gone had passed.
And he was doing so well.
Caspian opened his eyes after several minutes of closing them in hopes of falling asleep, glaring at the ceiling in the dim lighting of the room.
Why wasn’t he asleep yet?
He had been so sleepy even while he walked back to the bedroom, but the moment he got on the bed, he was suddenly wide awake.
Caspian scowled, it was too late to go back to the movie room to resuming watching movies with Jael now.
And he couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t fall right back asleep if he did, so he laid and stared blankly, the silence of sleep far from him.
It really didn’t take long for him to crumble, with a complete lack of something to do, and even less to distract himself with in the dim room, he thought about Asher.
And to avoid thinking about Asher, he thought about the gossip blogs...
In less than an hour, it had escalated to him scrolling through the pages again.
There were very few facts about the Mafia King, honestly. Clearly, the image his fan girls had of him was an idealized version, but it was also the Asher he didn’t know a lot about.
He didn’t know that Asher got around... a lot.
A decent amount of the blog’s followers were his past flings.
He also didn’t know that the Alpha rarely hooked up with the same person twice. It was like a completely different version of the Asher he knew.
Because there hadn’t been a moment since he was bought that he had seen or heard of Asher getting around.
He had even been upset just recently that the Alpha hardly gave him a reason to be jealous, his original opinion of Asher couldn’t be farther from the public’s opinion.
It really didn’t matter to him, it was just fascinating. Reading the discussions about how that had changed in the past months that he bought an Omega at the auction was a bit ego-stroking.
Caspian didn’t like to dwell on the posts that spoke about him, mostly because he didn’t care about what they had to say, but also because he wasn’t exactly a fan favorite.
He could only imagine the expressions of the admins in charge of the page when they realized that he was actually the bought Omega they all despised so much.
Caspian was as much of a fan of Asher as the followers of the private blogs about him, because here he was late at night, not sleeping but scrolling endlessly and reading favorable opinions about Asher.
He knew he scrolled too far down when he started to stumble into posts of some of the women he had hooked up with.
Most of the comments were other fans going on about how lucky they were.
He only lasted for so long, leaving the site with a dissatisfied expression.
It had only been fun when they were fawning over him, he hadn’t fought tooth and nail to get into the blog to hear about other women screwing his boyfriend.
A couple of hours later when Caspian finally put the phone down, he was in a more foul mood that when he first got on the bed.
He had stopped half-way through a post that was bragging about how Asher had bought her lingerie that she had been ordered to show up in.
Caspian wished he could lose his ability to read and at the same time, he wanted to read the rest of the post.
But he didn’t, barely holding back from chucking his offending phone across the room as he forced himself to fall asleep.
It took a good long while for him to but at least, he didn’t pick up the post again.
Not even after waking up early and making his way to the kitchen, not after being sent off with breakfast after he was given an update on the running of the kitchen.
He did so well until he was done with breakfast, and his entire day was laid out in front of him with very little to do.
It didn’t help that the wretched post clung to his thoughts, refusing to let go until he gave in and finished it up.
So less than an hour after eaten, Caspian was curled up in bed with his phone in his hand - on the fast track to becoming a phone addict.
He never imagined that he would have a reason to keep his phone locked away from Asher, because he barely used the device, but now that had changed.
He would do a lot to make sure that his recent past times didn’t get to Asher.
He doubted the Mafia King even knew that he had so many dedicated fan bases.
Just like being on a fast track to an unhealthy addiction, Caspian didn’t stop at that post, spending the entire morning on his phone.
He even got a couple of maid visits during that time, the kitchens had sent him snacks, and a maid had come to get the laundry.
Caspian had hidden his phone every time like he was worried they would see right through the back of the device.
By the time it was almost noon, he had finally managed to out the blogs down. He stopped reading the blogs and headed for the closet.
Already a terrible idea.
There had been so many more lingerie posts, honestly more than he had been expecting, so when he did leave the website, he found himself in front of the closet of lingerie he had come to meet.
Caspian threw the drawers open, scowling at the flimsy pieces of fabric. If none of the women on the blog admitted to being brought to Asher’s mansion, who then did he buy all these for?
He rummaged through them, finding out just like the first day in the mansion that they were all brand new.
They hadn’t belonged to anyone before, some still even had tags on them.
The thought made him snicker. Asher had just gotten them even though they wouldn’t be worn.
Did the Alpha really like the seductive outfits that much?
Caspian quickly went past finding the situation humorous to being tense.
At first, he had been upset that the lingerie used to belong to some woman, and then entertained because they didn’t but now he was tense.
The sexy underwear was clearly for a woman, and he wasn’t one.
Would Asher even be affected if he wore it? Probably not, but there wasn’t exactly a lot of options for sexy men’s underwear.
Caspian smiled a little at the thought and then lost his smile. Asher had never asked him to wear anything of the sort, the Alpha barely even paid much attention to what he wore.
But what did it matter even if he did? Caspian doubted he would look attractive in lingerie.
What with his obvious lack of boobs and his cock in the way.
He stared at the lingerie for far longer than he should, maybe Asher was just being considerate by not bringing it up.
Wearing dresses and skirts had been bad for his mental health anyway, all it reminded him of was how much loathing disgust Noah had for him.
So, the Alpha was just being nice, unlike the jackass he was mated to.