Chapter 5
Never has my oath of protection felt so… primal. My need to safeguard her supersedes coherent thought.
Idouble bolt the door so Leah can’t let herself in like she usually does. She’s pissed about that, and I can tell by the pounding on my door when she arrives. “Bitch, let me in!”
Sanders deftly swerves in front of me, blocking me from what I’m sure he views as a danger.
“It’s fine.” I swat him away. “It’s my friend Leah whose party you were at last night. She’s a menace but she wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
Tentatively, he moves out of my way but stays close enough to jump in, just in case.
I leave the top chain on and slowly open the door a few inches. “I need you to be chill,” I hiss.
Leah is beside herself. “Let me in, Penelope Marie Graves.”
“Marie is not my middle name and you know that!”
“That’s the name you get when you’re getting on my nerves!” she retorts.
I roll my eyes—she’s the most extra person I’ve ever met. “I will let you in but, for the love of all the gods, be. Chill.”
“I am chill,” she shrieks.
“Convincing,” I mutter, closing the door and unhooking the chain lock. Leah is ready to push through the door as soon as she hears the click. She barrels past me and straight into Sanders, who—damn him—doesn’t budge an inch.
“Holy. Shit. You are gorgeous.”
Good gods. “Really chill, Leah!”
She turns back toward me. “What? It’s true. Have you seen him?”
I refuse to answer that question, instead grabbing her hand and dragging her to my bedroom. She drops the bag of supplies on my bed before flopping down next to it. “So he’s actually, like, a medieval knight in shining armor?”
“It appears to be that way.”
“That is so weird,” she responds, blowing a curl from in front of her face.
“Coming from a Were, that’s a bit like a pot and kettle situation.”
Leah pops up onto her elbows, obviously offended. “Weres aren’t weird.”
“Not in Auraria, but you’ve told me they aren’t commonplace.
Imagine being in a different city that has never heard of Weres and having to explain where you go every time the moon is full.
Sanders needs help, and I know it feels strange, but I guess I need to help him.
” I’m giving myself this pep talk as much as Leah.
She’s my best friend, but I still don’t like for anyone to see me in situations where I feel less than competent.
She rolls over and opens the duffel bag she brought. “I love your dedication. Though, after seeing him, I would be dedicated to him too.” She pumps her eyebrows several times.
“Oh my gods!” I throw a pillow at her in a failed attempt to shut her up.
“What?” She laughs. “Who wouldn’t be dedicated to that tall hunk of—oomph!”
I tackle her. “Shut up! He can hear you, these walls are thin!”
She’s in a full giggle fit now. “Can I stay and see what’s beneath the armor?”
I give up. We both collapse, laughing uncontrollably until my sides hurt. “Shit, this is wild,” I pant when I finally catch my breath.
“The wildest,” Leah agrees. “Okay, let’s see what Dane packed.”
Dane is Leah’s brother and I would guess is around the same size as Sanders, which is why I had Leah raid his drawers. She pulls out tennis shoes, a few T-shirts, and sweatpants but no underwear.
“That’s in here!” She appears in front of me with a bag from Al’s. “I could not bring myself to open Dane’s underwear drawer—blech. I’m disgusted just thinking about it.”
Leah also purchased a toothbrush and toothpaste, socks, and deodorant. “I should have thought about grabbing the essentials when we were at Al’s earlier, but I didn’t know he’d be staying with me yet.”
She waves me off. “If you had, I wouldn’t have been able to come over and be a creep. Can we go stare at him again?”
“Gods, you are a creep.” Yet, it’s both of us, not just Leah, that tiptoe over to the bedroom door, cracking it open to get a peek at Sanders. Unsurprisingly, he hasn’t moved from where he was when we came in here, and he immediately clocks us staring.
“Need help in there?” he asks, with the smallest of smirks. Is he… making a joke? I thought my knight—no, not my knight—was the strong, serious type.
I hold out the bag of socks in my hand. “We have socks.”
He quirks his eyebrow, and I’m mesmerized by that one small movement. “They are like stockings?”
“Whatever you want to call them is fine by me,” Leah answers, giving Sanders a wink.
Alright, time for her to go.
“Sanders, you can use my bedroom to change out of your—suit? And Leah, you can leave.”
“And miss the show?” She moves around Sanders to plop down onto the couch. Two pillows tumble onto the ground. She doesn’t even notice.
“Leah! Get out of—wait. What show?”
Her grin is feral. “There’s no way he’s getting out of that on his own, am I right, knight?”
Sanders looks affronted. “I most certainly can get out of my armor on my own. It will just take time… and it is generally easier with a squire.” By the time he finishes his sentence, I’ve already come to terms with the fact that I will be helping Sir Alisander undress.
I sigh. Leah giggles. Sanders blushes.
Fantastic.
“Turn around,” I command. He does so, loosening his gauntlets and some of the straps on his arms. There are buckles on his shoulders and around his lower back that would be nearly impossible for him to reach.
I do my best to unhook them without invading his personal space.
Once I’m done, he removes the rest of his armor, leaving his chainmail over what looks like a few more layers of clothes.
“Gods, are you hot all the time?” I balk, admiring the quilted piece I can see under his chainmail.
“Penny, how bold of you!” Leah cackles.
Shit. “No! I mean like temperature hot, not looks hot, though you are looks hot too that’s for sure but I wasn’t talking about that it’s just a lot of layers and oh my gods I’m babbling, Leah shut me up!”
She’s zero help, having returned to sobbing fits of giggles on my couch.
Sanders traces my blush with his bare hand, a look of fascination and, is that determination in his eyes? “Do not be embarrassed, Lady Penelope. I do not understand most of what you just said.”
“That’s”—gulp—“good.” Fuck he’s close now. “That’s good,” I repeat, at a whisper this time.
He stares at me a beat too long before his eyes dart over to Leah, and he pulls back. “This layer is heavy,” he says, indicating the chainmail. “I have to let it slide off me like this.” He bows forward and it clinks as it slides down to the ground.
So. Fucking. Slowly.
Or maybe it just feels like slow motion in my mind as I see the smallest sliver of Sanders’ obliques that disappears so soon as the chainmail is finally off and he rights himself.
“Very impressive,” I mumble. “Water. I need some water. Sanders the, uhm, rest of your clothes are, uh, in my room. You can change in there. Door doesn’t lock but Leah will respect your privacy.”
“Like hell I wi—oomph.” I cut Leah off, covering her mouth and dragging her to the kitchen with me.
“For real this time, you need to leave,” I whisper-yell, checking to make sure Sanders is going into my room.
She holds her hands up in surrender. “Fine, fine, I’ll go. But I won’t be happy about it. You have to give me every juicy detail of what happens tonight, Penelope Graves.”
“Nothing is going to happen!” I screech.
“You’re screeching.” She cocks her hip to the side and crosses her arms across her chest, staring at me with that look that shows she knows I’m lying.
“I’m not screeching!” I screech. Clearing my throat, I lower it as deep as I can. “I’m not screeching,” I try again.
“Every. Juicy. Detail.” She punctuates each word with a finger wave to my face before finally leaving with a quick “Bye, Sanders!” called over her shoulder.
“Nothing is going to happen,” I repeat to myself. “It’s completely normal to have a half-dead, half-alive reincarnated man-knight… knight-man staying in your house. Absolutely, completely normal.”
“Is it? Here I was thinking I was the first.”
“Holy shit!” I fly at least a foot off the ground, not having heard Sanders come back in the room. “You scared me half to dea—oh gods.”
Sanders has put on Dane’s white undershirt that fits him so snuggly, I know many women, men, and non-binary folks who would pay good money to be transfigured into that exact T-shirt on that exact body for even a moment.
And he’s paired them with—you guessed it—gray sweatpants that show off just how well-endowed he is.
And I mean well-endowed. I feel like I should cover my eyes.
Averting them to be less obvious, I tell him, “For someone who has made constant noise around me all day, I’m shocked I didn’t hear you come out of my room. I almost pulled your own sword on you.”
His face grows very serious. “You should never touch a man’s sword without his permission, Lady Penelope. You also would not be able to lift it.”
That’s a double entendre if I’ve ever heard one.
I’m slightly offended that he thinks I couldn’t lift it, though he’s probably correct in that assumption. “My apologies, Sir Sanders. I will never touch your sword without your permission.” Either one of them, I add in my head. “You’ll sleep on the couch tonight if that’s alright with you.”
“Of course, thank you for allowing me into your home this evening.” He hesitates a moment before adding, “I do not know what I would have done without you.”
“It’s really not a problem.” It absolutely is a problem if the butterflies that have let loose in my stomach are any indication. “Let me grab a blanket for you.”
Sanders sits on the couch, stretching out his legs, and that’s when I notice. There’s absolutely no fucking way this man is going to fit comfortably on my couch for the night.