Chapter 23
Sundays were pretty perfect already, but with Marcus waking in my arms, they were only getting better.
Linc and Ell were no longer in bed with us.
Typical. Why they thought being up early was good for them was a mystery.
You’d think having a mate would cure them of this need to be all productive in the mornings, but it looked like that wasn’t to be.
Marcus, our reasonable mate, was still mostly asleep when I started waking up.
I listened to the house—Linc and Ell had closed the bedroom door behind them, but I’d heard the shower run earlier. I was pretty sure they were both downstairs now. Hmm. One of them was probably going to make tea for our mate, then, but I got to kiss him awake. A tradeoff I could live with.
Marcus opened his eyes.
“Are you good with mornings or bad with mornings?” I was still half-asleep myself, but I wanted to know.
Marcus sighed. “Depends. Is there tea?”
I chuckled. “My little tea snob.”
“Not a snob.”
And then he snuggled closer. There wasn’t much of a chance that he’d shock me into doing or saying something silly—I was still too sleepy for that—but fuck did this feel good. I’d have to tell the others that he’d done this.
Marcus’s scent was for sure the most dominant in the room, but I was pretty sure I could smell Linc and Ell’s sex smell.
Again, nice tradeoff, but snuggling Marcus was better.
Perhaps “better” wasn’t the right word. When he rubbed his nose against my chest, I stopped thinking about words altogether.
“Do we have to get up?” he mumbled. I wasn’t sure he meant for me to hear him. Human hearing wasn’t all that good. We, on the other hand, were unlikely to miss anything our mate said.
I pressed a soft kiss to his head. “We can stay like this for as long as you want, Little Red.”
He sighed. “But food. Food is downstairs, right?”
“I can get you a tray.”
He sighed again, but this time, he used it as a sort of boost to get himself turned on his back and blink his eyes open. “No. I can do civilized eating.”
I shuffled closer. “Let your wild side out every now and then.”
He gave me a sharp little look with eyes narrowed and lips pursed. “You only say that because you literally turn furry.” The narrowed eyes eased open. “Does that hurt at all?”
“Oh. Hmm. I guess not really?” I straightened the lapel of the pj top he was wearing.
I really liked him in my clothes. “It’s a little like when your throat is scratchy after shouting your lungs out at a concert or running without taking a break, but then when you start the shift, I guess that feels like sneezing, right when you can no longer stop the sneeze. Does that make sense?”
He blinked at me while he thought about that. “It does, actually. You’re saying it’s not painful, but not comfortable either. I wonder… It sounds like when snakes shed their old skin.”
I wrinkled my nose. “It doesn’t sound anything like that at all. I mean, it doesn’t feel anything like that at all, I don’t think. How’d you take that away from what I just said?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s early, and I haven’t had tea.”
He was half right. It was probably around ten.
“You want to see whether the others can make your tea right?”
Marcus looked at my hand. I was still fussing with his lapel, but had moved down to the first button without even noticing.
“I’m dressing in my own clothes though.”
“Aww.” I gave him my saddest sad face. I had a T-shirt I liked wearing when I headed into town with Linc and Ell, and it would look really good on him. Bit long, of course, but that was part of the appeal.
“My clothes. That’s final.” He sat up. “I’ll take the first turn in the bathroom.”
I whimpered and moved around on the bed until the sheet slid off my chest.
“You’re so mean, Little Red. Has no one ever told you about how awesome sharing is? After last night, haven’t you realized how awesome sharing is?”
He’d climbed out of the bed at the foot end, and now he was just standing there, looking at me.
“It was—I mean… I’ve never done that. Don’t laugh, okay, but…
” He lowered his voice. “I had fun yesterday. All of yesterday was nice, okay? I had fun in town too, even if I still wasn’t feeling all that great. ”
I sat up. It would’ve been better if it had been Linc hearing that. Or Ell. Not that I couldn’t acknowledge another person’s emotions—growing up with a non-wolf brother came with lots of emotions—but saying the right thing wasn’t always my specialty.
I tried openness. “Thanks for telling me. I liked that you trusted me at the diner.”
He made a face. “Ugh. That was not fun. Nice buns though.”
“You have nice buns too, Little Red.”
He rolled his eyes. “Okay. Thanks for that. I’ll let you know when the bathroom’s free.”
He wandered off, and while I might’ve been imagining it, I was getting certain vibes off of him as if he was not just ready to give us a chance, but maybe wanted us to win him over.
I’d be down for that. Honestly though, if all he wanted was to be held and snuggled, I’d be more than down for that too.
I went downstairs to get Marcus’s bag for him. Ell and Linc were on the couch, Ell stretched out and reading on his phone, Linc with Ell’s legs on his lap and a laptop on top of Ell’s shins, probably doing work stuff.
Linc looked up from his screen. “You’re not dressed for breakfast.”
I shot him a grin. “We dress up for breakfast now? Should’ve made it clear that wasn’t the kind of company you’d find yourself in before you moved here.”
He grinned right back. “I was just talking about pants.”
I sighed. “Yeah, yeah. Marcus wants his clothes though. Silly, if you ask me, but it’s what he wants.”
Ell put his phone on his chest. “You’re just saying that because your clothes come closest to fitting him.”
I showed my teeth. “Oh, that would be silly.”
Ell snorted. “Linc, let me move.”
I left the two of them to get breakfast ready and went to find our mate’s bag, then took it to my room. Marcus hadn’t really gotten a tour of the floor yet, which was a shame. I’d done some of my most fiddly work on this floor.
I poked my head out of my door when I heard him come out of the bathroom. He stood there, fingers going to the back of his head while he looked at the stairs.
“Psst, Little Red. The stitches can’t come out yet.”
He dropped his hand. “Yeah, I know. But they’re itchy.”
“We’ll ask Ell what to do about that. Come here for a sec. I want to show you something.”
He crossed his arms and didn’t move an inch. “Sounds suspicious.”
“Pfft.” I flapped my hand in a dismissive gesture. “I’m not suspicious. Besides, I have your bag.”
“You kidnapped my bag?”
Downstairs, Linc chuckled while Ell sighed.
I kept my face straight. “Yup. You have to come closer to hear my demands.”
“Getting more and more suspicious.”
I moved to stand right in the doorway where he could see all of me. “Do I look suspicious to you?”
His gaze dropped to my briefs. Yup, Marcus liked how I looked in nothing but my underwear.
“I think you want to look suspicious, but unlike you, I need my pants.”
I sighed. “That’s such a shame. Come on.”
He pulled up the overlong legs of the pants he was wearing while giving me a pointed look. I stepped aside to let him into my room, and like most people when they first came in here, he looked straight at the mirrors that made up the entire left wall.
Marcus lifted his arms and turned to the mirrors, flapping them until only the tips of his fingers were visible. “I don’t look good in these. Ell’s such a liar.”
Downstairs, Linc cackled.
“He’s not, and you look delightful in my clothes.
That’s a wardrobe.” I stepped past him to show him the sliding doors.
Yeah, maybe I wanted to show him how organized all my stuff was inside the wardrobe too, so sue me.
Marcus took a step closer though, and I pointed at the single window.
“I don’t get too much light in here. I thought about putting in a bigger window, but there are pipes in that wall. I went with the mirrors instead.”
Marcus turned and looked at the bed, where I’d put his bag. “Why do you all have your own beds anyway? Don’t you all sleep together?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. But you want your own space sometimes, you know? Also, Ell works really wonky shifts sometimes, so he has his own room—not that I mind him collapsing on me. Early on, Linc thought he might have to leave town for work on short notice a lot, so him having his own space also made sense in case he came back late. I liked the idea because of my special place.”
Marcus frowned. “Getting more suspicious again.”
I winked at him. “Nah. Look there.”
I pointed at the staircase I’d hidden behind the wall opposite the wardrobe. It wasn’t really a wall, just some wooden panels I’d fitted to the head of the bed and wallpapered over. You could walk around it to a small alcove.
“I thought that was an extra bathroom,” Marcus said as he rounded the faux wall. “Huh. Not an extra bathroom.”
I followed. The room really wasn’t that big, and I didn’t want to crowd him, so I made sure to keep my back to the wall so that he could still get past me if he wanted.
“I built those stairs. It leads up to the attic.”
Marcus’s eyes went wide, and I basked in that attention. He tested the wooden steps with both hands—the thing was steep and built to make a ninety-degree turn. There was some storage underneath too, but really only because I’d have wasted too much space if I hadn’t built it like that.
“I didn't think there was an attic. It doesn’t look like there is one. You have that skylight over the stairs.”
I nodded. “It doesn’t cover the entire second floor.
The house is really odd. An architect started remodeling it, gave up halfway through, then just left it unfinished for a few years before finally deciding to sell.
That’s both the good news and the bad. It has good bones, but it still needs a lot of work. ”
“Can I really go up there?”
I nodded. “Sure. I’ll be right behind you.”