Chapter 10
August
Exhausted, I stared across my kitchen at Gregor wiping down the far counter, unable to believe that my mate, who had to be back in his shop in a few hours, the same as I did, had stayed up all night while I’d perfected the twisted candy teardrops I’d needed to complete the rush order that had kept me busy for most of the day.
Fortunately, my cousin Sierra had been able to man the counter for me so I could focus on filling the order. I’d been so stressed about running out of time that I’d forgotten to eat and would have probably still been starving if Gregor hadn’t showed up. And with a salad. I’d make sure he knew how much that meant to me the moment I wasn’t too exhausted to express myself properly.
“I think we’re all set,”
Gregor said as he disposed of the wipe he’d been using.
“Yup, I’m all done over here, too,”
I replied, yawning as I leaned against him.
The moment I did I instantly regretted it as exhaustion overwhelmed me. My body swayed and I might even have hit the ground if he hadn’t wrapped his arm around me and tightened his hold the moment I started sliding down his body.
“Bedtime,”
he declared, lifting me and carrying me around the room to collect my things and turn out the lights.
No comments about me overdoing it. No suggestions that I take more breaks or dial back a little. Those were the types of comments I’d heard from the few men I’d dated, who’d rapidly became exes when they grew more insistent about it and started outright complaining about my hours.
Instead, he held me close as I wiggled in his arms and fished the key from the pocket of my jeans. He held me while I locked up, another huge point for him when others would have tried to take my keys from me and do it themselves
“I walked,”
he declared. “Are you good with me driving your vehicle, or would you like me to place you in the driver’s seat?”
Wait, what?
I had to take a moment just to make sure I’d heard what I’d thought I’d heard.
He was asking me.
He wasn’t declaring that I was too tired or unfit to drive.
He wasn’t demanding my keys.
He wasn’t taking over.
This big, snarly badass of a wolverine, who could have wrested the keys away from me in an instant and tossed me across my own back seat before driving me wherever he wanted to take me, was asking what I wanted. And giving me the opportunity to make my own assessment of how I was feeling.
Exhausted.
The little hedgehog inside of me longed to curl up on the passenger’s seat on the short drive home. Had he demanded I let him drive, I’d have seen the need to refuse and insisted upon getting behind the wheel. Him giving me the choice made it easy to choose what I really wanted.
“I’ve got no problem at all with you driving my SUV,”
I told him, and hit the button on the key fob to unlock the doors.
Not only did he carefully place me in the passenger’s seat without banging my head on the way in, but he also buckled me in and kissed the tip of my nose before going around to the other side and getting in. The next thing I remembered was being lifted again. Holy shit, I hadn’t even heard the engine of the car turn on, yet somehow, we were already here.
I curled against his chest as he carried me in, but I expected to be put down inside for the long walk up those winding stairs. Instead, he shifted me to his hip, bouncing me a little in the process.
“Wrap your legs around me,”
he murmured, gently caressing my back to encourage me.
Didn’t have to tell me twice. I wrapped my legs around him, hooked my ankles together and rested my head on his shoulder as he placed his free hand on the banister and carried me up three flights of steps. Would have been far easier if he’d told me to shift first, though I wasn’t sure if I’d have been able to muster up the energy. I’d bet he’d taken that into account, too, and saved me the trouble of trying and not being able to pull off a shift.
I was just bone weary at the moment, and so damned comfortable that by the time he lay me on our actual bed, I just melted against the comforter, while he stripped off my clothes. I must have seemed like a rag doll to him, unable to help with anything, even my super clingy jeans. I bounced when he tugged, and there was a bit of flopping around, and the feel of his teeth in one of my ass cheeks involved before he got them off me. Once I was naked, he tucked me in and pressed a kiss to my temple before sliding off the bed.
Warm and cozy.
That was the only thing I felt.
Along with a swift and sudden burst of longing that made it impossible for me to close my eyes. In the few days since I’d come to live here, I’d grown used to falling asleep with his arm around me and it wasn’t there yet. The bed was wonderful, the mattress soft and positively amazing, even the bedding was perfect. Light and breathable, providing just the needed amount of warmth for this time of year..
But his arm wasn’t around me yet which meant that he wasn’t in the bed with me yet. Until he was, I’d just lie here and wait impatiently for him to get his ass beneath the covers. I was feeling a little snappy by the time he finally joined me, wondering what had taken him so long and why his feet were so cold.
“Grump,”
he grumbled in my ear when he tapped my nose and I tried to nip at his finger.
“Slowpoke,”
I complained as he tugged me flush against him.
“They’re predicting a bit of a squall in the morning,”
he explained. “So I went around and closed all the storm windows and made sure the windowpanes were locked, too, so nothing accidentally blew open if the winds got as bad as they’re saying they’ll be.”
“Ohh,”
I said, feeling a little bad about nipping at him now, but only just a little.
It had still felt like it was taking forever, so a little nip was warranted, at least to my way of thinking. He didn’t seem to mind, either, he just nuzzled the back of my neck when I rolled and rubbed his cheek over my skin, tickling me with his beard. I was too tired to laugh and squirm, so I just sighed and finally began to surrender myself to the pull of sleep.
“I loved watching you work,”
he murmured, his breath warm against my skin. Goosebumps hit when the cool air hit the spot moments later, and I shivered, jarred from the first moments of haziness to hear him chuckle.
“You did that on purpose,”
I grumbled, swatting at his arm.
“Nope, I just wanted to tell you, so you’d know how inspiring it was. I’ve already drawn up a trio of kitchen imps with hedgehog features, gleefully going about their work.”
“There is nothing gleeful about the way I move around a kitchen,”
I snapped. “I’ve been told that storm is a more accurate way to put it, though stomp has even been used to describe my movements from time to time.”
“So, I took a little creative license,”
he murmured, his beard tickling me.
“A lot of creative license is more like it,”
I grumbled, wondering where the hell I was getting the energy to continue to snark at him when all I wanted to do is slip away into dreamland.
“Pff.”
“That right there tells me that I’m right.”
“I’ll tell you all the reasons you’re right in the morning, but I think we both need some rest right now,”
he declared, the weight of his head on the pillow making it dip more as he sank into it, too.
When I woke, the room was filled with golden light and my alarm was screaming at me. I don’t know how the hell he managed to set it without needing me to open the lock screen for him, until I realized that the lock screen opened to facial recognition as well, something he’d seen me use several times now. I bet he held it up to my face to unlock it so I wouldn’t be late making my delivery.
Some people might have been pissed, and I knew others would call it an invasion of privacy, but I wasn’t worried about concealing anything on my phone from him, nor would I expect him to go looking. I trusted that he’d opened the phone, opened the clock app, set the alarm to give me enough time to shower, eat and drive there, closed it and returned it to the spot where I’d left it before he’d gone about his morning routine.
That was the kind of consideration I could appreciate. He could have just as easily woken me and told me to set it myself. At that point, I’d probably have just gotten up and left with him, since my brain wouldn’t have allowed me to fall back asleep after that, knowing it was morning already.
Yawning, I stretched and wiggled around on my back, feeling the ache in my shoulders ease as I rolled them and turned my head from side to side until my neck popped. Much better. The feel of the hot water pouring over my shoulders from the overhead shower chased the last lingering bits of sleep away as I rubbed shampoo into my hair and tipped my head back to wash the suds from it. Living here in this amazing converted lighthouse, with more space than I’d ever imagined, once he started showing me the extension they’d built onto it, including a huge family room and a gigantic kitchen with plenty of counter space on both sides, double sinks, a dishwasher, and holy shit, even a pizza oven that sat waiting for me to claim it. It even had an island in the center, with more cabinet and counter space. Done in the same nautical themed blue and white as the rest of the lighthouse, it just looked cozy.
It had made my little hedgehog heart super happy when he’d bowed at the entryway and ushered me past him on the way into the room, proclaiming it to be the room where I could experiment to my heart’s content. At first, I’d wondered if he’d still be saying that after he saw how many pots, pans and kitchen gadgets I’d be bringing with me, until I started opening the cabinets and discovered that they were mostly empty.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to set the space up properly,”
he explained. “With it just being me living here, there really wasn’t a need.”
“No need for you to worry about that any longer,”
I told him. “There’s more than enough room for all the things I have and all the things I’ve put off getting because I didn’t have a space for them.”
“Looks like that problem’s been solved.”
“You’re getting really good at solving problems you didn’t even know I had,”
I told him, tugging him in for a kiss.
“Consider it another of those special talents of mine.”
My mate truly was talented, especially when it came to surprising me with little gestures that showed not only his thoughtfulness, but that he’d already made a space for me in his life. I’d seen a few of my siblings and their mates struggle with that. Sometimes it took time and miscommunication before couples started seeing each other as a duo instead of individuals.
I took my time enjoying my shower, but the moment I started dressing my phone let out a series of little pings. Racing to it, I picked it up to see that it had been pinging for a while, with several messages addressed directly to me, telling me to hurry up and bring my butt down to the shop and Gregor, too, if he was still with me.
Since he wasn’t I fired off a quick text asking him to go there if he was able to, that I didn’t know what was going on but that they were asking for both of us. I got his reply as I headed down the stairs. Three curt words, on my way, giving me a sense of relief as I started driving there.
It was butt fuck early in the morning, we’d barely opened. What the fuck could possibly be happening already? I started going back over my memories of the night before, everything had been off, wiped, checked and double-checked, sanitized and put away when we’d locked up.
No matter what state I was in, I never failed to maintain kitchen safety and end of the day protocols, even going out of my way to double-check myself the way I had last night because I’d known how exhausted I was. If the place was on fire, it wasn’t because of anything I’d done or forgotten to do.
I arrived to a bit of a crowd, both of customers and relatives that had crowded into Ever’s chocolate shop, where a large, imposing woman in a black leather jacket loudly demanded that he stay the fuck away from her son.
“You need to leave this instant,”
Aunty Eunice demanded.
When the woman whirled to turn her furious gaze on her, I saw that she had facial tattoos and a scar running from her ear to her cheek.
“I’ll leave when this bit of vermin agrees to steer clear of my son,”
she snarled.
“Isn’t it Olly’s choice who he spends time with?”
Ever asked.
“Oliver is too stupid to know when he’s being played for a fool,”
she hissed, glaring at everyone around them. “Do not make me come back here or I swear it will be a far less pleasant experience.”
“That’s enough, Dana!”
The voice sounded a lot like Gregor’s, but different, rougher, as was the face I saw when I turned to look toward the entryway.
The crowd parted for a man who looked a lot like Gregor, too, only a little older and taller. He had at least three inches on the woman, and he seized her arm the moment he reached her. Heat and hatred flared in their gazes when their eyes locked, and for a moment they engaged in a stare down that ended only when she lowered her gaze and allowed herself to be led out of the shop.
I followed, as did Aunty Eunice, wanting to know who the woman was and what her connection was to Olly and Gregor. The nerve of that shrew, coming in here like that. I don’t know what she’d hoped to accomplish, confronting Ever that way, but if I knew anything at all about my littermate, I knew that what she’d done here would just make him even more determined to spend time with Oliver.
I couldn’t hear what was being said between the pair as he led her out of there, but he kept her close, one hand holding her wrist, the other wrapped around her, his lips moving non-stop by her ear as he escorted her to the large Harley she’d parked on the sidewalk.
At least it didn’t have a ticket on it or she’d probably have turned around and blamed Ever for that. I watched him point her down the street before the engine roared to life. She flipped him off before roaring down the street in a plume of exhaust as Gregor came rushing up out of breath.
“Pops,”
Gregor rasped out in between puffs. “What the hell’s going on?”
“Fix that damned machine of yours so you can ride it to the shop and you’d know already,”
Pops snapped.
For a moment they just glared at one another, until he saw me approach with Aunty Eunice and Aunty Clara and turned to face us.
“I hope you have an explanation for that,”
I said before Aunty Eunice could.
“That’s Olly’s mom, but I don’t know why the hell she came here like that.”
“They’re dating,”
Aunty Eunice declared. “And they are going to keep on dating as long as they want. Olly is Everett’s mate.”
“Wait, you mean two of my boys found their mates at the same time?”
the older man said, ending my curiosity about whether Oliver and Gregor shared a father or a mother.
We’d had to put off introducing me to his folks when his rut hit, so this was the first time I was face to face with one of them. I’m just glad that meant the witch that left wasn’t Gregor’s mother, but I felt shitty for Olly knowing that was the kind of bullshit he had to put up with.
“It might be easier to have this conversation inside,”
Aunty Eunice suggested.
For the second time that week, we wound up commandeering the largest table in our shop for family issues, but as long as the registers kept running and orders kept being filled, no one seemed to mind. I sat beside Gregor for what I was certain would be one hell of a story, but nothing could have ever prepared me for what I heard.