Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sienna
The estate rises ahead of us at noon, pale stone against a deep blue sky, and I cannot decide whether I am relieved to be back or just exhausted.
Lucas’s hand sits at the small of my back as we come up the drive. His backpack is heavier than when we left, weighted with the lineage book. Darius is at his other shoulder. Violet has fallen back to walk with her mother, the two of them speaking low. Lillian has not said much since the cottage.
Lydia is at the front entrance, “You’re back earlier than I expected. Was the trip worthwhile?”
“It was,” Lucas answers shortly. “Summon Monroe and Reese to my study within the hour.”
“Alright.”
She disappears. Lucas turns to me in the corridor and brushes his lips against my forehead. The press of his mouth is brief, distracted, his thoughts already half in his study—which he then leaves for.
After the dark line of his shoulders disappears past the staircase, I climb up to our suite and shut the door quietly behind me.
The travel clothes peel off in stages. Forest dirt at the cuffs of my trousers, dust in the seam of my collar.
Everything goes in a pile by the bathroom door before I step into the shower and twist the dial as hot as the pipes will allow.
Water hammers the back of my neck. My shoulders unlock by degrees, the long hours of tension draining off me.
When I come out wrapped in a towel, the bedroom is still empty. The afternoon sun cuts a long, bright wedge across the bed.
My satchel sits on the chair by the window, and I cross to it.
Beneath yesterday’s travel clothes, wrapped in two sheets of pale tissue paper, are the three sets of lingerie Violet picked out for me at the shop in the village.
I still feel guilty about buying them, but she had a point.
Life is going to keep happening around us, and if things don’t work out with the curse, this year may very well be the only one I have with my mate.
It’s a weird thought, and I shake it off.
I won’t think about it. I have to focus on the now.
I lay out my purchases on the bedspread.
The first set is black silk, the bra cut low and the matching piece below it so absurdly small that I hold it up against the light just to confirm what I am looking at.
Cream lace comes next. Softer, more delicate.
Last is the wine-colored satin with thin ribbon ties at the hips. I stare at it for a full ten seconds wondering when in my life I would actually put on something held together with bows.
I’ve worn plenty of tiny clothes in my life to parties and clubs, but lingerie is a whole other ball game. You wear lingerie for your partner. I’ve never had a steady boyfriend. A few flings here and there, but no one I wanted—or needed—to seduce.
My stomach does a slow, ridiculous turn.
The image of Lucas in the bed at the inn last night comes back to me. Hands behind his head, eyes on the ceiling. Then, the deliberate space he keeps between his body and mine when we sleep. The week of his back turned to me.
I start to think seriously about modeling some of this lingerie for him.
Tonight, I tell myself. I will think about it tonight.
The wine-colored set folds back into its tissue under my hands, then the cream, then the black. I open the second drawer of the dresser, and all three get pushed to the back, behind a shirt that has not been worn since Moonvale.
A clean blouse and trousers come out of the closet next, and I think I look like I have my life perfectly together.
By late afternoon, Monroe and Reese are about to leave Lucas’s study. In the corridor, through the half-open door, I hear their voices, low and clipped, wrapping up the briefing. I wait until their footsteps recede before I push the door open.
Lucas is at his desk. The lineage book is open in front of him. A pencil rests under his fingers, and his eyes are fixed on a point past the page, in the middle distance behind the desk lamp. He does not look up as I cross the room.
I come around the desk and sit on the edge of it in front of him without invitation.
His head lifts.
“Stop reading,” I tell him.
He leans back in the chair and drags both hands down his face. The skin under his eyes looks bruised, and there’s a small, tight movement in my chest at the sight.
“I keep trying to imagine her,” he murmurs against his palms.
“Meera?”
“The one before her. Or whoever wrote down the first name.” He drops his hands. “Four generations of witches walking into a human town to confirm the death of a stranger’s mate. Coming home and crossing him out. The discipline of that, Sienna. I cannot put a face on her.”
Lucas closes the book. He reaches across the desk and pulls my hand into his. His thumb finds the inside of my wrist, where the pulse runs close to the skin, and he lifts it to his mouth. He kisses it slowly, once, with his eyes closed.
“I want to ask her what her role in this is. Of course, I don’t know if she will help us if we find her. Is she even alive?”
I don’t know what to say to him.
Quiet stretches between us. The light at the open window has gone amber, and outside, a gardener pushes a wheelbarrow across gravel. The sound is brief and ordinary and very far away.
“Monroe radioed an hour ago,” Lucas says eventually. His thumb is still moving on my wrist. “The squadron has discovered a compound.”
“What did they see?”
“Nothing he wanted to say on a radio.”
“Come on.” I tug him to his feet. “Everyone is tired. We’ll have dinner sent to their rooms. We can also have ours in our suite. I just want to rest.”
He lets me pull him along.
He is in the shower when one of the staff brings in dinner. Sitting in his pajamas, shirtless, his hair still wet, Lucas eats. I can see the strain in his eyes. My mate bears all the weight of the world on his shoulders. I don’t like it.
“I’m going to change,” I tell him once the dishes are removed.
He makes a noncommittal noise, focused on the report on his tablet. My mate is also a workaholic. Another little thing I want to change. Work does not belong in the bedroom.
Actually, I need him distracted right now. I retrieve my lingerie before I lose my nerve.
I quickly open the dresser drawer and push aside the clothes in front to decide what I’m looking for. The black is too much. The cream is too soft. The wine-colored seems milder. I slip it out of the drawer.
The bathroom is the only place I can do this; the full-length mirror in the bedroom would intimidate me before I tied the first bow.
My fingers fumble at the satin. It sits cool against my ribs, warmer at my hips where the ties cross.
When I straighten, the woman in the glass looks back at me wide eyed, half stunned, out of her depth.
What is the worst he will do, I ask her silently, ignore you?
Being ignored by Lucas is something I have already survived. I can survive it again. But this time, I might kick him in the family jewels.
I open the bathroom door before I chicken out. Lucas is standing at the corner of the bed in his pajamas, frowning down at something on the tablet. The lamp on the side table catches the silver at his temples.
He looks up and freezes.
“Sienna.” His voice goes rough at the edges. “What are you wearing?”
I step out of the bathroom into the warm light of the bedroom. The satin moves smoothly against my upper thighs. My chin lifts. Slowly, deliberately, I do a turn for him in the middle of the floor.
Facing him again, I tilt my head. “What do you think?”
There is a long stretch where Lucas Steele, Alpha of Silvercrest Pack, does not appear capable of speech.
The tablet is still in his hands. His lips have parted. His eyes move from the bow at my hip to the strap on my shoulder to my mouth and back down the other side, and they are doing it in a loop he does not seem to be controlling.
“You look…very pretty,” he rasps.
My wolf yowls inside me.
Pretty.
My eyes drop, deliberately, to the very obvious tent at the front of his pajama pants. I let my gaze sit there for a moment before lifting it back to his face.
“‘Pretty’ is doing a lot for you, Alpha Steele.”
His throat moves.
A step toward him takes me onto the carpet. The pile is soft under my bare feet. “You get this worked up for ‘pretty’?” Another step. “You must be very easy.”
He begins to move slowly backward without seeming to be aware he’s doing it. The backs of his knees hit the side of the mattress, and he sits down heavily. The tablet slips out of his fingers and bounces against the floorboards with a clattering sound that neither of us acknowledges.
He stares at me. The distance between us closes. My thigh slides between his. His hands come up to my hips. He grips me there, and I let him hold me…for about three seconds.
Then, my fingers grasp his wrists, and I lift his hands off me. I set them down on the bed at his sides, and I step back.
“I should probably go and get somebody else’s opinion, since you think I just look ‘pretty.’”
I turn around. Two strides toward the bedroom door are all I get before his hand closes around my arm. Not gently, either.
“Where,” Lucas breathes from just behind my shoulder, “do you think you are going dressed like that?”
I don’t turn around. “Violet’s room.” His grip on my arm tightens. “I want her opinion.”
“Darius is in there.”
I tilt my head innocently. “And?”
The bond between us spikes so violently, it steals the air from my lungs. A low, dangerous growl rumbles in Lucas’s chest, the sound vibrating straight through me.
Before I can take another breath, he yanks my arm and turns me around. My body collides hard against his chest. The impact knocks a soft gasp out of me, but it’s swallowed instantly as his other arm locks like steel around my lower back, crushing me to him.
His mouth crashes down on mine.