Chapter Four #2
It was a quiet day, thank gods. No intruders or conflicts.
No threats. Just Davion sleeping upstairs, because he’d been up most of the night, and Xavier moving around the house and nearby land to make sure the day stayed quiet.
Ren seemed at loose ends until I showed him the den, which contained two bookcases full of books and a large smart TV with just about every streaming service available.
I left him in there to relax while I spent some time in my office making last-minute preparations for the gathering, specifically the speeches I would have to make and discussions I would have to have.
When car doors slammed outside halfway through the afternoon, I realized two things: I’d forgotten to eat lunch, and Kyle had arrived. Whatever was left to do for the gathering could wait. I still had another day. Right now, seeing my mate after being apart from him overnight was my top priority.
In the front hall, Kyle stood, flanked by our two senior guards Seth and Laurits. Two of our other guards, Benjy and Yovanny, were behind them. The door was open, but that wasn’t surprising given that five werewolves and their luggage were trying to crowd into the entryway.
Five werewolves. No humans, and one of the guards was missing. “Where are Chloe and Mandeep?”
“Hi, Tobias,” Kyle said. “I missed you last night. I’m happy to see you.”
I rolled my eyes. “I love you and you know it. Where are Chloe and Mandeep?”
“One-track mind,” Kyle muttered. He grinned. “They took the smaller car to pick up one of the other cooks. Solana? You apparently promised her transportation.”
“Right.” I’d hired the temp household workers based on how much I felt I could trust them and whether they seemed competent in the job, not whether they had any way to get to the hunt house. “So we’ll have two humans here overnight. You all know the drill.”
“Mandeep will be with them during the day, as you’d already established,” Seth said. “I’ve assigned Benjy to guard them at night, except on hunt night.”
I nodded. One of the things I liked most about Seth was that he knew his job well enough to take things off my plate.
Especially since I’d made it clear to him after I took the rank of Anax that I wanted him to make decisions without asking me about every little move.
“Thank you, Seth. All right, for the rest of today, do what you would ordinarily do. Seth, Xavier is around here somewhere. Davion’s upstairs. ”
“Davion can stay off duty until tomorrow morning,” Seth said.
“I’ll have Mandeep step into his spot.” Each of the shifts had three guards.
In the couple of months since I’d hired Davion, Benjy, and Yovanny, none of whom had worked as guards before, Mandeep had become a combination of a float guard, filling in when necessary, and my personal assistant since he had a gift for logistics and planning that I desperately needed.
“Sounds good.” I raised my voice slightly. The den was just a couple doors down the hall, and werewolves had better hearing than humans. Ren would hear me. “Ren, if you’d like, you can come meet my mate and our guards.”
The den door creaked open, and Ren hesitantly emerged. I studied the guards’ faces for any indication of doubt or disgust. I’d done my best to vet all of them for prejudice and hatred, but sometimes things were missed.
None of them reacted with anything other than a friendly smile.
I relaxed and motioned to Ren to join us.
“Everyone, this is Ren Torres. He is our guest for a while and might join the household staff.” I emphasized the pronoun to make damn good and sure everyone knew Ren was a guy.
“Ren, how many names can you handle hearing at one time?”
He chuckled nervously. “Throw ’em all at me and I’ll see what I can do.”
I took Kyle’s hand and pulled him closer. “You asked for it,” I said, grinning. “This is my mate, Kyle Slidell.”
“It’s good to meet you, Ren,” Kyle said in a gentler tone than his usual as he held out his hand.
Looking a little bemused, Ren shook it. “It’s good to meet you, too.”
“And these are more of our guards.” I started with Seth, going with the protocol of introducing the highest-ranked first, though with the guards, it was more about seniority than rank.
“Seth Ogilvie, my head guard and the leader of the day guards. Laurits Solberg, second in command and the leader of the night guards. And Benjy Yates and Yovanny Westin.”
Ren looked completely overwhelmed, but he summoned a smile and said, “I’m glad to meet all of you.”
“Likewise.” Seth extended his hand, and Ren shook it. “I heard a little about you yesterday. I’m sorry for what you experienced.”
Ren raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Um, thanks.”
“We’ll have supper at six,” I said. “If Chloe and Solana aren’t ready to cook for all of us, we’ll order and one of you can go pick it up. Seth, I’ll leave you to organize the guards. Ren, do you need anything?”
He shook his head. “I’m all set in there, Anax, unless you want me to…I don’t know. Clean or something?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Right now, you’re a guest. If you want some work to do, I’m sure Chloe can find something for you when she gets here, but I’d like to see you just take it easy for a while. Didn’t Wilbur tell you to rest for the day?”
“Resting isn’t easy when you aren’t used to it.” He smiled again and looked at the guards. “Yeah, just let me know if you need me to do something. Otherwise, I’ll be in the den.”
“Kyle and I will come hang out with you in a little while. I just need to talk to him privately first.” Talking was absolutely not what I had in mind, but that information was between Kyle and me.
“If you want anything to eat or drink, help yourself in the kitchen. Don’t worry about whether it’s food for the gathering. I want you to be comfortable.”
His expression brightened. “Thank you, Tobias.”
Kyle and I headed up to our suite. In the bedroom, with the door closed, he yanked me into his arms and nuzzled my neck. “About time we got to be alone. I was beginning to think you’d forget what I looked like.”
“As if.” I moaned softly as his lips touched just the right spot. “I wanted to come home to you last night and have you fuck the hell out of me, but it just didn’t work out that way.”
“No worries.” He let go of me and pushed me toward the bed. “Lay your ass down and let me hold you. If more happens, so much the better, but right now I just want to wrap up in you and be here together before hell descends.”
“I hope it won’t be hell.” Unsure whether to undress or stay as I was, I didn’t move for a second.
Undressing sounded like the better choice, so I could feel Kyle’s skin against mine.
Right now, that would soothe me, and I needed to be soothed.
I took off the T-shirt and shorts I’d put on that morning and lay in the center of the bed, arms extended. “Here I am.”
“Took you long enough.” With a grin, he shed his clothes and joined me, lying on his side against me so I could put my arms around him. “The calm before the storm.”
“Not a hundred percent calm, but this helps.” I turned onto my side so I was facing him. My cock brushed against his and I shivered with the need that rose along with the beginning rising of my dick. “Oh, damn. How long has it been?”
“Since I touched you like this?” He reached between us and fingered my shaft, which made me shiver again. “A few days too long. You’ve had things on your mind.”
“And you didn’t call me out on ignoring you?” With a faint sigh, I moved against him. “I’m sorry.”
“You weren’t ignoring me. You were preparing for the Grand Poobah Alpha-con.
” He kissed my shoulder. “I was planning to make up for it on our wedding night. You’d better start preparing yourself for that, my love, because I will use your body like a goddamn rag doll until we’re both too fucked out to think. ”
I laughed. “There’s something not quite right with that imagery, but I get the gist. As much as I would love to make up for lost time right now, I don’t want to stay shut in here too long.
The guards will understand, but Chloe and her assistant will be here soon, and I’m still a little concerned about Ren. ”
“You’re always concerned about other people.” He pecked my lips. “Let’s just be here, and tonight when we go to bed, I’ll suck your dick until you want to scream. And then I’ll probably make you do the same thing to me. Deal?”
Oh, fuck, the heat and craving that rushed through me at his words almost made me change my mind. I was the Anax. I was in charge, which meant I could decide to spend the entire rest of the day naked in bed with my mate if I wanted. No one could argue. No one could complain.
But I wouldn’t do that, because being the Anax meant having responsibilities.
And in bed, I wasn’t in charge. The first time Kyle and I had sex, he’d taken control, not realizing that a low-ranked wolf wasn’t supposed to do that with their Alpha.
And I’d been grateful as hell for it, because he was the first partner I’d had who didn’t expect me to be as dominant in bed as I was out of it.
Sometimes even a dominant wolf needed to let go and let someone else run things for a while.
He pulled me closer and touched his lips to my shoulder again.
“Be here with me, Tobias. Things are going to ramp up over the next day or so. Then we’ve got Alpha-con, and I know we won’t be able to have much time like this when all the arkhons and alphas are here.
So for the next few minutes, try to stop thinking, at least a little, and just be here with me. ”
“Yeah.” I moaned softly as he kissed that perfect spot on my neck again, but then I settled and just lay against him, trying, as he’d asked, to stop thinking.
I wasn’t particularly successful. But I tried.