Chapter Nine #2
Okay, I am not expecting that answer, and I roll back on my side to face him as he sits. “What is it?”
“It’s the clubhouse.” He lies back on the bed, turning to face me. “We all pitch in to keep it up. I cleaned it last.”
We sit like that for a minute, a temporary truce.
Staring into his amber eyes is mesmerizing.
My heartbeat calms as my shoulder muscles relax, and before I know it, I’m slow breathing and all I want to do is reach out and touch him.
Weirdly, my fingers don’t itch to brush his skin so I can yank his shirt off, but because I know it would feel nice just to hold his hand or touch his foot with mine or curl up against him and let my head rest against his chest.
What in the world, Effie? Pull it together.
“Where’s your place?” I ask, needing to break the silence before I get too used to this comfortable just-us feeling and give in to the urge to cuddle.
“Farther into the woods.” He adjusts his position, bracing his head in one hand and the other landing on the mattress between us, not touching mine but oh so close.
Breath quickening, I drop my gaze down to where his strong fingers rest against the plush comforter. He is too close and not close enough at the same time. I drove for miles curled around this man and have flirted shamelessly with him, but not holding his hand is making me breathless?
Girl, have some pride.
“Too good for town?” I ask, going for teasing and coming out squeaky.
“I just like having a little space to myself,” he says, his eyes on my mouth. “There are things I like to do without prying eyes.”
The possibilities for what those things are is endless, and I’m going to be considering each one for days to come. Right now, though, I can’t ponder even one, because if I do, I’m going to get this man naked and have my wicked witchy way with him.
So I do the first thing I think of to put some space between us and roll (not smoothly) over to the edge of my side of the humongous bed and stand up.
At least I mean to; what I really do is a kind of lurch off the mattress, slip and slide on the floor before regaining my balance, and then recover just before face-planting on the hardwood floor.
Graceful I am not. That’s my sister Juniper.
“So your pack is good with orgies,” I say, waving a hand at the giant-ass bed while refusing to acknowledge my own klutziness or the fact that my cheeks are burning from nearly going ass over teakettle in front of him, “but whatever it is that you do out there in your private cabin in the woods is a step too far?”
“Who said anything about orgies?” He grins up at me, all of a sudden way too comfortable with me being flustered.
He just watches me, daring me to answer. It’s a moment that hovers for a minute, filling the air around us with a kind of tension that makes my core clench.
Of course, that’s when the sound of a lone howl, soon joined by several more voices, invades what had been beginning to feel like our space.
Darius is off the bed in one quick move thanks to his shifter athleticism and is at the front window in a few long strides, all the relaxed ease he’d shown moments ago gone.
He takes a second to look through the partially closed blinds and then turns back to me.
“We’ve gone off path,” he says, once more sounding every bit the uptight alpha. “You have to marry me.”
This man is going to give me whiplash going from flirty-sex alpha to all-about-business alpha.
“You don’t believe the fated mates BS, do you?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
Thank the Fates.
If I do this, there will be no forever between us. That is one hundred percent nonnegotiable.
Still, I can’t help but continue to tease this tightly wound version of Darius. “And what happens if you fall madly in love with me and can’t bear to see me go?”
He doesn’t snort, well, not exactly, but he makes some kind of huff of disbelief. “I won’t.”
This is clearly the best news, and the little pang in my chest where my hopeful heart would be if I had one is obviously indigestion from lunch. Though the pinch is annoyingly persistent—distractingly so.
That’s why instead of magicking the both of us out of Arcadia, I instead ask, “So until death do us part?”
This time he does snort.
“Not even close.” He glances back out through the blinds, still on alert, but some of the visible tension leaves his broad shoulders and his stance changes to a more relaxed one, as if it’s just us again.
“A month should give me enough time to pull a plan together for another job and to execute it.”
Thirty days as an alpha wolf’s convenient wife and then back to my normal life?
I can do that in my sleep. Plus, if the Council is distracted by trying to ransom me from the pack (because we both know Nikos is not the kind of werewolf to give up on that option), then that means their plans to gain control over Witchingdom will be delayed.
Artemis isn’t right about fated mates, but maybe I am supposed to be here, maybe this is how I can help beyond being a WitchyGram fun-time girl.
Maybe I have a purpose after all.
And if I get some Darius-assisted orgasms along the way, then score one for the badass witches who enjoy a toe curler or twenty.
Recovered from my earlier clumsiness, I walk over to Darius, putting a little extra swing in my hips, which would have knocked him sideways if he’d actually been looking at me instead of out the window again.
“So,” I say, pulling his attention, “are you getting down on one knee now or in front of the rest of the pack?”
Something changes in his gaze as he looks at me, and a deliciously dangerous sensation licks at my skin, setting off a shiver of awareness that has me clenching my core.
“Effie,” he says, gazing at me as if he’s about to eat me up in the absolute best ways. “If I’m ever on my knees in front of you, it won’t be to propose and there won’t be an audience.”
Then, as if he hasn’t just dropped a whole sex fantasy bomb, he walks out the door.
I’m not sure whether I should be grateful or magick him right back so he can follow up on that promise.