6. Thirty-one
Thirty-one
Taryn
“And that’s the last of it,” Brea said as she shifted the oversized box she’d carried upstairs to a corner of our storage space. She stood with a satisfied sigh, brushing a stray red hair out of her face. “We are officially moved in.”
Damn alpha strength. Brea had hoofed up and down the stairs with twice as many boxes as I had, yet there she stood, looking ready for a photo shoot in her stupid soft gray t-shirt and stupid sexy jeans.
Meanwhile, sweat glued my hair to my neck and forehead, and I was breathing exactly like I’d climbed up and down two flights of stairs six times in the last half hour while carrying moderately heavy and awkwardly sized boxes.
Honestly, I was a little mad at her.
Until, that is, she strutted over and put her arms around my shoulders and leaned in for a slow kiss.
Introducing La Musque, the fancy alpha’s body odor.
“It feels nice, putting down roots,” she said in a hazy voice, a soft smile on her lips and a hum behind her words.
I smiled so big my cheeks hurt. “Yeah, it does.”
We’d spent the last two-plus years as nomads—by circumstance, not choice.
Rootlessness was exhausting. Constantly rebuying and reselling of furniture as we moved from city to city…
never having a steady address for more than six months…
saying goodbye and moving on just as you got friendly with the neighbors.
Not this time, though. Farendale was going to be our city.
The one we chose together, the one where we’d stay for the foreseeable future.
We’d signed a two-year lease. We’d retrieved our most precious sentimental items from long-term storage.
We were making plans to furnish an actual nest in our actual home for the first time since we’d met.
It all made the whole thing feel so… real .
Grouchy landlords aside, Amethyst Commons was an absolute steal of a first home, too.
Three beautiful brick buildings, covered in sprawling hibiscus and muscadine vines, dominated a quiet city block.
The interiors were full of warm lighting and rich wood grains.
Vintage-looking brass mailboxes stood to the left side of the entrance lobby opposite a cozy grouping of three plush aubergine chairs.
Rugs and tapestries and lamps and paintings everywhere, but not overstimulating.
A beautiful oak stairwell ran up the center of the building, matching doors with cut glass on each side granting entrance to the first-floor units, including ours.
All details that had the omega in me frothing at the mouth.
On the more utilitarian side, each four-story building had a quaint courtyard, as well as on-site laundry and storage. Add to that a rent cost that was just low enough to be only mildly irresponsible to take on, and we’d jumped on the listing like a trampoline.
We’d just finished lugging up our surplus belongings into our designated third-floor closet space with the golden 3 on the outside. Small, sure, but getting a little of the clutter out of the apartment was convenient as hell.
I looked through the crowded space, and my eyes snagged on a box in the corner, mummified with duct tape that was probably the only thing maintaining the (semi) square shape. That certainly hadn’t been one of the approximately five million boxes we’d just loaded into the room.
“What’s in this one?” I asked as I broke away and approached the box and pulled apart the folded-together flaps.
“What—”
“HA!” I shouted in victory as I pulled out the long-sought-after charger for my toothbrush. “I knew I hadn’t lost it! You just hid it from me!”
“What?” Brea sputtered, looking with confusion at the box. “That box is labeled Winter Sweaters. It’s June.”
“I think we’ve established that boxes can hold more than one type of thing, haven’t we?” I kept digging through the box. “What else have you hidden away?”
“I haven’t hidden a damn—”
NO. WAY.
I gave a dramatic gasp and pulled out the skateboard that had been stuffed down beneath the messily folded winter sweaters and quilts. Brea’s sigh was confession enough. “Okay, hon, listen—”
“Thief!” I cried out. “Thief! Dirty, dirty thief!”
The skateboard had been an impulse flea market buy a few months after we left Pockston.
The moment I’d spied it piled on a table with some grungy CDs and stacks of board games, every cell within me had needed it.
Brea, of course, had worried I’d end up comatose or with a broken neck.
Luckily for me, Brea was also a sucker for my omega eyes—that oh-so-sweet look I’d long since perfected and pulled out whenever I wanted something.
The merchant had even come down on the price, offering it for ten bucks less.
Brea’d shot daggers at him from her eyes… but then she’d pulled out her wallet.
A week later, my pre-heat had started. Two weeks after that, Brea had gotten her acceptance letter to the social services program at Remington State, and thus our whirlwind began.
In all the chaos, I’d forgotten about my skateboard.
And during one of our many moves, my alpha clearly thought that she could simply facilitate my continued memory lapse.
A shrug of resignation was her only reply, and I laughed. “Tsk, tsk. Such a mean alpha, keeping me from shredding asphalt and kicking ass.”
“Only because it’s your ass that’s usually the one getting shredded.”
I rolled my eyes and tucked the board under my arm, leading the way out of our small storage unit.
Brea locked up, and just as I opened my mouth to give her a heart attack (via suggesting I ride my way down the stairwell), my eye snagged on an unassuming brown door at the end of the hallway.
It matched the one on our floor and, I assumed, the second and fourth floors too.
We knew it led to a secondary staircase.
For maintenance, maybe. We didn’t know for sure, though, since the doors were always locked.
At least they were usually locked. This one hadn’t quite closed all the way, the latch resting on the edge of the doorjamb.
“Brea,” I whispered. She turned, and I nodded toward the cracked door. Toward the key still sticking out of the lock.
She pursed her lips in a silent ooh of intrigue. “You suppose that’s where Sir McGrumpkins keeps the bodies?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
“Or his secret collection of creepy dolls.”
“All with curls and bows, of course.”
“Perfect, silent, obedient little ladies, one and all.” I chuckled, though my reminder of Mr. Arceneaux’s less-than-stellar first impression put a scowl on my mate’s face.
Brea huffed, giving a small shake of her head before stepping back toward the main staircase. “C’mon, I’m starved,” she said, reaching out for my hand. I didn’t take it, though. A wicked grin stole over my face as I took first one sideways step, then another, toward the mystery door.
My mate leveled a stern finger at me. “Taryn, no. ”
I took a deep breath, donning a serious mask as I stepped slowly within touching distance of the door. “I am approaching the door…”
Brea didn’t move. “Taryn Rose Maddox—”
“I am reaching for the knob,” I narrated as I slowly, with great exaggeration, did just that.
“Are you really that eager for another face-to-face with the Bad Sir?”
In response, I pulled the door open in slow motion. “I am stepping across the threshold.” Brea pinched the bridge of her nose, and I continued my narration. “I am officially standing in forbidden territory. Oh no. Phone the police. I must be stopped.”
“Yeah, something’s gonna stop, all right,” Brea muttered half beneath her breath.
I snorted, grin widening. If one of us was ever going to have a successful sex strike, it sure as fuck would not be my horny li’l alpha.
I only shrugged, stepping further into the dark stairwell, far enough that I couldn’t hold the door open any longer and it creaked shut.
Well, almost shut. Brea caught it before it hit the jamb, glaring at me as she pulled the key from the lock on the other side and followed me into the dark stairwell. “You are going to be the death of us both.”
“Dying of adventure is better than dying of boredom.
I grabbed my alpha’s hand, brought it to my lips for a quick knuckle kiss, then pulled her toward the stairs. By the time we were climbing, she was right beside me—not behind—and giggling, just like me.
Brooks
A headache that was not my own throbbed behind my eyes.
Shit. If Caine wasn’t able to block the pain from the pack bond, it had to be bordering on migraine territory. Again.
Between my shifts at the hospital, Lin’s million business meetings, and Caine’s general Caine- ness, we hadn’t all three had a nice evening together in weeks.
Or morning or afternoon, for that matter.
At least Lin and I shared a bed. Though Caine crawled into it very occasionally—for sleep and for not sleep—I missed him. I missed them both.
So (at mostly my insistence) we’d come up to enjoy the deepening dark of our private rooftop patio at the end of an exhausting week.
The oppressive heat of summer hadn’t yet usurped the breezy warmth of springtime, and the evening air was sweet.
Notes of honeysuckle from the gorgeous vines that climbed the buildings.
Spiced apple from the small bottle of homemade moonshine in my hand.
Crisp blackberry and decadent honey emanating from my mate.
Lin and I sat on one of three cozy sofas in comfortable silence.
He’d been up since five this morning driving all over Farendale for building inspections and design consults and bank meetings.
Fourteen hours later, his dark hair hung over his forehead and the top two buttons of his Oxford hung undone, but—bless him—he hadn’t even hinted at wanting to call an early night.
The warm weight of his arm around my shoulders added to the bubbly feeling in my head from the glass I’d already polished off.