Chapter 2 #2
He chuckled. “We can stop by your apartment on the way to breakfast. Give you a chance to shower, change, and pack some clothes. We’ll stay here again tonight, and then you’ll come home with me for the week while we figure out what needs to happen before we move you in with me permanently.”
She blinked at him. He was talking like her moving in with him was a given. Not would you like to, not what do you think about, just — stated. As if it’d already been decided, which apparently, in his head, it had.
Her first instinct was to push back on the assumption, and she took a breath to do exactly that, but then she stopped because… he had a point.
She’d severed her bonds with the pack to be with him. She changed her entire life for him, so of course he assumed she was moving in. What else would she be doing? Staying in her apartment alone, lone wolf, no pack energy, no community, driving to his mountain on Mondays?
It would’ve been better if he’d asked. She’d have appreciated being asked. But she hadn’t fallen in love with a man who gave polite invitations when the answer was a given.
“Yeah, a week’s worth of clothes. Maybe we have to do that twice while we figure out the logistics, but yeah.”
Once at her apartment, she left him snooping through her kitchen to take a shower. She dressed in jeans and a tight t-shirt, and packed a suitcase for his house, then a duffel to take into the clubhouse that night.
She came out of the shower to find him sitting at her kitchen island with the focused stillness of a man who’d made himself at home.
He was drinking from a glass of ice water, and he pushed it to the side and told her, “I can get rid of some of my things to make room for yours.
We can add your magnet bar wherever it makes sense, put in a hanging rack since that seems to be your preference.
He looked around. “Where do you put your studio lights?”
She told him, and he nodded.
It occurred to her that he was figuring out how to fit not just her, but also her things into his space. And not just fit them in, but he was talking about making it her space, too.
It touched her in a way she didn’t expect, and a warm feeling moved through her. It was going to be okay.
First Watch was busy, and they had to park three football fields away.
Once again, she was reminded how weak she was, but she managed the walk okay.
They had to wait for a seat, but it was a nice morning so they waited outside.
Standing, when her legs were tired, but she figured maybe it would help her build strength.
She wasn’t sure her energy would ever even out, which meant she’d just have to work on her stamina.
Other lone wolves survived. She would, too.
And, she reminded herself, she’d lost her pack and the magical power that came with it, but she hadn’t lost the core of who she is.
She was still a financially independent culinary specialist with skills restaurant owners were willing to pay big bucks for, and with nearly a million followers who set aside some time on Wednesdays to see what new dish she was cooking.
When they were finally seated, it was a table by the window, and she ordered the eggs benedict, smoked salmon, hash browns, and a pitcher of their blackberry bramble sangria.
He ordered two omelets with every meat option available, Belgian waffles, and a double order of hash browns — and then looked at her across the table until the waitress left, when he said, “You need more food than that. You’re still weak.”
“I’m better than I was yesterday, but yeah, my body hasn’t figured out how to act without…” She shrugged and answered the other part of his question. “Some restaurants, it seems fine to order several entrees, but I don’t want to do that here.”
He nodded, and then got the attention of another waitress and told her, “Can you have our waitress add third omelet onto my order and bring it out on a separate plate, please? Also, make it two Belgian waffles.”
She decided not to thank him, even though that was her first thought. It seemed better to just bring up the subject she really wanted to talk about.
“How many of your brothers are kinky?”
He lifted a brow, tilted his head, and finally answered with, “Most of them, I guess. Never really thought about it, but there are a lot of reasons I knew they were my people from the start.”
She wanted to ask what the other reasons were, but she made a mental note to do it later. She needed to stay on topic.
“I’m not a 24/7 kind of masochist,” she said.
She saw him understand where she was going with the conversation, and it seemed to settle him.
“I don’t want to run your whole life,” he said.
“Your career, your friends, your schedule — you’re an adult and all of that we deal with like a normal couple.
No different than the way we deal with my career, friends, and schedule.
” He met her gaze a few seconds before dropping his voice to a lower volume to add, “But I’ll expect you to obey every word that comes out of my mouth when it comes to sex.
As long as I’m not interfering with your work, you’ll obey me instantly when I give a command to strip, or to bend over a table and spread your ass cheeks, or drop to the floor and open your cunt mouth. ”
Her clit throbbed before her brain caught up with his words, and she wanted to argue, but the truth was… that fucking worked for her.