Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
NELL
Iwoke up sore in the best possible way. I had heard people talk about delayed onset muscle soreness; aches that crept up on you the morning after a workout.
I had never personally experienced this phenomenon.
My body had always just quietly handled itself.
Track coaches had been after me in high school, but I was more interested in the business classes.
The gymnastics coaches had salivated over my upper body strength, but I was more interested in the debate team.
Jars opened on the first try, which apparently emasculated the men I invited over.
So I had no reference point for the ache between my thighs.
Not bad. Emphatically, enthusiastically, not bad.
A tenderness that made itself known every time I shifted against the sheets.
Every time I pressed my thighs together in memory of that thick cock, and then the knot that had grown and throbbed inside me.
As soon as I got up, I was calling Addie to curse her out that she hadn't shared this fact about werewolf sex. Now that I'd had a beast between the sheets, I was never going back to mere men.
The bed beside me was empty. I reached out and touched the pillow where he'd slept. It was still warm, recently vacated. The scent of him there filled my nose and made my still swollen clit tingle.
He was still here in the apartment. His scent moved.
It stirred the air like a gentle breeze, drifting from the bedroom doorway to the hallway to the living room in slow, unhurried currents.
No windows were open. No fans were running.
The air conditioning wasn't on. I lay there and let my nose follow him around my apartment like a compass that had a new north.
I could also hear him. The kitchen. Cabinet doors. The sound of a pan on a burner.
Snagging his shirt from the floor, I slipped the dark fabric over my head and padded out of the bedroom. Magnus was in my kitchen in his suit trousers and nothing else. He stood at my stove with a pan in one hand and a spatula in the other, scrambled eggs moving across the surface.
His nose twitched. His eyes flashed — like a cat's at night — in the dawning sunlight of early morning.
His upper lip tugged upward, canines snatched his lower lip as he turned and took me in wearing his shirt.
He crossed the distance between us in two steps, cupped my face in his hands, and kissed me.
Devoured me like I was breakfast and he'd skipped dinner.
"Sit," he ordered after leaving me weak-kneed.
I did as I was told and sat.
He brought the eggs first; scrambled and buttery. Then the sausage, picking out the crispier end pieces for me.
He sat across from me and watched me eat with an expression of quiet contentment that was so foreign on the face of the man who had coldly told me to get back to work in a lobby days ago. I had to look at the plate to recalibrate.
"We'll need to keep things quiet for a while," he said conversationally, as I was cutting into the eggs. "While you're settling into the company. I don't want anyone suggesting you slept your way into the role. If I hear anyone say that again, heads will roll."
I looked up. "Again?"
"Our relationship won't be gossip for the water coolers."
"Relationship?"
I had never been in a relationship. I had done one-night stands and had a few fuck buddies who would arrive at my door after a U up? text that always came from my phone.
Fork halfway to my mouth, I looked at Magnus waiting for me to put his eggs in my mouth and had a realization: I wanted him back in my bed tomorrow night. Hell, I'd rather eat this breakfast in bed, and then nibble at his sausage. Maybe… maybe a relationship wouldn't be so bad. With him.
"You'll need to move."
I choked on the forkful of eggs, which were very good, by the way. "Move?"
"This apartment isn't secure enough. The building has good bones, but the access points are too exposed.
We'll get something in Vidar's building.
It has better infrastructure, a Blackwood-controlled perimeter, and you'll be closer to Addie.
" A brief pause. "Which will annoy Vidar.
You may have noticed my brother doesn't like to share his toys. "
Magnus snagged the fork. He placed a perfectly balanced amount of egg and sausage on the tines and held it out to me.
I ignored the food. "You want to move in together?"
"Of course." He made a motion with the fork for me to open my mouth.
I swallowed. Hard.
I had never lived with a man. I had never wanted to live with a man.
I had spent my adult years constructing a life that was entirely and specifically mine.
The idea of folding that life into someone else's, of negotiating space and schedules and the ten thousand small daily decisions that cohabitation required, produced a sensation in my chest that was not dissimilar to the feeling of being locked inside a very small, very dark place.
"We had one night, and now you want to move in together?"
"We had more than one night, Petronella."
This was technically accurate.
"There are things," he said slowly, "that I haven't told you yet. Things that I need to tell you before we tell my family."
"Tell your family what?"
"That we're mated."
"Is that another wolf thing like the knot?"
Magnus held my gaze. "It's the wolf equivalent of marriage."
Marriage. The word landed in the center of my chest like a stone dropped from a significant height. It had no impact. Because I was out of my seat before it could land.
"I thought you were asking me to be your girlfriend. I thought you would come over and we would eat eggs and maybe eventually you would leave a toothbrush in my bathroom. But marriage? I have never wanted to be a wifey."
He looked at me. No, it wasn't him looking at me. It was the wolf looking at me out of Magnus' eyes.
I'd witnessed that wolf tear through flesh and kill a man. I had never once been afraid of Magnus or the beast inside him. Now I was rethinking that feeling.