Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
VIDAR
Itook the stairs two at a time. The meeting with my brothers had lasted forty minutes longer than it needed to. And it wasn't done yet, but I needed a break. I needed to talk to Addie.
I pushed open the bedroom door. The bed was empty, sheets pulled back, the indentation of her still visible in the pillow on the left side.
My side, technically, but she'd migrated in the night and I had not seen any reason to correct her.
From behind the closed bathroom door came the sound of running water, the low rush of the shower.
I sat on the edge of the bed and waited.
The room smelled of her. Of us. The chemistry of last night was layered into the fabric of everything.
My wolf settled in a way it hadn't all morning.
The low, restless frequency that had followed me through the meeting went quiet.
I hadn't realized how much of my attention had been cordoned off until it released.
The shower cut off. A few minutes later the bathroom door opened.
She came out in a cloud of steam, wrapped in a white towel.
It was too large for her because she'd tucked the end above her chest and was holding it there with one hand.
Her dark hair was wet, slicked back from her face.
The mark on her throat was vivid in the morning light; dark at the center, still slightly swollen at the edges, unmistakably mine.
She was mine.
"You came back up," she said.
"I did."
She moved toward the closet with the easy, unselfconscious efficiency of a woman who had found the place where she belonged, and the man to whom she belonged.
She didn't hurry. She didn't linger. The mark disappeared behind the closet door, and something in my chest registered the absence with an irritation that was entirely irrational.
I could still smell her. But the specific scent that had been soaking into my skin since last night — jasmine and her honey-mush — had been scrubbed off her by the shower. Replaced by something clean and generic and not mine.
My wolf did not appreciate this.
I stood up, crossed to the closet doorway, and leaned against the frame. She was standing in front of the rack with one hand on a hanger, her back to me, still in the towel.
"You washed it off."
She turned her head.
"My scent."
A beat. She turned back to the rack, pulled a sweater free, considered it. "I was under the impression showers were a standard morning activity."
"They are," I said. "I don't have to like the outcome."
She made a sound that was almost a laugh.
I watched the back of her neck, the slope of her shoulder, the edge of the mark visible until the sweater covered it.
It still peeked above the fabric. The wolf's irritation settled into something more proprietorial, which was not more comfortable but was at least more manageable.
I pulled her back against my chest. She went still for a half-second — not flinching, just registering — and then relaxed into it with the ease of a woman who had decided she liked her cage, liked the man who held her leash.
I was going to bedazzle the fuck out of her neck with diamonds.
I pressed my mouth to the top of her head and breathed her in.
"I have to go out," I said into her hair.
"Where?"
"I need to handle something with the pack." I kept my voice even, my hands moving to her shoulders, thumbs working at the tension there. She carried it high, I'd noticed. A decade of performing competence in rooms that required her to be invisible. "It shouldn't take long."
"What kind of something?"
"Pack business." I pressed a kiss to the crown of her head, brief and final. "You're on holiday until Monday. The office will survive."
Addie was quiet for a moment. I could feel her processing: the slight shift in her breathing, the way her spine straightened a fraction. "Do I have to stay in the house?"
I turned her to face me. She looked up, green eyes steady, expression arranged into something neutral that didn't entirely conceal the question underneath it. I reached up and ran my thumb along the edge of the mark; gently, just enough pressure to feel her pulse jump against the pad of my finger.
"You're not locked in," I said. "And there is no one left in this city who will put a hand on you."
"I want to go into the city," she said. "See some girlfriends. Wedding talk. I haven't had a chance to tell anyone, and it's been almost a week."
"Which girlfriends?"
She named them without hesitation. A woman she'd worked with before Sterling. A college roommate she still saw occasionally.
"Take a detail," I said.
"I will."
"And keep your phone on."
I pulled her closer, one hand at the small of her back, and tilted her chin up. I kissed her; slow, unhurried, with none of the urgency of last night. Just the morning. Just this. Her free hand found the lapel of my jacket and held there.
When I lifted my head, she was looking at me with that expression I still didn't have the right language for. Eyes slightly unfocused, lips parted, the color high in her face.
I ran my thumb along the line of her jaw. Then I turned my head slightly, deliberately, and guided her mouth to the side of my neck. Her breath came out against my skin, warm and unsteady.
"When I get back, we'll handle that."
She swallowed. I felt it against my throat. She nodded once, her lips grazing my skin where I intended her mark to make its forever home for all to see. I stepped back before I changed my mind about leaving.
Magnus and Gunnar were waiting. They fell into step beside me as I came down the front steps.
"She's staying at the estate?"
"She said she's going into the city to see some friends."
"Fifty bucks says she slips them in less than an hour," said Gunnar.
I didn't take the bet. My Addie would probably do it in half the time. "Keep back," I said to Magnus as he slipped into the driver's seat. "No need to follow close with the tracker in her phone."