Chapter 15 - Andrea
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Andrea
“Bring a bag tomorrow,” Finneas said at the end of the day, casual, like inviting me to stay at his place was the same as asking me to print a report.
So the next morning I packed a toothbrush, pajamas I knew I wouldn’t wear, and the highland romance because I was mid-chapter.
Shoved everything into a tote bag and brought it to work and spent the entire day with it sitting under my desk while I pretended I wasn’t nervous about the fact that I was going to his house for the first time.
He’d always come to mine. My house, my couch, my bed.
His territory was new ground and my stomach was doing flips that I refused to acknowledge.
He drove me there after work.
The estate was absurd. I knew he had money, obviously, the man owned a company and ran a pack, but knowing it and seeing it were two different things.
The driveway alone was longer than my entire street.
Inside was all high ceilings and dark wood and rooms that kept opening into more rooms like the house didn’t know when to stop.
“Your kitchen is the size of my living room,” I said, trailing behind him down a hallway. “Possibly two of my living room. How many people live here?”
“Just me.”
“Just you. In a house with what, fifteen rooms?”
“Twelve.”
“Oh, well, twelve. Very reasonable. Very normal amount of rooms for one man and zero pets.”
He didn’t respond to that but I caught the jaw twitch and I counted it as a win.
We turned a corner and I stopped walking. Just stopped, mid-step, my bag sliding off my shoulder.
The room was floor to ceiling bookshelves.
Dark wood, two leather armchairs angled toward a fireplace, a reading lamp casting warm gold light across the space.
Thousands of books on the shelves, old and new, hardcovers with cracked spines sitting next to paperbacks with soft worn edges.
The room smelled like leather and old paper, warm in a way that hit me somewhere deep and unexpected.
“If you’re trying to seduce me,” I said, “it’s working.”
He was behind me in the hallway. “I wasn’t trying.”
“Well congratulations, you accidentally have the best room I’ve ever seen in my life.”
I walked in and ran my fingers along the spines on the nearest shelf.
History, philosophy, poetry. The leather was smooth under my fingertips, some of the gold lettering faded to a whisper.
I moved to the next shelf, novels, classics mixed with pulp fiction, and there was a rolling ladder on a brass rail that went all the way to the ceiling and I wanted to climb it so badly my fingers itched.
In the far corner I found a section of romance novels. Faded covers, spines soft from being read over and over.
“Whose are these?”
“My father’s mother. She lived here before my parents.”
“Your grandmother read romance novels?”
“Aggressively.”
I pulled one off the shelf. Shirtless man on the cover holding a woman whose hair was defying at least three laws of physics. “I love your grandmother.”
My eyes were stinging and I blinked it away fast because I was not going to cry in front of this man over a goddamn room.
But I’d described a room like this to Fin once on the porch, rambling about my dream house while scratching behind his ears.
Bookshelves, a fireplace, old books with cracked spines.
I didn’t know if Finneas remembered that conversation or if this was just his grandmother’s taste, but either way, standing in this room felt like walking into a fantasy I’d had since I was twelve years old reading under my covers with a flashlight.
I curled up in one of the armchairs with my book.
He took the other chair with his laptop.
Neither of us spoke. The fire crackled, the lamp hummed, and I sank into the chair and forgot to be nervous because this room made it impossible to feel anything except comfortable.
My shoes were off, feet tucked under me.
The leather of the armchair was soft, worn in the exact right places like a hundred people had sat here before me and loved it.
I read for an hour. Lost track of the pages, lost track of time, just fell into the story the way I always did when the world around me was warm enough to disappear into.
At one point I looked up and he was watching me over the top of his screen.
Laptop forgotten, his face open and unguarded in the firelight, and my neck went warm.
Neither of us looked away for a few seconds.
Then I went back to my book before words came out of my mouth that I wasn’t ready for.
Later I padded to the kitchen for water and he followed me. His kitchen was ridiculous, granite counters and a stove with six burners and a fridge that could hold enough food for a small army. I opened it and found beer, leftover takeout containers, and a single sad lemon.
“This is the fridge of a man who eats out every night,” I said.
“I eat at your place most nights.”
“So it’s my fault your fridge is depressing?”
“I’m not calling it depressing. It’s efficient.”
“Finneas, there’s a lemon in here and it’s going soft. This is beyond efficient. This is a cry for help.”
He took the water glass out of my hand, set it on the counter, and backed me against the fridge.
The cold metal hit my shoulder blades through my shirt and his body was warm on my front and he kissed me, slow, his hand cupping my jaw, his thumb on my cheekbone.
I forgot about the lemon. I forgot about most things.
My hands found his chest, the cotton of his shirt warm under my palms, and I kissed him back until my head was spinning and my back was freezing from the fridge and my front was burning from him and I was caught between the two extremes not wanting either to stop.
He pulled back first. His thumb traced my jaw one more time, slow, and then he stepped away and picked up my water glass and handed it to me like he hadn’t just short-circuited my entire nervous system against a refrigerator.
“Your water,” he said.
“I hate you.”
“You don’t.”
I didn’t. That was the problem.
We drifted back to the library because that room had a gravitational pull I couldn’t resist. I curled into the armchair with my legs draped across his lap, book open on my knee, his hand resting warm on my ankle.
The fire was still going, the lamp casting gold light across the shelves, and my body was still humming from the kitchen and I couldn’t concentrate on a single word on the page.
I set the book down.
“Tell me about the King stuff,” I said. “Not the council and the territory disputes. The everyday part.”
He told me. The pack was hundreds of wolves and their families. Disputes, politics, livelihoods. Territory that needed managing, alliances that needed maintaining. His company funded a lot of it but the pack existed long before the business.
“And the Luna?”
“The King’s partner. His equal. She holds the emotional center of the pack. Mediates where the King can’t. The pack looks to the King for strength and the Luna for heart.”
I traced a circle on the arm of the chair with my finger. Heart. That was a hell of a job description. I tried not to think about whether he was describing the role or describing me and I failed at not thinking about it almost immediately.
“That’s a lot,” I said.
“It is.”
I didn’t push further. We were day by day. I wasn’t mapping out a future that involved wolf politics and leadership titles. But the question sat in my head, warm and heavy, and I could feel him watching me like he wanted to say more.
I changed the subject because I wasn’t ready for whatever he was holding back.
“You know I used to dye my hair? In high school. Dark brown, almost black. Wore heavy makeup, black clothes, tried to look older because everyone treated me like a kid who couldn’t be taken seriously.”
“What happened?”
“Woke up one day, looked in the mirror, didn’t recognize the person looking back.
I’d spent years performing this version of ‘serious’ that other people decided I needed to be and I hated every damn second of it.
” I shrugged. “So I went back to blonde. Wore pink. People underestimated me anyway so I figured I’d rather be myself and let my work shut them up. ”
He remained silent for a second. Then he reached over, took my hand, lifted it to his mouth, and pressed his lips against the inside of my wrist. Slow.
Warm. His stubble grazed my skin, his breath landing on the soft part where my pulse was going crazy, and my whole arm went hot.
He held my wrist there, his lips barely moving against my skin, and I could feel him breathing me in.
“I love the way you dress,” he said, low, against my skin, and every nerve ending in my body lit up at the same time.
My brain just shut off. Full system crash. I sat there with my hand in his and his mouth on my wrist and I couldn’t form a sentence. Couldn’t form a thought. Just heat, his breath, his stubble, the low rumble of his voice vibrating against my pulse.
“That’s cheating,” I finally managed. “You can’t say shit like that while kissing my wrist. My head stops working.”
“Then stop thinking.”
“I can’t stop thinking, that’s my whole personality. Thinking and worrying and overanalyzing, that’s the Andrea Grey experience.”
“Sounds exhausting.”
“It is. You’re making it worse.”
I pulled my hand back and picked up the book because if I didn’t put a barrier between us right now we were ending up on the library floor and I hadn’t finished this damn chapter.
My wrist was still tingling where his mouth had been.
I pressed it against the cool leather of the armchair and pretended I was fine.