Chapter Six
The silence woke Summer hours later. Usually she woke to the sounds of Vincent singing or tap dancing or practicing new jokes and stories for his show. But this morning there were no sounds. Not even the noise from cars and trucks driving by.
Opening her eyes, it took a moment before fear washed through her.
Where was she? It certainly wasn’t her room with the ice white walls and ancient miniblinds that weren’t effective at blacking out the light from the neon signs on the building across the road, or the daylight that streamed in once the sun was high enough.
The wall she stared at was dove gray and the thick, luxurious curtains that apparently hid the window were burgundy.
She couldn’t see much else from where she lay, but between the silence, what she could see, and the fact that the bed felt like a giant pillow under her, she knew she had a feeling she’d wound up somewhere in ritzy uptown. .
Question was, where was she?
Closing her eyes, she probed her memories and in seconds recalled the run through the city, the hot sexy man who not only claimed to be a wolf shifter and a vampire, he’d also claimed that she was his mate.
“I know you’re awake,” a deep, slightly accented voice said, soft, cool breath blowing across her ear. “Are you ready to face a new day?”
Summer had to clear her throat before she could speak. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon. You should call the bar and let them know you won’t be in tonight.”
Summer rolled to her back and looked up at the gorgeous man. He looked sleep rumpled and relaxed. “What do you mean? I have to go to work. The rent’s due in a few days and I have bills to pay. If I don’t go to work, they’ll fire me and I’ll end up living under a bridge down by the Hudson River.”
“No, you won’t,” he assured her as he rolled to his back, pulling her with him so her head rested on his shoulder and his arm wrapped around her back. “You’ll be moving in here, and as my mate, you won’t need to think about money ever again. I’ll take care of everything.”
“You can’t do that,” Summer immediately protested.
“Why not? You are my mate and I’m richer than most countries. Why shouldn’t I take care of you?”
Summer studied him for a moment. He was serious.
But there was no way, in this day and age, that a man wanted a woman who wouldn’t contribute her share to a relationship.
There was no way she would sponge off him for the rest of her life.
She’d been raised to pull her own weight, pay her own way, stand on her own two feet.
Living in the spare room at Vincent’s apartment might have become more permanent than temporary, but she still paid her half of the bills, even if it was giving Vincent a free drink once in a while.
“Women of the twenty-first century are expected to work and contribute and pay their own way in life. We’re not supposed to sponge off the men in our lives. I don’t want you, or anyone else, to think I only stay with you for your money.”
He might have lived for more than a thousand years, and seen the world evolve, but Fenrir still seemed like a man with old world manners and expectations.
When he didn’t respond, she continued with her argument. “If I move in here and take your money and not work it won’t feel like I’m an equal partner. I don’t own anything of value. I don’t have a high paying job or an inheritance to fall back on. What do you see me bringing into this relationship?”
With that Fenrir blinked and his entire being seemed to soften. Rolling to his side, he pushed up and leaned over her until their noses were inches apart.
“What do you have to bring into a relationship? You bring you. Your sweet smile and sunny disposition. Your inquisitive brain and your beautiful body. Why is it so damn important for things to be so fucking equal all the time? Only in the last sixty or seventy years did people have to be equal partners. Until then, men worked and brought home the money while their women kept the home running, bore and raised the children, and made sure the money stretched until the next payday. Besides, I’m Konungr.
My mate is not expected to work, no matter what her social status is. ”
Summer blinked as the truth of what he was saying swept through her.
Just because he had money and she didn’t, just because he had been a part of the world growing and advancing, and no doubt seen places in the world she never would was no reason to deny this soul-deep pull that made her want to crawl into his skin and become one with him.
The summer hibernation would only last two weeks and if it didn’t work out between them, she could always leave and return to her little room at Vincent’s place.
She hoped.
In the meantime, she needed to come up with an explanation for her boss at The Gin Room as to why she was dropping out of sight for two weeks.
Lifting her head, she brushed a kiss on Fenrir’s lips. “Okay.”
“Okay? Okay what?”
“Okay, I’ll stay, at least through the hibernation. After that, we can reassess.”
****
“In two weeks you will be so spoiled you will never want to leave,” Fenrir said with the confidence she’d heard from rich men at the bar. As if he could tell the future and knew things would fall his way over their time together.
She smiled up at him, then lifted one hand and combed her fingers through his beard. “Does that mean we can have sex now?”
Though everything in him wanted to ignore the rest of the world and stay in bed for the next two weeks, there were some things that needed to be taken care of in the next few hours. Hibernation officially began at sundown and then they wouldn’t be going anywhere.
“I’m sorry, sweetness, but that will have to wait until tonight. Right now, we need to go to your apartment and collect your things, and run a few other errands before sunset.”
“You’re going with me?”
She squealed when he wrapped his arms around her and rolled them out of bed. He landed on his feet and carried her into the bathroom. Setting her on her feet in front of the toilet, he dropped a kiss on her nose.
“Of course I’m going with you. We will also take a few guards with us, just in case. I’ll let you get ready and go see if your clothes are back from the laundry.”
“You have a laundry in the building?”
“We have almost anything you might want in this building. Coffee shop, laundry, even a shop with candy, ice cream, and meat.”
“Cool. Now go away so I can pee in private.”
“As you wish, my mate.”