Chapter 6
Sam pulled into his own driveway with a bag of Thai takeout riding shotgun and a feeling in his chest that he wasn’t quite ready to examine too closely. Anticipation, maybe. Or something warmer and more dangerous than that.
He’d been looking forward to this all day.
Through three conference calls, two budget meetings, and an hour-long discussion with Gavin about security protocols for Monaco, part of his mind had been counting down the hours until he could see Claudia again.
That should have worried him more than it did.
The impulse to feed her had hit him around four in the afternoon, strong and undeniable.
His inner lion had been restless all day, pacing beneath his skin, and when the thought occurred to him that Claudia probably wasn’t eating properly while she worked on those protective items, the beast had practically purred its approval.
Feeding your mate was instinctive among shifters.
It was a sign of care, of courtship, of claiming.
Sam knew that. He’d watched it happen with other mated pairs in his Clan.
But knowing it and doing something about it were two different things, so he’d deliberately not examined the impulse too closely when he’d texted Claudia an hour ago.
SAM: Don’t eat dinner. I’m bringing food. We can discuss Monaco plans while we eat.
Her response had come back almost immediately.
CLAUDIA: You don’t have to do that.
SAM: See you at seven.
Now it was six forty-five, and he was sitting in his driveway like a nervous teenager, checking his reflection in the rearview mirror.
He’d changed out of his suit jacket and tie before leaving the office, rolling up his sleeves in a casual gesture that felt calculated now.
Like he was trying to look relaxed and approachable, instead of like the man who’d spent the entire day thinking about the woman living in his guest house.
“Get it together,” he muttered to himself, grabbing the food and heading up the path.
The guest house was lit from within, warm light spilling through the windows into the gathering dusk. Sam knocked on the door and heard movement inside, footsteps approaching. His pulse kicked up a notch.
The door opened, and there she was.
Claudia had changed out of her work clothes into soft jeans and a simple sweater in deep green that made her blue eyes look darker.
Her hair was down, falling in waves past her shoulders, and she wasn’t wearing shoes.
The casual intimacy of it, seeing her like this in what had become her home for the time being, hit him harder than it should have.
“Hi,” she said, and smiled. Just a small, nervous smile that made something in his chest tighten.
“Hi.” He held up the bag. “I brought a lot of food. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got a variety.”
“You really didn’t have to do this.” She stepped back to let him in, and he caught the faint scent of her magic, like rain and stone and something uniquely her.
“It’s no problem. I wanted to.” The truth of it surprised him. “Besides, we need to discuss the cover story for Monaco, and I figured we might as well eat while we do so.”
It was a reasonable excuse. Professional. Exactly the kind of thing a business executive would say to his consultant before a sensitive mission. It was also complete bullshit, and from the way Claudia’s eyes lingered on his face for a moment before she turned away, she probably knew it.
“Come in,” she said, leading him through the small living area toward the kitchen.
Sam followed, trying not to notice the way her jeans fit or the graceful line of her spine under that sweater. The guest house smelled like her now, he realized. That clean scent with an undertone of magic and something sweeter. Lavender, maybe, or verbena.
The kitchen was small but well-appointed, with a breakfast bar that separated it from the living area. Claudia cleared a stack of papers from the counter, and Sam caught a glimpse of sketches for jewelry designs before she tucked them away.
“That smells amazing,” she said as he started unpacking containers. “Is that pad thai?”
“And green curry, spring rolls, tom yum soup, and mango sticky rice for dessert.” He lined everything up, very aware of how domestic this felt. How right. “I might have ordered too much.”
“Or not enough.” She laughed as she pulled plates down from the cabinet, moving with easy familiarity in the space. “I haven’t eaten since lunch, and that was just a protein bar at my desk.”
His lion rumbled with satisfaction at the confirmation that she needed feeding. Sam pushed the feeling down and focused on serving food onto plates.
They settled at the breakfast bar, close enough that their elbows almost touched. Sam tried to remember the last time he’d shared a casual meal with someone like this, and couldn’t.
“This is really good,” Claudia said after her first bite. “Thank you for bringing it.”
“You’re welcome.” He watched her eat for a moment, pleased by her appetite, then forced himself to focus. “So, about Monaco. We should probably discuss how we’re going to play this.”
“Right. The cover story.” She reached for a spring roll, not quite meeting his eyes. “Business associates floating a potential partnership. You said that before.”
“That’s the official story, yes. But people are going to make assumptions.” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “They’re going to think we’re involved romantically. It’s inevitable at an event like this. People like to gossip and speculate.”
Claudia set down her fork. “I suppose that makes sense. A billionaire doesn’t usually bring a simple business associate to something like the Celestine Gala.”
“Exactly.” Sam turned on his stool to face her more directly. “Which means we need to be comfortable with each other in a way that looks natural to observers.”
“What do you mean?”
He’d been working through the tactical considerations while trying to ignore the more personal ones.
“I mean we need to be able to touch each other without it seeming awkward or forced. At events like this, couples do things. Small things. Me putting a guiding hand on your lower back. Standing close. Dancing.”
“Dancing.” Claudia’s voice had gone slightly higher.
“We’ll likely be attending both the Friday and Saturday balls. There will be dancing,” Sam confirmed.
“Right. Of course.” She picked up her water glass, took a sip. “So you’re saying we should practice? So it doesn’t look strange when we’re there?”
“Something like that.” Sam knew he was walking a dangerous line here.
He knew he was using the mission as an excuse for something he wanted anyway, but the reasoning was sound, even if his motivations weren’t entirely pure.
“If you flinch away from me every time I touch you, people will notice. And if people notice, they’ll start asking questions we don’t want to answer. ”
Claudia nodded slowly. “That makes sense. I guess I hadn’t thought about the physical aspects of maintaining our cover.”
“It’s important.” He shifted closer, close enough that he could see the faint dusting of freckles across her nose. “May I?”
“May you what?”
“Touch you. To see how comfortable you are with it.”
Her eyes widened, but she nodded. “Um… Okay.”
Sam reached out slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wanted to. He rested his hand on her shoulder, his thumb near the curve of her neck. Her skin was warm through the soft knit of her sweater, and he felt her slight intake of breath.
“How does that feel?” he asked quietly.
“Fine. Good.” Her voice was a little breathless. “Not uncomfortable.”
He let his hand slide down her arm, light and careful, watching her face for any sign of distress. There was none. Just a slight flush in her cheeks and a quickening of her pulse that he could see at the base of her throat.
“Good.” He moved his hand to her waist, resting it there. “What about this?”
“That’s fine too.” She wasn’t looking at him now, staring instead at some point over his shoulder.
Sam used his free hand to gently turn her face back toward his. “Claudia. Look at me.”
She did, and the impact of those dark eyes meeting his made something crack open in his chest. Want. Pure and simple and impossibly complicated.
“There’s one more thing we should probably practice,” he heard himself say.
“What’s that?”
“Kissing.”
The word hung in the air between them. He watched her process it, saw surprise flicker across her face, followed by something that might have been hope before she shuttered it away.
“Kissing?” she repeated.
“If we’re going to convince people we’re together, there might be situations where a kiss would be expected.
A greeting, a goodbye, a stolen moment at a party.
” He was making this up as he went along, justifying it when, really, he just wanted to know what she tasted like. “It needs to look natural. Not staged.”
“You want to practice kissing me.” It wasn’t quite a question.
“I want to make sure you’re comfortable with it if it needs to happen.” He kept his voice level and professional, even as his lion was pacing inside him with anticipation. “But only if you’re okay with it.”
Claudia’s gaze dropped to his mouth, then back to his eyes. “For the mission?”
“For the mission,” he agreed, lying through his teeth.
She took a breath, let it out slowly. “Okay. Yes. That’s probably a good idea.”
Sam’s hand was still on her waist. His other hand moved to cup her jaw, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
“I will.”
He leaned in slowly, watching her face. Her eyes fluttered closed when he was a breath away, and then, his lips touched hers, and the world narrowed to this. Just this.
The kiss was gentle at first, exploratory. Testing. Her lips were soft and tasted faintly of the lime from their dinner. Sam kept it light, careful, even though everything in him was screaming to deepen it, to pull her closer, to claim her mouth the way his lion wanted to claim all of her.
Claudia made a small sound in the back of her throat and leaned into him, one of her hands moving up to rest against his chest. He could feel her magic rising to meet his, sparking where they touched, and the sensation was intoxicating.
He angled his head and deepened the kiss just slightly, his hand sliding into her hair. She responded, her fingers curling into his shirt, and for a moment, there was nothing but the taste of her, the feel of her, and the rightness of having her in his arms.
Sam made himself pull back, breathing harder than a simple kiss should have warranted. Claudia’s eyes were still closed, her lips parted, and she looked dazed in a way that sent a surge of possessive satisfaction through him.
“That was good,” he managed, his voice rough. “Very convincing.”
Her eyes opened slowly, dark and slightly unfocused. “Convincing. Right.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Sam could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest and smell the subtle change in her scent that told him she was aroused. His lion was practically preening, wanting to kiss her again, wanting so much more than that.
He forced himself to move back, to give her space, even though it went against every instinct he had.
“So,” he said, trying for casual and missing by a mile. “I think that should work for our cover story.”
“Yes.” Claudia touched her fingers to her lips, looking stunned. “That should definitely work.”
An awkward silence fell. Sam picked up his fork and stared down at his plate, trying to remember what they’d been doing before he’d kissed her. Right. Dinner. They’d been having dinner.
“We should probably eat the rest of this before it gets cold,” he said.
“Right. Yes. Food.” Claudia picked up her own fork but didn’t actually eat anything.
Sam forced himself to take a bite of pad thai that suddenly had all the appeal of cardboard. What had he been thinking? Kissing her like that, using the mission as an excuse, when what he really wanted was so much more complicated and dangerous than a simple cover story.
He’d wanted to kiss Claudia because he was attracted to her. Because his lion had decided she was intriguing. Because every day he spent near her made it harder to maintain the professional distance he knew he should keep.
And now, he’d crossed a line that couldn’t be uncrossed, and they still had to get to Monaco and a whole weekend to get through once they were there. He was in so much trouble.
“Sam?” Claudia’s voice soft.
He looked at her. “Yeah?”
“About the protective items I made for you. Should we look at those now, or…”
“Now is good.” He seized the change of subject gratefully. “That’s why I came over, after all.”
Liar, his lion said. You came to see her. To be near her. To feed her and touch her and kiss her.
“They’re in my workroom,” Claudia said, sliding off her stool. “I’ll just go get them.”
She disappeared down the hallway, and Sam pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He needed to get a grip. He needed to remember that he was the Alpha, that he had responsibilities, that getting involved with Claudia beyond the professional would complicate everything.
But when she came back carrying a small wooden box, her eyes still soft and her lips still slightly swollen from his kiss, all his good intentions scattered like leaves in a storm.